How to reconcile verses of Secret Mark that seem to fit nicely into the regular Gospel of Mark and are rather intriguing, this despite the fact that the story of the now inaccessible Clement document seems rather suspect (according to most scholars)? I wonder if perhaps there could be some…

By James Bean When I first read the Book of the Great Invisible Spirit (Gospel of the Egyptians) in the Nag Hammadi Library I immediately recognized the strings of vowels that are present in the text as a kind of western equivalent of the AAAUUUMMM (OM) chant of eastern religions…

by James Bean On International Women’s Day I was watching a Syrian Orthodox gathering that was being streamed online, and much to my surprise one of the speakers began reading from the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and discussing it! They were using Karen King’s translation^^ that includes some Greek Oxyrhynchus…

Genres: Psalms, Poetry, Bhakti (devotion), Gnosticism, Gnostic Christianity, Meditation, Sacred Texts, Lost Books of the Bible, Mysticism, Metaphysics, Philosophy This mysterious collection of ancient psalms known as “the Odes of Solomon,” written in Syriac, a dialect of the Aramaic language, has been described as “some of the most beautiful songs…

Across the many centuries, lovers of the Beloved have been the composers of divine ecstatic poems, ghazals, odes, hymns psalms, banis, gathas, kirtans, shabds, and bachans. …

Some fragments from the lost Gospel of Thomas containing a few sayings attributed to Jesus were unearthed by the papyrologists Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt. These sayings were part of an impressive cache of literature composed in Greek that was discovered at Oxyrhynchus, Egypt back in 1897. …

Most of the vegans I know are Jains, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Sufis, Radhaswamis (my path), Bahais, or practice some form of individualistic "none-of-the-above" spirituality.

“Since the exterior senses, by hearing, by sight, by the sense of smell and of touch, are not able to search out the innermost mysteries of the natures, on this account God conceals within the inner members a nature having senses more subtle than all the bodies. Now because of the subtleness of its stirrings, this nature searches out the hidden wisdom of the things created by the Lord of all.” (John the Solitary, “John the Solitary On the Soul”, Syriac mystic)

They’re not mystics because they write poetry, not saints because they’re related to a saint. Their names and costumes don’t matter; only those who face the enemy in battle are brave. They’re not mystics just because they play instruments and drape an ascetic’s blanket over their shoulders, or sing and recite scriptures. Reading the Vedas and performing rituals does not make them saints. Penances, pilgrimages and living in forests make no one a mystic. Beads, caste marks and smeared ashes — these don’t make a saint. If they don’t forget the body*, says Tuka, they’re just people of the world.