Well I've finished books on Judaism. Fascinating lot of books really. It actually ended with the Holocaust (you can imagine from a previous post), but right before that, well there are books on the Nag Hammaddi, Qumran, and other interesting off shoots and sects of Christianity that didn't make it too well into this age. Of course this in a large part to three groups: first the Romans, who just didn't like Christians or the Jews for that matter. Then the main Christian sect itself, or the Pauline Christians. They slowly destroyed gnostic sects of christianity. Once they got into power, over the Roman Empire that was that, well almost. The Muslims helped, they're the third group. Fifty years after Muhumad's death the religion incorporated nearly all the middle east. They not only beat down the gnostic sects, but nearly single handedly destroyed Zoroastrianism. I said almost, there are about 100,000 of them left, many having immigrated to Canada. Which isn't bad considering this happened over 1500 years ago. There are still gnostic sects around too, only a few thousand. The most pure, direct lineage of these sects are located in Iran and Iraq. Small communities that are to some extent miraculously ignored by the surrounding Muslims. There has been of late a resurgence of Gnosticism, which is strange because there are only really two sources for it: Imflamatory stuff written by the early Christians (some of it shows up in the bible under the letters of Paul), and the Nag Hammaddi, who were a cult of Gnostics in Egypt. That is actually quite a bit when considering about sources. Those early Christian theologians gave quite a bit of imformation particulary doctorine and practices, though it was biased. I like the gnostics, they're kooky. They have a dab of traditional Christianity, a pinch of Eastern philosophy and a pot full of wonderfully original stuff that can be traced back to different mythologies of the region and Zoroastranism.
Now I'm done with all that, I'm entering New Age in Occult, all I can say about that is, if witches are naked as much as that one book portrays, sign me up. And the Greater and Lesser Keys of Solomon, though it seems silly, probably should be handled with kit gloves, you never know who may show up to dinner, and there's enough of me that believes that stuff might be real to fiddle too much.
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