Gnosticism: Difference between revisions

* [[Apocalypse How]]: Several texts describe the end of the world like the On The Origin Of The World (everything obliterated by light).

* [[Apocalypse Maiden]]: Sophia, but subverted by the fact she will do this in order to stop the [[Big Bad]].

* [[Beauty Equals Goodness]]: Especially Sophia, always depicted as beautiful and almost always naked.

* [[Body Horror]]: The Gnostics had great contempt for the flesh. In fact, the flesh, the world, and the Demiurge are the three most reviled things in Gnosticism!

* [[Did Not Do the Research]]: Catholic and Orthodox theologians tended to do this, even effecting our knowledge of them if we treat them as reliable source of info.

* [[Dirty Coward]]: The Gnostics were considered this by many because, unlike early Christians such as Ignatius and Polycarp, they were not prepared to [[Doomed Moral Victor|suffer martyrdom]] for their faith.

** If you look at the table of Aeons, it looks like a male Aeon and a female Aeon emanates new Aeons every so often.

* [[Eldritch Abomination]]: All of the archons' true forms qualify as this.

* [[Evil Is Sexy]]: Averted, the Demiurge ([[Big Bad]]) is a lion headed serpent who is also really ugly. Unlike modern Christian interpretations of evil, evil in Gnosticism is usually boneheaded and bureaucratic in nature, more like a supernal Soviet Union than a whorehouse. Its paragons have unattractive names like "Quarrelsomeness" and "Bitter Weeping."

** Also inverted, with [[Beauty Equals Goodness|Sophia]], who is always depicted as beautiful and generally depicted as naked.

* [[Forbidden Fruit]]: Subverted. Eating the forbidden fruit opened Adam and Eve's eyes to the fact they were prisoners.

** Also, this is the reason why most people have a concept of [[Fluffy Cloud Heaven]]. It is based on a concept of the Soul that was popular before this one predominated due to Existentialism.

*** This also needs mention of [[Fire and Brimstone Hell]], a concept more closely associated with traditional religion.

* ''[[Revolutionary Girl Utena]]''

* ''[[Serial Experiments Lain]]''

* ''[[Texhnolyze]]'': The further into this series you get, the more Gnostic symbolism and saturation shows up, with some of the darker and more paranoid ideas becoming increasingly warped and played with in a highly [[Mind Screw|Mind Screwy]] manner. For example, {{spoiler|the disturbing way in which Doc increasingly mirrors Sophia, or Kano mirrors the demiurge}}. And then of course, there's [[Messianic Archetype|Ran]].

** Who Kano keeps calling "Theoria" for no obvious reason. Naturally, this is yet another Gnostic concept meaningless to a casual viewer.

* There are some highly suspicious parallels in ''[[Blame]]'' to Gnostic ideology, particularly in the later parts of the series.

* Very surprisingly for a [[Shonen]] manga, but a case could definitely be made for ''[[Soul Eater]]''s inclusion in this list, particularly as of the Book chapters.

 

== [[Music]] ==

* [[Current 93]] makes continual reference to Gnostic texts.

* Arguably some of [[Tool]]'s songs touch on Gnostic themes, "Parabola" being an example, though Maynard's lyrics are open to a great deal of interpretation.

* [[Coph Nia]] actually has a song called "Gnostic Mass", whose lyrics draw heavily on Gnostic beliefs (no surprises there.)

* ''[[The Prisoner]]''

* ''[[The Thirteenth Floor]]''

* ''Stigmata''

* ''[[They Live]]''

* [[His Dark Materials]] ({{spoiler|the universe is, in a sense, self-aware; the Authority and, later, the Regent are demiurges}})

* [[Naked Lunch]]

* God have mercy on our souls, but [[Dan Brown]] has done as much to raise Gnosticism into the public consciousness as the Wachowski brothers.

** It might be useful to point out that while the Watchowskis have ushered Gnosticism into the public consciousness through the underlying philosophical discussions in their films <ref> with said discussion reaching into the fundamental ideology of Gnosticism and debating the arguments for and against the probable nature of reality, the delineation of the borders of reality, and playing with the idea of the demiurge and assessing sentient beings as contributors to the formation of an imperfect consensus reality</ref>, [[Dan Brown]] has raised awareness of Gnosticism by flinging the term around so liberally in such a vague and arbitrary manner in his books that it drove most of his readers to look it up on [[The Other Wiki]]... where most of them found two things: 1) Gnosticism is incredibly detailed, ancient, and so deep and involving that you can spend days on a [[Wiki Walk]] just scratching the surface, and 2) [[Dan Brown]] has a very bad habit of [[Completely Missing the Point]] when it comes to secular and philosophical ideology.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* [[Silent Hill]]-- even the soundtrack lyrics have a Gnostic undertone.

* [[Star Ocean Till the End of Time]]

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

 

== Western Animation ==