Sylvia Browne and Novus Spiritus

Sylvia Browne (1936–2013) was a well-known author and TV artist that made a lot of money on claiming to be a medium with psychic abilities, abilities that was hardly criticised for being worse than random guesses regarding known cases of disappearances, such as Amanda Berry (the Ariel Castro case) who was "predicted" to be dead, despite being alive. One could (unnecessarily generously) maintain that Browne had learnt cold reading and believed herself to be a medium, but that she "boldly expanded" her sphere of application of the techniques to where it shouldn't work according to socio-psychological common sense.

Sylvia Browne founded a church called Novus Spiritus (new spirit) in 1986, that describe itself as "Gnostic". The adherents are called "Browneites" among the Hoellerite Gnostics, and the earlier are reputed for their arrogance against everybody not accepting their own dogmatics, indicating a slightly cultic culture. From the traits I write about below, it is reasonable to believe that such a cultic tendency will soon disappear. The church in question maintains some standing points:

• Novus Spiritus describe God in a way that can be interpreted as a modern way to say "ineffable"[1];
• they claim that there are at least two gods, the Father Om and the Mother Azna, which could certainly fit in a polytheistic Gnostic system; this Azna is partaking in the world in a similar way that a Providence saves people from trouble at prayer – Azna is vaguely similar to Sophia Achamot but not just the guiding angel of the Gnostic community, but to anyone praying to God; the existence of this Om and this Azna was revealed by Brownes's spirit guide Francine[2];
• they assert that Christ lived on earth as non-unique Son of God, meaning that the son/daughter-hood is universal, but that his uniqueness rested in his teachings which are the only way to come to God; however our son/daughter-hood doesn't imply that we are gods[3];
• on the other hand, they deny the Godhood of Christ[3];
• they believe in the Neo-Theosophical (non-Gnostic) concept of all religions being equal and valuable and their own beliefs being more equal than anyone else [3];
• they regard knowledge more important than faith, which certainly is a Gnostic attitude[4];
• there is no Satan, but this planet is a Hell, which we leave for an eternal life in Heaven[5];
• every soul reincarnates until perfection is reached, after which we can enter Heaven [6];

The main deviations from Gnosticism are the lack of Aeons and a lack of a theory of the freedom in intellect versus imprisonment in passions. Formerly I regarded Novus Spiritus as not Gnostic, but rather Marcionite in design, but from their current material, one can actually maintain that they are Gnostics with their own (deceased) prophet.

Their website novus.org also refers to lots of external material, some of it really fringy, such as The Tomb of God (Andrews & Schellenberger) and Holy Blood, Holy Grail (Baigent), and on the other hand serious works as The Gnostic Gospels (Pagels) and The Nag Hammadi Library (ed. Robinson). This means that Novus Spiritus is open to the outside, and not a cult proper.

Novus Spiritus otherwise share many traits with New-Ageish Spiritualism, and makes some profit from dubious practices such as hypnosis and "past life" examination, and also less dubious practices such as dream analysis and meditation.

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