American Gnosis: Political Religion and Transcendence 0197653219, 9780197653210

Citation preview

American Gnosis

American Gnosis Political Religion and Transcendence A RT H U R V E R SLU I S

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Arthur Versluis 2024 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Control Number: 2023943853 ISBN 978–​0–​19–​765321–​0 DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197653210.001.0001 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

Contents Acknowledgments 

Awakening: An Introduction 

vii

1

1. What Is Neo-​Gnosticism and What Is Gnosis? 

10

2. Neo-​Gnosticism in American Literature 

25

3. Neo-​Gnostic Video 

50

4. The Neo-​Gnosticism of Miguel Serrano 

63

5. The Neo-​Gnosticism of Samael Aun Weor 

75

6. The Enigmatic Dr. Musès 

96

7. Psychedelic Gnosis 

124

8. American Archontic Neo-​Gnosticism 

140

9. Understanding American Gnoses 

175

10. Political Religion and the End of Modernity 

198

11. Future Gnosis 

212

12. Conclusion 

231

Notes  Index 

243 281

Acknowledgments To Nicholas Goodrick-​Clarke, who left us too soon, and who undoubtedly would have loved this book. My thanks to April DeConick, Brill, and Gnosis journal, in which parts of ­chapters 4 and 5 first appeared (“What Is Gnosis? An Exploration,” Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies 4, no. 1 (2019): 81–​ 98, and “The Cosmological Gnosis of Miguel Serrano,” Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies 7, no. 1(2022): 53–​68). Parts of Chapters 8 and 9 appear in “Neo-​Gnosticism and the American Dissident Right,” JSR: Journal for the Study of Radicalism JSR: Journal for the Study of Radicalism 17, no. 1(2023): 159–​190). To Cynthia Read, Oxford University Press editor of many years, and to Klaus Scharff, who provided much insight into and resources for understanding the work of Charles Musès. Parts of Chapter 2 draw from my much earlier book, Gnosis and Literature. My heartfelt thanks to all those whose conversations inform and make possible this groundbreaking exploration.

Awakening: An Introduction In the film They Live, the main character, John Nada (Spanish: “nothing”)—​ an itinerant construction worker played by Roddy Piper—​makes a series of unsettling discoveries about the nature of American society. He first encounters some rogue television transmissions claiming that people are being kept in a somnolent, delusive state, and then finds some sunglasses that reveal what is happening beneath the social veneer. In reality, society has been infiltrated and overtaken by aliens with skull-​like faces who have gained political, technical, media, and police power, and only those with the glasses (or contacts) can see the true situation. This science fiction film allegory has become an underground reference point, and represents an ideal popular entertainment reference point for our explorations in this book. In the context of this book, what Nada sees through the glasses is American political gnosis. In other books, I have discussed and defined the term gnosis (spiritual realization) clearly, but specifically in the contexts of mysticism and magic. In Platonic Mysticism and in Magic and Mysticism, I describe two broad kinds of gnosis: metaphysical, and cosmological. Metaphysical gnosis is spiritual realization understood as the transcendence of self-​other dualism, often conveyed in terms of negation [not (like) this, not that] because words and concepts are deceptive and do not accurately reveal it in themselves. This is the apex of classical mysticism, as in the work of medieval mystic Meister Eckhart. Cosmological gnosis is a limited kind of self-​other unity, as for instance in magical practices, where the aim might be to unite two lovers, or to bring wealth to someone. This is not sheer transcendence, of course, as in classical mysticism, but it is nonetheless a kind of special knowledge and practice that does unite subject and object in a limited way. These categories are useful, and we will continue to deploy them in this book, and discuss them in more detail shortly. However, be aware from the beginning that we will have to expand our definitions and uses of such terms, like “gnosis,” and “awakening,” beyond their conventional religious studies significations. While these terms remain accurate within particular domains, I have found them being used in other, American Gnosis. Arthur Versluis, Oxford University Press. © Arthur Versluis 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197653210.003.0001

2  American Gnosis more capacious ways in contemporary American, including Latin American, and global contexts. As a result, I found it necessary to develop more flexible and expansive ways of understanding our subject matter, which is not limited to religion as such but ranges widely, and including, for instance, politics, technology, society, and media—​indeed, virtually the whole of contemporary global society. It was jarring for me, for example, when an American woman in her forties that I encountered matter-​of-​factly referred to her “awakening.” For me, coming from a background in the study of religion, particularly areas like mysticism and Buddhism, “awakening” has a fairly specific meaning of spiritual illumination or transcendence, that is, enlightenment. In fact, in many contemporary translations of Buddhist texts, “gnosis” is widely used and definitely related in meaning to “awakening.” When someone is awakened, that’s a buddha. But was this what she meant? Was she matter-​of-​factly claiming enlightenment? So I asked her. And it turned out, she meant something very different, but related. What she meant by “awakening” was actually very much akin to the experiences of the character Nada and his ragtag band of a few rebels in They Live. She meant that she saw that the system, the entire global system of technology and politics and consumerism, was deluding people into believing only in a certain image of reality, and that she, like Nada, had seen through the misleading images to the reality beyond. She was no longer strictly materialistic in her worldview; she recognized that there is a spiritual reality beyond what we see. In practical terms, this meant she had a firm set of beliefs. “Elle” had come to the United States from a formerly Communist-​occupied country and had seen first-​hand the transition in the late twentieth century. She loves the United States as defined by the freedom to make your own way in life. “But where is that freedom today?” she asked. “Can you say what you want on social media?” “No.” She is a firm believer in President Trump, who is “someone who can’t be bought. That’s why they hate him so much.” She sees him as a patriot, and also as representing the forces of good against the forces of evil, that is, the left. Her awakening was to the spiritual war between light and darkness, between those who stand for freedom and those who stand for totalitarianism. As a result of her awakening, she became a lightworker, and we will discuss her and others like her later in this book. To understand Elle and people like her, we will be exploring Gnosticism, not understood as a historical phenomenon of late antiquity, or as a

Awakening: An Introduction  3 constellation of various groups and individuals deemed “heretical” by confessional forms of Christianity, most notably many of the Church Fathers, but rather manifesting as contemporary popular worldviews. In the contemporary context, Gnosticism is not so much a Christian phenomenon (though it may be) as it is a set of lenses through which we can see anew contemporary political, technological, and economic power structures. For this reason, I term it “neo-​gnosticism.” In a contemporary popular context, neo-​ gnosticism is very much akin to Nada’s magic glasses in They Live. Elle sees a narrative completely different than the one conveyed in mainstream media. For her, Donald Trump is not a politician but a heroic figure who, while of course a human being with his own quirks or foibles, has nonetheless chosen to serve as a vehicle for the powers of good and light and liberty. He, and the powers of light, are being oppressed by the powers of darkness, the archons as represented by the deep state, and utterly corrupt political figures who have in essence sold their souls to the mercenary devil. Her narrative is implicitly neo-​gnostic, or to put it another way, very closely resembling contemporary popular forms of neo-​gnosticism. But not all contemporary popular forms of neo-​gnosticism are only implicitly so. In fact, contemporary popular neo-​gnosticism takes forms that explicitly draw on ancient Gnosticism, as well as forms that are recognizably fit in a Gnostic interpretive structure. We will explore this phenomenon in much more detail, especially as it manifests in films and other forms of entertainment, as well as in social media. Here, it is important to recognize at least the outlines of what contemporary popular neo-​ gnosticism looks like. Like in the movie They Live, contemporary popular neo-​gnosticism more generally is based in the ideas that the (second) reality we see is a kind of illusion, and that behind it is another reality. This reality is a truer understanding of how things really are. When we see it, we are seeing that there are ignorant, evil, or deluded beings that seek to prevent us from recognizing the truth, and that seek our destruction. But we also see that there is a path toward light and freedom beyond their power, for their power is actually limited in scope and it is possible for us to see things as they really are. In this book, we examine a neo-​gnostic symbolic system common in contemporary American society, and identify three principal levels of political and spiritual awakening along which such expression tends to self-​organize. What we find is a widespread cultural understanding of gnosis expressed in what we may term levels. The first level hinges upon

4  American Gnosis the paradigmatic symbolism of the red pill and entails an awareness that something is awry in society, which can be described as a pathocracy or as pathocratic control; the second is an awakening awareness of higher spiritual dimensions to human life, understood in various terms ranging from a new Christian Great Awakening to lightworking to ascension to meditation or other contemplative practices, as well as interest in ancient civilizations and alternative health. The third level is less common, but is characterized by fuller engagement in a spiritual practice and is relatively apolitical.

Our Approach As you may have already surmised, this book will explore some very unusual subjects. In so doing, we will work with them all first on their own terms. Sometimes this is referred to as a “phenomenological” approach, but it also is simply fidelity to one’s sources. I have been trained in close reading in a historical context, and that has been quite valuable through the many subjects and figures and themes I have explored over the years. Second, we will engage in contextual comparative discussion and analysis of our subjects and themes. And finally, we will engage in meta-​analysis, which is, in essence, putting together the pieces of the puzzle, recognizing them as pieces in a larger mosaic, and seeking to understand not only how they fit together, but what they mean together. I am foregrounding our inductive approach here because deductive approaches laden with sets of a priori assumptions are very common, and these are typically not expressed but remain implicit. Thus one encounters scholarship in the humanities whose governing assumptions are materialistic, antispiritual, and Marxist, for instance. In Platonic Mysticism, I discuss and give some examples of the assumptive dismissal of Platonism and of mysticism—​but on what grounds? I go through some pronouncements of Richard Rorty and demonstrate that they are simply ex cathedra assertions based in left materialism. Authors like this don’t make the slightest effort even to understand other perspectives; they can assert that “essentialism is bad,” or that “no theory of the nature of truth is possible,” and that’s that.1 Quod erat demonstrandum. Microphone drop. By contrast, in an inductive approach, one remains open, like a detective on an investigation. Discovering new evidence, we take it into account and revise our understanding accordingly. Of course, this goes beyond simply

Awakening: An Introduction  5 “solving an enigma.” Our different chapters can be thought of as each part of a larger mosaic or tapestry, and as and after we move through them, we also move away from the individual parts, allowing us to see them together, or as a whole. Seeing the whole, like seeing a vast Hudson River School painting, is intuitive, integrative, and immediate. It calls us beyond our ordinary self or perspective. In developing this larger picture, analytical and categorial terminology can be helpful, and in fact, much of this introduction and some of the first chapter is devoted to it. Scholars in the early twenty-​first century coined the term “conspirituality” to describe the union of “conspiracy theory” with “spirituality” in a New Age context, and some of what we will discuss does more or less correspond with this term.2 I also have used the term “parahistory.”3 As we explore these different figures and movements, we may find useful some larger categories, sometimes used in the study of new religions. In particular, I will occasionally draw on the sociological categories of “world-​rejecting,” “world-​ accommodating,” and “world-​ affirming” new religions.4 These terms, although they do by their very nature reduce and over-​simplify the particularities of figures or groups, can be quite helpful for differentiation among them. And of course some figures or groups can include elements of several or all of these categories. Still, when a figure endorses prosperity theology or prosperity visualization, this does typically correspond to “world-​ affirming” and is fundamentally different than “world-​rejecting.” But with neo-​gnosticism, it would be more accurate to refer, for instance, to “society-​ rejecting” rather than “world.” The significances of this with regard to the study of neo-​gnosticism will become clear later. An inductive approach leads us to the recognition that the word “gnosis” is used, and can be used, to denote more than its strict definition as transcendence of subject-​object dualism. While that is the shortest and clearest way of defining it as it is used, for instance, in translations of Vajrayana Buddhist texts, it also in our context can be understood as referring also to an understanding or knowledge that is outside or beyond official propaganda or conventional belief and social control systems. Effectively, we can see an epistemological hierarchy of knowledge. At the top is gnosis, which is also freedom, including in this freedom from suffering as well as freedom from social conditioning and freedom to fully realize one’s own nature. Below that is gnosis as a more limited awakening from social conditioning; this is not absolute freedom but relative, and itself has gradations as one gets further away from transcendence and closer to social

6  American Gnosis conditioning and emotional reactivity. At the bottom is an unreflective acceptance of social conditioning as well as more or less wild emotional reactivity, which is typically intensified by social media technologies. At the bottom of the epistemological hierarchy is submergence in a termite-​like collective; at the top is individually realized freedom. The term “gnosis” is often loosely used in popular parlance to describe substantial movement up from one level to the next. In terms of the title of this book, and as discussed by various authors later in the book, metaphysical gnosis is understood as transcendence, broadly understood as meaning the transcendence of illusion and the realization of the true nature of reality.

Political Religion At this point we need to delve briefly into the other major term of our title: political religion. What do we mean by this? There are, of course, several different generally understood meanings for the term “political religion.” The first of these refers to when the state takes on pseudo-​religious aspects, that is, pseudo-​religious pageantry, official state doctrines in which one has to profess belief or be prosecuted for heresy, ritual-​like activities in which one has to engage, public confession and contrition, ritual sacrifices of dissidents, and so forth. It is not that the state is consciously creating a pseudo-​religion, but rather that when a totalitarian state appears, its totalitarianism resembles a pseudo-​religion, and this is why communist states persecute competing religious adherents. Like the god of the Old Testament, they brook no competitors. Of course, elements of political religion can cohere outside the state, but ideocratic state coercion is what makes a political religion in this meaning of the term. The second meaning of the term is when the state and an existing religious tradition are fused. In this case, it is not necessarily that a pseudo-​religion is generated, although it might be. But the coercive power of the state is nonetheless fused with religion, requiring adherence to a particular religious faith for political power and possibly even to conduct ordinary business, and combining elements of existing religious ritual, pageantry, and the like with the public activities of the state. This is essentially what the First Amendment to the United States Constitution was intended to prevent: a state religion. A fundamental impetus in American politics is for the separation of church and state.

Awakening: An Introduction  7 In the context of this book, the first meaning is the primary one. Centralized ideocratic state power more or less inevitably results in political pseudo-​religion, especially when there is a set of ideological doctrines to impose on the populace. Here, the term “second reality” is useful. An ideocrat projects a false second reality that “engenders the deformation of human being,” and that obscures actual reality for him.5 If state power is taken over by ideocrats, then its coercive power is wielded to enforce the “second reality” regardless of, and indeed because of the degree to which it is outrageously at odds with actual reality. There is another aspect to this process we must consider: what it does to the ideocrat. In effect, the projected “second reality” is for the ideocrat the only reality, and as a result, those that oppose the ideocratic doctrines can be tortured or killed without remorse—​they are seen as objects in the way of the realization of the “second reality.” But that means the ideocrat is now a “deformed human being” projecting deformation of humanity outward on others, and to impose deformation of humanity on the populace using the acquired power of the state requires the deformation of media, the deformation of government, the deformation of academia, and so forth, in order to censor dissidents, imprison them without trial or with show trials, using whatever means it can to impose a false second reality onto the intransigent world of nature and of normal human beings that, of course, are largely baffled by all this and just want to live free, normal lives and flourish.6 This is where the term “antignosis” comes in. Those who seek to enforce a “second reality” based in lies over actual reality cannot brook those who point out the lies, and recognize that the second reality is not real. Hence political gnosis is combatted with antignosis, meaning an extreme dualism that objectifies and projects a false reality onto dissidents. Adherents of a false second reality are prone to an extreme dualism that objectifies dissidents—​in Stalin’s case, the kulaks, or as in the case of the French Revolutionaries, the Vendée rural people, or in the case of Marxist-​ruled China, the traditional religious peoples and places, or in the case of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, vast numbers of young and old, rural and urban—​all such regimes leave in their wake countless victims. The dissidents are projected to be the enemy of the state whose elimination through genocide will bring the imagined second reality into being. But instead, of course, there is only suffering and death resulting from their actions in the actual reality. Political religion in the context of this book, visible in American fiction and nonfiction, film, and social media, often is expressed in terms of an

8  American Gnosis oppressive system that could be technological, as in the film The Matrix, or military-​industrial, as in the fiction of Thomas Pynchon. In the authors and social media sources from the right discussed in the latter part of this book, political religion is sometimes referred to as “globohomo,” shorthand for the ensemble of disparate and sometimes dissonant views that dominate contemporary American politics, in which system those on the dissident right are perceived as the enemy.7 Essentially, political gnosis as we see it in this book is expressed as waking up to the lies of the prevailing system. Waking up means effectively seeing through a projected false reality enforced by those who effectively act as ideological police through censorship, for instance, through “twitter mob,” “cancel culture,” and the like. This theme of seeing through a false reality is widely disseminated in films, and we shouldn’t be surprised to find it replicated in social media on the right. I discovered during the course of writing this book that there is a religious dimension to political awakening, just as in Elle’s case, mentioned earlier. “Awakening,” “waking up,” in this context can be expressed in different ways, such as not watching television all the way to “unplugging” from the system as a whole, but effectively it means being mentally outside the system and its control. Neo-​gnosticism is, as Harold Bloom said, fundamental to the popular American political religion. We will see many expressions of this kind of perspective on free speech social media and in various books, sites, and other sources later in this book. In what follows, we are going to begin by looking at how to think about neo-​gnosticism and awakening, in particular how these terms are used in contemporary American and global society. Around the turn of the twenty-​ first century, literary scholar Harold Bloom had identified neo-​gnosticism as the dominant theme in American religion, and here we’re going to explore the degree to which this is true, beginning with how neo-​gnosticism of a particular kind appears in popular forms of entertainment, including films, television series, animé, and others. We then will set the stage, looking broadly at how neo-​gnosticism fits within and reflects larger religious history, context, and currents. Here we are considering all of the Americas, and, necessarily, global context as well because increasingly as a result of media and technology even the local is more or less ineluctably global. Often the term “American religion” refers to the United States, but here we also look at hybrid or syncretic forms of religion that emerge in a Latin American (as well as global) context, and pay particular attention to South American new religions that draw on a wide

Awakening: An Introduction  9 range of sources, but especially Gnosticism. Major figures discussed include Miguel Serrano, author of numerous books on a neo-​gnostic syncretic and controversial new religion and in this chapter include Samael Aun Weor, central to the American Gnostic Association. These movements incorporate a vast array of sources ranging from Shaivism and Tantra to Rosicrucianism and Norse mythology, but a major identifying theme is neo-​gnosticism. What makes neo-​gnosticism attractive in a contemporary global as well as American context? North American forms or manifestations of neo-​gnosticism share in the same global tendencies and context as predominantly South American ones, although even these kinds of distinctions must remain somewhat loose. We look at neo-​gnosticism and gnosis in a North American context, considering earlier precedents (and opponents), well-​known film-​makers like David Lynch, as well as more and less influential authors in a body of literature that certainly contributes to the popular reception and use of Gnosticism implicitly or explicitly, in literature as well as in film and, of course, in direct examples. Figures discussed include the remarkable polymath Charles Musès, as well as David Icke and John Lamb Lash. Then we look at how gnosis and neo-​gnosticism and related topics manifest in contemporary political, social, and religious contexts, in some surprising ways, more on the right than on the left. Finally, we explore, based on what we’ve learned, what we can expect in the future. What makes this book so distinctive is its integrative approach. We draw together evidence from film, literature, new religions, politics, social media, and other sources in order to develop a fuller understanding not only of the recent and contemporary significances of neo-​gnosticism and gnosis, but also of what is developing now, from which we can extrapolate what is likely, perhaps even bound to happen in the future. In effect, this is complex pattern recognition and, drawing upon that, pattern prediction. As you will shortly see, our exploration will take us into some startling, entirely new territory, and much of what you encounter in this book has not been discussed before in scholarship. I hope you will enjoy exploring it as much as I have. New terrain, new map—​enjoy! Arthur Versluis

1 What Is Neo-​Gnosticism and What Is Gnosis? Our story begins nearly two millennia ago. The words “Gnosticism” and “Gnostic” as we discuss them in this book refer to the various disparate Christian groups, figures, and texts grouped under the broad term “Gnostic” in late antiquity (between the second or third and the seventh or eighth centuries after Christ).1 The word “Gnostic” refers to those groups or individuals in late antiquity who have been labeled “heretical,” by contrast to those authors known as the self-​proclaimed orthodox “Church Fathers,” and such groups emphasize gnosis, or direct spiritual illumination. “Gnostic” texts, figures, and groups varied quite widely, so much so that it is difficult to make accurate broad assertions about them, even today. But fortunately, we don’t need to wade out too deeply into those waters, because our focus in this book as a whole is on how Gnosticism reappears in contemporary society as neo-​gnosticism. As it turns out, though, this is perhaps even more wild a story. A word on terminology before we go further: an upper-​ case word “Gnostic” refers to a “heretical” Gnostic of late antiquity, whereas the lower case “gnostic” applies to someone who had or has direct inner spiritual knowledge. Thus the word “gnostic” can be applied to, for instance, a modern mystic, whether Christian or outwardly religious or not, whereas in the strictest interpretation, the words “Gnostic” or “Gnosticism” refer to “heretical” figures in antiquity. The term “neo-​gnosticism” in lower case is generic, analogous to the use of a term like communism. In this book, I don’t use the terms “esotericism” or “Western esotericism” because they have no coherent definition and would add nothing to our discussion. To distinguish the contemporary phenomenon of Gnosticism recurring in the contemporary context from ancient forms, I have largely used the term “neo-​gnosticism.” Neo-​gnosticism does not necessarily correspond to an organized religion—​it is, broadly speaking, a symbolic system drawn from

American Gnosis. Arthur Versluis, Oxford University Press. © Arthur Versluis 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197653210.003.0002

