Westworld did not disappoint with it's first season.
One of my favorite new shows. HBO also hit a homerun with The Leftovers, but it hasn't gotten near as much publicity. On the Gnosticism theme, there's a scene in The Leftovers where a preacher quotes from the book of Thomas. The whole show leaves so much unanswered, which is great imo.
Gospel of Thomas is a "must read" IMO regardless where you stand on theism. Easily done in less than an hour as the entire gospel is nothing but 114 sayings of Jesus. A lot of it is great stuff but a bit contrary to literalist orthodoxy.
As to the issue of the gnostic Demiurge (known as the half maker or imperfect creator) this idea first expressed in Platonism, but not in such
negative context by the Platonic and the Neo Platonists, the gnostics of both
Judaism and
Christianity subscribe to the idea that the Old Testament god was an evil deity, in Judaism is given the name
Yaltabaoth/Yaldabaoth and found in such texts as Gospel of Judas and the Nag Hammadi Apocryphon of John.
Marconite Christians held to a view of the Old Testament god as an evil god, literally on the same parallel as what we think of and call Satan today. My own view is that the New Testament view of Satan may well be a kind of leftover influence of gnostic christainity but that "VERY DEEP" subject is best left for another time, but a time worth spending IMO.
Gnostics were a fascinating bunch and unlike their literalist brethren, gnostics were far more open minded and saw their texts not in such literal senses but in the forms of metaphor and allegory. Much more like the parables Jesus used to teach higher principles as opposed to dogmatic, to the letter absolutes. Gnosticism by many is thought to have died out once Constantinian Orthodoxy was made mandatory and enforced. My own feeling as with others is that gnosticism went underground, carried forth as mystery teaching through some form of past mystery schools and re-manifested by other means. Some of it came to the surface among jewish scholars who crafted the Zohar and Kabbalah but also among hermeticists who would come to re-emerge as humanity came out of the Dark Ages during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment period. Hermeticism is claimed to trace its origins to Hermes Trismegistus and by extension to the Egypt god of Knowledge Thoth.
At the same time, the most important
library of Gnostic Christianity ever found was discovered at Nag Hammadi located in Egypt. My own suspicions of Gnosticism and Hermeticism being linked at the very least have some merit as both share the same source of origin and both may well have existed at the same time, albeit by different names. I suspect for example the great Alexandrian philosopher Hypatia may well have been a student of both what was hermeticism and the gnosticism of Valentinius that became
Valentinianism that also began in Alexandria Egypt.
Speaking of
Hypatia, she was murdered by Christian zealots driven by their zeal of defending the new emerging Christian orthodoxy and some argue that Hypatia's murder could well mark the beginning of the intellectual dark ages that would dominate Europe and near Asia for the next 1000 years. I also hold to this view.
It wasn't until hermetic and esoteric teaching in the 15th century CE began to leak out thanks mostly to daring free thinkers in Northern Italy, specifically Florence that the intellectual Dark Ages ended and the early enlightenment began to emerge.
As a free thinker and lover of free thought, I have real soft spot in my heart for those early esoteric and occultic Hermetic students, free thinkers in the extreme, who paved the way for the enlightenment philosophy that was to come. And without them, some of the best Sci-fi we have would not be possible at all. From Blade Runner, to They Live to The Matrix and now Westworld among so many others. From the early gnostics and hermeticists to our current enlightenment free thinkers and Sci-fi geeks, a long tradition on a straight line IMO, we owe a debt of gratitude.
