betweengenesisfrogs:

That paper describes Abraxas as the ultimate, invisible God
that unites all opposites into one being, as well as the Lord of frogs and
amphibians (puts a whole new spin on consorts and BSlick, not even to mention
Jake’s consort kingdom, huh?). I also think the most obvious analog for Aeons
are actually the Aspects themselves–it’s important that the world of the
Pleroma is also the world of Ideas, and that Yaldabaoth is a “blind”
god because it cannot perceive the Ideas that created it.

The Ideas angle also
links into the Ur-Self stuff you talked about with Davepeta. I think Hussie
covered that pretty thoroughly, because the Ur-Self is just another branch of a
topic Hussie already covers from Act 1: Platonic Realism, and the expression of
the pure realm of Ideas in the world of Material reality. My next two videos
are covering the links between Gnosticism and Greek theory of Platonic Realism,
but in the meantime Tex Talks’ alchemy stuff breaks the latter down v well.

Oh, also notable is
that Yaldabaoth is described as having created “seven heavens” in the
sky–lending additional weights to the Seven Gates leading to Skaia, as the
characters must Ascend the gates much as humans must Ascend to the Heavens to
reach Pleroma 😉 And you are indeed correct that Skaia is the metaphysical
manifestation of Pleroma–hence why it acts as the Sessions’ Sun. It also gives
off Light, but Skaia’s Light is more focused on Ideas.

At last I finally have a chance to post your very helpful
correction! Sorry it took so dang long! XD

Yeah, I was totally wrong on Abraxas when I said he was Sophia’s
counterpart Aeon. I think I must have decided that because 1) it seems weird to
me that we wouldn’t know the name of that Aeon, but mythological systems are
weird and arbitrary like that I guess 2) I misread one of my sources, which referred
to Abraxas as “in Pleroma with Sophia,” which is still technically true, but as
it turns out, true in a more general way.  I’ve corrected the original post. Won’t stop
old reblogs of it from going out, but ah, that’s the nature of the tumblr beast.

I’ll have to look into Jung’s take, but I’m intrigued. I
think Abraxas predates Jung, existing in earlier Gnostic systems (but not all
of them) and I think he does start as a separate god originally. But I LOVE
that he’s associated with amphibians! That’s fantastic. That really ties him closely
into the system of Sburb, even more than I originally thought, and suggests
that Hope is somehow tied to the unlimited creative potential of Skaia.

Also, I was looking into Abraxas, and as far as I can tell
he seems to have been a Hellenistic-Roman god of curses and power, of a type
that was pretty common in that period of history—gods whose long, bizarre names
were written on papyri and stones to summon the god’s magic power, frequently
as a curse to bring down your enemies. Variations on Abraxas’s name were
common, and in fact (I made sure I double-checked this this time, ha!) this
does appear to be where we get the word ABRACADABRA, from tablets and similar
riffing on ABRAXAS. Or Abraxas is a riff on ABRACADABRA and similar bizarre
power-god names. Which is fascinating in its own right, but on top of that, it
occurred to me…

Writing ABRAXAS like this might look something like:

And oh my god Jake is closely associated with Abraxas as his
denizen and Roxy even wonders on that page if he was writing ABRACADABRA and this just ties
Jake and the mysteries of the Hope aspect even more closely into Gnosticism,
and fuck, Homestuck really is the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t it? Fucking
love it.

You’re right, Homestuck has always engaged pretty closely
with the platonic/archetypal nature of its entities, all the way from Act 1
onward! Thanks for pointing that out. It’s interesting to see how it becomes
more explicit (and more focused on characters) later on, but it’s so satisfying
to notice how the seeds were already there. I like the Platonist Forms connection
lots of folks have made; I’ll admit Platonism isn’t my area of expertise,
though. I tend to approach this much more from a Lit Crit/ Structuralist theory
of ideas. But it kind of comes to the same result, doesn’t it? Structuralist concepts
and Platonism get along pretty well, the only difference is that one’s encoded in
language and one in the universe. Given that Homestuck’s a linguistic-narrative
structure that represents a cosmic structure, it’s a pretty fantastic marriage!

Seven Gates / Seven Heavens is another SWEET CATCH, thanks! Sevens
are a pretty classic magical number, but they don’t appear super often
Homestuck outside the acts and the gates, do they? Curious. Very curious.
Another echo of Narrative as Cosmos, Story as Gnosticism? From what I gather
the archetypal power of sevens historically comes from the seven visible
heavenly bodies, (the sun and moon plus the five visible planets), and that’s
probably pretty closely tied to the Gnostic idea of Seven Heavens. Which all
ties in very nicely with the planetary and cosmic structure of Sburb. Excellent
stuff.

Thanks so much for writing in! I always look forward to
hearing your ideas. 😀

I can’t believe I missed this until just now when I needed to dig up your post on the Gnostic stuff and LE as Yaldabaoth, but all of this is great and i need to save it now, thanks