What Is Neo-Gnosticism and What Is Gnosis?  11 ancient Gnosticism that is adapted to a modern political, religious, or cultural context. In the case of the Eccclesia Gnostica, a contemporary Gnostic church based in California, because it explicitly is modeled on a resurgence of ancient Gnosticism, I don’t use the term “neo-​gnostic.” But as you will see, neo-​gnostic figures, groups, or texts often have a tenuous relationship to ancient Gnosticism, and as a result, a new term is called for this historically recent phenomenon. Neo-​gnosticism is a contemporary development that employs terms or symbols from ancient Gnosticism(s) (demiurge, archons, and so forth), but in a new, modern, technological social context, as in films like The Matrix, They Live, and The Truman Show. Understanding neo-​gnosticism doesn’t require us to go into detail concerning ancient forms of Gnosticism, although I will provide some brief remarks shortly as at least a modicum of background. Neo-​gnosticism owes a great deal to classic works of twentieth-​century scholarship, and in particular, to Hans Jonas’s The Gnostic Religion.2 In his influential book, Jonas describes Gnosticism as characterized by a cosmic dualism and a sense of human alienation from this world, along with a sense of divine otherness. A human being in this depiction of Gnosticism is a stranger marooned in an alien and hostile place created as a kind of cosmic mistake, a “fallen being” caught in delusion or distraction, beset by hostile powers, who hears a call from the world of light. In Jonas’s view, the Gnostics rejected the ancient Greek view of the cosmos as good, seeing it instead as a hostile realm subject to the “tyrannical and evil law” of the demiurge. From this perspective, the cosmos is a trap, and gnosis is the means of escape. Is Jonas’s depiction of ancient Gnosticism accurate? For our purposes in this book, it doesn’t matter much, because what does matter is this: Jonas’s depiction of ancient Gnosticism is very close to what we find in contemporary neo-​gnosticism. Gnosticism, in short, entails from this perspective a cosmos in which humanity is trapped, beset by hostile forces, and seeking a way into the kingdom of light. In Magic and Mysticism, I provided the following list of characteristics of Jonas’s depiction of Gnosticism: 1. A hostile cosmos (Gnostic antipathy to nature); 2. A demiurge, or ignorant creator responsible for botched creation and hostile to human spiritual awakening; 3. Dualism: opposition between the realm of light and the realm of matter; 4. An elaborate mythology;

12  American Gnosis

5. Myths concerning Sophia (Wisdom) and her fall and restoration; 6. Belief in a hidden God (not the demiurge); 7. Difficulty of spiritual progress due to the archons or other hostile powers in the cosmos, and ignorance of the inherent (fallen) human condition; 8. Existence of the ogdoad, or eight spheres (including the seven planetary spheres) and possibility of their transcendence; 9. The necessity of gnosis, or direct spiritual knowledge from the realm of light; and 10. A revealer or redeemer figure to show the way to the realm of light.3 It doesn’t matter if all or, for our purposes, perhaps even if any of the various figures and works grouped under ancient Gnosticism are accurately reflected in these ten elements —​because these represent characteristics found in twentieth-​century scholarly depictions of Gnosticism, particularly in the wake of Hans Jonas’s seminal The Gnostic Religion. And these same elements definitely recur in contemporary neo-​gnosticism, and especially in archontic neo-​gnosticism, which features hostile archons to enforce the false reality or imprisonment in delusion or ignorance.4 Jonas himself was quite aware that his depiction of Gnosticism owed much to twentieth-​century existentialist philosophy, and in fact that his interpretation might well be understood as itself a contemporary phenomenon. In an interview in 1975, Jonas himself remarked that he and his book on Gnosticism “had touched the sensitive nerve of an epoch. This is not an argument—​and I must stress it—​that my interpretation of Gnosticism was correct: it simply fitted to the moods provoked by historical circumstances.”5 Jonas was not alone in this interpretation of Gnosticism, of course. Giovanni Filoramo, for instance, wrote: All this will become clearer if we turn briefly to the existential situation of the Gnostic[s]‌. By their anthropological constitution they are prisoners of demonic powers. Equally, one can say of their cosmic Dasein, or existence: cast down to live, not only in a body, but also in a cosmos dominated by hostile, clever forces continually seeking their destruction, how could they escape from this closed universe except through the intervention of an external power?6

Thus, Filoramo remarks,

What Is Neo-Gnosticism and What Is Gnosis?  13 The process of salvation, which is revealed in the very heart of the Gnostic through the acquisition of a knowledge that is certainly in itself salvific, is placed in being if, and only if, a revealing, illuminating force intervenes from outside. For Gnosis is principally a cry from above, light from the light world of the Pleroma. By himself the gnostic is incapable of salvation. Gnosis is revealed knowledge, divine charis, or love, charity, which springs from the compassionate heart of the Father. It therefore requires a Revealer, the Gnostic sôtêr.7

In such interpretations, Gnosticism appears to be dualistic. In fact, in a seminal work on Gnosticism, The Tree of Gnosis: Gnostic Mythology from Early Christianity to Modern Nihilism, Ioan Couliano’s first chapter is entitled “Dualism: A Chronology.” In this interpretation we find many of the themes Jonas emphasized recurring—​the fallen Sophia and botched, hostile cosmos, the ignorant demiurge, the identification of the ignorant demiurge with the deity of the Old Testament, the archons—​all tied together with the red thread of dualism. Couliano traces Gnostic dualism historically through later movements like Marcionism, Bogomilism, and Catharism, even providing a cursory summary of some modern authors exhibiting Gnostic dualism in their works of one type or another.8 Thus he, too, confirms the influential pattern of Gnosticism in modernity that Jonas emphasized. But this is not why I mention Couliano here. Rather, I do so because Couliano provides an important key to understanding contemporary neo-​ gnosticism. Couliano argues that “speculative systems are composed of certain ‘bricks.’ These may be either shuffled in fortuitous arrangements or combined according to certain hierarchical criteria.”9 How, he continues, “do such ‘bricks’ appear? They are the outcome of simple mind processes.”10 He gives the example of reincarnation. Rather than fruitlessly trying to “trace” the idea of reincarnation getting transmitted hither and yon, it makes much more sense to recognize that reincarnation is “just one inevitable intellectual ‘brick’ upon which any human mind, anywhere and at any time would stumble, should it begin from the commonly shared assumption” that the mind or soul might exist beyond the body.11 Hence Couliano seeks to show that “gnostic myth originates in the transformation of other myths,” and that gnostic doctrines derive from one another not in a lineal direct transmission (author y is consciously following author x) but “through a cognitive process of transformation.”12

14  American Gnosis Let us continue Couliano’s line of thought here, but in a contemporary context. Given the ten “bricks” or characteristics of Gnosticism mentioned before, we perhaps can see the application. That is, in a given set of circumstances conducive to such a view, it is not at all unreasonable to expect that someone would rediscover, in an apparently different time and far distant place than late antiquity in the Mediterranean region, the ideas that there is a false or ignorant demiurge that others have mistaken for a true god, or that there are powers in the cosmos hostile to human spiritual self-​realization (whether they term them archons or demons or some other name), or that revelation from a world of light is essential to the salvation of humanity in a coming new age. And indeed, this is exactly what we do find in the contemporary American religio-​political landscape. That is, the discrete “bricks” of ancient Gnosticism (remember, as outlined by contemporary scholars, meaning that already “Gnosticism” is filtered through contemporary lenses) recur in new contexts because they so perfectly suit new circumstances. It is not so important whether the creators of films like The Truman Show, or The Matrix, or Dark City, or They Live had ever heard of ancient Gnosticism—​again, what Couliano terms “direct transmission” is not necessary. Rather, the creators of such films only had to realize in film symbols and metaphors that recapitulate “bricks” essential in the Gnostic worldview. Likewise, we find Gnosticism referenced on the political right because particular elements of Gnosticism (demiurge, archons, botched social system) naturally correspond to and express authors’ convictions or insights into contemporary society. Of course there are cases in recent literature, film, religion, and politics in which Gnosticism in late antiquity is directly referenced. Some fiction, some films, expressly echo or cite Gnostic precedent, ideas, and terms, as April DeConick discussed in The Gnostic New Age.13 The Ecclesia Gnostica founded in California explicitly and clearly is modeled on ancient Gnosticism, and has developed (as we will see in a later chapter) a clear set of doctrines as well as rituals and practices with an eye to historical and textual precedent. But what we will explore in this book is broader. The phenomenon of neo-​ gnosticism is essentially the rediscovery of intellectual “bricks” or elements that correspond to and symbolize aspects of contemporary society, especially those involving censorship, corporate or elite power, oligarchy, control, conspiracies, and a pervasive sense that mainstream reality is falsified or deceptive. It is not farfetched to describe a digital or virtual realm (e.g., Meta)

What Is Neo-Gnosticism and What Is Gnosis?  15 in terms of a demiurge or ignorant creator, enforced by archons, for instance. Such a perspective uses a number of the “bricks” of ancient Gnosticism, and in so doing, it does not matter whether the user of those bricks is aware in detail of their provenance in antiquity. What matters more is that which is constructed. But before we get to that in more detail, we need to look at what is meant by the term “gnosis.”

What Is Gnosis? Gnosis today has become a familiar term, and in the study and translation of some religious texts, notably Tibetan Buddhism, the term “gnosis” has entered common usage, far beyond its narrow application confined to the historical period of late antiquity. But how precisely is the term used? And what does it offer us in the study of religion? While in the past, definitions varied somewhat, we can now see a transdisciplinary consensus regarding the broader utility of the concept of gnosis. This consensus has significant implications. In what follows, I will explore how the term “gnosis” is used in the contemporary distinctively American study of religion and develop a model for understanding gnosis that is of particular value for the study of consciousness. Here we are focusing not on typologies for finding neo-​gnosticism in popular culture, although those are quite interesting and revealing, but rather on the specific subject of gnosis in both academic and popular usage. For about twenty years, as I will discuss in more detail shortly, I have been asking students to find examples of the ten characteristics of neo-​gnosticism, meaning anticosmic Gnosticism marked by figures like a demiurge, archons, a fallen Sophia, and so forth. The assignment is always a success: it is easy for students to find examples of neo-​gnosticism in films like Dark City, in anime, in popular music, indeed, in all sorts of unexpected places. What they almost never look for and rarely find depicted in popular culture is gnosis. The concept is, for them, too unfamiliar. A seminal figure for understanding gnosis as it is defined here is the Buddhist scholar Edward Conze (1904–​1979). Conze recognized the fundamental similarities between Buddhism and Gnosticism, but more specifically, how the term gnosis could be understood as describing transcendent mystical experience as found both in ancient Gnostic texts and later in Christian mysticism. In Buddhism: Its Essence and Development, Conze

16  American Gnosis remarked that “when we compare the attributes of the Godhead [as understood by Meister Eckhart] with those of Nirvana, we find almost no difference at all.”14 Further, in Buddhism “the Gnostic vision has always been regarded as the more true one.”15 In fact, in his Memoirs of a Modern Gnostic, Conze remarked that he had lectured on “Buddhism and Gnosticism” numerous times around the world, beginning in 1960, including in Berkeley in 1972, and he also published “Buddhism and Gnosis” in Further Buddhist Studies in 1975.16 Conze refers explicitly to the “Old Gnosis,” by which he meant gnosis as the transcendence of self–​other divisions.17 The term “Old Gnosis” was picked up by Theodore Roszak, following upon Conze’s introduction of the term. In Where the Wasteland Ends—​the sequel to his seminal The Making of a Counter Culture—​Roszak explores the themes of politics and transcendence in modernity, arguing the vital importance of “the Old Gnosis,” meaning “transcendent knowledge,” “mysticism,” and the “transcendence” that must play a role in “saving urban-​industrial society from self-​annihilation.”18 Quoting seventeenth-​century poet Thomas Traherne, Roszak goes on to remark that “a vividly participative sensory life is the innate human condition—​the ‘Pure Primitive Virgin Light,’ ” in which “knower and known merge; the eye ingests the object and tastes it internally.”19 Roszak saw the absence of gnosis as characteristic of modernity, a root cause of modern alienation. Gnosis, in Roszak’s usage, following upon Conze’s, is the union of knower and known. Harold Bloom used the term in more or less the same way not only in The American Religion, but also in his subsequent book Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection.20 There he creates a synthesis that draws from Hans Jonas’s distinctly twentieth-​century pessimistic interpretation of Gnosticism, as well as from the thought of Henry Corbin and, of course, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Bloom writes that “for Jonas, as for Emerson, the moment of Gnosis is the mind’s direct perception, a pure movement and event that simultaneously discloses a divine spark in the self, and a sense of divine degradation even there, in the inmost self.”21 While this latter notion is dubious, nonetheless, for Bloom, gnosis is “not to be confused with Freudian or Jungian excursions into the interior” but rather is “a meeting between inner and outer realities,” a “return to a perfect knowledge, at once experiential and intellectual.”22 Hence “knowing God is primarily a process of being reminded of what you already know, which is that God never has been wholly external to you, however alienated or estranged he is from the society or even the cosmos in which you dwell.”23 Bloom’s insistence on the

What Is Neo-Gnosticism and What Is Gnosis?  17 fallen nature of the cosmos is not Emersonian or Platonic, but his definition of gnosis is broadly in accord with that of Roszak. In “The Countercultural Gnostic,” April DeConick offers a typology for defining gnosis: The first characteristic is framed around direct experiential knowledge of a transcendent God beyond the gods of all the religions (including what the gnostics called gnosis). In ecstatic moments, the gnostics felt immersed in the overwhelming presence of transcendence, believing that they had been reunited with the Very-​Ground-​of-​Being.24

Gnostics pursued gnosis, meaning “ecstatic states and unitive experiences of transcendence.” In The Gnostic New Age, DeConick develops her typology, observing that “because they experienced complete unity with the transcendent God in their initiations [gnosis], these people were convinced that humans have an innate spiritual nature that is an extension of this transcendence.”25 In such passages, DeConick’s contemporary account reminds us of Edward Conze’s much-​earlier correlation of the “Old Gnosis” with Buddhist prajnaparamita texts and with via negativa mysticism.

Developing a Paradigm for Understanding Gnosis I have developed a typology for understanding the term gnosis as central to esoteric religion. In Magic and Mysticism: An Introduction to Western Esotericism, I defined esotericism as having at its center gnosis, that is, “secret or semi-​secret knowledge about humanity, the cosmos, and the divine.” Magic and mysticism together form European esoteric traditions, and at their center is gnosis, but of two different, related types. Understood in this way, magical traditions have to do with union of subject and object for cosmological aims, whereas mysticism is about subject–​object transcendence. This paradigm has precedent in terminology used in scholarship on Jewish mysticism. In the study of Kabbalah, one sometimes finds reference to “magicomysticism,” for instance, in Moshe Idel’s Kabbalah and Eros,26 or in Elliot Wolfson’s Language, Eros, Being.27 The underlying implication here is that magic and mysticism belong to a spectrum, and that in the middle is a crossover region that belongs to both. Typically, though, Jewish mysticism is the primary category that magic modifies.

18  American Gnosis I drew upon this usage in order to create the typology in Magic and Mysticism, which expands and develops this idea into the basis for a more complete model.28 There, I posit two broad kinds of gnosis: cosmological and metaphysical. Cosmological gnosis corresponds to practices that have particular worldly aims, for instance, folk or other forms of magic, or to knowledge of hidden aspects of the cosmos. We can speak here of a kind of gnosis—​ that is, limited union between subject and object albeit for a particular goal or purpose, like erotic attraction. A book collection on neo-​gnosticism, The Gnostic World, defined all of gnosis as cosmological, arguing that “Quests for [g]‌nosis, or for the deep knowledge in which the mysteries of the cosmos are unveiled, form a crucial component in world religious and cultural life.”29 However, as we will see, cosmological gnosis is certainly common but not the only type. Metaphysical gnosis corresponds to mysticism, that is, to the transcendence of self–​other division or duality. If we were to conceive of mysticism as a circle above, then a second, overlapping circle would represent magical practices, and their overlapping area or vesica piscis would be either mystico-​ magical at the lower half, or magico-​mystical at the upper half. Metaphysical gnosis is essentially the same as mysticism, if mysticism is understood as self-​ other transcendence, or the transcendence of dualism. Gnosis, in other words, can be understood in terms of a spectrum going from duality or dualism to nonduality. That spectrum looks like this: antignosis > political gnosis > cosmological gnosis > metaphysical gnosis Here are some related spectra: Extreme dualism

—​>

Nondualism

Materialism

—​>

Spirituality

Collectivism

—​>

Individualism

Coercion

—​>

Freedom

Mandated belief/​ideology

—​>

Transcendence

Second reality

—​>

Reality

Let us start with the far left end of the spectrum: antignosis. An obvious example of antignosis or antignostic thinking is the Inquisition, which the Roman Catholic Church established beginning in 1184 AD and developed further when in 1227 Pope Gregory IX appointed the first judge-​inquisitors

What Is Neo-Gnosticism and What Is Gnosis?  19 for heretical thought and action.30 Of course the various targets that the Inquisition pursued were varied, but definitely some of them were nondualists whose crime effectively was that they did not affirm Church doctrines of belief, but rather advanced gnostic or nondual perspectives, as did, for instance, Meister Eckhart (1260–​1328), perhaps the most famous nondualist mystic whose work was condemned for heresy near the end of his life, or Marguerite Porete, author of The Mirror of Simple Souls—​a work of mysticism akin to that of Eckhart—​who was burned at the stake in 1310. As I discussed in The New Inquisitions, the historically recent phenomenon of totalitarianism can be understood in part as a secular bastard child of religion turned against itself. Inquisitionalism is, of course, a form of extreme dualism, so extreme that it literally murders those who dissent from mandated beliefs. To burn someone at the stake is to so completely objectify them as to be willing to force them into the most horrific of torture and death. We do see something analogous, for instance, when totalitarian China invaded Tibet, murdering, torturing, and imprisoning Tibetan Buddhist religious practitioners, destroying monasteries, burning irreplaceable sacred texts, and melting down priceless statues, as documented for instance in the grotesque images of Forbidden Memory: Tibet During the Cultural Revolution.31 Given that Tibetan Buddhism has provided the world the most extensive and profound nondual meditation traditions, Mahamudra and Dzogchen, we can safely term the occupation and destruction of Tibet as, among other things, antignostic. Of course, “antignostic” also exists on the spectrum, and there are forms of antignosis that are less explicit than burning poor Marguerite Porete at the stake. Ideologies predicated on materialistic, antireligious premises, such as various forms or stepchildren of Marxism, regard religions as representing independence from and therefore a threat to the totalitarian political system. In ideocratic systems, dissenting thought is criminalized, as Czeslaw Milosz discussed in his classic about living under Soviet occupation, The Captive Mind.32 An ideocracy is generated and enforced through hate, by opposing the existing order and targeting dissidents. As Lenin put it, “hatred [especially for bourgeois ‘class politicians’] is truly the ‘beginning of all wisdom,’ the basis of any socialist and communist movement and of its success.”33 This brings us to the next point on the spectrum: political gnosis. Political gnosis, as expressed in literature, film, or other forms, means realizing that an existing state-​enforced or state-​and-​technology-​enforced system is actually based on lies. Political gnosis means becoming a dissenter within a false

20  American Gnosis system, one that doesn’t allow us to reach our full potential, but further, that actively prevents or censors knowledge of the truth. One could see political gnosis exemplified in the work of novelist Thomas Pynchon, for instance, which on the one hand is often described as highly critical of the existing political-​social machinery, even accused of paranoia; and on the other hand points toward an Orphic spirituality and toward the Tibetan secret kingdom of Shambhala. Revealing that one is trapped in a society hostile to spirituality may be, of course, a kind of revolutionary act and itself a bit dangerous. As we discuss in later chapters, especially Chapter 9, political neo-​ gnosticism is a transitional perspective, the primary focus of which is diagnosing what is wrong with society. Society-​rejection is not world-​ rejection; one might very well reject an oppressive society but have a world-​ affirming perspective. Gnosis itself is the transcendence of all dualisms. But in this book we refer to different levels or kinds of gnosis. The first is political, an awareness that society has gone wrong; the second is an awakening of an awareness of higher spiritual dimensions to human life. The third level is less common, but is characterized by fuller engagement in a spiritual practice, integrating all three levels. Cosmological gnosis refers to that part of the spectrum in which apparent self–​other division is less extreme. A spiritual connection to the natural world belongs in this category, what is sometimes termed “nature mysticism,” even a “union with the source,” or a “union with all things,” as we see for example in the Romantic nature poetry of William Wordsworth or, in American literature, Walt Whitman. Another example would be Ralph Waldo Emerson, who in his early book Nature described a mystical experience in which he felt united with the divine in the natural world.34 Paranormal experiences, including clairvoyance, telekinesis, or various kinds of magic, as well as visionary experiences, all fit within the sphere of cosmological gnosis, that is, a partial union of subject and object, a partial overcoming of dualism. At the far right end of the spectrum is metaphysical gnosis, that is, nonduality or the complete transcendence of apparent subject–​object division. It is with this meaning that the word “gnosis” appears in recent translations of Tibetan Buddhist religious texts, and it has a consistent meaning. Already in the 1980s, one finds a scholar listing the culmination of the Kalachakra Tantra as “gnosis.”35 In the early twenty-​first century, the word had become relatively frequent. For instance, in his translation of Rongzom Chökyi Zangpo’s Entering the Way of the Great Vehicle: Dzogchen as the Culmination of the Mahayana, Dominic Sur uses the word “gnosis”

What Is Neo-Gnosticism and What Is Gnosis?  21 extensively in a variety of contexts.36 Many of those uses are too abstruse to go into here, but it is noteworthy that the work emphasizes realizing “luminosity of the basic mind (rig pa), thus emphasizing. . . gnosis.”37 Buddhist enlightenment is not cognitive in nature—​knowing as such is “about discriminating ‘this’ from ‘that.’ ”38 Buddhahood is not a cognitive act. Hence, “all domains of experience are naturally occurring gnosis appearing to itself.”39 Gnosis in this context has no core or essence because it is beyond subject–​object divisions. The discussions of gnosis in the context of Nyingma Dzogchen teachings are highly developed and subtle. Gnosis here is “not an act or activity or transformation of the ordinary thematic mind (citta, sems),” and is not in “the jurisdiction of the intellect.” Buddhahood itself is “not a cognitive act.”40 All of these negations correspond to the Madhyamika philosophical tradition, but the particular aspects of the term “gnosis” as used in this particular text are too much to go into here. Suffice it to say that the word “gnosis” is employed in multiple and highly sophisticated ways well beyond a simple assertion of “unity.”

