About this episode

The episode discusses the concept of unverified person gnosis (UPG) in spirituality and its implications in contrast to monotheistic beliefs.

UPG is a term I find to be often misunderstood. Short for "unverified person gnosis," this phrase is sometimes wielded as a criticism in the world of spirituality – pagan, polytheist, or otherwise. It's the word "unverified" that stands out in this instance, that seems to be contextualizing someone's "personal gnosis" – about a spiritual path, or being, or myth – as dubious, or heterodox. When used disparagingly, UPG can feel like a corrective. In many ways it can feel like a tool within so-called "alternative spirituality" to reinforce the kind of strictures of the culturally dominant monotheisms onto the "Old Gods" – whether they like it or not. In the protestant form of Christianity that I grew up with, the word of God had already been written down, in the Old Testament and the New Testament, and that was the Almighties mic-drop. Any divine addendums beyond it were generally considered heresy. When the stakes of divinely inspired words can bear the punitive power conferred by the Christian Bible, it's easy to see why the amendment process would be extremely bureaucratic. It's this very patriarchal approach to spirituality that we find in monotheism, though, that makes…

People in this episode

Host: Chad Andro

Guest: Briar

Topics covered

• unverified person gnosis
• spirituality
• alternative spirituality
• monotheism
• personal gnosis

Keywords

• UPG
• spirituality
• personal gnosis
• monotheism
• alternative spirituality

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Christianity

Books & works: Old Testament, New Testament

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