Do NOT pre-order this album! This is only published as a test to see if, when, and where the artwork would get me into trouble for having tasteful nudity on it.

For now, the Safe-For-Work (SFW) version of the album art has been uploaded, and the original, NSFW, REAL artwork with slight nudity is downloadable as a bonus item, just so that I don't get banned from various platforms when I share it.

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About the artwork:

The artwork and album concept revolves around the word "Gnosis," or "Knowledge" in Greek. But not just "information," but "knowledge" in the sense of personal acquaintance and enlightenment.

In the earliest days of Christianity, belief was not centralized into a single canonized version. Many different groups existed with their own beliefs and books based on the figure of Jesus, some which conflicted with where the orthodox (meaning "straight thinking") church wanted the religion to go. These groups were the first to be accused of heresy and disposed of accordingly.

Today, those groups are collectively referred to as "Gnostics," although they were not one single group and did not have a single shared belief.

The artwork combines several of the "Gnostic" symbols and beliefs into a single image. The Midjourney prompt I used was:

"The Sophia stylized as the goddess Venus clad with a serpent and depicted as a divine female figure who represents spiritual insight and understanding against a backdrop of the world of physical and spiritual chaos, cinematic lighting, photorealistic yet surreal, extremely detailed, 8k, oil painting in the style of Rembrandt"

Sophia is a Greek word that means "wisdom," and in Gnostic Christianity, she is seen as a divine female figure who represents spiritual insight and understanding. According to Gnostic teachings, Sophia is the "Mother of All," the source of spiritual knowledge and the embodiment of divine wisdom.

She is said to have created the demiurge, a flawed and imperfect god, and to have been trapped in the material world as a result. In some Gnostic texts, Sophia is also seen as the consort of the divine, and as a mediator between the divine and human realms.

She is shown topless due to merging her with the figure of Venus (Roman equivalent of Greek Aphrodite), the goddess of love and sensuality. The planet Venus is sometimes referred to as the "Morning Star," due to its visibility in the sky just before sunrise. Due to a mistranslation in the KJV Bible, where a reference in Isaiah to the morning star using the Hebrew word "hilel" was replaced with the Latin "lucifer" ("Light Bearer"), gradually over 500 years "lucifer" the common noun became "Lucifer" the proper name and was attributed to and conflated with a completely unrelated MALE depiction of Satan.

Additionally, Lady Justice (Justitia) is also frequently shown bare-breasted, and this figure of Sophia-Venus is meant to encompass a call for justice for the Church's victims accused of heresy throughout the ages.

The suppression of Gnosticism was also simultaneously one of the first patriarchal moves to systematically suppress WOMEN in established Christianity, as the Orthodox church would not tolerate a female deity outright; by venerating Mary, a lower-than-god role, they were able to establish males as the sole source of ultimate power, both physically and symbolically.

Thus, Venus is shown intentionally, to return the reference to its original meaning, to reassert the feminine nature of the Morning Star, yet still retain the further reference to Enlightenment as well as the rebellious connotation of "Lucifer" in response to the long history of the Church's efforts to snuff out any and all conflicting viewpoints as heresy. Therein lies a double-meaning for "Gnosis" — it also refers to the knowledge of the Church itself and its often-bloody history of dealing with dissenters.


Further symbolism in the artwork:
The serpent is often seen as a symbol of transformation and wisdom in Gnostic Christianity.

The chaotic scene in the background represents the demiurge, who is often seen as a flawed creator of Earth and the physical realm in Gnostic Christianity (with the creator of the Universe a separate, perfect being). The demiurge is represented by a broken or incomplete world.