{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2622",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 2622,
    "subject": "Gnosticism (Pullman; heavy spoilers)",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-05-05T10:17:59+00:00",
    "last": "2001-05-05T10:17:59+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0030-0376@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Alice Turner",
        "address": "akt at attglobal.net"
      },
      "date": "2001-05-05T10:17:59+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Gnosticism (Pullman; heavy spoilers)",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Going back a bit to the Gnostic discussion:\n\nFrom Wombat (responding to John Bishop):"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Good summary, with one thing omitted: That every person contains\nwithin\nhimself (or herself) the spark of the divine breath. The point of \"the\nknowledge\" and the self-abnegation is to allow that spark to rejoin\nthe\ngreater God outside the created world. Direct contact with the divine\nis\nboth possible and difficult."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "In Pullman, there is the question of Dust. Interestingly, responses to\nDust are mixed--is it good or evil? All we know at first is that is it\nis attracted to sexually mature humans, not to children. And that this\nis also true of the soul-vampires, the Specters of Cittagazza, who are\ncertainly evil (and scary, Bear). In Manichaeean Gnoticism, this is\nLight, if good. Otherwise it would be Dark Matter (matter being bad and\nidentified with Satan or Ahriman). Dust is certainly matter for this is\na scientific world (the Dr. Malone part of it, anyway) and we know more\nabout matter than the Gnostics or orthodox Early Christians (who were\nalso inclined to think of matter as evil) did. Pullman, like Mani, has\npulled together elements from a number of religions. I *wish* he had\nstayed on track; it's such a good and ambitious idea.\n\nPullman got lost, I think, in the sheer cumbersomeness of his schema and\nits (their?) relation to Gnosticicm. It might have been easier to posit\nLyra as Sophia instead of Eve--Sophia, too, makes a big mistake which\nleads to the formation of the world as it is instead of what it should\nbe (we wish). By separating this Eve from her Adam, yes, you certainly\navoid temptation: none of the Edenic boinking John Bishop evoked so\ngladsomely. But Sophia conceived the abortive Demiurge on her own!\nBesides, the original schema, both Gnostic and Christian, try to account\nfor the wicked ways of human beings, not only what seem the injustices\nof heaven, and Pullman, in harrowing Hades and in squelching Specters,\ndoesn’t cope with that. Though I suppose if you equate Dust with\ngoodness, and you’ve fixed things so that there will be a good deal more\nof it, you have performed a redemption.\n\nAnd of course Metratron is kaput, though it seems as though that might\nhave happened anyway, kidz or no kidz.\n\nCrowley coped with Sophia a bit more easily (only a bit, because I'm not\nsure anyone reading the book without a pony could figure it out) by\nequating Sam with Sophia only during the \"passage time.\" The grown Sam\nof the fourth book will no longer be Sophia in any way, nor, I predict,\nwill she have any notion that she ever was. And Crowley was only\nborrowing from Gnosticism, not trying to set a scheme.\n\nSorry, this is all a bit rambly.\n\n-alga"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}