Gnosis, Unpeaking, Blasphemy

My introduction to the Gnostics happened in college. One story in particular that stuck with me was the re-imagining of the Eden myth. With the Garden of Eden story, you have a story and it's interpretation fused into one story. It never occurred to me that the story could be retold, the characters recast, or that the meaning of the story could be so radically altered. 

I don't know why that story in particular had the effect it had, but I didn't buy into Gnostic beliefs because of it. Instead, it showed me that myths aren't static. They are open to interpretation. Two individuals hearing the same story, could come away with radically different perspectives on the characters, their meaning, and the morality of each of the actors. 

It really didn't matter that the Gnostic story was equally as broken to me as the original. It meant that I could play with the myths to create meaning in similar ways. Before, that process felt closed off to me. Like the only thing I could do was blaspheme. In this sense, blaspheme would be to negate or in our parlance, to "unspeak". You can see blasphemy as a kind of essential and important "unspeaking". 

Unpeaking, however, isn't necessarily creative. Its function tends to be destructive. Hence, getting stuck here can be limiting. Gnosis allowed me to move beyond unspeaking. I took part in the mythmaking process. That doesn't mean that I accept Gnostic principles. Gnosticism demonstrated how to do this for me in a way I think I was patently discouraged from doing having grown up Catholic.

Ultimately, Catholicism teaches you to be passively receptive to religious concepts. The idea of working actively with them is withheld under the aegis of the priest. But you don't need to be a priest to manipulate religious symbols. William Blake provided another symbolic vehicle to escape the interpretive trap.

Ultimately, Gnosis helped me pop an interpretation from a narrative and a symbol from its referent. It became possible for me to play with these ideas more actively. Instead of being a passive receiver of myth, I was an agent in control of manipulating symbols. I controlled the myth. Not vice versa.