The Term Gnosis in Contemporary Popular Usage Magicians often use the term gnosis, and it has become commonplace in Chaos magic, for instance. Let me offer a few examples. In Liber Null & Psychonaut, British author Peter Carroll has a small chapter entitled “Gnosis,” in which he writes that Altered states of consciousness are the key to magical powers. The particular state of mind required has a name in every tradition: No-​mind. Stopping the internal dialogue, passing through the eye of the needle, ain or nothing, samadhi, or one-​pointedness. In this book it will be known as Gnosis. It is an extension of the magical trance by other means.41

Carroll goes on to remark that there are two methods of achieving gnosis, “the inhibitory mode,” that is, silencing the mind until only the object of concentration remains, and “the excitatory mode,” in which the mind “is raised to a very high pitch of excitement while concentration on the objective is maintained.” In brief, here, gnosis is “one-​pointed consciousness” oriented toward a goal.42 About the same meaning is deployed by Phil Hine in Prime

22  American Gnosis Chaos, when in passing he refers to “the more physical routes into Gnosis such as dancing, flagellation, sex, chanting, drumming, hyperventilation, and other ecstatic modes.” Fear or terror, however, “soon palls as an effective lever for gnosis.”43 In Hands-​On Chaos Magic: Reality Manipulation Through the Ovayki Current, American author Andrieh Vitimus continues and develops the use of the word gnosis in the context of Chaos magic.44 In fact, he directly cites Peter Carroll’s use of the term, and while recognizing that the term could refer to states of consciousness associated with mysticism, continues Carroll’s perspective, even the terminology mentioned above of “inhibitory” and “excitatory” states of consciousness. Vitimus also recognizes that many identify gnosis with trance. Vitimus adds the word “chemignosis” to our vocabulary, referring specifically to psychoactive substances used in magic, which he adds can be quite risky. And in addition to expanding Hine’s list of forms of excitatory gnosis to include “dancing, drumming, fighting, sex, spinning, ecstatic chanting/​shouting/​domination, terror, running, and glossolalia,” he adds “seething,” a “snake trance” in which “the participant sways back and forth rhythmically until gnosis hits.”45 Here “gnosis” and “trance” seem to be nearly identical. We’ve gone on this excursion into some primary sources here in order to see how the word gnosis is used by practitioners in ways that corresponds closely to the model in Magic and Mysticism, in particular, distinguishing between cosmological and metaphysical gnosis. Chaos magicians, aiming at a particular objective, seek to become one with that objective, and the objectives are by and large cosmological, that is, in this context, worldly or mundane. But there are also uses of the word gnosis that correspond much more with metaphysics, whether described as “self-​transcendent experience,” or as union with the divine. Cosmological gnosis is subject–​object transcendence harnessed to a this-​worldly purpose; metaphysical gnosis is subject–​object transcendence for its own sake. The term “gnosis” is also used in psychedelics research, as we will see in a later chapter. Buddhist teacher Lama Surya Das, in Zig Zag Zen, observes that “LSD is strong yogi medicine; an almost infinitesimal amount can deliver you to other worlds. It can propel deep self-​inquiry and gnostic experience. It can also precipitate psychosis.” Likewise, in “The Paisley Gate,” Erik Davis explores the boundaries and bridges between psychedelic experiences and religious prohibitions, and remarks that there has been at least some overlap between Buddhism and psychedelics in American Buddhism since

What Is Neo-Gnosticism and What Is Gnosis?  23 the 1960s. This overlapping terrain is the gnostic spectrum from cosmological to metaphysical gnosis. It is in this context that Ken Wilber writes in The Religion of Tomorrow, referring to “a contemplative mode of nondual knowing (referred to as jnana or prajna—​the jna found in both words is, in English, ‘kno,’ as in ‘knowledge,’ or ‘gno,’ as in ‘gnosis,’ which is how nondual mystical awareness is often known in the West.”46 Wilber’s work, while itself a primary source, is clearly drawing on scholarly conventions in contemporary translations of Buddhist texts. What’s more, the word gnosis is featured throughout Wilber’s explication of his vision. Hence he draws on Aurobindo’s use of the word gnosis, and asserts that “there is another type of nondual awareness—​more profound than gnosis, although, as it were, ‘containing’ gnosis as an aspect of itself.”47 In other words, Wilber posits a gnosis beyond gnosis, the “nondual gnosis of the Suchness state,” “added to a structure comprehension that is literally the fullest of the fullest of all Form possible.” This Wilber terms, following Aurobindo’s terminology and thinking, the “Supermind,” the “summation of evolution.”48 The term “gnosis” is quite important for the study of consciousness, but its utility requires both clear definition and recognition that the word can incorporate a spectrum of implications. Gnosis here means transcendent unitary knowledge beyond subject–​object dualism. Gnosis as a concept is not static, but dynamic. The term gnosis can incorporate a spectrum ranging from cosmological to metaphysical, in increasing degrees of the union and ultimately transcendence of the apparent subject–​object division. An example might be one’s viewing of a painting, in which in the experience of viewing the viewer and the object viewed conjoin in the act of viewing. It is not that the viewer and the painting are actually one, obviously, but there is nonetheless in aesthesis an experiential connection [viewing] between the viewer and the viewed. There are different levels of such experiences of unity, but if one keeps in mind the meaning of gnosis as union, then the word may be capacious enough to include such a range of increasing subtlety in meaning, all the way to what we saw in a Madhyamaka Buddhist context as the complete negation of all imputations. Clearly, the elastic term “gnosis” as we have discussed and defined it is here to stay. What is more, the continuum of cosmological and metaphysical gnosis has a much broader utility than one might have expected, as the term “gnosis” has been adopted into the contemporary popular and scholarly vernacular in areas ranging from magic to psychedelics to the translation of Buddhism.49

24  American Gnosis But there is an important question that naturally arises here. How can Gnosticism or neo-​gnosticism be dualistic if gnosis is nondual? As mentioned before, neo-​gnosticism emphasizes that we are trapped in a false reality and beset by hostile powers (archons or demons) preventing us from spiritual progress. How is such a dualistic perspective—​which in its very nature for instance separates us from a deluded society under the influence of an ignorant demiurge—​compatible with gnosis understood as self–​other transcendence? This central question is important, even critical, for understanding this book as a whole. I will provide some answers. One answer is that in this book, we are often discussing neo-​gnosticism without gnosis, or alternatively, gnosis without neo-​gnosticism. What do I mean by this? Arguably, of course, there is a kind of cosmological gnosis in many of the figures, works, and subjects we’ll be investigating. At the very least, neo-​gnosticism is a frame for some kind of hidden knowledge about society—​when one realizes that society is ruled by a self-​serving cabal, described in terms of a false god, archons, aliens, or demons, for instance, that realization can be termed a kind of gnosis. And indeed, I do argue this later in our book. However, the fact is that in much of neo-​gnosticism, there is little or no hint of metaphysical gnosis, that is, of subject–​object transcendence. And by contrast, in those figures at the end of our book whose work focuses on metaphysical gnosis, that is, subject–​object transcendence, we find no archons, no demiurge, no hostile cosmos or society, none of the elements emphasized in neo-​gnosticism. Another answer, though, is that neo-​gnosticism can be understood as movement from false to authentic reality, hence from dualistic illusion to nondual truth. From this perspective, life in contemporary society is being trapped in a dualistic, materialistic illusion without being aware of it. Realizing that one is trapped in a false reality or beset by hostile powers is still in the realm of dualism, but nonetheless is a step forward, part of one’s movement toward gnosis, or subject–​object transcendence. From this perspective, dualistic gnosticism is a collection of metaphors useful for helping us understand our plight, but ultimately only like a tool, useful at a certain point, to be dropped later on. This answer, too, is applied in later chapters. And with that, we begin by turning our attention first to neo-​gnosticism in American literature.

2 Neo-​Gnosticism in American Literature From a birds-​eye view of nineteenth-​and twentieth-​century American literature, we don’t necessarily immediately see Gnostic or neo-​gnostic aspects as a prominent feature. It’s not as though a great many novelists explicitly invoke Gnostic texts, figures, or themes from late antiquity, nor do we find demiurges and archons and fallen Sophia figures widely visible. Nor do we find allusions to various Church Fathers’ invective against Gnostics—​on the surface, Gnosticism from late antiquity is just not all that prevalent as a reference. But that is not our focus here. Rather, we are going to look at neo-​gnostic aspects of American literature. In particular, we will look at how some major works of American literature resonate with neo-​gnosticism in key ways, most of all, perhaps, in the notion of a hostile cosmos. My argument here is that in these works of literature we can discern some commonalities, especially with regard to a pessimistic view of society and often of the cosmos. It is not necessarily that Gnosticism from late antiquity plays a direct role in this, though it sometimes does, but rather that neo-​gnosticism (including in this the Jonasian depiction of Gnosticism in late antiquity) emerges in the twentieth century, eventuating in the various neo-​gnostic religio-​political figures, works, and groups we look at later in this book.1 Neo-​gnosticism can be an expression of alienation from a hostile society or cosmos, but also, at least potentially, can express a path to salvation or liberation. In literature, for the most part, the first of these (alienation) is its primary mode. As I discussed in The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance, mid-​nineteenth-​century American literature divides, roughly, into two main groups: world affirming, and world rejecting. The world affirmers include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Walt Whitman, and others in the American Renaissance whose work reflected something along the lines of a Platonic or Plotinian view that the cosmos is ultimately ordered, that evil does not have any ultimate metaphysical reality, but is essentially privatio boni, or absence of the good, and so forth. American Gnosis. Arthur Versluis, Oxford University Press. © Arthur Versluis 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197653210.003.0003

26  American Gnosis Whitman is perhaps the most extreme of this camp, with his expansive celebrative catalogues, but Emerson and the others, as I showed elsewhere, owed much to Platonism and also were inclined toward the sunny side of life. But there were others in the American Renaissance who did not belong to the world affirming camp—​indeed, in some cases, who detested the world affirmers. These we may term the world-​rejecters, those who think along these lines: that nature is cracked across the brow, that evil has a substantial presence in the world, that life is suffering, confidence men abound, and men do evil, wage war, and commit crimes because they can. And those who don’t recognize the dark aspects of life are delusional, they think. Among such authors we can include Edgar Allan Poe (1809–​1849), Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–​1864), and Herman Melville (1819–​1891). I elsewhere have discussed in more detail the Gnostic leanings of some of these authors and their works, and here will provide a recapitulation.2 With regard to Poe, some scholars have identified his work with anticosmic Gnosticism.3 Here, I will not make a direct argument for Poe as being indebted to Gnosticism, but rather recognize again that those identified by Hans Jonas as neo-​gnostic themes—​alienation, dread, homesickness, intoxication—​certainly are present in Poe’s work. But it is a bridge too far to claim Poe’s parody of modern science, Eureka, as a “supreme act of knowing, or gnosis,” when it is an elaborate joke.4 Rather, I would argue that Poe’s fiction and poetry, with its generally macabre pessimistic or dark themes, is a result of his temperament. His temperament, like that of Hawthorne and certainly of Melville, aligns quite well with neo-​gnosticism in the twentieth century. But did this alignment derive from Poe’s having delved into apocryphal Gnostic texts or accounts of the Church Fathers? Unlikely. Barton Levi St. Armand argued that what we see in figures like Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville on the one hand, and Emerson, Thoreau, and the other Transcendentalists on the other hand, is “almost a reincarnation. . . in mid-​nineteenth century America” of the ancient opposition between the Gnostics and the Neoplatonists, exemplified in Plotinus’s well-​known treatise labeled, rightly or wrongly, “Against the Gnostics.”5 As I said in Gnosis and Literature, “To consider Transcendentalism and anti-​Transcendentalism in light of Platonism and Gnosticism respectively is most illuminating, and does indeed suggest that Gnosticism and Platonism represent fundamental ways of viewing the cosmos reappearing in different eras.”6 The antipathy expressed by Poe and Melville toward Emerson or implied toward

Neo-Gnosticism in American Literature  27 Emersonian figures in their fiction undoubtedly has a temperamental origin: at heart, it is the opposition of pessimists to cheery optimists. At the same time, a survey of the scholarly literature reveals quite an array of articles, dissertations, and books that explore the works of Poe and especially Melville, but also Hawthorne, as reflecting a Gnostic cosmology of seeing the human plight in this dark world as akin to being trapped in a prison, or in darkness, as being damned, or under the sway of hostile powers, and as doubting the beneficence of the monolatric God(s) of Christianity, or by extension, Judaism or Islam.7 St. Armand argues that Gnosticism is key to understanding Poe, and in particular, Gnosticism is the key to his well-​known story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” in which the character Roderick is enchained in his family house and under the spell of “time’s great Archon, Chronos or Saturn.”8 One of the more interesting reflections regarding the relevance of ancient Gnosticism to these American Renaissance authors, at least for our purposes, is from the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo in Argentina, and is written by Nora Casanova, on “Hell, Heaven, and Alchemy in Hawthorne’s ‘Scarlet Letter.’ ”9 In this thesis, she advances the argument that an essential key to understanding Hawthorne’s famous novel, published in 1850 and set in Puritan New England, is in the teachings of Samael Aun Weor (1917–​1977), founder of a twentieth-​century neo-​gnostic movement to which we devote a subsequent chapter of this book. Weor’s books, teachings, and groups are relatively widespread in Latin America. It is probable that Weor was familiar with the Oneida community in New York and its practice of nonejaculatory sexual union, but certainly he had encountered subsequent iterations of this idea in American occultist circles. Casanova’s hypothesis is that if Hawthorne’s contact “with esoteric fraternities made him aware of the estoeric symbolism present in his novel, then it can be said that his work condenses his knowledge of the occult sciences (as explained by Gnosticism).”10 She argues that the primary secret of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter: A Romance is “the sexual alchemic practice and the creation of the existential bodies,” and “how the ancient and secret method to go back to Heaven is artistically recreated by Hawthorne in his novel.”11 The novel, and perhaps others of Hawthorne’s works, exemplify “the rebirth of the Divine Androgynous and the return to paradise.”12 She continues: “It is necessary to appeal to Samael Aun Weor’s Gnosticism due to the fact that Gnosis comprehends the basic principles of all religions and scientifically explains the profound meaning of any material and spiritual

28  American Gnosis phenomenon.”13Hence, naturally, Weor (and his view that not ejaculating is the essence of Gnosticism) is for her the key to understanding Hawthorne’s work as well. To return briefly here to Coulianu’s idea of Gnosticism consisting of various elements that can be rediscovered: this idea can also be extended to include the rediscovery of those elements in the past, or the projection of them into the past or present. There is not a lot of evidence in actual Gnostic texts from late antiquity, in particular the Nag Hammadi Library, for Weor’s emphasis on not ejaculating, but once that particular “brick” is added to one’s assemblage, then one can look for it elsewhere as well. Likewise, the idea of a fallen or sinful world is present in some forms of ancient Gnosticism, in some forms of neo-​gnosticism, but also can be found in the Calvinism so familiar to Hawthorne. Does that make it Gnostic in Hawthorne, or make of Hawthorne a Gnostic? Not necessarily: we rather find a very similar “brick” in all of them. But we do know from Hawthorne’s exchanges with Melville that the two of them shared heretical or “impious” thoughts about Christianity, and it’s also clear that Melville knew about and drew on Gnosticism in his work. Here is Melville’s “Fragment of a Lost Gnostic Poem of the 12th Century,” which reads as follows: Found a family, build a state The pledged event is still the same: Matter in end will never abate His ancient brutal claim. Indolence is heaven’s ally here, And energy the child of hell: The Good Man pouring from his pitcher clear, But brims the poisoned well.

This poem makes crystal clear that Melville was familiar with some fundamental ideas of Gnosticism, including the idea that Gnosticism reappeared in the medieval Cathar sect. What’s more, the fundamental pessimism of the poem, especially vivid in the final two lines, exemplifies Melville’s world-​ rejecting temperament, so obvious in works like “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” Billy Budd, and especially The Confidence Man. In this last work we see

Neo-Gnosticism in American Literature  29 exemplified Melville’s jaded view that virtually everything in American life, including Emersonian optimism, is just variations of the age-​old confidence game, the flim-​flam. But is this pessimism also Gnosticism? Definitely Melville was familiar with Gnosticism, about which he must have learned via Andrews Norton and Pierre Bayle, the French Enlightenment scholar whose labyrinthine Dictionary Historical and Critical (1734–​ 1738) included entries on all manner of heretical topics.14 In Melville’s Quarrel With God, Lawrence Thompson wrote about Melville: The turn which his life had taken translated him from a transcendentalist and a mystic into an inverted transcendentalist, an inverted mystic. To this extent, then, he was consistent, in spite of all his concomitant inconsistencies, to the very end of his life. Like his own Captain Ahab, he remained a defiant rebel, even in the face of death.15 [Melville’s view was] that the world was put together wrong, and that God was to blame. The gist of it was that simple. He spent his life not merely sneering at the gullibility of human beings who disagreed with him, but also in sneering at God, accusing God, upbraiding God, blaming God, and (as he thought) quarreling with God.16

In fact, the characters Ishmael and Ahab in Moby Dick, as numerous scholars have pointed out, are overtly Gnostic, Ahab’s speech in “The Candles” directly reflects Gnosticism.17 Ahab here mockingly addresses the demiurgic god: certainly [thou] knowest not thy beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun. I know that of me, which thou knowest not of thyself, oh, thou omnipotent. There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear spirit, to whom all eternity is time, all thy creativeness mechanical.18

We see this defiance in Moby Dick, as when Ahab fiercely declaims: “I now know that thy right worship is defiance” for “To neither love nor reverence wilt thou be kind; and e’en for hate thou canst but kill; and all are killed.”19 But Ahab, as captain of the ship, also can be seen as a demiurgic figure himself, and Moby Dick includes such passages as this one about the botched nature of our cosmos: “Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.”20 Whiteness, the chapter

30  American Gnosis continues, “is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian’s Deity; and yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind.”21 Melville spent much of his later life working on the epic poem Clarel, which also has Gnostic allusions in it. In “The High Desert” Melville reflects on

Abel and Cain—​Ormuzd involved with Ahriman In deadly lock. Were those gods gone? Or under other names lived on? The theme they started. “Twas averred That, in old Gnostic pages blurred, Jehovah was construed to be Author of evil, yea, its god; And Christ divine his contrary: A god was held against a god.22

Clearly Melville was familiar with Marcionism, the idea that the Old Testament god was in fact an ignorant demiurge, Christ a revelation of the true god, but also in this passage is a fundamental dualism seen to underlie history, and indeed, the cosmos itself. What we see with these seminal authors of the American Renaissance recurs again in the twentieth century and is not limited only to American literature. While our focus here is American literature, very broadly understood to include the Americas as a whole, American literature exists in an increasingly global context, even in the nineteenth but certainly in the twentieth century.

The Twentieth Century and Existentialist Gnosticism Within this larger international context, there is a considerable history of major literary works being recognized as having key Gnostic or “Gnostic” aspects. Here we might mention Franz Kafka (1883–​1924), whose The Castle has been seen as Gnostic; Joseph Conrad (1857–​1924), whose Heart of Darkness (inspirational for the American film Apocalypse Now) has been interpreted as Gnostic; Olaf Stapledon (1886–​1950), author of Star Maker; and David Lindsay (1876–​1945), author of the strange quasi-​Gnostic A Voyage to Arcturus, with which to some extent the works of C.S. Lewis’s

Neo-Gnosticism in American Literature  31 “space trilogy,” J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams could be understood as in dialogue.23 To give an indication of this context: in David Lindsay’s novel A Voyage to Arcturus, the character Maskull travels to the world of “Tormance” (Torments), the only planet of the star Arcturus, and there comes to realize that he is living in the world of “Crystalman,” (the Gnostic demiurge), and that this world is “false. . . side by side with it another world exists, and that other world is the true one, and this one is all false and deceitful, to the very core.” Maskull concludes, looking at the ceaseless rounds of suffering in “this world” of Crystalman: “so strong is my sense of the untruth of this life that it may come to putting an end to myself.”24 As Bernard Sellin wrote, Lindsay’s is the kind of language which was employed, over the centuries, by the Gnostics, those men classed as heretics by the Christian Church.. . . What part does Gnosticism play in Lindsay’s thinking? It is difficult to determine, as its ramifications extend into numerous systems of associated thought. The convergence, however, is clear enough. How can one fail to see, in Crystalman, the Prince of Darkness, or evil God who, nearer to our time, has also inspired Lawrence Durrell? With David Lindsay, one meets the same obsession with the problem of evil, the same feeling of being a stranger in the world, the same search for spirituality, and conversely, the same denigration of the body and everything connected with it, such as pleasure, sexuality, and illness.25

Lindsay’s novel is imbued with many elements of the anticosmic Gnosticism with which we are familiar, but ultimately is not about redemption or salvation—​the characters in it kill or are killed; they act in a cosmos apparently without moral order; and the book is in the end nihilistic. This combination is one that, as it turns out, characterizes much of the American literature we will consider shortly. We will note that a number of the American novelists associated with Gnosticism also produce science fiction, and there is good reason for this consonance. Douglas Mackey observes that The gnostic religion, which flourished in the first through third centuries A.D., provides an excellent paradigm for the understanding of the type of religious awareness that much SF favors. The gnostics, regarded as

32  American Gnosis heretics by the faction that became orthodox Christianity, were radical transcendentalists. They believed that man is essentially pure spirit (pneuma), trapped in a cage of flesh. The world cannot be taken at face value: it is one vast snare for the senses, causing man to forget his inner spiritual reality. The being who created it was not God: it was a lower power, an “archon” or demiurge, who masquerades as God to the unsuspecting. This creator is not good but evil, or at least ignorant and self-​deluded. Mankind’s goal must be to transcend its own nescience through gnosis. Gnostic sects had their own subjective science to accomplish this, involving the development of mental powers to break the tyranny of the archons, and the realization of human pneuma as identical with the divine spirit of God.26

Mackey goes on to explore how various authors’ works of science fiction can be understood in a Gnostic context, including Poe, Lindsay, Stapledon’s Star Maker, and some novels of Philip K. Dick, among others, and he concludes, Gnosticism is, in Jacques LaCarrière’s words, a ‘mutant thought.’ Similarly, science fiction is a mutant literature. At its best it transmits an experiential synthesis of objective and subjective reality, a sense of linkage between our appetite for knowledge of the universe and our spiritual cravings. The mirror in which it reflects us reveals a third eye sprouted in our foreheads: an opening to the infinite vista of stars and worlds, and to the dazzling darkness of our inner selves.27

