John Lamb Lash audio transcription
This talk is a reading of a 1500-word article requested by Watkins Body Mind Spirit online magazine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u59Jx16ha0Q
“The Missing Debate Over Gnosticism”
Since the publication of Not In His Image in 2006, interest in Gnosticism has grown exponentially. Aside from a growing number of books, either scholarly or amateurish in bearing, this interest has largely come to expression on the internet, both on mainstream and alternative platforms. Gaia.com, for instance, has hosted high production videos on the Nag Hammadi Codices with discussions featuring such pop gurus as Gregg Braden, Jay Weidner, and Graham Hancock, the latter two being former colleagues of mine, and in the case of Graham, also a friend.
However, a discussion is not a debate. A discussion may proceed from various viewpoints, but a debate is the occasion to compare and contrast at least two distinct viewpoints. So far, an open publicly accessible debate between the two primary views of Gnosticism has not occurred. Why not? This question begs another.
What exactly are the two primary views of Gnosticism that might be debated? There are numerous differing interpretations of the surviving materials attributed to the Gnostics. Are they Pagan Heresy, Jewish appropriation of Gnostic ideas, or vice versa? Mystery Religion doctrines? Outtakes of early Christianity, if not, Gnostic Christianity, pure and simple? A cognate of Egyptian Hermeticism, Sethian and Valentinian Schools? The late Platonizing spin of Mystery teachings, like the cover of a pop song performed by an amateur? Or a Neoplatonic rehash of Mystic doctrines drawn from various obscure sects? And that is the shortlist. But no matter the diversity of views, there is no debate unless a minimum of two opposing views appear together on a single platform. So far, this has not happened. Again, why not?
The current situation with Gnosticism is similar to the ongoing controversy on 911, so-called climate change, and the COVID pandemic. Of course, there are opposing voices that challenge the official narrative on these topics, but they do not appear on the same platform in an open argument that can be attended and evaluated by concerned members of the public. The official view of Gnosticism holds the platform today and monopolizes the discussion. The vast majority of those interested in Gnosticism do not even realize that an alternative view exists.
What you find on Gaia.com, and countless other platforms and YouTube channels, both large and small, is the conventionally sanctioned interpretation of Gnosticism. All recognized Gnostic scholars, experts whose opinions are not to be challenged or refuted, routinely attribute certain definitive features to the Gnostic worldview. These experts allege what Gnostics believe. But are the allegations true? Are they correct and verifiable on the basis of original source materials?
Consider, for instance, the two outstanding definitive claims about the Gnostic worldview. First, the Gnostics were anti-cosmic, rejecting the material world as evil. And second, they proposed a way to liberate the “divine sparks” of humanity entrapped in the prison planet of this world, our world. Anyone seeking to investigate Gnosticism today meets these two claims from the outset. To date, Not In His Image is the only book on the subject that attempts to challenge, deconstruct, and refute them. All parties promoting the official view agree that Gnosticism was a heresy. What is lacking however, is an appraisal of the Gnostic message of heresy coming from a contemporary heretic.
Not In His Image argues emphatically that the two definitive attributions stated above are not correct and not consistently supported by evidence. What’s more, it provides a deeply researched foundation for refuting them. It presents in full detail the opposition view that has so far been excluded from the discussion. Perhaps because so much that happens in a social order today is obviously evil, corrupt and morally wrong, the assertion that Gnostics hated the material world and saw humanity trapped in a matrix of deceit make sense to many people. But hold on. It is not the social order, but the material setting of life, the natural world, that Gnostics are alleged to have condemned.
And it gets worse because they identified the Creator God as a satanic agency, the Demiurge, variously named Saklas, Samael, and the Yaldabaoth. In this alleged view, the evil of our human world derives from the satanic agency at the origin of material existence. The world is the way it is because a sinister agency created it and lords over it. This assertion goes unquestioned by those who discuss the orthodox view. But it cannot stand up to analysis based on rigorous study of the source materials, including not only the Nag Hammadi Codices, but also the Polemics that condemn the Gnostics, written by Christian ideologues, such as Irenaeus, Epiphanius, and Hippolytus, the legal team for the prosecution of Gnostic heresy.
