# Gnosis And Maya

"Gnosis" in Gnosticism & Hermeticism, "Moksha" in Hinduism, and
"Nirvana" in Buddhism are almost the same concepts.

The more I study Hermeticism, the more I realize that it is much
closer to Hinduism & Buddhism than Christianity & Islam. It was
originally a Hellenistic religion after all.

In fact, that is not hard to realize. In Gnosticism & Hermeticism,
people reincarnate rather than going to the heaven & hell.



"Maya" means (literally) illusion, or perceptions. It is "what it
looks like", thus fake.

If you know Gnosticism, you would instantly know that it's the
Gnostic sense of the material world. And the Demiurge has made it.

A goal in Hinduism & Buddhism is realizing that Maya is fake. Have
you read Demian by Hermann Hesse? That's exactly a novelized version
of it. Though the actual reality is different in each religion.

In Gnosticism, the goal is escaping the material world and going
back to the Pleroma with the Gnosis.



However, Hermeticism is somewhat special. In Hermeticism, there is
an eternity in the material world -- gold. Therefore we can be
saved by transforming materials into gold. Of course not necessarily
the literal sense. It's rather symbolic.

Though that's a later addition. In fact, Hermeticism in antiquity
and Hermeticism in medieval & Renaissance are quite different. But
it is all just Hermeticism. Similar to why we don't say that early
Christianity and modern Christianity are different religions.



Hence I think that Gnosticism is a western variant of Hinduism. Or
I could say "Hinduism with Logos".

And I think Hermeticism is a "fixed" version of Gnosticism. Similar
to how Nietzsche is a "fixed" version of Schopenhauer.