While it is certainly true that the science fiction genre provided room for philosophical, cosmological, and even arguably, as in the case of Star Maker, metaphysical speculation, it is also the case that one finds elements of pessimistic or anticosmic Gnosticism as a common theme we can term neognosticism specifically in American literature as well. Here I would mention for instance the poetry of Robinson Jeffers (1887–​ 1962). It is not that Jeffers was directly indebted to Gnosticism, although the subject does come up in literary criticism concerning his work.28 It is rather that Jeffers, with his Calvinist-​influenced, isolationist, fierce temperament, naturally manifested what he termed “Inhumanist” themes in his poetry. But because of his identification with and celebration of nature and nature’s serene indifference, Jeffers did arrive at a worldview, and created poetry that reflected something very much like Gnosticism. Peter O’Leary observes,

Neo-Gnosticism in American Literature  33 The flaws and weaknesses of humans are a source of knowledge for the poet, but not in the sense of a Buddhist loving-​kindness; rather, as a Gnostic inoculation against the virus of human nastiness. Thoreau seems only mildly puckish compared to Jeffers. Why don’t Jeffers’s admirers come clean on this count? Here is a poet who believed humans to be an indignity to creation, whose inhumanism aligns with the catastrophic wisdoms of Gnosticism, which it seems to modify for modernity.29

But if Jeffers detests the inhumanity of man, the stupidity and greed, the cupidity and cruelty and wanton destruction, what does he affirm? Critic Robert Hass: Jeffers seems to have been, politically and sentimentally, an old-​fashioned Jeffersonian republican. He believed in the American republic as a commonwealth of independent and self-​reliant households, and saw himself—​ educated at a time when small boys knew the history of Rome and had been taught the parallels between the Roman and American republics—​as a defender of the spartan and honest American commonweal against the thickening of empire.30

I want to underscore the connection here, because it will recur at the end of our inquiry in this book as a much larger point. On the one hand, Jeffers in his vast epic poetry and occasional prose expressed Spenglerian disgust for imperial and consumerist America, and his work has been compared to Gnosticism—​but fundamentally his worldview is affirmative, affirmative of the ancient human virtues, of family life, of love, and above all of the natural world. His “Gnosticism” is actually a critique of human folly. In a late poem (1942–​1947), “The Inhumanist,” in the collection The Double Axe, Jeffers wrote in a Spenglerian passage about an old man’s mordant observations concerning how beautiful are these risings And fallings: the waves of the sea, the Athenian empire, The civilization of Europe, the might of America. A wave builds up... It spouts a foam-​head of empire and dirty wars and rives on, toppling and crashing, and it sighs its life out At the foot of the rock. Slow was the rise, Rapid the fall: God and the tragic poets

34  American Gnosis They love this pattern; it is like the beauty of a woman to them; They cannot refrain from it.31

I could not resist quoting at least a short passage from Jeffers, whose view corresponds so closely with the perspectives expressed in a later chapter of this book. Science fiction, by contrast, is not typically quite so jaded, perhaps because this is a genre that often incorporates evolutionary theory and the ­notion of human progress. While associations between various science fiction authors and Gnosticism are broader than this, here we can at least touch on two significant figures, the first of whom is science fiction author and founder of the new religion Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard (1911–​1986). In his survey The Church of Scientology, Hugh Urban summarizes the relationship this way: Hubbard appears to have had no substantive knowledge of the complex body of religious movements known as Gnosticism, which spread throughout the early Christian world during the first several centuries after Jesus’s death (and were eventually considered heretical by the dominant Christian churches). However, various observers have noticed that Hubbard’s view of the immortal, divine thetan trapped in the material world bears more than a passing resemblance to early Gnostic ideas of the divine spark of the soul trapped in the physical cosmos. Hubbard does, moreover, make passing reference to Scientology as a “Gnostic religion,” in so far as it “knows that it knows.” And like the early Gnostic heresies, he also saw his own new movement as a persecuted minority unfairly targeted by the dominant orthodoxies of the day.32

Various scholars have found substantial connections between Hubbard, Scientology, and Gnosticism, which makes sense given the primary mythology of Scientology. “Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science” was published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1950, which in turn led to the founding of the Church of Scientology later in that decade.33 Scientology became an extremely wealthy movement, one controversial for its strong-​arm tactics. It even went so far as to lay siege to the Internal Revenue Service by allegedly using blackmail and similar means in order to become a recognized nonprofit and religious organization.34 The core narrative of Scientology is outlined by Hugh Urban, based on reports by ex-​ Scientologists, Hubbard’s notes, and court testimony

Neo-Gnosticism in American Literature  35 concerning a science-​fiction-​like cosmological narrative that centers on a ­figure 75 million years ago called “Xenu,” a Galactic Federation head that brought people to earth and put “implants” in them to control them.35 The “implants” are designed to prevent people from realizing cosmic secrets, but the process of “auditing” using the “E-​Meter” in Scientology is said to disable the implants and allow people to ascend through a series of reportedly increasingly expensive levels or grades at least up to a level called “OT VIII.” Hubbard evidently claimed that he was the only one to overcome the implants in 75 million years.36 This mythology does have some parallels with ancient Gnosticism: the idea that humans are caught in delusion in Matter, Energy, Space, and Time (MEST) and need to break from “implants” or conditioning; that there is a demiurge or archonic figure preventing this; the idea of ascent through levels; and so forth. There are a number of books and articles discussing the neo-​gnostic aspects of Hubbard’s fiction and other writings.37 The case of science fiction author Philip K. Dick (1928–​1982) is, of course, somewhat different, since Dick directly identified himself and his fiction with Gnosticism, especially in the novels Valis, The Divine Invasion, and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer. Valis tells the story of a schizophrenic hero named Horselover Fat and his mystical experience with a beam of pink light. A conversational novel set in California, Valis is a strange, disorienting, and often intellectually startling ride through a bizarre combination of references to the Nag Hammadi library, Xenophanes, Mircea Eliade, Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parcival, and American popular culture, including the Grateful Dead, Volkswagen cars, and Mick Jagger. Dick himself evidently experienced in March, 1974 what Valis depicts: the novel has at its center Horselover Fat’s belief that “God. . . had fired a beam of pink light directly at him,” and that through the beam “he knew things he had never known.” For example, he knew “that his five-​year-​old son had an undiagnosed birth defect,” later proven correct by doctors.38 Eventually Fat realized that he was simultaneously in two realms or times at once: ancient Rome, where he was a Gnostic Christian hunted by Roman authorities, and 1974 California, where he was a science fiction writer. He also came to believe that there is a secret society with its origins on another star system (Sirius) that existed in ancient Egypt, was carried on through Gnosticism, and exists today, comprised of “three-​eyed” people (their third eye being that of Shiva, affiliated with the pineal gland). These ideas had some precedent in California in the 1970s and 1980s, as we see in a later chapter on Charles Musès.

36  American Gnosis Although the novel begins by narrating the story of Horselover Fat, eventually it becomes clear that he, the narrator, and Dick are one and the same, and that the novel’s center is a kind of neo-​gnosticism related through quasitechnological terms like “plasmate” and “space-​time continua.” Fat discovers that there are two of him existing simultaneously: himself, and Thomas, a Gnostic Christian who is Fat’s “master personality” and who is living in Rome. “Thomas” in fact says—​in Fat’s mind—​“There’s someone else living in me and he’s not in this century.”39 Through “Thomas” and Horselover Fat we are offered a series of aphorisms, called Cryptica Scriptura. These aphorisms make references to important figures in European esoteric thought, including Apollonius of Tyana, Asklepius, and Bruno, but chiefly they consist in semioracular statements like these: One Mind there is; but under it two principles contend. Matter is plastic in the face of Mind. One by one he draws us out of the world. The Empire never ended.

In the novel we are told: Since the universe is actually composed of information, then it can be said that information will save us. This is the saving gnosis which the Gnostics sought. There is no other road to salvation. However, this information—​or more precisely the ability to read and understand this information, the universe as information—​can only be made available to us by the Holy Spirit. We cannot find it on our own. Thus it is said that we are saved by the grace of God, and not by good works, that all salvation belongs to Christ, who, I say, is a physician.40

Despite the bizarre elements in Dick’s fiction, and despite his misidentification of “gnosis” with “information,” his work turns out to be more deeply Christian and affirmative than we might have expected. That Christ is a physician, that “all salvation belongs to Christ,” that gnosis comes through the Holy Spirit—​these are surprisingly traditional affirmations. Ultimately, Dick’s Valis is a book about waking up and remembering who we really are, and his work resonates in interesting ways with later authors and topics. The same theme governs Dick’s other two books in this trilogy. In The Divine Invasion, for example, the character Herb Asher realizes that “I was caused to

Neo-Gnosticism in American Literature  37 remember, made to remember, the real world.”41 When he is nearly arrested by a policeman, he explains that the earth is ruled by “the Evil One,” “Belial,” and that the policeman himself is an unwitting agent of evil.42 Above all, Dick’s trilogy is about freedom, and about overcoming or transcending conventional, mechanistic views of reality. Dick’s fiction is unusual in its affirmation of transcendence rather than nihilism; and it also fits very well with the neo-​gnosticism we will encounter later in this book that also rejects the “empire” of materialistic, consumerist, technocratic control. While Dick’s work is more flamboyant, it clearly reflects themes and metaphors we will see again. Since we are discussing science fiction, we also see some neo-​gnostic themes ambiguously reflected in William Gibson’s (b. 1948) works, for instance, Neuromancer and Count Zero. These novels are set in a futuristic world of remarkably imagined clarity and consistency, and trace the paths of main characters who act as “cyberspace cowboys” in the virtual world of computer networks. By “jacking in” to the virtual realm, one leaves one’s body behind and enters into Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation.. . . A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.43

When the main character, Case, finally is able to “jack in” after a long lapse, he experiences first “silver phosphenes boiling in from the edge of space, hypnagogic images.. . . symbols, figures, faces, a blurred, fragmented mandala of visual information” and then a gray disk that begins to rotate, expands, flowers into fluid neon origami trick, the unfolding of his distanceless home, his country, transparent 3D chessboard extending to infinity. Inner eye opening to the stepped scarlet pyramid of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority burning beyond the green cubes of Mitsubishi Bank of America, and high and very far away he saw the spiral arms of military systems, forever beyond his reach. And somewhere he was laughing, in a white-​painted loft, distant fingers caressing the deck, tears of release streaking his face.44

38  American Gnosis There is definitely a sense here of cyberspace as analogous to out-​of-​body or trance experiences, cyberspace as “inner space.” Given this analogy, which holds throughout Gibson’s fiction, it is not surprising that his characters encounter discarnate beings in cyberspace, and that in both Neuromancer and Count Zero, there are discarnate intelligences who “create” virtual realities rather on the order of technological demiurges. In Neuromancer, two artificial intelligences with the names “Wintermute” and “Neuromancer”—​multiple “gods,” like in Lindsay’s Voyage to Arcturus—​ play the role of demiurge for Case: Neuromancer creates a beach setting and recreates Case’s dead girlfriend Linda as his companion in a kind of virtual devil’s paradise. In Count Zero, the role of the demiurge is played in part by Virek, a billionaire whose body is kept alive in a vat and whose consciousness appears only in a virtual body, and who governs virtual reality with a seeming omnipotence. There are other elements of Gibson’s fictional cosmos that correspond to Gnosticism, and one of the most provocative is “words of power,” the words that unlock the secrets of discarnate intelligences. In Neuromancer, this theme is overtly one of sorcery: an artificial intelligence policewoman tells Case that the artificial intelligences are indeed demons, and that no reward in this world could recompense humanity for what would happen if one of these discarnate entities were let loose;45 while later in the book the intelligence Neuromancer tells Case directly: “To call up a demon you must learn its name. Men dreamed that, once, but now it is real in another way. You know that, Case. Your business is to learn the names of programs, the long formal names, names the owners seek to conceal. True names...” “A Turing code’s not your name.” “Neuromancer,” the boy said, slitting long gray eyes against the rising sun. “The lane to the land of the dead. Where you are, my friend. Marie-​ France, my lady, she prepared this road, but her lord choked her off before I could read the book of her days.. . . I am the dead, and their land.”46

Here virtual reality becomes a “land of the dead,” where dead characters live on in virtual bodies or as disembodied voices, and just as some ancient Gnostics believed, here one must learn the secret names of the virtual archons in order to pass safely through cyberspace. In Count Zero, this analogy holds in a slightly different way, for in this novel, cyberspace has come to host the gods and goddesses or loa of Voudoun, and

Neo-Gnosticism in American Literature  39 so virtual reality is again a kind of bardo or interworld, in which the discarnate intelligences of Voudoun hold sway. At the novel’s conclusion, the seemingly invincible character Virek, whose name is suggestive of Vir [man] and ec-​[outward], and whose power in virtual reality seems unlimited, is overcome by the Voudoun Lord of Death, who swoops down upon him. Here, as in Neuromancer, virtual reality represents a kind of discarnate no-​man’s land through which people must navigate by way of secret knowledge or gnosis; there are hostile powers in it; and conventional religion is seen as a delusion or mere pastime. Only what “works” is valued. There is a peculiar flatness, an alienation and a kind of emptiness in Gibson’s characters; here gnosis as secret knowledge does not lead to rejuvenation, only to survival. When, at the end of Neuromancer, Case is told by the freed artificial intelligence that it has located analogous life to itself in a distant galaxy, Case lights a cigarette, exhales, and says “No shit.” This is a characteristic moment in Gibson’s fiction, I think, where life reveals itself as casually violent and not especially meaningful in the end; Case is like the burned out main characters of Hemingway’s fiction, and there appears to be little redemption or transcendence, and not much anti-​cosmic rebellion in this world whose sky is gray like the color of a television tuned to a dead channel. In 2003, Gibson remarked that unlike the film The Matrix, and some of the work of Philip K. Dick, Neuromancer and by extension the Sprawl series, is not Gnostic.47 Gibson observed that I thought it [The Matrix] was more like Dick’s work than mine, though more coherent, saner, than I generally take Dick to have been. A Dickian universe with fewer moving parts (for Dick, I suspect, all of the parts were, always, moving parts). A Dickian universe with a solid bottom (or for the one film at least, as there’s no way of knowing yet where the franchise is headed). It’s thematically gnostic, something NEUROMANCER isn’t.48

It’s interesting that he makes “gnostic” lower case here, which may be an artifact of the limited formatting of the blog itself. In fact, there is little to no hint of gnosis defined as transcendence of subject–​object dualism or spiritual liberation in Gibson’s work or, for that matter, in The Matrix or its various sequels. With regard to general fiction, there is another author to mention here, Malcolm Lowry (1909–​1957), whose brilliant novel Under the Volcano is a mirror reflecting back at the modern world its own self-​destructive

40  American Gnosis tendencies. In Lowry’s novel, Faustian modern man is shown in the main character as inebriated, as an “alien” or a “stranger” outcast from paradise and caught in a hostile world symbolized best by the fascist movement in Mexico City on the day his tragic novel is set, Day of the Dead, 1939. Lowry’s main character, the alcoholic Consul, inhabits a postreligious world still shot through by glimpses of spirituality, seen in the icon of the “Virgin for those who have nobody with” that the Consul visits in the depths of his despair. Yet the Consul is a tragic figure, and neither the Virgin nor his long-​suffering wife Yvonne save him from himself. Lowry had extensive Hermetic and Kabbalistic knowledge, as we see in his observation that the Consul lives near the “portals of the Qlipoth,” (the evil residue of creation according to Jewish Kabbalism). But this knowledge, like the rest of the countless literary allusions in Under the Volcano, (one feels the whole of the European inheritance is refracted through this novel) does not point toward a transcendent liberation, and at the end of the book the Consul and the Europe he represents are together hurtling down into the ravine-​ abyss that, we are told, opened in the earth the day Christ was crucified. In Lowry’s world, there is no salvation. His work is Gnosticism without gnosis, pessimistic, nihilistic, and above all, tragic. Among the more nihilistic of modern authors termed Gnostic is Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937), whose work has been said to reveal “a Gnosis without transcendence.”49 A more accurate phrase, with which we will become more familiar over the course of this book, is “Gnosticism without gnosis.” Dwight Eddins maintains something along these lines in a book entitled The Gnostic Pynchon.50 Eddins believes that Pynchon’s work is best understood as in a matrix defined by a paranoia of religious dimensions—​the increasing suspicion, suggestive of ancient Gnosticism, that humanity is trapped in a history increasingly manipulated by antihuman forces. It is this dialectic between the concepts of cosmic indifference and introduction of quasi-​demonic conspiracy that generates the larger significations of the novel V., and—​in a different form—​of The Crying of Lot 49.51

This archontic neo-​Gnosticism helps clarify the largely paranoic penumbras of most of Pynchon’s novels: the characters in these novels, and also Gravity’s Rainbow, are caught in the machinery of external agents that control them in an indifferent or hostile cosmos.52 When I first read Pynchon, I thought

Neo-Gnosticism in American Literature  41 he was a nihilist, perhaps along the lines of Thomas Ligotti, describing the fragmentation and destructiveness of modernity. Only later did I see that there is also another aspect to Pynchon’s work. His paranoid archontic neo-​ Gnosticism, like that of a number of those we will discuss later, reveals the dysfunction and destructiveness of modern materialistic scientism and consumerism, but that is not the only aspect of his work. He is critical of the “growing ascendancy of the artificial over the natural,” but he also puts forward a “gradually evolving dream of Orphic unity” of humanity and nature.53 Pynchon’s Orphism is where a hint of transcendence leaks in through the cracks and shatterings of modernity. Was Harold Bloom right that Pynchon’s is neo-​ gnosticism without transcendence? Almost, but not quite. Here, let us have a look at Pychon’s Against the Day, where late in the novel, some of the characters are in the Balkans, where they hear “some kind of Bulgarian thrush.” Pythagoreanism appears from time to time in the novel, and emerges here, in a “convent” that “belonged to a sect descended from the ancient Bogomils who did not embrace the Roman Church in 1650 but chose instead to go underground,” the hegumen of which “had the Tetractys tattooed on his head.”54 This peculiar Order “went back, it was claimed, to the Thracian demigod Orpheus, and his dismemberment not far from here, on the banks of the Hebrus River, nowadays known as the Maritza. The Manichaean aspect [of the Order] had grown ever stronger,” and the aspirant in the order was to “remain acutely conscious, at every moment of the day” “of cosmic struggle between darkness and light” “behind the presented world.”55 In this church was “an icon of Zalmoxis,” “and depending on a kind of second sight, a knowledge beyond light of what lay within the wood itself, of what it was one’s duty to set free.”56 Is this transcendence? Gnosis? Something like that is hinted at, but it is not. There is no mystical union here, only a hint of possible future human-​natural unity, implied with Orphism and with the recurrent references in the novel to Shambhala, the fabled “hidden land” utopia of Tibetan Buddhism. Eddins puts it this way: Pynchon presents “a gnosis that is ultimately antignostic, of a rebellion against gnosticism itself as the sum of metaphysical possibilities. Such a rebellion might entail the restoration of a humanizing transcendental and of man’s union with nature.”57 In other words, neo-​gnostic dualism provides metaphors for the degenerate nature of the modern world, and “gnosis” hovers in the distance as a possible future for at least a few in a remote monastery or convent, or in a Tibetan beyul, or “hidden land.”

