Jeremy Puma's Blog, page 3

Interview on Aeon Byte This Weekend!

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Check out Aeon Byte this weekend, where yours truly and the illimitable Miguel Conner will discuss all things “Thinking Gnostic!”:

With the increase of police states, rampant conspiracy theories and the vanishing of reality-boundaries because of shifting media, Gnostic belief is more important than ever. The ancient heretics dealt and deconstructed these and more issues better than anyone in an oppressive Roman Empire. We mine Gnostic wisdom in order to distill insights on how to remove the fog that grows over the consciousness of Western Civilization– in order to ultimately release our inner Logos and Wisdom and become at peace with a turbulent cosmos. It’s a Philip K. Dick world, you just happen to live in it. Time to get out.

 

‘How to Think Like a Gnostic’ Now Available in Paperback!

Send to KindleHow to Think Like a Gnostic

Everything you ever wanted to know about gnosis, but were afraid to ask!

In How to Think Like a Gnostic, Jeremy Puma builds upon his previous work in Gnostic philosophy, approaching it as a functional worldview for a solitary practitioner. Breaking down the Gnostic myth to its basic components, Puma clarifies the often inscrutable aspects of Gnostic thought without talking down to the reader.

Accessible, interesting, and often humorous, How to Think Like a Gnostic is a must for the library of anyone interested in the Gnostic Way.

Now available in paperback through Amazon.com or Createspace, or avaliable for order through your local purveyor of fine reading material!

Paperback: 268 pages
Publisher: Strange Animal Publications (June 9, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0615823327
ISBN-13: 978-0615823324

ALSO available on Amazon Kindle for $4.99!

“ How To Think Like a Gnostic explores a genuinely Sethian Gnostic path with plenty of perceptive insights and new perspectives. 

“Puma understands the historical scholarship but knows that ancient texts must be applied creatively if they are to aid the spiritual quest. The result is an exploration that manages to be both systematic and meandering, taking in all aspects of the basic Gnostic myth yet managing to include Buddhism, chaos theory and Philip K. Dick and a good dose of personal opinion. Puma is stimulating yet not prescriptive. Anyone interested in the Gnostics will find much here to learn from, to sympathise with and to dispute, and I suspect the author wouldn’t have it any other way.”

- Andrew Phillip Smith, Publisher, The Gnostic: A Journal of Gnosticism, Western Esotericism and Spirituality and author, A Dictionary of Gnosticism.

Flash Fiction Friday: My Other Self

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I was surprised, at first, when, while walking down the street the other day, I met me.  ”Wow,” I said.  ”You’re looking pretty good.  Are those new glasses?”

“New to you, or should I say, new to me,” I replied.  ”As is the haircut– yours is still so long.  Still, I suppose I do look about the same, which is good, considering I haven’t travelled very far to get here.”

“Oh?  How are things where you’re from?  Or should I say, how are things where I’m headed?”

“They’ve been better,” I replied.  ”You’ve gotten into some trouble, is all.  The deal fell apart, so you made some ethically questionable decisions. Thankfully, you found the device, so here I am.”  From somewhere in my jacket, I pulled a gun on me.  ”Now turn around.”

“You wouldn’t!”  I said, turning away from me.  ”If you kill me, you won’t have a chance!”

“Who said anything about killing?”  I asked, and I felt an explosion of pain behind my left ear, and then blackness.

——-

“Don’t worry,” I said, checking my bonds and leaning over me.  I had bound myself into a chair in a dark room somewhere.  ”Everything will be fine, soon.  I plan to replace me.”  I’d switched our glasses.  ”Since I know what I’d done, I know what I have to do. Now I can make the right decisions, and I won’t have to come back and kidnap me.  Hopefully, sometime soon, you’ll just fade away.”  With a wave, I left myself in the dark.

——-

A minute later, my other other self walked through the door and untied me.  ”I’m about to make a huge mistake,” I said.  ”The continuum can’t handle the strain.  Let’s go stop me.” I didn’t recognize his glasses, but I went with me anyhow.

How to Think Like a Gnostic Now Available for Kindle!

Send to KindleNEW for Amazon Kindle, from STRANGE ANIMAL PUBLICATIONS:

Everything you ever wanted to know about gnosis, but were afraid to ask!

In How to Think Like a Gnostic, Jeremy Puma builds upon his previous work in Gnostic philosophy, approaching it as a functional worldview for a solitary practitioner. Breaking down the Gnostic myth to its basic components, Puma clarifies the often inscrutable aspects of Gnostic thought without talking down to the reader.

Accessible, interesting, and often humorous, How to Think Like a Gnostic is a must for the library of anyone interested in the Gnostic Way.

Available on Amazon Kindle for $4.99, and coming soon in paperback!

“ How To Think Like a Gnostic explores a genuinely Sethian Gnostic path with plenty of perceptive insights and new perspectives. 

“Puma understands the historical scholarship but knows that ancient texts must be applied creatively if they are to aid the spiritual quest. The result is an exploration that manages to be both systematic and meandering, taking in all aspects of the basic Gnostic myth yet managing to include Buddhism, chaos theory and Philip K. Dick and a good dose of personal opinion. Puma is stimulating yet not prescriptive. Anyone interested in the Gnostics will find much here to learn from, to sympathise with and to dispute, and I suspect the author wouldn’t have it any other way.”

- Andrew Phillip Smith, Publisher, The Gnostic: A Journal of Gnosticism, Western Esotericism and Spirituality and author, A Dictionary of Gnosticism.