In-depth investigation of Gnosticism requires a long hard trek through a minefield of complex, ambiguous and often contradictory textual evidence. But the orthodox view is not hard to refute. Doctrinal nuances do not flutter the counter argument, and no one needs a masterful overview of the entire range of Gnostic studies to grasp it. In fact, the orthodox view fails upfront and immediately on two basic issues, which stand out boldly in the firsthand source materials. Concentration on these key issues reveals how the official interpretation of Gnosticism is skewed and gravely misleading.
In the first place, Gnostics did not claim that the Demiurge created the material world. They clearly stated that it falsely claims to have done so. Saklas, meaning fool, is a demented pretender, not a true divine agency like the Aeons of the Pleroma. The satanic adversary is a real presence in the cosmos, yes, but it operates through a primary force of influence, Hal, Coptic word for simulation, or virtual reality. The Demiurge is a super-ego figure that directs the extraterrestrial hoard of the archons, alien mind parasites. Evil itself is not an autonomous cosmic power as seen in Zoroastrian dualism. It arises in human behavior through the induction of error by a paranormal influence. The Archons are messengers of error — that is a direct quote from a Gnostic cosmological text — who attempt to trick humanity into submission to authoritarian control, expressed in past times in racial and religious ideologies, and today, in transhumanist technocracy.
Gnostic cosmological texts describe how one of the Aeons confronts the Demiurge and exposes it as a demented off-planet freak who poses as the sole and supreme creator. These passages are unambiguous. Yet the orthodox view continues to assert that the Demiurge actually created matter and dominates all life that arises within it. But if not the Demiurge, who did create the material world inhabited by the human species, called Anthropos in Gnostic writings?
Irenaeus in [Against Heresies] Book One, [Chap.] IV.III correctly paraphrases the Gnostic myth that describes how the Wisdom Goddess Sophia turned herself into the earth, and indwells nature, and animates all material phenomena within the range of human experience. How could Gnostics have hated the natural world if they identified the feminine deity central to their cosmology with the Earth, the living planet, Gaia? The answer is they could not. That allegation is entirely false and can only be upheld by a skewed reading of the textual evidence. The Wisdom Goddess Sophia is the supreme divine agency in ancient Gnosticism, as well as in its update, The Living Gnosis Today.
The alternative, that is heretical, view of Gnosticism is not merely an academic thesis limited to the interests of scholars, far from it. The polarity of Sophia–Satan is the axis of a psychic constellation that operates in the human mind with tremendous repercussions for good or evil, depending on how it is handled. Likewise, the polarity of Anthropos–Archon is an inescapable factor in the dynamics of human imagination. Gnostic writings explain the contest between human intelligence, nous, and the exobiological archontic parasites.
Moreover, Gnostics did not teach that human beings are divine sparks trapped in a satanic matrix. That is Talmudic doctrine enshrined in the secret teachings of the Kabbalah and Zohar. The initiates who founded the Pagan Mystery Schools and directed them for millennia, detected in the human species a germ of divine intelligence, not a godlike divine spark fatally immersed in darkness. Their cosmological narrative, restored today in the Fallen Goddess Scenario, named Sophia, “wisdom,” and her consort, Thelete, “the intended,” as the divine designers of the human genome. In Gnostic cosmology, the human species is a singularity, endowed with the teleological properties of wisdom and intentionality.
This short article can barely hint at the nature-positive, life-affirming, psychologically instructive, and morally inspiring content to be found in the Sophianic vision of life. The Gnostic warning about Archontic intrusion offers an incomparable exposé of human alienation from its divine origins. This supreme heresy delivers a shattering critique of salvationism, messianic expectation, and the master-race ideology that drives transhumanism and the technocratic agenda.
Carlos Castaneda who identified the Archons as “Flyers”, stated pithily that, “human beings are on a journey of awareness, which has been momentarily interrupted by extraneous forces.” To clear the way ahead and resume that journey and all its wonder and mystery leading to the optimal evolution of our species, an honest open debate over Gnosticism would be welcome, if not essential.
This talk is a reading of a 1500-word article requested by Watkins Body Mind Spirit online magazine. After the short intro, the reading itself runs to about 15 minutes, a little longer than I estimated. Tone and delivery may be a little off as I do not usually record from a written text. Festina lente: make haste slowly.
Gaian Light 