Azrael Ondi-Ahman

Azrael Ondi-Ahman, real name Archie Dean Wood, is a former Southbaptist that converted to Mormonism but then decided to preach a new message, which have some traits in common with Gnosticism:

• he claims that the world is ruled by an evil god Yaldaboath [sic], and it's emanation "Jehovah-Yahweh" although they didn't create this world,
• he claims that Sophia Wisdom is the wisdom made manifest in God, which is in quite accord with antique Gnostic theory, who called the heavenly sophia Barbelo,
• he claims that sex and procreation is necessary to be fully spiritual (but believes that the original Gnostics didn't), however this ethics is in accord with the Mandean opinion who are horrified by the Catholic ideas of celibacy and monasteries.

Azrael Ondi-Ahman has formed the "True Gnostic Church" based solely on his own book The Song of God declaring it to be the sole source for "True" Gnosticism in opposition to all other Gnostic Scriptures. In order to become a member of the "True Gnostic Church" you have to:

be at least 18 years old	good so far, misleading young is evil according to Gnostic ethics
have read The Song of God in its entirety and have a working knowledge of its content	Gnosticism per term coiner primacy is defined by Irenaeus (early 2nd century – circa 202 AD), so the 2008 AD book The Song of God should be irrelevant
must take the three covenants of Discipleship, Fellowship, and Tithe	it is notable that good Azrael requires Tithes for membership, this indicates that our man Azrael requires lots of money — good for him but not good for anyone else!

In opposition to real Gnosticism, Azrael Ondi-Ahman claims:

• that the Demiurges didn't create this universe, therefore the Christian theodicé ("why did the good God create evil?") remains,
• he rejects that this universe is "evil", which would (seemingly) imply that he denies that time, entropy, diseases and death are fundamental parts of this universe — but it might actually occur that he hasn't actually understood Gnosticism in depth,
• he hails the "archons" as "arch-angels", which would (seemingly) imply that he hails forces of sinister passions that clouds clear judgement (in short: deadly sins) as virtues — but it might actually occur that he doesn't understand what the concept "archons" entail,
• he disregards "aeons",
• he claims that man created God, which is upside-down from real Gnosticism, which claims that "the principle" or "the notion" preceeds and causes the "instances" or the "examples".

My personal opinion about the man so called "Azrael Ondi-Ahman", i.e. Archie Dean Wood, is that he is a greedy cult leader that wants money and power based on an exclusivist "truth" message. His self-fashioned "religion" is only superficially Gnostic, not genuine since it disregards the Nag Hammadi library and Pistis Sophia, and it seems that Archie in reality haven't actually studied real Gnosticism, since he doesn't understand that the "evil" of real Gnosticism regards entropic decay rather than sadistic narcissist behavior of bad people that is usually regarded as "evil" by other religions.

Archie Dean Wood is a cult leader. Those who join his church will lose money and time. The better alternatives to Archie Dean Wood are:

• join one of the non-cultic Gnostic movements, such as Ecclesia Gnostica, Societas Gnostica Norwegia, Ecclesia Gnostica Mysteriorum or similar,
• read everything yourself, before deciding,
• try another religion according to your individual nature — according to my personal view, Gnostic enlightenment is the end point of the soul's travel, and it should not be forced upon anyone immaturely for any purpose.

The Mandeans

The Mandeans are factually the only true and genuine Gnostics today:

• they originated in the antiquity in an area near or in the Roman province Judaea;
• they believe in Malka ḏ-Nhūra, the King of Light, a being anterior to all creation,
• they believe the material world was created due to the uthras (angels) Abathur and his unclean son Ptahil violating the rules of light by looking out into the darkness and forming a world within it, for this they were punished by the powers of the Light,
• they discourage passions and emotional behavior,
• the religion is very restrictive regarding teaching the correct interpretation of their scriptures, while they are less sensitive against revealing their scriptures themselves
• knowledge is the only road to salvation.

All other modern prophets, movements or cults are at best only to a degree genuine revivalists of the theologies in the Gnostic scriptures (see www.gnosis.org), or more commonly they aren't Gnostics at all.