42  American Gnosis At first, the fiction of William S. Burroughs (1914–​1997) seems similar to Pynchon’s in some themes. More than Pynchon’s, Burroughs’s work is antinomian, libertine, blasphemous, and violent; he literally invokes demons, as in his “Invocation” to Cities of the Red Night: This book is dedicated to the Ancient Ones, to the Lord of Abominations, Humwawa, whose face is a mass of entrails.. . Dark Angel of all that is excreted and sours.. . . to Ah Pook, the Destroyer, to the Great Old One and the Star Beast, to Pan, God of Panic, to the nameless gods of dispersal and emptiness . . . To all the scribes and artists and practitioners of magic through whom these spirits have been manifested. . . . NOTHING IS TRUE. EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED.58

The aphoristic—​“Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”—​and elements like those above in Cities of the Red Night are more overtly magical than anything in Pynchon. But for all its bizarre and disgusting images, Burroughs’s work arguably exemplifies a neo-​gnostic search for redemptive knowledge and a way of escaping a deranged and destructive human world. The human world is represented as very hostile to the seeker for liberation in Burroughs’ fiction, populated as it is by corrupt and vampiric public officials who are mirrored by invisible “Death Collectors,” the “Feku,” which are specialized beyond any human semblance. Their faces have a smooth copper sheen like a beetle’s wing. The mouth is a purple beak, the huge black eyes bright and shiny with insect innocence of human feeling. A long pink proboscis can protrude from the mouth to a distance of two feet, sucking in the energy released in the moment of death. Violent death is the most nutritive, and these creations gather like vultures at battles and riots and executions.59

But there is a neo-​gnostic theme central to the same novel, The Western Lands, where we read The road to Waghdas, the City of Knowledge, is a long, circuitous detour through labyrinths of ignorance, stupidity and error.. . . The road to the Western Lands is by definition the most dangerous road in the world, for

Neo-Gnosticism in American Literature  43 it is a journey beyond Death, beyond the basic God standard of Fear and Danger. It is the most heavily guarded road in the world, for it gives access to the gift that supercedes all other gifts: Immortality. Every man starts the course. One in a million finishes.. . . Knowledge can bind men together in secret brotherhood, the knowledge of some unspeakable deed or rite so foul that an outsider could not conceive of it. So the brothers are safe if they stay together and keep silent.. . . A dangerous road. Every pitfall, every error, every snare to which Everyman has been liable since the beginning, you are sure to meet on the road to the Western Lands.60

I quote these lines both because they illustrate Burroughs’s neo-​gnosticism, but also because this quotation is the source for those lines Burroughs himself chose for narration in the song “The Western Lands” on the album Seven Souls by the band Material, narrated by Burroughs himself.61 Here the knowledge of the Western Lands is revealed as central to the novel, and in fact, this resonates with some aspects of ancient Gnosticism. Like some ancient Gnostics, Burroughs holds that only a few attain gnosis; like them, he holds that the road to the City of Knowledge entails a detour through this labyrinthine world of error and ignorance—​and like them, Burroughs sees the afterlife as hostile to the gnostic search for liberation, unless one gains the secret keys to the afterlife while alive on earth. Finally, like the ancient Gnostics, Burroughs seems to seek the knowledge that bestows immortality. There can be no doubt that Burroughs’s work exemplifies in the extreme the contradictory, paradoxical themes associated with an antinomian Gnostic paradigm since antiquity, visible here in his neo-​gnosticism: hostile invisible powers, demons, secret knowledge, spiritual freedom. As Gregory Stephenson has noted, to understand the enigma of Burroughs’ fiction requires understanding antinomian Gnosticism.62 Tommy P. Cowan goes further, detailing how Burroughs’s work exemplifies “archontism” or archontic neo-​gnosticism, and how Burroughs himself identified explicitly as a Manichaean and Gnostic.63 Cowan also observes, Herein lies a rationale behind the common overlap of archontism with the “rejection of the regulated self.” Perhaps the altered states of consciousness associated with “gnosis” lead one to see the physical world, and thus the body, as composed of “limitations.” If the physical world is a limitation,

44  American Gnosis it could be seen as a type of prison, and thus the physical world must be rejected to attain one’s true potential.64

Of course, it is also possible that archontism provides metaphors for understanding how modern social structures (corporations, government, the military, religion, the media) seek to control and limit human potential, and thus archontic neo-​gnosticism is fundamentally a means of critique of this control, whereas gnosis is quite a different matter. If so, Burroughs then would be an archontic neo-​gnostic without gnosis. While we won’t go into the horror genre in too much detail here, we can’t avoid at least mentioning the long half-​life of the Cthulhu mythos and related monstrosities that followed the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft (1890–​1937). Lovecraft’s work of course is itself significant here because it combines many aspects of the larger argument in this book. Lovecraft’s uncanny fiction projects into the New England region of the United States dark histories that reflect not only the corruption of humanity, but corruption of the cosmos itself, which has secrets of unspeakable horrors at its very center. Lovecraft detested modernity, had a low opinion of the urban masses, and was imbued enough with a Spenglerian view that one book about him is entitled H.P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West.65 Lovecraft’s work is neo-​gnostic in that much of his fiction concerns the quest for deeper knowledge, but the revelation of deeper cosmic knowledge does not yield tranquility or wisdom, but rather horror or madness. The cosmos, in the Lovecraftian world we encounter in such works as At the Mountains of Madness or The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, houses monstrosities barely concealed by the decadence of modern life. Thus, for instance, in “The Horror at Red Hook,” we encounter a New England “maze of hybrid squalor near the ancient waterfront” that once was home to “clear-​ eyed mariners” and “homes of taste and substance,” but now is “a babel of sound and filth,” full of “swarthy, sin-​pitted faces,” behind which is “a faint stench of secrets more terrible than any of the sins denounced by citizens.”66 The main character, a policeman named Malone, discovers hideous secrets among the hordes of Red Hook, and unable to bear what he sees, passes out “amidst a thunderous crash which seemed to blot out all the evil universe.”67 What is the gnosis here? The revelation of horror hidden behind the squalidness of American New England life. Lovecraft was not well known during life, but his fiction took on a life of its own, and indeed, as a number of scholars have explored, has generated

Neo-Gnosticism in American Literature  45 subsequent magical groups and individuals (notably Kenneth Grant) bent on engaging in ritual magic directly linked to the horrors of Chthulhu and the other unspeakable forces from the depths.68 And it has much genre fiction set in the same or related fictional realms, including many collections and authors that convey a similar neo-​gnostic pessimism, as we can see in such works as The Azathoth Cycle: Tales of the Blind Idiot God, as well as in the role-​playing game Call of Cthulhu.69 A fictional work of black magic in the Lovecraftian world, The Necronomicon, has been created and published, and in turn is connected to what is termed “the Necronomicon Gnosis.”70 To some extent in the American tradition of Lovecraft is Thomas Ligotti (b. 1953), who has published both weird or horror fiction and a very unusual collection of nihilistic essays, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race:A Contrivance of Horror, which is composed of many reflections like this one: Almost nobody declares that an ancestral curse contaminates us in utero and pollutes our existence. Doctors do not weep in the delivery room, or not often. They do not lower their heads and say, “The stopwatch has started.” The infant may cry, if things went right. But time will dry its eyes; time will take care of it. Time will take care of everyone until there are none of us to take care of. Then all will be as it was before we put down roots where we do not belong.71

Like Emile Cioran, Ligotti is quite familiar with Gnosticism, and observes in passing Many people in this world are always looking to science to save them from something. But just as many, or more, prefer old and reputable belief systems and their sectarian offshoots for salvation. So they trust in the deity of the Old Testament, an incontinent dotard who soiled Himself and the universe with His corruption, a low-​budget divinity passing itself off as the genuine article. (Ask the Gnostics.) They trust in Jesus Christ, a historical cipher stitched together like Frankenstein’s monster out of parts robbed from the graves of messiahs dead and buried—​a savior on a stick. They trust in the virgin-​pimping Allah and his Drum Major Mohammed, a prophet-​come-​lately who pioneered a new genus of humbuggery for an emerging market of believers that was not being adequately served by existing religious products. They trust in anything.72

46  American Gnosis These acid remarks also remind one of Melville’s arch-​cynical The Confidence Man—​though Ligotti makes Melville sound like a cheery Mark Winsome by comparison. Ligotti also mentions the Cathars and the Bogomils in passing, since in his view they excelled in world-​rejection. His collection Teatro Grottesco bears the remark on the front cover: “an accomplished conjuror of nightmares in the tradition of H. P. Lovecraft.”73 In the foreword to The Shadow at the Bottom of the World, Douglas Anderson observes that “in the historical development of the artistic horror story, there are three major figures”: Poe, Lovecraft, and now Ligotti, “who has extended Lovecraft’s cosmicism by suggesting that an inescapable malignancy and nightmare inheres in all existence, manifesting itself in both the individual psyche and the physical cosmos.”74 While this is not a comprehensive survey, of course, but rather an overview to demonstrate our argument, it is important to mention Cormac McCarthy (b. 1933) as well here. McCarthy’s fiction is very much in the American current established by Melville, and he is an extraordinary stylist, author of bleak, magnificently written novels set in Appalachia or in the American Southwest. Literary critics that have identified his work as deeply influenced by Gnosticism are, at this point, legion.75 Dianne Luce reflects on “McCarthy’s awareness of Gnostic symbols, character types, and anticosmic attitudes and his extensive borrowing from or alluding to them in creating his own parable of spiritual alienation in the cosmic realm.”76 Sven Birkerts remarks “McCarthy has been, from the start, a writer with strong spiritual leanings. His orientation is Gnostic: he seems to view our endeavors here below as a violation of some original purity.”77 I could go on and on with such quotations. The first book I read by McCarthy was Blood Meridian Or the Evening Redness in the West, which features among its bleak epigraphs one by the great mystic Jacob Boehme. The book is absolutely brutal, horrific, and yet the language and style is so extraordinary. I realized I was reading an American classic. Set in the American West of the 1850s, full of scalpings and shootings, cruelty and human monstrosities, the book has at its center the figure of “the judge,” Judge Holden, a great shambling mutant, silent and serene. Whatever his antecedents he was something wholly other than their sum, nor was there system to divide him back into his origins for he would not go. Whoever would seek out his history through what unraveling of loins and ledger books must stand at

Neo-Gnosticism in American Literature  47 last darkened and dumb at the short of a void without terminus or origin and whatever science he might bring to bear upon the dusty primal matter blowing down out of the millennia will discover no trace of any ultimate atavistic egg by which to reckon his commencing.78

The hulking figure of the judge is a demiurgic figure, ruler of this cracked and desolate Western realm, similar in some of his observations to Ahab in Moby Dick. This passage gives at least a sense of the novel’s diction, an elevated and strange style full of recondite words, the landscape and animals beautifully evoked, yet all suffering in a world cracked through the middle. Now one might think from this description, which would hold more or less in McCarthy’s later novels as well, such as No Country for Old Men, and The Road, that McCarthy’s is a world without redemption, filled with human cruelties, and the merciful nihil of death at the end. But that is not necessarily the case. In a perceptive book on McCarthy, A Bloody and Barbarous God, Petra Mundik discusses what he says were McCarthy’s remarks on his own spiritual experience. Citing William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience, McCarthy is said to have observed that “people all over the world, in every religion, were familiar with this experience.”79 McCarthy’s interlocuter confessed to being “nonplussed,” and McCarthy remarked that he was simply talking about “Truth,” the realization of which “writers must accomplish in their writing.” What truth? The Truth: “mystical experience is a direct apprehension of reality,” McCarthy is said to have replied.80 Certainly McCarthy’s fiction reflects a preoccupation with the nature of evil in this world, whether in the figure of the albino Judge, or in the remorseless psychopathic killer Chigurh of No Country for Old Men, or in Suttree, or Outer Dark, certainly in the apocalyptic The Road. But his featuring Jacob Boehme in an epigraph hints that McCarthy may share with Boehme an awareness not only of the wrathful and dark, but also of light, not only of damnation and loss but also of redemption. Mundik suggests that there is a Platonic and mystical aspect to McCarthy, one aligned with the kind of American gnosis in a perennial context that we will encounter again at the end of this book. Is that so, though? Are both currents, the cynical and dark, Melvillean one, and the bright, cheerful mysticism of Emerson both present in McCarthy? Perhaps. Certainly the first of them is there; if the second is, it is a gnosis still hidden. We cannot resist also mentioning the work of literary critic Harold Bloom (1930–​2019), who reproduces in the late twentieth century the anticosmic

48  American Gnosis neo-​gnosticism of Melville, while also recognizing the gnostic current of Transcendentalism. Bloom’s archontic neo-​gnostic novel The Flight to Lucifer is an exercise in anticosmism. In The Flight to Lucifer: A Gnostic Fantasy, Bloom draws his characters more or less directly from ancient Gnosticism, especially from the Nag Hammadi Library. In fact, the characters are merely names (Perscors, Valentinus, Achamoth) taken from Gnostic mythology to illustrate a hopeless, demon-​filled cosmos. Pheme Perkins was right to observe of Bloom’s work that, “as one might expect of the modern Gnostic, all elements of the liberating transcendent are gone.”81 Bloom’s novel, like his literary criticism, derives from his adherence to an ideology of rebellion. Just as in his literary criticism, where Bloom holds in a Freudian fashion that the “later poet” “wrestles” with his predecessors and seeks to overcome them, so too in his novel his characters are engaged in constant struggle against one another, or against obscure personified demonic forces. Likewise, just as in Bloom’s literary criticism there is no room for what Longinus long ago recognized as the real relationship between a great poet and his predecessors—​love and admiration—​so too in his novel there is no room for these things. Bloom’s demonic characters wander aimlessly, and even the apparent liberation of some of them results ultimately in nothing. Bloom’s “pleroma” is “emptiness,” and his “cosmic war” among protagonists and antagonists is “endless.”82 Nowhere in Bloom’s novel is there evidence of love or joy, of spiritual revelation or transcendence. In The Flight to Lucifer, we are adrift in a vast cosmos peopled by comic book characters with Gnostic appellations. At the same time, it is interesting that such a novel is written by a prominent literary critic during the late twentieth century, for it testifies to the persistence of neo-​gnosticism. If Bloom’s The Flight to Lucifer exemplifies a deliberately neo-​gnostic literary effort, Bloom’s literary criticism emphasizes a distinctly American gnosis. But unlike some critics, Bloom uses the term “gnostic” approvingly; Bloom holds, for example, that the power of Emerson’s prose comes from his intuitionist gnosis. Indeed, Bloom goes so far as to argue that American literature, and American Protestant religion itself is fundamentally gnostic in nature. In The American Religion, Bloom directly asserts that the “hidden religion” of America is gnostic, meaning by the term not the Valentinian neo-​ gnosticism of his novel, but a neo-​ gnosis loosely conceived as a Transcendentalist or Romantic view that people can directly intuit spiritual truth.83

Neo-Gnosticism in American Literature  49 The division that we see in the discussion of McCarthy is directly visible in Bloom’s work as well, and in fact runs through our entire book: on the one side is cosmological gnosis, on the other metaphysical gnosis. But in contemporary America, cosmological gnosis might manifest as a sense of the fallen cosmos, as in the line from Poe and Melville to Burroughs, Jeffers, Ligotti, Pynchon, and McCarthy, to name only a few, and as critique of fallen humanity and the depravity of man. This critique addresses the sickness of a deluded, domineering, bureaucratic, police-​state, surveillance-​dependent, propaganda-​heavy, controlled-​media society. There is no profound gnosis in such a society, only metaphors that reveal its diseased degenerate nature. This is what we see in author after author, from Melville to Burroughs to Pynchon and McCarthy. Our discussion could not be comprehensive, as of course there are other authors to consider. One thinks here of Don DeLillo84 and Robert Anton Wilson (whose work I discussed American Gurus)—​of course our discussion could continue to expand. But one thing would still be largely missing. What is missing from all of these is gnosis as subject–​object transcendence, metaphysical gnosis. To that, we will return much later in this book, but for now, we will turn our attention to cosmological and political gnosis in film.

3 Neo-​Gnostic Video Each time I teach a university course on magic and mysticism, I ask the students to find an example of neo-​gnosticism in film, video, anime, music, gaming, or other contemporary media. And every time I give this assignment, students find new examples of contemporary “Gnosticism.” There are so many films students have discerned as “Gnostic” that just to list them all here would take pages, and then there’s anime, online gaming, and music. Of course some of their examples are a little far-​fetched, but by and large, once they grasp the central intellectual “bricks” of stereotypical Jonasian-​style “Gnosticism,” that is, archons, demiurge, trapped in a hostile cosmos or artificial environment, Sophia figure (female divine wisdom), and so forth, they find that ideas like these are pervasive in contemporary entertainment. The question, of course, is: why? In this chapter, we will explore some exemplary “Gnostic” films with an eye to how these films influence the political religion that we discuss later in this book. With the exception of the rare film that explicitly quotes from the Nag Hammadi Library, I am doubtful that very many of the writers, directors, producers, or actors of these many films actually had Gnosticism as such in mind when they created them. Like science fiction author William Gibson, even though neo-​gnostic elements may be found in their work, and indeed, even if their work could even be seen as paradigmatically neo-​gnostic still, many of them might decline the identification or deny the claim, probably correctly in the technical sense that neo-​gnostic elements just weren’t in the forefront of their minds when the film or video game was created. Of course there are more or less clear exceptions. For instance, the film Stigmata features a direct quotation from the Gospel of Thomas in the Nag Hammadi Library—​or likewise Ialdaboath the demiurge complete with an elaborate family tree appears in online gaming.1 Or again, in Assassin’s Creed, there are Gnostic allusions to Sophia, the apple of the Garden of Eden symbolizing secret knowledge, and so forth.2 A little less explicit examples include for instance the Japanese Role Playing Game (JRPG) Megami Tensei or Shin Megami Tensei that appears to have a false or demiurgic God figure American Gnosis. Arthur Versluis, Oxford University Press. © Arthur Versluis 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197653210.003.0004

Neo-Gnostic Video  51 (YHVH) that seeks to enforce the law against chaos (identified with Lucifer), while behind them is “the Great Will.” But for the most part, “Gnosticism” is imputed to films because they include some, often many of the elements of neo-​gnosticism. There is no mention of Gnostic texts, and no direct evidence that Gnosticism ever entered the minds of this or that film’s creators, yet nonetheless, the film really does appear to be yet another example of neo-​gnosticism in action. As in American fiction, so in film, music, and gaming, it is not so much that creators are explicitly shaping a neo-​gnostic narrative, though sometimes they may well be, but rather that the media, especially film and gaming, naturally produce neo-​ gnostic narratives because those themes so perfectly fit with the nature of the media itself. Film, gaming, anime, comics, all entail the creation of an artificial world, J. R. R. Tolkien referred to as a “second creation,” in relation to which the video creators are like a god, or a demiurge, that is, a fashioner of an artificial, flawed realm in which characters are trapped. And in such a realm, it is only natural that there be a messianic figure, or a revealer figure, or a divine feminine figure, or archon or demonic figures—​all of these archetypes are independently rediscoverable, just as Coulianu suggested of the “Gnostic” intellectual “bricks.” Of course, some creators may mine ancient Gnostic texts for names or archetypes, but that isn’t necessary for a film to be widely understood as “Gnostic.” Let’s look at some examples, beginning with the most influential franchise, The Matrix. There’s no explicit evidence that the film was created with the Gnosticism(s) of late antiquity in mind. The directors, the Wachowskis, confirmed that Buddhism was important in the creation of the film, and there obviously are Christian references in it. But when they were asked about whether the film has “Gnostic overtones,” they replied “Do you consider that to be a good thing?”3 Given how widespread the view that The Matrix was constructed with Gnosticism in mind, this answer is a little surprising. That said, in the context of this book, particularly in its later chapters, The Matrix is arguably the single most important film, not least because it provides the term “red pill.” The plot of the film certainly lends itself to a gnostic interpretation: the reality we take for granted is an illusion generated by technology, and guarded by archons in the form of government agents. The main character is Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves), who receives the message to “wake up,” and who is then given the choice by Morpheus (Laurence

52  American Gnosis Fishburne) of a choice between a “blue pill” that ends the story and continues mundane life, or a “red pill,” which means “you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”4 Both “red pill” and this latter phrase are to recur many times in social media, particularly in conspiracy discourse, in the men’s rights movement, and in discourse on the right. The film is the story of how Mr. Anderson becomes Neo, the redeemer figure or the One, who knows the nature of the artificial reality and is able to actually manipulate it in his battles with Agent(s) Smith, who are the “gatekeepers” of the false reality. Eventually the term “red pill” was widely used on the right to refer to leaving behind leftist illusions and waking up to political-​cultural reality, and when on May 17, 2020, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted “Take the red pill,” Ivanka Trump then forwarded the message with the word “Taken!” To this, one of the Wachowskis responded “Fuck both of you.” This exchange, which was very widely reported, both indicates how widespread the term and idea had become, and also how its adoption, especially on the right, was not welcomed by those that were largely responsible for bringing it into being in the movie.5 And by the fourth in the Matrix trilogy, The Matrix: Resurrections, writers for the film said an explicit point of the film was to “reclaim that trope,” because it was “kidnapped by the right-​wing.”6 We will see how deep this rabbit hole goes in a subsequent chapter. For now, it is enough to say that The Matrix certainly provided widespread neo-​gnostic metaphors, probably more than any other single movie. Of course, the film’s big revelation—​that anesthetized humans are being energy-​ harvested by artificial intelligence machines—​is at most a very limited form of political gnosis, one could say, and although Neo is resurrected after having been killed by Agent Smith, and promises to reveal a world where “anything is possible,” all of this feels anticlimactic and in a larger sense, unsatisfying. It would not be inaccurate to say that The Matrix, in the end, represents neo-​gnosticism without gnosis. In large part, though, this may be because the film’s conclusion was constructed to leave room for a sequel. Alas, the original film’s success turned into a series of increasingly unnecessary and confusing, confused sequels, none of which added to, and all arguably detracted from, the original film’s neo-​gnostic metaphors. But as we saw in fiction, the metaphors of neo-​gnosticism without gnosis are relatively widespread in American intellectual life, and perhaps the congruence of the political religious dimensions of The Matrix with those metaphors is in fact a significant aspect of the original film’s reach.

