Gnosis
"Quoddam semper, quoddam ubique, quoddam ab omnibus creditum est," which means that magic is everywhere, and all over the world, it’s a recognized fact. Always.[1]
Gnosis is the art of exploiting loopholes in natural law as a means of bringing one's will into being, through manipulation, prediction, or manifestation of gnostic phenomena. Examples of naturally occurring gnostic phenomena are arcana, numina, and the Dreamscape. Other phenomena can be crafted using knowledge of the elements and humours that make up all reality. Creating or predicting such phenomena is considered a hex. Different hexes can then be combined to form hexcrafts, which at the elder witchblood level can be layered to form metahexes.
Knowledge vs faith
The primary principle of gnosis is the edict of the balance between knowledge and faith, or gnosis and agnosis. Caster Wilshe, choromancer and progenitor of all modern gnosis and mysticism, worded it as: "Knowledge is power; faith is surrender."[2] Most interpretations of this statement agree that contextually, Wilshe's statement is not making a value judgment, but rather stating that each has its place. By definition, all gnosis is the product of an increase in knowledge of a subject, the laws of continuum, or the behavior of various beings and Forces, coupled with the ability to sublimate knowledge into agnosis: the application of lucid will into both the freedom from all belief apart from the efficacy of the act. Inversely, mysticism relies on a consistent refusal to believe or know anything, allowing information and intuition to flow through one's mind as droplets through a river. When one needs an answer, the information crystallizes, but is only true for a moment. This lack of belief allows one to act as conduit for the fundamental chaos of the Forces and Depths. It has been suggested that mysticism is the inversion of gnosis: the use of lucidity to blank the mind to create a moment of pure knowledge.
Chaos Witches combine gnosis and agnosis in all acts, refusing belief until necessary, and then believing only in the hex being worked, and only until it is complete. Once its effects are as true as the world they were enacted in, a Chaos Witch ceases to believe in either, living by another Wilshe ethos, "of the Trees of Agnosis and Gnosis, one must eat of both to not be poisoned."[2]
Priests use a version of gnosis-agnosis by believing in only one thing: their deity, who can issue contradictory edicts or make new laws of reality at a whim, because nothing else but their god is true. The mystique-hex side effects they receive as a result of this system are called boons.
Loopholes
Preparation
Hexes must be prepared ahead of time. Methods of preparation vary from practice to practice.
References
- ↑ --Dario Argento, Suspiria (1977). The Latin actually translates as "If a thing is timeless, if a thing is ubiquitous, that thing is believed by everyone."
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Hyssthur & Cairn, by Caster Wilshe
Subcategories
This category has the following 3 subcategories, out of 3 total.
Pages in category "Gnosis"
The following 5 pages are in this category, out of 5 total.