Pistis is also translated as faith, which is in the sense of being faithful. Having faith in a deity is being faithful to the fact of their existence, which is to say maintaining a status wherein whatever happens, one orients one’s existence in relation to that fact, like a planet around a sun. Contrast this with Gnosis “knowing” which is not related to fidelity, faithfulness, or loyalty. To experience Gnosis is to partake of that existence and to be changed by it. Those with Pistis are like ships or aeroplanes finding their way by constantly following the signal beacon which will lead them home to safe harbour. But the pistis is not ‘for’ the purpose of gaining safe harbour – it is loyalty to the signal’s fact, wherever it might lead, even if that be rocks. The Gnostic is different; they are become a beacon in their own right, becoming aware by their knowing-of, of that which surrounds them. Their loyalty, their fidelity renders them aware of the duty they bear to themselves – the signal-lineage they carry – and its consequent implication that they alone must chart their course, must orientate themselves completely by themselves. This Kosmic Aloneness drives some Gnostics to wish to flee the world; this Nocturnal, oceanic all encompassing space seems to them to be smothering with its protean plasticity, its endless, all encompassing, and cloying touch. To them, this noisome and cacophonous Pandemonium is a prison. They would seek a Pleroma where all is Signal, and noise never existed. But there are others for whom the activation of the beacon within them, the lighting of the very blood itself, produces ecstasy – who are seized by that same furor, that daemoniac frenzy. To those enthused, that darkness is as to wine, a rich draught which brings us into the embrace of the Mother of All, bejewelled and garlanded as the dance of existence continues. All-encompassing, All-infusing. Lover and Beloved; the Kosmos in all Hir play of form and absence. Origin and terminus. Inescapable. The indomitable muse of all creativity. Wisdom itself. Sophia. (Queens of Heavens and Hells. Lost souls begging you not to look back. There, in Endless Night, we find the pulse and the polarity. Ten Thousand Tricksters, A Multiplicity of Madmen & Magicians, the Hunters Who Are Hunted. Hear them sing, hear them roar – drunk now – Would you know yet more?) “Darkness preceded Light – She is Mother.” For those Gnostics of which we speak, that Matrix does not imprison, but instead brings-forth. Poiesis. Mother and Child. A primordial Mystery. Think on that, perhaps. |