A few retourts to your points. The erisans where around long before illuminatius came out (princaplaya discordia predated it by a number of years). Illuminatius trilogy (and a later fallow up every thign is under control) are probably part of "operation ****up". As for the masons, which rite as there are a number. It seems from what I have read that the oriental rite belives the statement I made. Oh and the hassiassins where not just a gerilla force, as they had agents in most of the major eropean reulers courts of the day.

Originally posted here by Zonewalker
bballad...

hope you meant that about arguing points



I would argue the inclusion of several of those groups in there....

the crux of gnostic philopsophy is as follows;

1. Self knowledge is knowledge of God, the self and the divine are indentical
2. Jesus came as a guide to open access to spiritual understanding rather than to save us from sin. When enlightenment is attained you become equal to Jesus in a spiritual sense
3. The physical world was created imperfect either by a moronic 'god' or evil 'god'. The true god is so outside of our comprehension that we will never know anything of him until we become enlightened. However this is not a gift, it is something we must work for.

In many respects Gnosticism is very similar to Buddhism and you can probably see why it was described as heresy by what we know as the Church. There are of course different interpretations of some of the gnostic texts much as there are differences of opinion concerning the New and Old testament

The crux of Masonic philosophy is that all men are brothers under God and that we should all look after each other. Essentially it's the biggest 'Frat' house on the face of the planet.... apologies to any Masons for being so flippant...

The crux of Illuminiati philosophy is very much unknown... the Bavarian order of the Illuminati is not widely documented - despite the book by Robert Wilson (which I should point out is a work of fiction... a good book, but still fiction)

Erisian philosophy.... well I hate to even put the two words together... the modern Erisian 'cult' stems from the Illuminatus book by Robert Wilson mentioned above - it's called Discordianism in there... Discordia being the latin form of Eris - the genealogy of Eris is confused but one variant indicates she is the daughter of Nyx (primal Goddess of the Night) and Erebus (primal God of Darkness) both of whom are offspring of Chaos. Discordianism is very much formed by the Illuminatus trilogy and whilst it might be interesting from a psychological point of view is inherently vapid. To quote from the Eris Discordia web site "Discordianism is either a religion disguised as a joke or a joke disguised as a religion". The original cult of Eris... is well... it's unsure if there even was one. The Greeks viewed Gods like Eris or Erebus very much as natural forces to be respected rather than as beings to be worshipped.

As for Hassassin philosophy (I am assuming you mean the forerunners of assassins!)... given that the 'Old Man of the Mountain' drugged followers to the eyeballs with hash and opium and then ordered the followers to kill people (usually Christian crusaders) I doubt their philosphy was anywhere near similar to your 'secret'. I'm probably going to regret saying this but the sect was an offshoot branch of Shia Islam i.e. they were muslims, it is more likely that they were fighting a guerilla war against the incursions of the Christian crusaders into their homelands at the time.

Probably the only thing you were right on in your post is that Satanists believe that


Although I daresay some of the Satanists round here may argue that one with me

Anyway..... sorry for the length of the post but I had to put in my 2penneth worth

Z

Ps can't comment on KoC... don't know anything about them.... are you refering to the Keepers of Chaos???