Neo-Gnostic Video  53 What other films are said to be neo-​gnostic in their metaphors, plots, and symbols? The list is quite long. Examples that my students have identified as having significant Gnostic elements include They Live, Dark City, Blade Runner, Westworld, The Truman Show, The Thirteenth Floor, Pleasantville, eXistenZ, Gattaca, Inception, Oblivion, Snowpiercer, Stigmata, The Lego Movie, Electric Dreams, The Man in the High Castle, The Others, Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks (including the original series, the subsequent film, and the second series), Ink, The Nines, Coraline, Fight Club, Ghost in the Shell, Jupiter Ascending, The Island, Cloud Atlas, various renditions of Batman, the Alien films including Prometheus, the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, especially The End of Evangelion, and many more. This is not an exhaustive list, only an indicative one. What do all these films or series have in common? Typically, films identified as neo-​gnostic include an artificial or false world of delusion in which characters are trapped, like The Truman Show. There is a demiurge figure, and often there are hostile archon figures that enforce the false reality. The plot includes the revelation of a reality outside the illusion, often a female revealer guide, or a messianic hero; and sometimes the films unforgettably reveal the existence of implacable evil or divine wrath in a botched cosmos, as in the original Alien film with its hideous parody of birth when the alien parasite gestates inside and bursts out of a man. This, too, has been discussed in the context of neo-​gnosticism.7 My aim here in this discussion is not to go through all these films individually and demonstrate their neo-​gnosticism, but rather to focus on those films that intersect most with the narratives we will be exploring later in this book, and that in some cases, like The Matrix or They Live, have taken on independent meme-​lives of their own despite the expressed intentions of their creators. These are the most important cases. But it is important to recognize that films and games have an outsize role in contemporary cognitive life, and the prevalence of neo-​gnostic metaphors in them almost certainly has had the broadest impact in society at large. Of course, the course of that influence and its results may not be at all what the original creators had in mind. A clear example of this is the film They Live, which I brought up in the introduction to this book. They Live is similar to The Matrix in that it lends its signature elements so well to meming on social media. Obviously the term “red pill” has reached much further across society, but They Live provides a narrative that also resonates very well with those who are estranged from a society in which academia, media, corporations, advertising, federal, and

54  American Gnosis often state and even local government and the military are controlled by those on the political left. The signature image from They Live is the glasses that allow the main character, Nada, played by professional wrestler Roddy Piper, to see the reality behind the illusions created by the aliens to disguise their true nature. When he puts on the glasses, he can see the ugliness of the aliens that have infiltrated and are controlling society, and there are many memes showing one contemporary image juxtaposed with Piper with glasses off, and another image juxtaposed with Piper, glasses on.8 It is not so much that the film is explicitly or even implicitly referencing “Gnostic” elements as it is that They Live illustrates what we could term political gnosis, the kind of political-​cultural awakening that Elle described in our introduction to this book. The film’s overarching conspiracy of aliens to control contemporary technological society is likened, typically through memes, to the control that those on the left (or alternatively, Jews) exert over contemporary American or global society. One meme (glasses off) shows a cover of Time magazine referring to “The Transgender Tipping Point,” and below it a hermaphroditic Satanic image (Piper with glasses on).9 In the film, the aliens put subliminal messages on billboards, and in advertising: “CONSUME. OBEY. SUBMIT. NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT.” “We are their cattle,” says one member of the resistance in the film. “We’re like livestock to them.” The small resistance group in the film tries to use media against the aliens to warn other humans, but the resistance members themselves are free, the film suggests, because they are essentially off the grid. The film’s director, John Carpenter, however, like the Wachowskis with The Matrix, disavows the memes being created out of They Live. In a tweet, Carpenter wrote “They Live is about yuppies and unrestrained capitalism. It has nothing to do with Jewish control of the world, which is slander and a lie.”10 And in an earlier interview in 2013, Carpenter made clear the same point: “By the late 80s, I’d had enough, and I decided I had to make a statement, as stupid and banal as it is, but I made one, and that’s They Live.” He added, “I just love that it was giving the finger to Reagan when nobody else would.”11 But the film’s intended meaning soon gave way to many alternative interpretations. Why? One essayist puts it this way: Head down any number of online wormholes and you’ll discover that skeptics of all political persuasions have embraced the allegorical significance of They Live. All that’s required is feeling as though you’re

Neo-Gnostic Video  55 oppressed by a shadowy cabal of they—​ media elites, corporations, globalists, Russian hackers, university professors, the deep state, SJWs, the Koch brothers, George Soros, or some other evil character that your conspiracy glasses have detected. All of us seemingly live in this paranoid world now.12

He continues: the meta-​narrative of They Live, about the fear of being controlled by some massive conspiracy only you and a select group of “awakened” radicals can see, is a different matter. That is the story of how many of us now see reality. While the text of They Live isn’t all that scary, the subtext is among the most terrifying aspects of life in the modern world.13

The film is a favorite of InfoWars host Alex Jones, who hosted Piper himself on his show to discuss the Illuminati and related topics in relation to the film, and They Live was also incorporated into some of the QAnon movement.14 Outraged left-​wing news articles and essays about the memes and interpretations of They Live from those on the right are manifold.15 If we return to our earlier definition of metaphysical gnosis—​the transcendence of subject and object dualism—​then what we are looking at here is obviously not gnosis in this sense. We will return to this question in a later chapter concerning contemporary political religion, but here should remark that in They Live we see a paradigmatic example of what can be termed political gnosis, meaning a sociopolitical awakening. The left, we will recall, uses the term “woke,” and what does that mean? The word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2017 and is defined as “alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice,” but the word itself means “awakened” or “woke up.”16 Both the contemporary left and the right essentially lay claim to Roddy Piper’s glasses, and this accounts for much of the fury on the left evident in the many articles and essays against the right’s They Live meming. Putting those glasses on, we can term, not cosmological, but political gnosis, an “awakening.” The third film we must explore here, Dark City, will help further clarify the difference between political gnosis and cosmological or metaphysical gnosis. Dark City, directed by Alex Proyas and released in 1998, is arguably the paradigmatic neo-​gnostic film, and is undeniably a classic. In the film, John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) is an amnesiac man on the run from police in a city

56  American Gnosis where it is perpetually night. The city is controlled by albino men in trench coats called “Strangers,” and at midnight, Murdoch sees them rearrange the city. In the course of the film, he discovers that the Strangers are psychokinetic aliens inhabiting reanimated human corpses, essentially archons and demiurges both. They were in the process of making Murdoch seem to be a serial killer when he awakened and went on the run. Murdoch later discovers that he also has psychokinetic powers to do what the aliens do, “tune” or “tuning” the city to make it change around them. In the course of the film, there are signs for a place called “Shell Beach,” and when Murdoch can’t find the actual place, he breaks through the wall and behind it finds outer space, at which point he realizes that the city is an artificial realm in space, not a city on Earth at all. At the end of the film, Murdoch fights with and defeats the aliens because it turns out he has the same psychokinetic creative powers that they do, and he uses those powers to rotate the realm so there is sunlight for the first time, and then creates Shell Beach, complete with an ocean. He then walks out to Shell Beach, in the sunshine, to meet his newly (re)created partner, now named Anna. So let us reflect on Dark City in terms of cosmological gnosis first. Here are the ten elements of Gnosticism mentioned earlier: (1) a hostile cosmos (Gnostic antipathy to nature; Dark City itself); (2) a demiurge, or ignorant creator responsible for botched creation and hostile to human spiritual awakening (the Strangers; “Dark City” itself being constantly tinkered with); (3) dualism: opposition between the realm of light and the realm of matter (light and darkness in the film); (4) an elaborate mythology (the Strangers, “tuning,” and so forth); (5) myths concerning Sophia (Wisdom) and her fall and restoration (Murdoch’s wife Emma and her restoration in Anna); (6) belief in a hidden God (not the demiurge; Murdoch is the god within); (7) difficulty of spiritual progress due to the archons or other hostile powers in the cosmos and ignorance the inherent (fallen) human condition (Dark City begins with the theme of amnesia; the Strangers are both demiurge and definitely hostile archons); (8) existence of the ogdoad, or eight spheres (including the seven planetary spheres) and possibility of their transcendence (the film is about breaking through spheres of restricted knowledge/​ power); (9) the necessity of gnosis, or direct spiritual knowledge from the realm of light (the end of Dark City is the revelation of light); and (10) a revealer or redeemer figure to show the way to the realm of light (this is, of course, Murdoch).17 Dark City exemplifies every single element of archontic neo-​gnosticism.

Neo-Gnostic Video  57 But Dark City might be argued to include some version of metaphysical gnosis. Of course it is primarily a cosmological parable, and in fact one could make a case that Murdoch himself becomes a demiurge at the end of the film. Certainly as Fryderyk Kwiatkowski points out, In Gnosticism, liberation has a strictly religious dimension. It equates salvation with merging with God. In Dark City, John’s victory over the Strangers does not lead him to God. Rather, he liberates from the inauthentic illusory world controlled by hidden forces in which there is no place for freedom and self-​determination.18

However, if we define gnosis in terms of the transcendence of self-​other dualism, then at the very least we can say that Murdoch exemplifies this in visual form. At the film’s end, he has taken on godlike power—​he can with the power of his mind create a new light-​filled world with a new Adam and Eve in it. Subject (Murdoch) and object (Dark City) are now magically, in a cosmological sense, one. He has magical powers. Is this, however, metaphysical gnosis (mysticism) in the sense of spiritual liberation? There is no clear sense of that in the film, exactly as Kwiatkowski points out. Maybe. It is perhaps hinted at. Even though one might think Dark City as amenable to memes as The Matrix or They Live, in fact for the most part it has not been coöpted into the meme wars. This, I think, is because Dark City is much closer to the spiritual transcendence meanings of gnosis than to political gnosis. The two kinds of gnosis here are different. One is spiritual awakening understood as subject–​object unity or overcoming dualism—​but the other is inherently still dualistic, since it involves waking up from a false reality. In political gnosis, someone who is “woke” demonstrates this by rejection (of the inherited past, of whites, of men, of injustice); likewise, those on the right reject society they perceive as dominated by the left and its injustices. Political gnosis is different than cosmological or metaphysical gnosis. Nada’s glasses are polarized, you could say—​they dualize. By contrast, Dark City is a parable about cosmological gnosis as magic—​in this case, change in the world effected through will. This is a set of distinctions to which we will return. Here, I will say that political gnosis can blend into cosmological gnosis, and we can understand all of these (political, cosmological, metaphysical gnosis) as existing on a spectrum from waking up to the dualism of illusion versus reality (political) to nondualistic gnosis (metaphysical). They Live is fundamentally a

58  American Gnosis dualistic political parable. Dark City and The Matrix are not. The Matrix also concludes with a kind of cosmological gnosis—​Neo is able to manipulate “reality” and may or may not be “the One,” just as Murdoch was able to attain demiurgic powers and perhaps become a kind of redeemer figure (bringer of light). All the same, one could easily imagine a meme showing the Strangers manipulating Dark City. Film, including anime as well as gaming, are naturally amenable to neo-​ gnostic elements because they are so perfectly suited to depict the demiurgic powers granted by the technology that makes the forms of entertainment possible. The reason neo-​gnostic elements recur in so many contemporary films, games, anime, and other media is that these forms of entertainment are drawing on archetypal plots, characters, and themes. Such ideas are bound to recur again and again. There is one further area—​the initiatory aspects of films, anime, games, or other forms of video—​that we should explore here. In Greco-​Roman antiquity there were a number of initiatory Mystery traditions, including the Mysteries of Isis, the Mysteries of Demeter or Cybele, and so forth. There were temple complexes where the Mysteries were celebrated, including very famous ones on the island of Samothrace, and at Eleusis.19 One of the great sources for understanding the ancient Mystery traditions is Apuleius’s novel, The Golden Ass, a humorous tale about a young man, Lucius, being turned into an ass and eventually being saved by the grace of the Goddess Isis. In the classic Mysteries, an initiate undergoes in ritual drama a period of distress, confusion, fright or terror and darkness, then illumination, freedom, and happiness. Plutarch put it this way: Thus death (teleutan, literally, the end of life) and initiation (teleisthai) closely correspond; even the words correspond, and so do the things. At first there are wanderings, and toilsome running about in circles and journeys through the dark over uncertain roads and culs de sac; then, just before the end, there are all kinds of terrors, with shivering, trembling, sweating, and utter amazement. After this, a strange and wonderful light meets the wanderer; he is admitted into clean and verdant meadows, where he discerns gentle voices, and choric dances, and the majesty of holy sounds and sacred visions. Here the now fully initiated is free, and walks at liberty like a crowned and dedicated victim, joining in the revelry; he is the companion of pure and holy men, and looks down upon the uninitiated and

Neo-Gnostic Video  59 unpurified crowd here below in the mud and fog, trampling itself down and crowded together, though of death remaining still sunk in its evils, unable to believe in the blessings that lie beyond. That the wedding and close union of the soul with the body is a thing really contrary to nature may clearly be seen from all this.20

To what extent do horror films represent a kind of initiatic experience? There are some film adaptions of Lovecraft stories, but while they may have some stomach-​turning scenes, they don’t generate the sense of dread and otherworldliness conveyed in Lovecraft’s fiction. This is also true of a film like Lord of Illusions (1995), directed by Clive Barker—​the film is effective enough visually, but does not generate “all kinds of terrors, with shivering, trembling, sweating,” as Plutarch put it regarding the Mysteries. The first Alien (1979) film, with its hideous creature inspired by H. R. Giger, is one of the few films—​especially viewed in the theater with little warning of what was to come—​that could generate terror of what was genuinely and implacably, utterly other, truly alien to humanity. It revealed something horrific, and horrifically wrong, in the fictional cosmos, where no one could hear you scream. In some sense, viewing such a film, especially in the communal setting of a theater at a new release, could be construed as an initiatic experience. And walking out of the theater into normal life, into the light of the mundane lobby, could be understood also as a kind of being reborn into a new life. But beyond the idea of a botched cosmos, or of a dualistic realm in which we are faced by an unfathomable evil and must make our way to a realm of light free of it, can we discern neo-​gnostic elements in the horror genre? Horror in general does not lend itself all that well to neo-​gnostic elements beyond its fundamental engagement of our fight-​or-​flight instincts, the sense that we are prey to some implacable monster, which is, of course, on the far end of the dualism spectrum. Essentially, the initiatory sequence as described by Plutarch moves through terror to salvation, and while horror does this as well, it does so only in a limited way, with no gnosis, no “majesty of holy sounds and sacred visions” of a blessed life at the end, just freedom from the induced terror of being hunted. But there is the occasional film that appears to have initiatory aspects and that has been incorporated into popular conspiracy discourse. One such clear example is Eyes Wide Shut (1999), directed by Stanley Kubrick. In this film, Tom Cruise plays Dr. Bill Harford and Nichole Kidman his wife Alice, a well-​to-​do New York City couple. On a tip, Harford goes to a mansion

60  American Gnosis where he witnesses some kind of elaborate sexual ritual, and a woman there warns him he is in great danger. The film reveals that there is an elite secret society involving ritualized orgiastic sex as well as the sexual abuse of young girls, and what is more, the group possesses the power to have people killed without subsequent investigation or prosecution in order to maintain its secrecy. Like some of the other films we have discussed in more depth, Eyes Wide Shut represents political gnosis—​in this case, the revelation that behind the wealth and opulence of an American social elite is initiation into a corrupted and corrupting secret society or network. And the film also does incorporate the sexual trafficking of young girls, as actually happened of course in the well-​known case of Jeffrey Epstein and his wealthy, politically connected network of probably blackmailed associates. A number of authors were later to point out the film as prescient, or as referring to a conspiratorial reality.21 But Eyes Wide Shut has also taken on a much more extended half-​life in contemporary conspiracy interpretations. Essentially, the widely dispersed argument is that in Eyes Wide Shut Kubrick revealed genuine secrets of the Illuminati, and this is why the film includes so many resonantly symbolic elements, not only the ritual masks, but also all manner of other things (eight-​pointed stars, ritual pillars, aspects of ancient cults, human sacrifice) are painstakingly found and documented online in frame shots from the film.22 But Eyes Wide Shut also is a reference point for the revelation that behind the appearance of high society, celebrity, wealth, and political power is corruption variously labeled Satanic, Luciferian, Illuminati, or demonic.23 Similar interpretations apply to the David Lynch film Mulholland Drive, or to the Twin Peaks two series and film, which do feature a mysterious secret society or occult group. And in numerous films, advertisements, and elsewhere online and in the media, some interpreters have also found much imagery described in similar terms, that is, as Satanic or demonic.24 We might reflect here on the meaning of the title Eyes Wide Shut. The title plays on the idea of seeing what is in front of us (eyes wide open) and yet not seeing, or not wanting to see. In effect, such films or series as Eyes Wide Shut or Twin Peaks are inverted initiations—​initiations that bring the viewer not toward blessedness or salvation, as in Plutarch’s description of the ancient Mysteries, but rather into the origin of evil in the human world (Twin Peaks: The Return, 2017), as well as into darkness, fragmentation, doubling, the demonic, and into a Black Lodge and a supernatural sense of dread and

Neo-Gnostic Video  61 indeed, horror akin to Lovecraft. Who sees with eyes shut? How would one see, if not supernaturally? Twin Peaks, in all its iterations, plays on exactly these kinds of questions, and initiates the reader in something genuinely dark and disturbing. In such films and series, we realize that the world we take for granted is not how things really are. What makes Eyes Wide Shut and even more Twin Peaks so fascinating and effective is exactly the sense that the films are not just films, but somehow almost like portals into what they convey (especially Twin Peaks of course) through their strange, dissociative, deliberately alienating imagery. This is a kind of politico-​cultural gnosis, a revelation that the mundane world we take for granted, with its folksiness (Twin Peaks) or its elite glossiness (Eyes Wide Shut) hides real monsters, and supernatural evil is behind even a foreboding shot of trees in a Pacific Northwest forest. It is gnosis in the sense of waking up to a different reality—​there is the reality we took for granted before seeing these films or series, and the one afterward, haunted by what we have seen. It’s not only that we are shaped by the presence of such themes in our films and series and media—​it is also that they in turn reflect and intensify what is already present in society. We see anew, we see conspiracies in part because the films give us visual language to the prevalent idea (as we will see in a later chapter) that we are ruled by a secret elite, or a demonic secret society, or by archons—​by those that prey on us and that wish us weakened or dead. We see that our battle may be with ignorance, but we also see that the revelation of knowledge carries its own price, the solitude of knowing in a society that still does not know and does not want to hear. Some films feature heroes or redeemers, but in others, we see those who may choose to go forward knowing, but keeping eyes wide shut. Cinema, videos, gaming—​ these provide the quasimythological popular substructure for how many people understand their world. And neo-​ gnostic tropes do recur so often that we must recognize the extent of their influence, which is amplified in social media, as we will see in later chapters. Neo-​gnostic elements in “popular culture,” which pop up more or less spontaneously, shape many people’s understanding of the global, technological, centralized, bureaucratic systems in which they may see themselves embedded, but externalized into a video narrative. Neo-​gnosticism is arguably endemic to what is often termed “modernity.” I can think of no clear examples of metaphysical gnosis in film—​perhaps it is there somewhere. But we can say it is rare, so rare as not to enter into

62  American Gnosis our discussion in this entire book until nearly the very end of our inquiry. Film and literature are about narrative, about plot and characters, about conflict and terror, love and hate, dread or horror—​not about transcendence. We can almost say that transcendence or metaphysical gnosis is an entirely separate category, and it naturally raises the question whether (since we do not find it in film or literature) we find metaphysical gnosis among those neo-​ gnostics who thoroughly self-​identify with many of the “building blocks” of Gnosticism in antiquity? There are such recent neo-​gnostic figures, and those we will survey here are prolific. To exploring the work of these contemporary neo-​gnostics, we now turn.

4 The Neo-​Gnosticism of Miguel Serrano Miguel Serrano (1917–​2009), whose full name is Miguel Juaquín Diego del Carmen Serrano Fernández, was born into a wealthy family in Chile and served as an ambassador for Chile to a number of countries. During his time abroad, he met and in many cases befriended famous figures of the day, including Carl Jung, Herman Hesse, Ezra Pound, and the fourteenth Dalai Lama, whom he met just after the young Tibetan fled Tibet following the invasion and occupation by Chinese forces. Serrano published (some in translation published by Routledge) memoirs of some of his friendships, as well as his own magical realist fiction, which has a distinctively surrealist style. In later life, Serrano published a series of books in which he explicated a complex esoteric spiritual belief system that clearly owed a considerable debt to early Christian Gnosticism. These books are our focus here. Those who are familiar only with Serrano’s widely distributed earlier books would perhaps be surprised to learn that in later works he elaborated at great length a complex mythology that combined a veritable farrago of different subjects and themes—​from UFOs and secret technological wizardry to sacred sites around the globe, from various esoteric currents including astrology, Hinduism (in particular, Tantra), Norse religion, European magical traditions, and much more to the Gnosticism of late antiquity—​into a single vast mythology that he termed “esoteric Hitlerism.” Esoteric Hitlerism has at its center, of course, the figure of Adolf Hitler, understood as an archetypal, even avataric cosmic being and force, who as a spiritual being continues to exist and to whom a spiritual league is dedicated. In the future, Hitler and his “last battalion” of warriors will come again for a cosmic battle and perhaps a new era for humanity, or at least, some of humanity. We do not have space here to explore all the complexities of Serrano’s mythology, let alone the network of sources and predecessors on which he drew, or the successors to his thought. There is some scholarship in English on Serrano and his work, and in particular here I would direct attention to Nicholas Goodrick-​Clarke’s Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism,

American Gnosis. Arthur Versluis, Oxford University Press. © Arthur Versluis 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197653210.003.0005

64  American Gnosis and the Politics of Identity.1 This work explores the predecessors to, context of, and some successors to Serrano’s thought. And there are a number of Serrano’s major later works translated into English, sometimes several different versions, though those can be difficult to obtain. I have all the major translations, and also have consulted the original editions from Chile. Subsequent Spanish versions are also available from Chile. In what follows, I will concentrate exclusively on how Gnosticism and gnosis figure explicitly and implicitly in Serrano’s work. As we will see, they are central, and so far as I know, this subject has not been discussed extensively in any secondary literature. Of course, the first question is: what sort of Gnosticism do we find in Serrano’s work? The answer is what might be called stereotypical Gnosticism á la Hans Jonas, that is, an ignorant demiurge, a hidden true god, a world/​society opposed to true spiritual knowledge, and so forth. But there is a twist. Serrano takes it one step further, in Marcionitic fashion, explicitly identifying the ignorant demiurge with the Jewish Jehovah, so the entire narrative is anti-​ Jewish. Thus Serrano writes in El Cordon Dorado (The Golden Thread) that “today, when the Jews kill Palestinians, they do it because of their Archetype, because of their Demiurge, or Golem, because of their Covenant with Him. They are mere instruments in a Myth they cannot betray.”2 Further, “it must be remembered that for the Gnostics and the Cathars, Jehovah was Satan, the Demiurge of the Kali-​Yuga, creator of the inferior earth.”3 Serrano referred specifically to Gnosticism in late antiquity, and he was clearly familiar with some Nag Hammadi Library texts, in particular the Gospel of Thomas, as well as with Marcionism. In a discussion of ancient Gnosticism that explicitly refers to these, Serrano observes that “one must remember the declaration by the Gnostic Marcion: ‘Christ has nothing to do with Jehovah.’ The Old Testament is immoral. Christ is son of a God of unknown Love. All of the prophets, including the very John the Baptist, are acolytes of the false god, of Jehovah.”4 Serrano links together with Gnosticism the ancient Mystery traditions, Hermetism, Samkhya philosophy in Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, the Cathars, and the Templars, as they are all “cosmic,” “solar,” and “dualistic,” as is the religion of the “ultimate” or “last avatar,” Hitler, and so “Hitlerism is also a Gnosticism.”5 In Serrano’s vast mythological superstructure, the Jews are the enemy, the “robotic” servants of the “extraterrestrial” demiurge Jehovah, that “must follow Jehovah’s orders if it is to continue to exist. Thus there is the ‘People of God,’ of Jehovah, Saturn, Sat-​an (Satur-​day).”6 “Wars and mass killings are