Flash Fiction Friday: Staples

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He’d built his fortune on a platform of marketing savvy and a unique kind of ingeniousness for recognizing things that could be reused.

He started with a small corporation that hired migrant workers to remove nails and staples from telephone poles and lightposts around the City.  This saved the City utility companies a statistically significant amount of revenue, and allowed the Mayor to lift an unpopular poster ban as part of a new “Civic Renaissance” initiative.  He was a guest of honor at the Celebratory Banquet.

Soon, his Corporation had branches in every major urban center, and processing centers where the millions of staples his workers had collected were melted down, their base metals extracted and sold to Military and Industry.  The proceeds from his staple refineries were invested as venture capital, and in short order his fingers were in hundreds of businesses, his name a household word on six continents.

Through diversification and creative accounting, he absorbed his competitors to appear that he wasn’t a monopolist.  His approach was the same each time:  purchase interest in municipal waste removal, hire an army of the dispossessed to recycle that waste into useful consumer items.  His products were cheaper, easier to find and best of all, utterly disposable.  Whenever the consumer was done with a product, he or she just needed to place a call, and one of his employees would come by and replace it, collecting the old version for recycling.

By the time he announced his candidacy for President, his products were in nearly every household on the planet.  All in all, it hadn’t been very difficult for him to make it to the top.  Now, as prophesied, it was time to recycle society itself.  He grinned, pleased.  And they’d told him being the Antichrist would be difficult!

Iron Writer Challenge: Beaten in a Landslide

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Congratulations to M.D. Pitman, who soundly defeated yours truly in Iron Writer Challenge #12.   You can read his winning story here. A gracious winner, his author site can be found at http://mdpitman.wordpress.com/.

This isn’t over, Pitman! There will be a rematch! 

Iron Writer Challenge: Vote for Me

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My short meditation, titled “Combat,” has officially been posted on The Iron Writer Challenge!

http://theironwriter.com/the-stories/challenge-12/

Although I encourage you to vote for whichever of these fine tales you think is the best, I think you’ll all agree that one in particular stands out of the crowd (wink, wink, wink)!

What are you waiting for? Go vote!

 

Flash Fiction Friday: CSI

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“What have we found?” Lt. Laszlo Humphries asked the assembled team of Criminal Sorcery Investigators.  ”Inspector Prickears?”

“Yes, sir.  Have a look at the computer model.”  The hobgoblin led his superior to a nearby flat-screen monitor.  ”According to Projectiles, a very small lightning bolt entered here.”  On the screen, a 3D model of a human chest appeared, an animated blue line illustrating as Prickears narrated.  ”It perforated the left pectoralis major, glanced off of the third rib, and delivered a kinetic shock to the superior vena cava.  The immediate trauma to the victim’s heart– it would have been like jump-starting a hamster with a car battery.  Boom.”

“Interesting.  Dr. Myzithra?”

A hunched figure staggered forward.  ”Yes, sir,” it mouthed.  ”The autopsy revealed an entry wound measuring approximately 2 micrometers in diameter.  At first we thought it was a pinprick, or a pore, but spectral analysis demonstrated that the edges were scarred, almost as though they’d been cauterized.  Definitely a lightning bolt.”

Humphries sighed.  ”We’ve been blaming the murder on the Ghost of Mrs. Parsons this whole time.  It looked like an open-and-shut case of the old ectoplasmic heart-squeeze.  But what kind of weapon could have done this to the victim?”

“I know the answer,” replied the third member of the team, the snakes in her hair undulating as the lab’s central air kicked on.  ”According to the central munitions database, only one thing could have delivered this kind of directed lightning bolt so precisely and discretely.”  She held up a picture of an nondescript wooden stick.  ”It’s this: a modified 6-inch PW-19 Maple Lightning Caster.  The thing is,” she paused, “these are department issue.”

“Thank you, all,” replied Humphries, sliding on a pair of sunglasses.  ”I think we’ve found the smoking wand.”

(Tip o’ the keyboard to Terry Pratchett/David Caruso)

Flash Fiction Friday: Selfish

“I know it’s selfish of me,” she said, wiggling her enormous, grub-shaped fingers, “but I always have to take the last one.”

“Darling,” he replied, “it’s certainly not selfish when it’s your birthday.”  He kissed her on one of her cheeks.  ”Go ahead and treat yourself.”

She blushed and reached down, lifting the final struggling human and popping him into her great, gaping maw.  ”What a lovely gift,” she exclaimed, after her digestive fluid had dissolved the still-writhing form.  ”And now we’ve eaten every last one.”

Wrapping his tentacle around her thorax and giving an affectionate squeeze, he triple-grinned.  ”That was just the appetizer.  Wait until you see the planet we’re going to for dinner!”

National Day of Prayer is a Good Day for a Gnostic Prayerbook

As Miguel Conner astutely points out, we can use today, the official “National Day of Prayer,” to consider what prayer means to us.

These prayers, rites, rituals and devotions are for the independent Gnostic practitioner. Herein, one will find prayers of blessing, consecration, thanksgiving, healing and more, as well as a complete collection of sacramental rites for individual practice. Sacraments contain appropriate rubrics, and rites and rituals presented include the Eucharist, Initiations, Baptism and the mysterious and powerful Mystery of the Five Seals.

You can find A Gnostic Prayerbook: Rites, Rituals, Prayers and Devotions at Amazon.com in paperback, and in a Kindle edition.