More important facts about the Mandeans:

• Manda allegedly means "cult hut" as well as "knowledge",
• they regard Jesus Christ as a false (misleading) prophet, a Mandaean apostate that illicitly revealed Mandean truths to unworthy people,
• they regard prophet Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, as a false prophet,
• they regard John the Baptist as one of their prophets, Mandaeism has a lot of prophets, angels and spiritual beings from the Judaeo-Christian Old Testament and others from Mesopotamian mythologies,
• their Savior is called Manda ḏ-Hiia and is an entirely spiritual being without material body, teaching John the Baptist the secrets of Mandaeism,
• John the Baptist actually baptized Manda ḏ-Hiia in "Jordan", and Manda ḏ-Hiia then revealed to be the source of the Living Water, but when John asked for more knowledge from Manda ḏ-Hiia, John "died" in the sense that he lost his physical body and became a spiritual being himself,
• other luminaries beside Manda ḏ-Hiia were Hibil (Eber or Abel), Sithil (Seth) and Anoš Uthra (Enosh), as well as Yošamin and Abathur,
• their holy day is Sunday, they have religious service in the Sunday morning,
• they have a cross, the Mandaean cross, that they regard not as a Roman crucifiction device, but as a national symbol of the Mandaeans,
• they have ganzibras (≈ bishops), tarmidas (≈ priests) and šgandas (≈ priest assistants),
• their priestly cast identify themselves as Nasoreans, which is also the name of a certain Gnostic sect in the antiquity, the name is often believed to mean "watchers" with the conventional connotation of "watchers of the secret knowledge",
• they Baptize to remove sins, not to convert, they don't accept converts to Mandaeism,
• their "Heaven" is not a place of eternal emotional pleasures, but instead immaterial rivers of energy (ahar = ether, the fifth element of the Platonists), where spiritual souls of pure intellect roam.

There are a lot of academic theories of the origin of the Mandeans with no clear consensus, but the Mandean "chronicle" Harran Gawaiṯā claim that they broke away from the Jews and moved away from the lands around Jerusalem to move to the Harran Mountains in Persia (current Khuzestan) and the lowlands of Mesopotamia (Iraq). This story is not unlikely considering the contents of the Mandean scriptures, and academics supporting this history, date the migration to around the 1st to 3rd century AD.

Personally I believe in approximately this scenario. External influences were picked from Egypt (f.ex. Ptahil) and Mesopotamian and Zoriastrian demonology. The Mandeans themselves believe this to be be due to themselves wandering around, but I think it was rather due to the Mandeans forming from multiple earlier Gnostic sects that decided to exile themselves together due to Roman or Christian persecution. Those sects originated among others from Judaea, Samaria, Egypt and Jews that remained in Mesopotamia after the schisms of the Josiah Temple reform. All else is in flux.

Sources:

• Wikipedia: Mandaeans
• Wikipedia: Mandaeism
• The Story of Creation in the Mandaean Holy Book the Ginza Rba – Sabah Aldihisi

What is Gnosticism, my opinion

There are a multitude of opinions out there what Gnosticism is, but my personal opinion is, based on old definition primacy:

Gnosticism were antique religious sects with the following characteristics:

• the Cosmos emanated in concentric aeons from the Unknowable Invisible Father,
• our material Cosmos was created due to some catastrophe, where souls originating from the Unknowable Invisible Father were trapped in material bodies giving rise to evil passions,
• good behavior is "stoic" insofar as we don't let passions ride us, passions are created by evil Archons ruling this evil material Cosmos, and passions ensure that we will be eternally trapped in this material world,
• the creator of the material Cosmos is not the Unknowable Invisible Father but instead a lesser deficient god,
• the sect has secret knowledge communicated to it by a savior figure, which is a messenger from the Unknowable Invisible Father, and this secret knowledge provides us with the only means of salvation from this material Cosmos to return to the Unknowable Invisible Father,
• scriptures are used as riddle collections, all interpretations are mystical, and somehow founded in a cosmology, which have a "psychological" impact in modern psychology terms.