كنيسة الساحل الغنوصية

My Alawite brothers and sisters,
I send you all a greeting of love and peace.

Today I will speak about a very essential part of the Alawite belief — faith in the shrines and holy sites of the saints.
These shrines that we visit for blessing, and which we believe to be the tombs of blessed souls, form a major part of our faith and are rooted in a very ancient Gnostic heritage that we have carried for centuries.

Unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no detailed explanation of this concept in the current Alawite texts after the time of al-Khasibi. Yet, by returning to the true roots in Christian Gnosticism, we find a beautiful and complete understanding of the nature of these shrines, the qualities of the saints whom we venerate, and the reason we believe in their sanctity — which in reality derives from divine power itself.

When we believe that a saint or a certain shrine can perform an act that would normally be considered miraculous, we attribute that to the power of the Creator.
To explain this concept, I will refer to The Gospel of Truth, which, as I mentioned in a previous video, I have translated along with two other gospels and uploaded to the Coastal Gnostic Church website as PDFs available for anyone to read or download.

The Place of the Blessed (Gospel of Truth, §19)

The last passage of the Gospel of Truth is called The Place of the Blessed. It speaks of the pure and holy spirits through whom we receive blessings at the shrines.
I will quote its most significant parts:

“All the emanations from the father, therefore, are fullnesses, and all his emanations have their roots in the one who caused them all to grow from himself. He assigned their destinies. They, then, became manifest individually that they might be perfected in their own thought, for that place to which they extend their thought is their root, which lifts them upward through all heights to the father.”

This text explains that our spiritual root is from the Creator, and that every soul, though connected to divine light, possesses its own individuality.
Each soul purifies itself, ascending back to its divine source.

Then the passage continues:

“Such are they who possess from above something of this immeasurable greatness, as they strain toward that unique and perfect One who exists there for them.  And they do not go down to Hades.  They have neither envy nor moaning, nor is death in them. But they rest in him who rests, without wearying themselves or becoming confused about truth. But they, indeed, are the truth, and the father is in them, and they are in the father, since they are perfect, inseparable from him who is truly good.”

This sublime passage describes the union of pure souls with the Creator, where truth dwells in them and they in truth, reaching perfection without lack, resting in the Spirit, listening to their divine root, and losing nothing of themselves.
This is the Place of the Blessed — the dwelling of the pure souls who have truly known the Creator and returned to Him.

An Alawite Philosophical View of Paradise and Hell

In a previous video titled “I Am Alawite, I Am Not Muslim”, I mentioned that we Alawites do not believe in paradise and hell as described in Islamic theology.
We do not see paradise as a place of sensual pleasure, nor hell as a place of bodily torment.
Such descriptions, in our view, are instinctive and cruel, unworthy of a spiritual and rational human being.

Human beings are not to be led by lust or by fear, but by consciousness, ethics, and knowledge.
The Alawite faith is a spiritual and philosophical doctrine that views the human being as an inherently good and intelligent creature, who, through experience after experience and life after life, seeks to purify the soul from desires, lust, hatred, and anger — to rise and return to the Creator.

Shrines and Saints

The shrines we visit are, in truth, symbols of souls that have transcended desire and hatred, souls that have come to know the Creator truly and united with Him.
Every blessing or miracle attributed to them is nothing but the will of the Creator manifesting through them.

Gospel of Truth, §17

The passage says:

“It happened, then, that the word was the first to come forth at the moment pleasing to the will of him who desired it; and it is in the will that the father is at rest and with which he is pleased. Nothing happens without him, nor does anything occur without the will of the father.”

Even the actions of our Lord Jesus, as we believe, were performed according to the Father’s will.
Likewise, when we believe that a saint heals the sick or performs miracles, it is not by his own power but by the divine will working through him.
That is why, when we visit a shrine, we say: “May God grant us his intercession.”
This means that the saint has become a bridge of mercy between us and the Creator.

The Gnostic Roots of the Alawite Faith

Through these verses from The Gospel of Truth, I wished to clarify that faith in shrines and saints is a very ancient spiritual belief, deeply rooted in Christian Gnosticism, and that it possesses profound explanations far beyond those found in later texts.

This belief is shared among many Gnostic communities, including us Alawites and our Alawite brothers in Turkey.
The book Plain of Saints and Prophets mentions an Alawite community in the city of Cilicia, describing how numerous their shrines were and how they suffered persecution for their beliefs.

In this video, I wanted to explain this important aspect of the Alawite faith and to show its deep spiritual richness and ancient origins.
In the next video, God willing, I will speak about the path to the Kingdom of God according to the Alawite and Gnostic understanding — how the soul is purified to return to its Creator and become one of the blessed spirits. Thank you all, and may peace and love be upon you.