Hello people! How did the ancient Gnostics transform heaven and angels to outer space and aliens? Since the beginning of civilization, every culture has been fascinated with space and the gods. Everything from gods in biblical text to little green men that are contemporary to dinner table conversations all have a shared reiteration of the unknown forces that shape existence.
Furthermore, it seems that the information about ancient Gnosticism makes it possible to reveal the evolution of the aesthetical imagination of various concepts in religious and philosophical cultures concerning heaven, angels, and other divine worlds, and the representation of outer space and aliens in the present culture. Converting religious experiences into a system of space meetings is not a characteristic only of the modern period; its basis can be traced to ancient mystery teachings.
In this article, it is proposed to consider how, with the help of such elements of Gnosticism as a multilevel view of the heavenly world, divine persons, and the super-celestial universe, these or similar ideas might have been put into practice on the basis of the mentioned tradition. This vital shift will question how the attributes of angels and celestial spheres were reshaped in modern re-castings of space and aliens, primarily when, where, and safely speculated in the genres of speculative fiction, New Age other-worldliness, and even ufology.
Let’s dive in!
Repackaging Heaven and Angelic Beings as Outer Space and Aliens: How Ancient Gnostics
Gnosticism A Brief Overview
It became evident from the present studies that Gnosticism was a diverse and profound paradigm of religious thought in the first few centuries of the common era. Actually, it developed mostly during the second to fourth centuries, together with early Christianity, and used many of the same texts and images. Gnosticism is built around the dualism of that which is considered evil or flawed – the physical world – as opposed to which is regarded as spiritually pure – the divine realm; the humans are considered to be ensouled by a divine spark, while the Demiurge, a lower deity created the world.
According to Gnostic teachings, the world is categorized into a number of heavens and hells, even though this concept has more layers rather than a lower one. Such is described as being out of reach to the ordinary mortal unless he acquires ‘gnosis,’ the knowledge of the universe that is veiled from our ‘normal’ ability to comprehend. Any reading of the Nag Hammadi library, for instance, shows that there is a constant focus on the cosmological order and the part that angels, archons, and other celestial beings play in the management or governance of various realms of being.
For the Gnostics, salvation was a spiritual journey that transcended the physical domain, ascending through various states to merge with the source of luminance. In their belief system, divine beings, angels, and other heavenly creatures were seen as messengers of a super material and unseen world, protecting the paths to the unknown. Despite the multitude of realms and beings, this cosmology shared many ideas with the emerging conceptions of space and alien life, inspiring contemplation and reflection.
The Facilities of Angels and Celestial Chambers in Gnosticism
While in the mainstream Christian tradition, angels are understood as quite simple representations of God or messengers in the literal interpretation of the term, in Gnosticism, they play a far more complex and ambiguous part. A considerable portion of them contains a complex and potentially rather diverse meaning – or even vaguely vague at times. Should we turn to the subsequent chapters, it will be seen that in a number of systems, angels constitute an organically hierarchized part of a designed cosmic hierarchy that ranges from the highest spheres to the lowest abyss. At the same time, some angels are minions of the Demiurge – an imperfect and insane divine being in charge of the material world – and others work for more powerful supernatural entities.
To Gnostics, they stand alongside angels, demons, and doubles, yet simultaneously obstruct their path.
In this connection, angels are the openers of various levels of existence or planes of realms. They could bar souls who have yet to receive guidance or knowledge from growing to other dimensions or failing to assist the ones who do have the gnosis. These descriptions of angels as great spiritual beings that act as gatekeepers for the divine are not far from today’s portrayals of aliens who protect, open, or hold information on the cosmos. The concept of angels and spirits acting as performers of interactions between radically distinct planes is very similar to the idea of ‘aliens,’ whom many people see as beings that originate from different planes of reality and who can bring people knowledge, protection, or even a warning.
Heaven Transformed and Repackaged as Outer Space
As the new science of astronomy propelled humanity out of the geocentric Universe, the heavens, once the home of the Christian God and angels, took on a new, mysterious, and infinitely vast identity explored by science.
The heavens were moved from the new early modern literature and then in science fiction of the twentieth century from the abode of angels and God to aliens. Writers like H.G. Wells, whose novel The War of the Worlds depicted Martians descending from space, and Arthur C. Clarke, whose 2001: Star Travel envisaged in A Space Odyssey a big impersonal unknown populated with superior creatures, thus adding to the identification of space as the realm of mystery. It is in science fiction that an intergalactic view of the world replaced the old religious world of heaven, angels, and divine beings.
