So, Nag Hammadi

One of our intrepid readers here, just raised the matter of the Nag Hammadi 'library' (as it is generally called now).

Now I promised to reveal some clues about some secrets closely guarded by the world's greatest 'master perfumers...' So, how we will be able to jam those two things together -, well, we'll see!

What is the Blog's intention?

Is this your house? Cool. We're all coming
over to make some noise at your place.

This Blog is intended to have you feel exquisite.

I mean I just came back from somewhere in the local city, after lunch with a couple of errant fashionistas - whose surgeon husbands thrill to the limitless expenditure on wild ideas generated by their women.

Apparently. Evidently - must be, anyway, you'd certainly think.

And there was only one word for lunch today: exquisite.

And I'm not even going to say what it was. We're going to talk about a different thing on a different kind of menu, and how those dishes are prepared.

Because 'the clues' are in there.

Anyway, Nag Hammadi.

Nag Hammadi is a town in Egypt. And there, in 1945, a local farmer found a very very large sealed jar in which were 13 actual leather-bound 'books' - and he attempted to sell them in the local markets - which attracted the attention of experts in antiquities.

Whether the 'sealed jar' part of the story is true or not who can really say - it must have been a very big jar, big enough to contain perhaps a serving maiden called Morgiana, and at least several or a dozen ranks of Jinn.

These days... ...are gone!

Actually there is a Jinn aspect to the story as told by the Egyptian farmer who found the cache but nevertheless, we need to get on to the contents and what they mean.

Neither the contents nor their dating, nor their construction are unique or unusual: the material parts being - cartonnage, papyrus, and leather.

It's just that because of public interest in the translations - what these might say, since after all, it was a 'rare antiquity' discovery - there was a wider interest after that in the Gnostic writings in the codices, and from there, the actual Gnostic religious ideas as they were expressed in those texts.

Gnostic ideas were well-known to all of the learned classes - whether they were Romans, or standard mainstream Christians, or even Jews, or just the scholastic literary people of the wealthy or educated circles.

'Cenobites' - monks, basically early communists (lol), people who lived in groups and held everything 'koinobiakos' ('in common'), spent a lot of time reading things other than the canonical texts, and during several phases throughout history, you get those groups who gravitate towards the 'Gnostic' ideas.

The Nag Hammadi manuscripts are neither particularly unusual, or especially more important in a philosophical sense, than works that had already been circulating among various well-read people. 

It is possible to extract, however, one key aspect that is interesting to look at, to consider, in metaphysical, Cosmological/Spiritual sense.

Which is basically, the perpetual existence of two 'Divine' forces - a good one, and an evil one; I do not subscribe to that idea, myself however. Nevertheless...

Fires are not for burning books! Julius, as you well
know!

There is of course, a lot of play made in actual Gnostic thinker circles, of the apparent Cosmological 'creation' narrative that is contained in the Nag Hammadi texts.

By the same token, you could also say that the explanation in there is not particularly any more, nor any less satisfying than that modern scientists' one -  you know, that one here: nothing, nothing, nothing... ...BANG! ...Big, bang. And then everything including Sharon Stone.

Gnostic Cosmology is an abridged version of the 'Primeval Egg and Snake' imagery.

The trouble is, that by the time that particular idea has emerged in manuscripts like the ones those Egyptian monks were reading, it has been through the hands of many people who never knew where the thing came from as an idea in the first place!

See, these books are not really old old...

It's very difficult to see in bold writing, for example, how old the Dead Sea Scrolls are - these being some 800 'books' of Hebrew scrolls found in a cave in 1947.

...They only date to at the earliest around 900 AD!

Not Gin, prolly Rum.

Jews make a big deal of these 'scrolls' but what's the big deal about them?? They're not old! I hate to say this, but it is the Septuagint that is the actual oldest form of the 'Torah!!.' And that was made by an Egyptian king! Not a Jewish one...

I mean sure, people will throw stones at you if you say this kind of thing, but, you know, facts being what they are, well, people don't like them, see. They'll *ing crucify you if you are not careful.

You see, the really significant thing about the Nag Hammadi texts, is that they clearly show early religious cenobite sects, possessing a fairly decent enough knowledge of much much earlier and really classic material like the works of Homer and other Greek writers, as well as Persian and Egyptian 'mythology.'

But there is another stark fact about all of these texts - which is that they never had any of the works of geometry and mathematics, design and art, and engineering among their codices.

Instead, we find - as in the Oxyrynchus Papyri and certainly the Nag Hammadi books - attempts to burn or destroy these works, that is, all the religious works.

And that is because, after Amr ibn al-As al-Sahmi, invaded Egypt in 639, he took all the 'good' and useful, practical/functional texts and preserved those, while setting out to have destroyed all those which would contradict the big thing they were working on then back in Basra - which was, namely, the Quran.

And which is also why you see Euclid and other great works of mathematics pass through the hands of Arab Islamic 'scholars...'

...But on the surface of things, not any of the metaphysical works. And which is why also you have this whole huge body of Eastern occult works then, handed down via the Andalusian situation, and on to Venice and to Western Europe more generally then, where they merged with existing occult teachings and writings.

There is nothing in Gnosticism that will produce for you a Jinn in front of your very eyes.

As there is nothing in modern science that will do that either.

...But go on, as I have been pressing here often, recently - tempt me.

Tempt me to do it for you.

'Gin-cured' trout...

Do not imagine for one moment that it is impossible.

You walk down any road, and you please tell me - the people that you see there, are they 'invisible,' or genuinely ephemeral to your senses? No.

So why are you throwing your 'philosophical lot' in with books of ideas that offer you 'invisible, intangible' nothingness - as an explanation for reality?

That isn't even in keeping with the self-evident reality of your own daily experience in front of your eyes.

On the one hand 'Thomas' is the guy who is famous for having doubted, and requiring the evidence of his plain senses, but suddenly now, in the hands of Gnostics, he becomes a different guy, with his almost metaphysical prose poetry 'Gospel of Thomas...'

Short of running a very great risk of being sued or shot, by some Spanish billionaire nazis, I could give you here, a recent history example, of something that is widely propagated, and is yet nevertheless all a pack of lies and thieved writing.

...And all thieved from Ian Hendry, Dennis Spooner, Dennis Price, and Anton Rogers.

Who? You say? As you go chasing into Wikipedia.

Anyway, back to the cooking.

Flounder almondine.

The French chefs have had this item of folklore, see, among themselves and their friends, that a fish needs to cook, in the same kind of 'sea' in which it lived...

Sea fish is cooked in salted sauce or salted butter, while say, a fresh-water fish like a trout, is cooked gently in spring water.

He he he he he he.

Sorry, Lorenzo Villoresi  - I promised our people here that I would give away some secrets. Couched, hidden, certainly, but it is in there, so - sorry Lorenzo.