The Neo-Gnosticism of Miguel Serrano  65 the banquet of Jehovah,” he continues. Without being fed in this way by the deaths of the goyim, Jehovah “would disappear.” And in a short, late text, Serrano introduces his primary theme, esoteric Hitlerism, this way: “After the ‘New Covenant’ with Jehovah, that tribe of slaves, the Jews . . . gradually altered everything, infiltrating everything with the aid of their Demon-​God Jehovah.”7 Serrano distinguishes confessional branches of Christianity indebted to Judaism from what he terms “Kristianity” with a K, by which he means the Aryan, solar current represented and initiated by Kristos, understood to be one with the pagan deity Wotan. For Serrano, Kristos was a manifestation of an Archetype, that is, a divine principle whose purpose is to reveal the spiritual path of resurrection and salvation, understood as self-​realization. “And what do the ‘Gods’ want?” Serrano asks. “They want that man, the Divya that has fallen, the Vira already separated from his divinity, to recover it, returning to the Lost Home, and that they should show him the way though they know that he shall never again be a God like them, but something else, unknown in the Universe.”8 This “Kristic initiation” into realizing the enduring astral body of the Self is “inherited from Wotan, from Odin, from Mithras, from Mani and, above all, from Shiva.”9 Serrano’s narrative is entirely cosmological. Sometimes he uses the word “cosmogonic” to denote the secret initiatic path of his esoteric Hitlerism, and this word is also apropos, given that so much of his larger narrative concerns the fate of the earth in an age of decline and apocalypse at the end of the Kali Yuga or Iron Age.10 Primarily, Serrano is concerned with the secret history of the human world. And in particular, he focuses on how humanity came to be trapped in a materialistic worldview, “cut off ” from our “astral, stellar, and extraterrestrial roots.”11 By focusing humanity’s attention only on a narrative of six thousand years in which they feature prominently, Jews, in thrall to the demiurge, “have shortchanged humanity” and “filched from it the cosmos, the metaphysical blood, the prologue, and the ultimate meaning of creation and life.” In Serrano’s “Orphic and Hitlerian Cosmogony,” “spirits—​better to say, ‘beings’—​came into this visible world and embodied matter in order to fight here the Demiurge, which is the real creator of Satan-​Yahweh-​Jehovah, which in turn created the Jewish genetic robot in order to contaminate the earth.”12 These spirits or beings were Hyperboreans in the polar realm. In Serrano’s mythos, the demiurge and its adherents are dominant in the final stage of the Kali Yuga, Iron Age, or last age, and are behind global “biotechnological

66  American Gnosis slavery, technetronic, cybernetics, technological chips, clones,” in short, “world slavery.”13 According to Serrano, the entire modern world, with its globalist agenda of a “new world order,” “destroying national borders and sovereign states,” “electronic ‘money,’ ” “technocratic, electronic and cybertronic Globalism will serve, very well, to impose the Theocratic Jehovah-​Yahweh world dictatorship, together with Virtual Reality and Computer Technology.”14 The “esoteric Hitlerist war is not only on this Earth, but in all of the Universe against the servants of the Demiurge (the enslaved Aions).”15 Serrano sees esoteric Hitlerism as transcending politics, and as fundamentally religious and symbolic, a “new religious faith, able to change the materialistic man of today into a new idealistic hero.” It is “a totally new vision of the world (Weltanshauung), a cosmogonia.”16 Fundamentally, Serrano thinks, it is “a way to transmute a hero into God.”17 For Serrano, “Shiva is the same as Wotan. Both of them, at the beginning, were only heroes of the Polar or Hyperborean Race, the embodiment of an Archetype.” And “the task of the Esoteric Hitlerists is to try to recover this Power and become like Shiva or Wotan again: The Superman.”18 In Serrano’s usage, the word “gnosis” is directly tied to ancient Gnostic interpretations of the book of Genesis, but in the specific context of Serrano’s larger synthesis of so many different esoteric traditions. While discussing megaliths, Serrano connects them to “the first polar Mountain, the Polar Axis; also, man’s spinal cord.”19 This then leads him to “the Menhir, the Lingam,” “the Tree of Life,” which then brings him to “Lucifer’s serpent—​ that of knowledge, of the Science of Good and Evil, of the Gnosis, that would make of man a god—​was coiled around the Tree of Paradise.”20 This serpent is “kundalini resting at the foot of the initiated’s Spinal Cord Tree.”21 World War II, in Serrano’s reading, was not just a materialistic conflagration, but a spiritual battle, a “War of Gods, of myths and legends, of titans, where opposing initiatic currents, worldviews, and cosmogonies confronted each other, where all of the History and the spiritual Destiny of the planet was at play.”22 Most people were “dragged like sleepwalkers into the butchery of living and dead, of symbols and blazonry, and . . . ‘died without knowing why they did it.’ ”23 But there were also those who were “conscious beings, with gnosis.”24 Gnosis here means one who has “the memory of his spiritual blood” and who “attempted through magic to restore the Golden Age.” This, he thinks, is the “blood of the Blue Beings of Hyperborea, of the Siddhas of the Golden

The Neo-Gnosticism of Miguel Serrano  67 Thread,” the “Stone Chalice of the Grail,” the “Chalice of the Philosopher’s Stone” for “drinking by the heroes who will be transmuted into Supermen,” before the end of the Kali-​Yuga. Those with gnosis will “be able to go to the Inner Other Earth, where awaits them the King of the Grail and the Beloved, who hand the Gral to them and help them interpret it.”25 What we see in all of these aspects of Serrano’s complex neo-​gnosticism, and also in his uses of the term gnosis, is that effectively, it is all cosmological. It all concerns secrets of the cosmos, magic, hidden dimensions of the material world or alternatively, spiritual doubles of and hidden powers in the physical realm. It is an elaborate new mythology in which Hitler plays a role, of course, but whose ambit is far larger than just that one historical figure. In fact, a neo-​gnostic form of Marcionitic Gnosticism arguably has a larger role in some respects in holding together his entire mythological superstructure than does its putative center, Hitler, who in this new mythology is reversed from a nemesis into an avatar, true, but himself nonetheless also only has a cosmic role in the much larger mythological narrative. Esoteric Hitlerism, as conveyed by Serrano, is a synthesis of religious cosmological themes that is difficult to summarize. To give an example, Serrano writes that “Hitler is a lightning bolt, He is a Ray fallen from Another Universe, as Savitri Devi sensed.”26 He is “the son of Wotan,” and an “Avatar,” a concept “partly mixed with that of the Bodhisattva and of the Tulku from Tantric-​ Tibetan Buddhism; a Liberated One,” who “returns voluntarily to help . . . imprisoned comrades in the World of Illusion, in the Maya of the demiurge.”27 He is “an Absolute-​Man, a Sonnenmensch, a Superman.” Hence “the Serpent Kundalini has caught the tail, having converted it into a circle, into a Vimana, a Flying Disk, which rises like a Chariot of Fire and carries within it a whole crew: the Wildes Heer of Wotan, the Furious Horde of Odin . . . the Ultimate Battalion of the Führer, with whom Kalki will defeat the Demiurge and his armies.”28 From this lengthy set of quotations you can see how all these different religious and mythological elements are held together by the temporal goal of the final battle of Kalki at the end of time against the (Jewish) demiurge. Thus neo-​gnosticism is the thread that runs through the whole fabric. Largely but not totally missing from Serrano’s narrative, for all its vast reach across the mythologies and religions of the world, is what I term metaphysical gnosis. Metaphysical gnosis, again, refers to the complete transcendence of self–​other dualism, corresponding to gnosis as understood in the Mahamudra and Dzogchen traditions in Buddhism, and to

68  American Gnosis the Christian-​Platonic mystical tradition represented by such works as Dionysius the Areopagite’s Mystical Theology or Meister Eckhart’s sermons.29 There is nothing like this in Serrano’s contemporary neo-​gnosticism. Admittedly, Serrano refers to Meister Eckhart, but when he does so, it is gestural.30 Eckhart, for Serrano, reflects “the purest currents of the ancient Gnostic Christianity.”31 In fact, Serrano wants to co-​opt Eckhart into a Gnostic dualism model, and asserts that “it is not possible to conceive a single God without arriving at the Principle of an Opposite Evil.”32 But in continuing he also alludes to transcendence: “in the end, when “the Opposite will be redeemed. And to say in the end is to say now, always. Meister Eckhart also knew this.”33 While Serrano’s vision is cosmological or, as he puts it, cosmogonic, one could say he does leave a door slightly cracked open to metaphysical gnosis. But it is the slightest of cracks in what is in fact a strictly dualist neo-​ gnosticism of such elaboration that we have only sketched it so far, and one always feels that there is a great deal more that has to be said by way of explanation. Which additional pieces, which additional themes, subjects, allusions, popular and classical works, and so forth, should one include? What makes Serrano’s system difficult to explicate is precisely its syncretic character. In this too it resembles Gnosticism in antiquity of course. We will recall that Hermetic, Platonic, and Gnostic treatises are bundled together in the Nag Hammadi collection, and questions related to the nature of syncretism in antiquity have of course been discussed in scholarship by many scholars.34 Unlike these scholars, however, here we are looking at a near-​contemporary example, where clearly the author identifies with a dualistic version of ancient Gnosticism, and is explicitly creating a contemporary, unambiguously dualistic neo-​gnosticism. His narrative is very strongly this-​worldly and apocalyptic. Of course a main figure in it is, improbably for most readers I would guess, Adolf Hitler. But one has to ask, is converting Hitler into an avatar or divine figure so different, as an act of symbolic reversal, from reading the serpent in the Garden of Eden Genesis narrative as a positive influence on and bringing gnosis to Adam and Eve? In other words, inversion or reversal is inherent in at least some strands of ancient Gnosticism, and Serrano is arguably doing something quite similar. Serranian neo-​gnosticism, if we may so call it, in the complexity of its narrative, bears some resemblance to Valentinian Gnosticism in late antiquity. In Valentinian Gnosticism the primary figure is of course Sophia, who in some

The Neo-Gnosticism of Miguel Serrano  69 texts is identified with Eve in the Genesis narrative of the Garden of Eden, and who has various cosmological roles in, for instance, the Gospel of Philip, Exegesis on the Soul, Pistis Sophia, and the Interpretation of Knowledge. The figure of Sophia is sometimes associated with a cosmic fall and with humanity’s loss of divine knowledge, but also with gnosis, and restoration. Like Valentinian Gnosticism, Serranian neo-​gnosticism features an emphasis on the divine feminine, but Serranian neo-​gnosticism incorporates many elements from Hindu Tantrism, including not only chakras, or energy centers in the body, but also mudras or symbolic hand gestures,35 and above all, a complex doctrine involving male–​female complementarity and self-​ transcendence that was central to Serrano’s fictional works like El/​Ella, or Nos, and became explicit in his later neo-​gnostic explications.36 Here are some examples of how Tantra is absorbed into Serranian neo-​ gnosticism. In Serrano’s narrative, there are two Tantric paths, and “both fall under the sign of Shiva-​Lucifer, of Abraxas. One corresponds to the being who aspires to overcoming the human condition, adhering to the luminous principle of sattva.” This path is “union in the astral, subtle body, solely in the spirit.”37 The other path is “the Left-​Hand Path,” that of “the being who aspires to the passionary expansion by means of the ardour of fire, also in order to be able to overcome its condition . . . making magic use of sex and of Bindu, semen, which must not be ejaculated in the act, in order to create an Androgyne.”38 Both paths “follow the Shivaist line,” those who “with their bodies make themselves immortal.” Of fundamental importance in this process is the “Shakti, or Shiva’s feminine creative aspect.”39 In late conversations, published in a collection called Son of the Widower, Serrano elaborates on the divine feminine, but rather than the name “Sophia,” he prefers the “Queen of Sheba,” who is the center of the ancient “Mystery” [singular in original text]. She represents the great Tantric Mystery for man, and “if a man meets with the Queen of Sheba, then it is a doorway to loyalty,” because “the Queen of Sheba is for A-​Mor, not for marriage. What is A-​Mor? It means Without Death.”40 Serrano also remarks that mysticism is “to merge oneself, to make oneself disappear in the Great Self.”41 One becomes one with “a God that includes everything,” “the poles, obscurity and light,” and “the God Abraxas.”42 A realized one becomes the “Absolute Man,” and the male–​female inner union in the Mystery is an essential part of this transformation.43 Serrano’s language and conceptual framework here joins together Shaivism, Luciferism, Wotanism, and Hermetism, among others, under

70  American Gnosis the organizing sign of Gnosticism. Even though he incorporates various strands of different traditions into his narrative, they are integrated into a larger occultist system whose scope is governed by a neo-​gnostic narrative of fall and restoration. And although it seems outlandish with all the various colorful elements it includes, it does remain congruent with many aspects of Gnosticism(s) in late antiquity, including doctrinal aspects like a fallen cosmos, of a demiurge, of secret knowledge, of the divine feminine, and so forth. What makes Serrano so unusual in this context is the fact that he himself was a reasonably well-​known fiction writer who knew personally a number of famous literary, political, and religious figures. And his overarching narrative is, absolutely without doubt, suffused with Gnostic references and couched in the language of ancient Gnosticism, although it is simultaneously extremely modern, global, and extraordinarily syncretic. In an earlier article, I briefly discussed Serrano’s work exemplifying modern globalism and syncretism.44 He is a particularly strong example of both, given that his references range across different religious traditions as well as continents, and he synthesizes them in unusually comprehensive ways so that they form a larger narrative. To give an example, he emphasizes geomantic connection points around the globe, tied to particular esoteric religious associations, in a variety of ways. Thus he associates Mount Meru in Buddhism, the cosmic mountain, with “Gralsburg in Berchtesgaden, Montsegur, and Melimoyu in the Andes of the Far South.”45 In this single example, he is combining multiple religious references (Buddhism and Catharism with Hitlerism) as well as multiple geographic reference points with a single theme: the sacred mountain. It is useful to recognize that Serrano represents a larger set of phenomena than his own global, syncretic narrative. He says he came from the “political Left,” but “met some SS men, and then a little later, my Chilean Master, who revealed to me the secret roots of Hitlerism and who Adolf Hitler really was: a magician who had the power to come voluntarily out of his body and to communicate with other unbodily beings.”46 In other words, Serrano existed in a context, and it is certainly true that beyond Serrano’s own assertion that he belonged to an initiatic order, there is a larger constellation of subsequent groups, initiatives, and figures that carry on, reflect, or are influenced by Serrano’s mythological and esoteric narrative. In a pair of extensive sourcebooks, James Pontolillo has cataloged the history of the Black Sun symbol, the eponymous title of a seminal 2002 book

The Neo-Gnosticism of Miguel Serrano  71 introducing the topic by Nicholas Goodrick-​Clarke.47 There are multiple aspects to the Black Sun: as various graphics, often in the form of lightning bolt or crooked rays around a center circle, it is in widespread use on the right and in occultism; and it also has cosmological dimensions, so, for instance, for Serrano the Black Sun is behind the golden sun that we see, and behind the Black Sun is the Green Ray, “which announces the Morning Star.”48 While the swastika symbolized past twentieth-​century National Socialism, the Black Sun symbolizes the future in terms of rejection of prevalent society, timelessness, and millenarian anticipation. Hence it is not surprising that it has been incorporated into rock music, occultism, chaos magic, and so forth. One reason the Black Sun symbol is widespread is that it combines so many potential meanings, including of course the implication of transcendence of opposites, the void, and so forth. A black sun is paradoxical—​it, like Abraxas in the works of Hesse and Serrano, is both light and dark, or to put it another way, blackness and illumination at once. As a result, it is inherently fascinating, hence incorporated into the iconography of metal bands and of groups and individuals that are far afield from our primary subject here. And yet the neo-​gnostic framework of Serrano’s mythological narrative is conveyed, not only in his own work but into other groups and author’s works. Goodrick-​Clarke, in Black Sun, summarizes this way: “Serrano . . . blends exotic oriental religion with his Gnostic-​Manichaean doctrine of ‘Esoteric Hitlerism’. Tracing the semi-​divine Ayrans to extraterrestrial origins, Serrano recommends kundalini yoga to repurify ‘mystical Aryan blood’ to its former quality of divine light,” and explicates “a Gnostic war against the Jews, the Black Sun, the Hitler avatar, and Nazi UFOs in Antarctica.”49 Out of this admixture, he continues, “new myths and meanings” have been developed for new generations. In his extensive survey, Goodrick-​Clarke details how the narrative we find in Serrano’s work is actually far more widespread than one might think, emerging in all kinds of unexpected places. For instance, David Icke, a prominent critic of British lockdowns and of globalism in 2020–​2021, is in Goodrick-​Clarke’s survey of 1990s literature for his 1994 book The Robots’ Rebellion. UFO theories overlap with Serrano’s work, and a number of well-​ known authors on UFOs are featured as well. One of Serrano’s books in English is Hitler’s UFO Against the New World Order, which intersects with a much larger body of material on fantastic German National Socialist technological achievements.

72  American Gnosis Whereas Goodrick-​Clarke provides a scholarly survey of at least some of this influence, at least up to 2002, Pontolillo presents in his pair of sourcebooks examples from a vast array of sources concerning the Black Sun. And of course the Black Sun as a symbol in turn is accompanied by all the themes we have discussed so far, and includes discussion of Serrano himself and his works. Pontolillo examines popular books published in Europe, England, and the United States, concerning the Black Sun in relation to occultist groups and theories, magical technology theories, geomantic and astrological theories, theories of secret National Socialist technology, UFOs, the Grail, the SS, Himmler, Tibet, Bön religion, and much else. There are many such popular books in many languages, and Pontolillo has made a remarkable effort to collect and survey them. Of course in such a farrago of theories and confabulations, the themes of neo-​gnosticism often takes a back seat, as the driver is headed in other directions. But that said, neo-​gnosticism is still generally along for the ride even if it’s not necessarily in the driver’s seat. And on reflection, this makes sense because dualistic neo-​gnosticism in the model presented by Hans Jonas and others in popular works (Jacques Lacarrière, for example) provides or corresponds to themes of being lost in an alien world, spiritual marriage or sexual union, a demiurge, lost knowledge recovered, aeons, demons, spiritual battles, apocalypse, and so on that recur in Serranian neo-​gnosticism. As it happens, dualistic neo-​gnosticism just fits well with Black Sun symbolism and related narratives. Having taught numerous courses that include neo-​gnosticism as a topic, including neo-​gnosticism in contemporary popular culture, and having seen many hundreds of students find neo-​gnostic themes in popular films, anime, novels, videos, music, and other media, I was finally convinced the kind of dualistic neo-​gnosticism that Serrano represents, a model with a hostile demiurge and so forth, is as much or more a modern phenomenon than it is something found in late antiquity. Students find dualistic neo-​gnosticism virtually everywhere in popular culture. As exemplified by Serranian neo-​ gnosticism, dualistic neo-​gnosticism in general easily becomes a meme; it is in some sense like a mind virus that replicates itself, and can be transmitted even if the author is not consciously doing so.50 In Magic and Mysticism, I introduced the natural distinction between cosmological gnosis, which is associated with magic, that is, limited subject–​ object connection, and metaphysical gnosis, which is associated with mysticism, that is, transcendence of subject–​object dualism.51 And it makes

The Neo-Gnosticism of Miguel Serrano  73 sense that Serrano’s mythological narrative, and many if not all of those associated with the Black Sun symbol, would correspond more to the former than to the latter, because fundamentally the mythology is about salvific power in physical and supersensible realms. It is about making sense of the German loss in World War II in a cosmological context of a greater, cosmic war, and an apocalyptic final battle. It is unconcerned with mysticism or enlightenment as understood, for instance, in Buddhism.52 There is a comparison possible, because a predecessor to Serrano was Savitri Devi, Maximiani Portas [Maximine Portaz] (1904–​1982), born in Lyon, France, and author of The Lightning and the Sun, written between 1948 and 1956, which put forth the view of Hitler as an avataric figure. Savitri Devi lived a good part of her life in India and identified with Hinduism, and her book concludes with a discussion of Hitler and Kalki, the final avenger at the end of time who will usher in the new Golden Age. This and a number of other themes in Serrano’s work are prefigured in Savitri Devi’s work. When we compare Serrano to Savitri Devi, though, we find that while the two share some general ideas, the most characteristic ideas of Serrano are not present in the earlier author’s works. Above all, we do not find any reference whatever in The Lightning and the Sun to Gnosticism—​the word does not even appear in the index to the definitive edition of this book in English.53 Nor does the concept. There is no demiurge, no sense of a hostile cosmos, or any of the other identifiers of Serranian neo-​gnosticism. There also is in her work no emphasis on initiatic orders and little reference to esoteric practices either of Tantrism or of European occultism, nor is there much reference to literary or philosophical figures or traditions. Although both arguably belong to a current called “esoteric Hitlerism,” their works are very different, not least because Serrano’s is so strongly identified with Gnosticism. It is the latter that makes Serrano’s work more viral. At this point, a reader might wonder: this is all rather interesting and strange, but is this just an unusual, isolated example of contemporary dualistic neo-​gnosticism, or does it have broader significance? The answer is that Serrano’s work and the larger current to which it belongs has broader significance. From their enduring presence in popular culture, we can see that Hitler, National Socialism, and related topics remain perpetually fascinating precisely because they are de facto and sometimes literally forbidden territory. Making an esoteric religion of Hitlerism is arguably the ultimate religio-​ political inversion in the contemporary era: it has power precisely because it is taboo. And its half-​life is thus very long.

74  American Gnosis Nicholas Goodrick-​ Clarke discussed at length some of Serrano’s successors in North America and in Europe, and as we have seen, there have been many more in the decades that followed. The dynamics he discussed in Black Sun, in particular those of identity politics and of messianism, millenarianism, and apocalypticism, have not vanished; if anything, they have intensified. And, of course, so has censorship. Currently, many of Serrano’s books are unavailable, interestingly paralleling here as in other ways the dynamics of the suppression of Gnosticism and its texts in late antiquity. As a result of this suppression, Serranian neo-​gnosticism and its kin will reemerge in new and stronger forms—​the attractive power of the forbidden does not diminish. Indeed, its fascinating aspects are thus heightened. We can expect that we have not seen the last of Serranian neo-​gnosticism and whatever follows upon it.

