Esoteric

Belinda tried strict diets, grueling exercise routines, and some sort of esoteric New Age detox, all amounting to nothing--she had curves, and that was that.

It's an esoteric debate.

Aliens have telepathically revealed to me the esoteric meaning of each word of this cereal box.

The Druze follow an esoteric religion.

Kabbalah is an esoteric tradition within Judaism.

One of my interesting friends is Don, who hails from Xiānggǎng. We two while away long nights at a wonton teahouse, as we talk about sci-fi and esoteric philosophy.

The holy books of her religion have been translated. There is loss of information, as there are wordplays, poetic rhyme, and esoteric letter numerology in the original. Also, the mindset of agrarian people thousands of years ago cannot easily be comprehended now. In some religions, adherents are required to learn the original language, so they can read their holy writings.

Gnosticism was a religious movement older than Christianity. There were both types of Christian and non-Christian Gnosticism because there was syncretism, or mixing. They believed that humans were trapped in their bodies and in this evil material world that was created by a cosmic disaster, by a malevolent deity who was not Christ. Christian Gnostics believed that Christ was one of the aeons or divine beings from the Pleroma, the Divine Realm, as described in the Apocryphon of John, part of the Nag Hammadi Library of Gnostic literature. Salvation was by esoteric knowledge, although ultimately self-knowledge. Gnostics believed in the dualism of the good spirit and evil matter. The material world was an evil place from where Gnostics had to escape. They believed that not all humans had the Divine Spark. The aeons emanated from the Ultimate God, the Monad in the Pleroma. The origins of Gnosticism are unclear today, but probably it came from Persia or further east. It had a lot of Greek influences. Today, after the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library as leather-bound papyrus codices in a sealed jar in Egypt, in 1945, some people are trying to revive Gnosticism. "Gnōsis" is Greek for knowledge.

I went to Bali for temple-gazing, as I was an aspiring amateur archeologist. Also, I had an interest in indigenous languages like Indonesian and Balinese. I looked there for Balinese linguistics books, but to no avail. There were craftsmen, though, who sold Balinese calligraphy written on bamboo or paper. I knew that the carvings and objects in the temples had esoteric meanings, but only experts knew. I enjoyed eating exotic tropical fruits in Bali, as I first tried the "salak" snake fruit. Bali was a Hindu oasis in the largely Muslim country of Indonesia. In a souvenir shop, I met a lady vendor who had an interest in Buddhism. I befriended a hotel worker named Made Budi Artawan, and I had an avocado shake with him in a cafe near my hotel.

There is no esoteric knowledge in Islam.