Angels Recast as Aliens
One of the interesting shifts in the recent approach to people’s philosophies is an evolution of what used to be angels or, in certain cultures, spiritual messengers and even deities and aliens. This change can be traced back to the development of interest in UFO phenomena since the mid-twentieth century. When alien presence and UFO articles started appearing frequently around the world, a number of theorists based the existence and sightings of these extraterrestrials on the old enigmatic visitations by angels.
The idea that aliens could be other-dimensional supermen—possessing knowledge and force beyond human comprehension—is not far from the Gnostics’ portrayal of angels. Thus, in many recent views on UFO phenomena, aliens are depicted as beings that exist beyond physical conditions or are, in fact, some sort of ethereal Gnostic angels who can relatively freely navigate between the physical and spiritual worlds.
An excellent example of such reinterpretation can be found in Erich von Däniken’s book Chariots of the Gods. Where the author insisted that many ancient people who met gods or angels were, in fact, meeting representatives of a higher civilization. Von Damien holds that these aliens were on Earth in the early ages and came into contact with human civilizations, leading to religious myths.
Symon and Other Aspects of Modern Alien Encounters
Digital Encyclopedia/Historiography Many contemporary UFO sighting stories are reminiscent of the Gnostic archetypes. In each of the cases mentioned above, the man is transported out of his mundane world and into the next world, where he meets with great spirits. As messengers, they continually disclose hidden messages to humanity and predict potential risks that are looming or direct change at the individual level.
For example, most abductees who think that they have been taken close to aliens report that they have been taken in spaceships, which they equate to different dimensions or realms. This is similar to what Gnostics have narrated as a journey of the soul through the heavens. Either way, the person who meets the supernatural character changes and can transform in a spiritual or physical way.
In the same way, the knowledge that reveals aliens under the night veil, as a rule, corresponds to the Gnostic focus on special knowledge as the way to salvation. In the same manner, as most Gnostics, who thought that it was only vital to comprehend the arcane wisdom of the universe so as to attain salvation, contemporaneous ufologists also maintain aliens to be in possession of some superior knowledge that may save mankind from its awful fate.
Speculative Fiction and Media A Possibility
As for me, the role of speculative fiction, but in particular of science fiction, has been to rewrite religious paradigms of the afterlife, angels, and divine beings into space and aliens. For example, Philip K. Dick writing in part in the Gnostic tradition, investigated the religious and otherworldly as manifesting in extraterrestrial events. In Dick’s novels, characters often come across aliens, or at least spirits which are not wholly unlike aliens. His books, Valis and Ubik, contain themes of Gnostic cosmogony and a notion of societal actuality being an imposing omnipotence.
TV shows such as The X-Files and movies such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind have also given people the idea that these extraterrestrial beings may well be similar to angels or even gods. Many of these tropes involve issues of conspiracies, secret government knowledge, or the desire to know the unknown, the greater cosmic order—all very Gnostic ideas.
Conclusion
The triumph of heaven as space and angels as extraterrestrials is a very interesting transformation of ideas that shape human’s position in the universe. This is already inherent in the basic Gnosticism view, where the cosmos is a pluralistic, organized hierarchy of divine beings and powers below the surface. When knowledge about the universe grew, it was the same spirituality. These concepts were assimilated into space science, meeting with UFOs and Alien society.
These changes are fundamentally caused by humans’ cries for the unexplainable essence of life regardless of the horizon of religion, philosophy, or science. Whether referred to as angels or aliens, the inhabitants of the above-mentioned higher realms stay equally vivid in peoples’ imaginations, revealing snatches of the forbidden insight and power that seem to exist beyond the sphere of the tangible. In this respect, therefore, we see the influence of Gnosticism throughout the present reality as the world continues to search for a means of escaping its earthly bounds to be a part of a superior cosmic reality.
Did ancient gnostics influence what people today believe about aliens?
FAQs
1.What is the term used for heaven according to Gnosticism?
Pleroma is the source of divine existence, and the “above” (which must not be taken as geographical) of Pleroma is home to spiritual beings such as axons (the eternal ones) and, on some occasions, archons.
2.So, what was the Gnostic attitude toward angels?
Some religions, such as the Gnosticism movement, have perceived the cosmos in a dualistic manner. In this case, angels were thought of as spiritual overseers of specific domains that a soul was to traverse in its process of liberation from the physical realm.
3.What is the true God in Gnosticism?
According to the Gnostics, the idea of the creator God as an angel improved. The true God is the God of pure essence and love. By the second century, Christians worshiped a different god—though this God was still the God of Israel—and held many ideas from the Jewish Scriptures.
4.Do Gnostics still exist?
Since WWII, various Gnostic organizations have been initiated or refounded, including the Ecclesia Gnostica, the Johannite Church, the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, the Ecclesia Gnostica Mysterious, and the Thomasine Church (to distinguish it from St.
