Bonnie Nettles and Marshall Applewhite, the founders of the millenarian movement Heaven's Gate, began teaching at a retreat they called Know Place, where one came to "know thyself" in the "no-place of Utopia." This initial phase set the stage for a process of self-recognition that would become the hallmark of conversion to the movement, much as Gnosticism employed in the first centuries of the common era. The parallels between late antique Gnosticism and Heaven's Gate are remarkable. Both posited two breeds of humans, one a material husk and the other an enlightened soul temporarily trapped on earth. Both proposed radical gender equality and maintained a rigorous ascetic regime. Both proffered death as a return to a prior state of gnosis rather than a disjuncture into a new life and afterlife. This paper examines the rhetoric of self-verification employed by both movements as it relates to a modified monotheism. Bonnie Nettles and Marshall Applewhite, the founders of the millenarian movement Heaven's Gate, began teaching at a retreat they called Know Place, where one came to "know thyself" in the "no-place of Utopia." This initial phase set the stage for a process of self-recognition that would become the hallmark of conversion to the movement, much as Gnosticism employed in the first centuries of the common era. The parallels between late antique Gnosticism and Heaven's Gate are remarkable. Both posited two breeds of humans, one a material husk and the other an enlightened soul temporarily trapped on earth. Both proposed radical gender equality and maintained a rigorous ascetic regime. Both proffered death as a return to a prior state of gnosis rather than a disjuncture into a new life and afterlife. This paper examines the rhetoric of self-verification employed by both movements as it relates to a modified monotheism.
مجموعه
تاريخ نشر
2019
توصيف ظاهري
147-164
عنوان
Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies
شماره جلد
4/2
شماره استاندارد بين المللي پياييندها
2451-859X
اصطلاحهای موضوعی کنترل نشده
اصطلاح موضوعی
aliens
اصطلاح موضوعی
asceticism
اصطلاح موضوعی
Heaven's Gate
اصطلاح موضوعی
monotheism
اصطلاح موضوعی
theodicy
نام شخص به منزله سر شناسه - (مسئولیت معنوی درجه اول )