One of the most exotic flavours in this seething cauldron of theological controversy was Gnosticism, a mystical philosophy whose adherents rejected the creator god of the Old Testament as an incompetent fraud.
Instead the Gnostic Christians dedicated their lives to the search for another god, an elusive deity secretly hidden within the human spirit.
This quest for the God within took many forms. Some Gnostics advocated a total rejection of the world and society, living in the desert as ascetic monks; others married, worked and played alongside their neighbours without ever discussing their spiritual pursuits.
The Gnostics had an intuitive, personal approach to enlightenment. There was no hierarchy, no code of conduct and no central governing authority; the goal was liberation by any means necessary, not the creation of new orthodoxies.
While most Gnostic Christians contented themselves with respectable lives of study and contemplation, others chose a more direct route.
Often mischaracterised as “libertines” or “devil-worshippers,” it is the taboo-smashing travellers of this shorter path who have inspired the most curiosity among modern researchers.
Perhaps no two human activities are as thickly ringed round with religious and social taboos as the twin mysteries of sex and death – the beginning and the end, the void from which human life emerges and the gulf into which it disappears.
French philosopher Georges Bataille argues the religious impulse is identical to erotic desire for this reason – both strive for the extinction of individual consciousness, either through the mystical death of the ego (religion) or the “little death” of the orgasm (sex).
In Bataille’s view, sexual and religious taboos provoke their own violation – or “transgression” – simply by existing, for it is only through the very human drive to define and then deflower (or desecrate) states of purity that we loosen the grip of rational utility and plunge or collapse into ecstatic communion with the sacred.
Taboo-breaking, in other words, is a profoundly spiritual activity; whether through religion (the giddy euphoria of the blood sacrifice), sex (the anarchic carnality of the orgy) or social play (the topsy-turvy lawlessness of the carnival). Madmen, criminals and holy fools throughout the ages have always sought to tempt fate and “break on through to the other side.”
The notion that the psychological shock caused by performing forbidden activities can lead to spiritual awakening is called “antinomianism”. The word “antinomian” means, literally, “against the law.”
Antinomian sects have been present throughout human history in almost every culture. Perhaps the best-known modern example is that of the Aghora (or “pure ones”), Hindu holy men who practice necrophilia, cannibalism and even coprophagy (the eating of feces) in their fierce quest for wisdom ... (Read More ...)