According to John Vervaeke, Gnosticism says that “the core of spirituality is not worship, but self-transcendence, healing and freeing people from existential entrapment of their suffering, and that our mythologies and practices should be in service of reuniting to who and what we are.”
There are a few key differences between Gnosticism and Christianity:
It’s not about worship, but self-transcendence.
It’s not centered around a single dogma, but around making stories and analogies that tap into the act of self-transcendence (and these analogies continue in movies).
Mythology-wise, the Gods are not our superiors, but prison guards that trap us (and, like Christ, we each have a divine spark that lets us escape).
Have we misdefined the word "transgression"? If progress is walking forward and regression is walking backward, then transgression means something like “beyond walking.” A transgression is not a sin, but it’s to walk in a direction that is not aligned with our shared notions of progress. It escapes the spectrum. Maybe that’s a meander, maybe that brings us to hell, or maybe that brings us to our destiny. And isn’t so much high-level success about breaking out of local maxim to find a better current to follow? Isn’t genius about hitting the mark that’s out of view? A transgression is something that escapes black and white morality.
From all cosmologies, know thy quest;
From stagnant phenomes, slant through fresh;
Of mechanical order, keep it light;
Of creative angles, enter right;
On abstract virtues, live this hour;
Upon third doors, do not cower;
In voids of nothing, wait and perch;
In cities of noise, build a church.
Developers and rationalists optimize for T1, and designers and artists optimize for T2, but T3 covers the existential purpose of architecture. Can form transform itself beyond a shell for inhabitation, and actually transform its inhabitants? This has been called “the revolutionary function” of architecture, and Modernism is a textbook of failed attempts.