5 The Neo-​Gnosticism of Samael Aun Weor Victor Manuel Gómez Rodríguez (Samael Aun Weor, 1917–​1977) was born in Columbia and raised Roman Catholic; he went to a Jesuit school, and wrote in his spiritual autobiography The Three Mountains that in adolescence he read “innumerables obras metafísicas” (innumerable metaphysical books) and by 18 he had joined the Fraternitas Rosicruciana Antiqua, a Latin American Rosicrucian group founded by the German Arnoldo Krumm-​Heller and influenced by Paschal Beverly Randolph. He said he had read “the whole Rosicrucian library” (“toda la biblioteca rosa-​crucista”), including the works of authors Arnoldo Krumm-​Heller, Eliphas Levi, Franz Hartmann, Rudolf Steiner, and Max Heindel.1 During this time, he likely also encountered the ideas of the nineteenth-​century American author Paschal Beverly Randolph, who taught a form of sexual magic in a Rosicrucian context. In his autobiography there are not a great many personal details, but he does mention that he was married and that he was called in a visionary encounter with his spiritual master to end that relationship so that he could engage in a spiritually transformative relationship with Arnolda Garro Mora, whose spiritual name was “Litelantes,” and with whom he was able to practice the great mystery, which is to say, at its center, sexual relations without ejaculation.2 His master Adolfo tells him: “she is indeed useful to you for the Sexual Magic (Sahaja Maithuna); with this lady adept you can work in the Ninth Sphere (the Sex).” He then replies: “Oh, guru! I long for the awakening of the Kundalini and the union with the Intimate with infinite yearning, whatever the cost may be.”3 But this visionary encounter in a magnificent initiatory transcendent church of translucent crystallike marble is framed in a context of demon-​ inspired challenges by a “dark Tantrist,” “repugnant and sinister,” who taught “Sexual Magic with seminal ejaculation.”4 He continues: “That dark Tantrist arrived before me accompanied by two demons. He appeared very satisfied with the abominable organ Kundartiguador, the satanic, witch-​like, terrible tail, the sexual Fire projected from the coccyx towards the atomic hells of man, American Gnosis. Arthur Versluis, Oxford University Press. © Arthur Versluis 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197653210.003.0006

76  American Gnosis the sequence and corollary of black tantrism.”5 The word “Kundartiguador” is said to be identical with G. I. Gurdjieff ’s term “Kundabuffer.”6 Whereas Kundalini is the serpentlike power of awakening, the “Kundabuffer” in Gurdieff ’s system is what keeps people caught in a falsified reality. One might note there is no reference to Gurdjieff in the text, and that the term “black tantrism” defined in this way has nothing to do with traditional forms of Tantra.7 In the same way, Weor’s use of ancient Gnostic terms is not necessarily aligned with the way they usually are understood. To give an example, the demiurge: in Marcionism, the deluded demiurge figure is identified with the Jewish deity, and even if the latter identification is not explicit, the demiurge figure in Valentinian Gnosticism, for instance, is deluded or flawed, presiding over a flawed creation. By contrast, for Weor, there is an “architect Demiurge” identified with “a Logos or collective Creator of the Universe,” and this “Demiurge is not a personal deity as many wrongly suppose, but only the collective of the Dhyan Chohans, Angels, Archangels, and the rest of the forces. God is Gods.”8 Weor goes on to add that “Lucifer is the antithesis of the Creator Demiurge, its living shadow projected into the profound depths of the microcosm man. Lucifer is the Guardian of the Door and the Keys to the Sanctuary, so that only those who have been anointed and hold the Secret of Hermes can enter it.”9 Even though “common people” find the name hateful, “the esoteric Lucifer of the Archaic Doctrine is “the symbol of the highest sacrifice (Christos-​Lucifer) of the Gnostics and the god of Wisdom under an infinite number of names. Light and shadow, mysterious symbiosis of the Solar Logos, perfect multiple unity, INRI is Lucifer.”10 We can see here that Weor specifically is referring to ancient Gnosticism, and that this is a kind of neo-​ gnostic symbolic inversion. Just as the serpent (seen as bad in confessional Christianity) in a Gnostic interpretation of the Garden of Eden myth of Genesis brings gnosis (knowledge of good and evil), so too here Lucifer is forthrightly seen as good, as “light and shadow,” “unity,” and as identical with the “Solar Logos,” here Christ. But we should recognize that these ideas reflect the founding figure of the Theosophical Society, H. P. Blavatsky’s terminology and ideas. The “Dhyan Chohans” mentioned before angels or archangels by Weor have their origin in Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, as does the idea of the collective divine identity, the idea of the demiurgic “architect” of the cosmos, and the idea of Lucifer not as a negative but as a positive, light-​bringer, or revealer figure.11

The Neo-Gnosticism of Samael Aun Weor  77 Again, as with the Gurdjieffian terminology, there is no attribution: Weor presents these ideas rather as simply the way things actually are. In The Three Mountains, after a series of chapters that lead toward “The Sexual Fire,” he then discusses the titular three mountains, the first of which concerns “The Gnostic Church,” initiations of fire, and the transfiguration of Jesus; the second of which concerns his visionary journeys through the hells and related heavens of the planets in this order: Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, culminating in “The Resurrection.” Then the third mountain consists primarily in the final labors of Hercules. As can be seen even in this brief outline, while the overarching terminology is Gnostic, the text is visionary and synthetic, pulling together a surprising array of mythological and religious esoteric sources. There are actually a number of striking parallels between Weor’s cosmology and that of Charles Musès (d. 2000), roughly a contemporary. In remarking on this I am not suggesting influence in either direction. Rather, I am pointing out that the two authors both emphasize the importance of the planets not in astronomical but rather in astrological terms. Both outline planetary stages of transformation, in Weor’s case presented as visionary journeys to hells and heavens. Both emphasize specific astrological moments that announce a new age or transformative window. Weor writes for instance that on February 4th, 1962, between 2 and 3p.m. . . . all the planets of our solar system got together in a supreme cosmic council, precisely in the brilliant constellation of Aquarius, to initiate the new Era in the midst of the august thunder of the mind. From that memorable date and under the ruling of Uranus, the very venerable and most worthy Lord of Aquarius, the Dionysian wave vibrated intensely in the whole of Nature.12

And in Weor’s visionary account, as in Musès’s, Isis, Osiris, and Horus play significant roles.13 Of course, there are obviously major differences between Weor’s visionary narratives and Musès’s presentation of what he termed the Lion Path. Weor is announcing a “Dionysian wave” made available to humanity on this date, Dionysus here being defined as “A) Voluntary transmutation of the sexual libido. [and] B) Mystical transcendental ecstasy.”14 Neither these themes nor such terms or ideas play a role in Musès’s works. And the ancient Egyptian gods are central to Musès’s late work, whereas they are more incidental to

78  American Gnosis Weor’s. One cannot gainsay that these are very distinctly individual authors and works. Weor founded a neo-​gnostic movement that grew worldwide, with multiple succeeding organizations, whereas after his death, Musès’s group dissolved and vanished. And yet all the same, we can see at least some striking similarities between the two authors’ works, which we will explore further at a later point in this book. Weor’s first book, published initially under the name Aun Weor, was El Matrimonio Perfecto [The Perfect Matrimony] (1951), a revised version of which was published in 1961. In this book Weor announced his primary teaching, which is summarized very clearly: “We have investigated all the great Gnostic treasures, we have scrutinized the basis of all the archaic religions, and we have found the supreme key of Sexual Magic at the base of all cults. Now we deliver this treasure, this Key to suffering humanity.”15 There is “really only one unique and cosmic religion,” and so “we simply teach the synthesis of all Religions, Schools, Orders, Lodges and beliefs. Our doctrine is the Doctrine of the Synthesis.”16 This doctrine at the center of all religions, the key to “Christification,” has a single principle at its center: “Sexual Magic,” meaning sexual intercourse without ejaculation.17 Simply put: “Sexual Magic with ejaculation of semen is black magic. Sexual Magic without ejaculation of semen is white magic.”18 Weor’s book expounds an unmitigated, very clear dualism. In Weor’s view, the choice is very clearly and literally white and black. One the one side a white lodge, headed by Christ; on the other side a black lodge, headed by “Jahve, the genius of evil.”19 And in fact dualism pervades everywhere: “Every human being has his double.” “Every white soul has a black double, a contrary soul that antagonizes and fights.”20 Indeed, “there are two moons. The White Moon and the Black Moon.”21 And “The Knights of the White Grail must inevitably fight against the Knights of the Black Grail.”22 Weor counts “the Bhons and Dugpas of the Black Lodge of Tibet,” who “spill the semen” and seek to draw it back in, as devotees of the darkness.23 The head of the Black Lodge is a particular man in Germany.24 It is a fiercely dualistic cosmology. There is here another parallel with the work of Charles Musès here: hyperspace theory. Weor writes “so-​called witches . . . know how to take advantage of hyperspace to transport themselves from one place to another with their physical bodies. Soon astrophysics will discover the existence of hyperspace. This can be demonstrated with hyper-​geometry. When a body is submerged in hyperspace, it is said to have entered a state of Jinas. Every body in the state

The Neo-Gnosticism of Samael Aun Weor  79 of Jinas escapes from the law of gravity. Then it floats in hyperspace.”25 He develops this idea in other places: The temple with its Grail submerged itself within hyperspace. Now we can only visit the temple with the astral body or with the physical body in a state of Jinas. A physical body is able to be taken from the three-​dimensional world and placed in the fourth dimension. This can be achieved through the wise use of hyperspace. Soon astrophysics will demonstrate the existence of hyperspace.26

Weor presents a very clear categorization: there are debased, degenerate “infrasexuals” who are hypocritical, typically, by decrying sex while engaging in it; there is normal sexuality; and there are “suprasexuals” who engage in sexual intercourse without ejaculation and ascend beyond the human level. Examples are “Christ, Buddha, Dante, Zoroaster, Mohammad.”27 The fundamental truth of human nature, he reiterates, is that spiritual realization comes from withholding seminal ejaculation. Once again, we have a parallel with Charles Musès: both emphasized physical transmutation, Musès by focusing on specific regions of the brain; Weor by focusing on the parts of the body associated with the chakras, including pineal gland. In this discussion, Weor refers specifically to some of the ancient Gnostics, citing Krumm Heller, who initiated Weor into a Rosicrucian fraternity when he was in his late teens.28 Weor sees the seven churches of antiquity as the seven chakras in the body, and for Weor, when the kundalini serpent is awakened and ascends to “the level of the pineal gland, the Church of Laodicea is opened.” The “pineal gland is influenced by Neptune,” and gives one “polyvision, intuition.”29 The pineal gland awakens based on the strength of the sexual glands. And still another parallel with Musès—​a connection with ancient Egypt. Weor writes that “Happy are the couples who know how to love. With the sexual act we open the Seven Churches of Apocalypse, and we transform our selves into Gods. The seven chakras resound with the powerful Egyptian mantram FE . . . UIN . . . DAGJ . . . the last word being guttural.”30 The ancient Gnostic mysteries were present in Egypt, and indeed, “All the celibate Initiates who have shone throughout the history of the centuries, practised Sexual Magic inside the pyramids with these vestals. Jesus also had to practise Sexual Magic in the pyramid of Kefren.”31 Hence “The Great Mysteries of ancient Egypt, as well as the Mysteries of Mexico, Yucatan, Eleusis, Jerusalem,

80  American Gnosis Mithra, Samothrace, etc., are all intimately related and are in fact absolutely sexual.”32 What is more, Weor asserts that through the sexual practice he advises, one creates a nonmolecular or etheric body that enters a kind of paradise-​ consciousness with or in a different (fourth, in Weor’s case) dimension: “Whoever has completely developed the Sacred Fire in fact enters Eden. The complete development of Kundalini allows us to visit Eden with the etheric body. Eden is an etheric plane, a region of an intense blue colour where only happiness reigns. Those who have learned to Love live in Eden.”33 Weor sees ancient Egyptian adepts working behind the scenes on behalf of humanity, and anticipates that they will re-​awaken and “initiate a new era of spiritual activity.”34 All who are in the “state of jinas” work in “intermolecular space,” the “fourth dimension.”35 Weor ends on an apocalyptic theme. The majority of people, regardless of their belief system, are destined for the abyss, to become cosmic dust. Only those who undertake the path that he terms “sexual magic,” and who are successful, will “become an angel.” Only they will be saved; all the others will undergo the “second death” and disappear. Thus he ends with a note of sorrow for humanity as a whole.36 Weor produced so many books over the course of his life that we cannot survey them all here. Of course, there is also considerable repetition of topics and injunctions even within books, let alone among them. That said, he wrote or spoke on a wide array of subjects, and in many cases the repetition of an earlier theme also may include clarifications, revisions, or new ways of seeing the same topic. In what follows, having looked closely at the spiritual autobiography Three Mountains, and his first book, Perfect Matrimony, we will proceed topically with an eye to our larger argument. The fact is, the complexities of Weor’s total body of work and its relations to his sources, as well as the array of subsequent groups and the wide diffusion of his thought, warrant further investigation well beyond our scope and space here. Weor provides some detailed discussion of what he terms “hypergeometry,” which is to say, multidimensionality beyond three-​dimensional space. In “The Jinn State” in The Yellow Book, he writes “Hyperspace can be demonstrated mathematically with hyper-​geometry. Jinn Science belongs to hyperspace and to hyper-​geometry . . . hyperspace permits the Gnostics to perform extraordinary acts. Jesus performed the extraordinary act of taking his body out of the sepulcher after three days, thanks to hyperspace. Since then, the resurrected Master lives with his physical body within hyperspace.”37 Thus,

The Neo-Gnosticism of Samael Aun Weor  81 We affirm that all of the spaces of the infinite space have hyper-​ ellipsoidal form. We affirm that with the forces of the mind, the human being can place his physical body in whichever revolving hyper-​ellipsoidal space he chooses. We routinely affirm that astrophysics will demonstrate to the world the existence of hyperspace. We also affirm that inside one line, hyperspatial lines exist. We affirm that the Savior of the world actually lived in hyperspace with the same physical body that he had in the holy land. We affirm that any Initiate who receives the elixir of long life dies, but does not die. We affirm that all of those who receive the elixir of long life will rise from the sepulcher on the third day with their physical body, thus taking advantage of the opportunity that hyperspace is granting us. These Initiates maintain their physical body over millions of years. The immortal Babaji and his sister Mataji have maintained their physical bodies for millions of years. They will perform great missions for humanity in the future sixth and seventh great root races.38

Weor goes on to say that “We affirm that any human being can place the physical body in Jinn State, at any moment that he wishes to, if he truly has faith in the Divine Mother,” and further, that “Any sage of the elemental art (Jinn Science) can make the great jump. The Masters of Jinn Science can leave the earth in order to live on other planets with the same physical body that they have here in the third dimension. They can take their physical body of flesh and blood to other planets. This is the great jump. Some Masters of Jinn Science have already made this great jump.”39 What Weor writes here has some clear parallels with the works of Serrano and Musès. Serrano makes similar claims about individuals living beyond usual physical boundaries, particularly regarding Hitler, whom he regards as an avatar; and Serrano also sees “the last battalion” as returning to fight in the great battle at the end of the age. But the clearest parallels are actually with the works of Musès, who also writes of higher dimensionality, and of the human potential to “jump” to live and continue to evolve in other dimensions for vast periods of time, as well as of hypernumbers and the hypergeometry of other dimensions than those with which we are familiar. Weor’s work, like Serrano’s and Musès’s, does include apocalyptic aspects. As we have seen, Weor asserts forthrightly that most human beings are destined to become “cosmic dust,” unless they undertake the Gnostic path,

82  American Gnosis and his authorship of El Libro Amarillo is listed as “Samael Aun Weor, Kalki avatara de la nueva era acuaria [Samael Aun Weor, Kalki avatar of the new Aquarian era].”40 Weor held that a new Aquarian era commenced on February 4, 1962, between 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m., and that it will bring “frightful catastrophes.” He continues, in announcing The Message of Aquarius: “It is urgent to know that life has begun its return towards the great Light. This signifies catastrophe. The earth will experience a process of planetary disintegration and reintegration. Aquarius brings terrible cataclysms.”41 Indeed, this book is itself a commentary on the Revelation of St. John—​about as apocalyptic as one can get. Weor’s apocalypticism, as perhaps is inherent in the genre, is sharply dualistic: Black and White lodges duel with one another; Black lodges lead into the abyss, and the abyss is the destination of all who are not saved through sexual magic. It is, broadly speaking, cosmic pessimism with optimism only for the saved. We have already seen that that astrology and astronomy play a role in Weor’s work. In Buddha’s Necklace, for instance, Weor discusses at length astronomical aspects of the solar system and Milky Way, and observes that “In Nirvana, the sense of family, tribe, and clan disappears because all beings consider themselves as members of one great family. Variety is unity. After a lot of observation and experience, however, all of us brothers [and sisters] have verified the existence of something similar to a family in each group of the Elohim or Prajapatis who govern the various solar systems of our galaxy. It is this sense of cosmic association within each group of Elohim that makes them like ineffable, divine, sublime families.”42 Each of the astrological planets corresponds to an angelic regent, for instance, Gabriel to the moon, Samael to Mars, and so forth; there is a “King of the World” within the earth; there is a “solar heart temple” within the sun, from which the “seven Chohans” “direct the seven great cosmic rays.”43 Much of Weor’s terminology here derives from that of the Theosophical Society or Blavatsky, including “Atlantis,” “Lemuria,” “root races,” “King of the World,” and “root races.” But some references to astrology in Weor’s work are distinctively his. Thus, later in Buddha’s Necklace, he writes If we study the book of the heavens, the marvelous zodiac, we will understand that the zodiacal sign of Aquarius governs the new Age of Aquarius. The symbol of Aquarius is the water carrier, a woman trying to intelligently mix the waters in the two buckets she carries. This symbol reminds us of sexual alchemy.

The Neo-Gnosticism of Samael Aun Weor  83 In Pisces, people were mere slaves to their sexual instincts, symbolized by two fish in the waters of life; however, in Aquarius, people must learn to intelligently combine the waters of existence and to transmute the sexual forces. Uranus, the planet, which also governs the sexual functions, governs Aquarius. It seems incongruous and absurd that some isolated individuals and certain pseudo-​esoteric schools reject the Maithuna (Sexual Magic), but nevertheless, have pretensions about initiating the New Age. Uranus is one hundred percent sexual, and in the new era governed by this planet, human beings should know, in depth, the mysteries of sex. Rejecting the Maithuna (Sexual Magic) means, in fact, pronouncing oneself against the sign of Aquarius, governed by Uranus, King of Sex.44

At the same time, planets are realms where alternate populations live, and thus “Before the dreadful catastrophe which is approaching, the heavens will pass away with a great noise and the human multitudes from Mars, Mercury, Venus and other planets will come in their cosmic ships to the planet Earth. These brethren humanities from other planets will come in order to teach us Law and Order.”45 Again, there are parallels here between the multidimensionalisms of Weor, Serrano, and Musès: in each case, the idea of beings in other dimensions that represent higher degrees of evolution and are interested in our realizing humanity’s and earth’s future potential. There is also a negative power envisioned in Weor’s work. He sees 1950 as a turning point: Since the year 1950 a gigantic world has been approaching our planet earth. This star has already fallen over the planet earth, and to this star was given the key to the bottomless pit. What we want to say with this is that the electro-​magnetic waves of this gigantic star have already touched the axis of the earth. The key to the bottomless pit was given to this gigantic world. The inferior animal psyche of this gigantic planetary bolder acts upon this terrestrial humanity by sucking, absorbing, attracting all of those billions of souls who do not have the sign of God on their foreheads. This star acts from the bottom of the abyss, attracting billions of human beings. The key to the bottomless pit was given to this star. Since the year 1950, billions of human souls have been entering into the abyss. The bottomless pit (the abyss) has been opened since the year 1950.46

84  American Gnosis This is, of course, the inverse of the idea of human evolution toward new dimensional states as emphasized by Musès. It does, however, represent a kind of “time window,” albeit a negative rather than positive one. We also must note the ways Buddhism appears in Weor’s work. Often, Weor assumes a Blavatskyan Theosophical Society version of Buddhism, which we see for instance in his references to the “henchmen of Lucifer and Ahriman,” the followers of “Bons and Dugpas, who are the enemies of the fourth path” and “have been entering into the abyss.”47 The “Bons and Dugpas,” since 1950 especially, “have been part of the great battle on the side of “the great Black Lodge and all of its left-​hand adepts” against the White Lodge. Of course, it is quite unclear what a “Dugpa” actually is. Blavatsky herself claims that “Before the advent of Tsong-​ka-​pa in the fourteenth century, the Tibetans, whose Buddhism had deteriorated and been dreadfully adulterated with the tenets of the old Bhon religion—​were all Dugpas. From that century, however, and after the rigid laws imposed upon the Gelukpas (yellow caps) and the general reform and purification of Buddhism (or Lamaism), the Dugpas have given themselves over more than ever to sorcery, immorality, and drunkenness. Since then the word Dugpas has become a synonym of “sorcerer,” “adept of black magic,” and everything vile. There are few, if any, Dugpas in Eastern Tibet, but they congregate in Bhutan, Sikkim, and the borderlands generally.”48 This definition would seem to label all Tibetan orders (including Bön) and except the Gelukpa as malicious sorcerors, painting with a very broad and unfair brush indeed. There is a Drukpa Kagyu subsect (not “dugpa”) prevalent in Bhutan, but it has nothing to do with “adepts of black magic and everything vile.”49 By the latter half of the twentieth century, popular and scholarly knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism and its various orders was much more developed than in the nineteenth century when Blavatsky was writing, but it is on Blavatsky’s work that Weor was primarily still drawing. Other terminology and legend incorporated by Blavatsky and relatively widespread in fin-​de-​siècle European occultism is also visible in the work of Weor. For instance, Weor refers to “the King of the World” in the “subterranean kingdom” of Agarthi, and to how “the population of Agarthi is waiting for the degenerate Aryan race, the earth’s current race, to perish by fire.” Then they, “the survivors of Lemuria and Atlantis, will repopulate the earth.”50 Weor also incorporates the legend of the Kingdom of Shambhala, asserting that

The Neo-Gnosticism of Samael Aun Weor  85 Jesus Christ resurrected on the third day with his body of flesh and bone and he still lives with this same body in Shamballa. The secret country of Shamballa is in the Orient, in Tibet. The Master Jesus has a temple there. Other masters live with him who have also resurrected and who have kept their bodies over the many ages of time.51

Agartha or Agarthi, the subterranean kingdom, Lemuria and Atlantis, Shambhala, all these are floating in the occultist milieu upon which Blavatasky drew and to which she and later Weor contributed. Weor makes some references to Buddhism proper. For instance, in The Mystery of the Golden Blossom, Weor discusses Zen Buddhism and its “ultimate Truth-​Prajna,” the Buddhist teaching of emptiness. Weor asserts that “When the mind is still, when the mind is in silence from within and without and in the centre, the mystic experience of Emptiness comes; however, it is obvious that Self-​Realization is something very different. Emptiness is not very easy to explain. Certainly I can tell you that it is not definable or describable.”52 He goes on to say that Zen Masters put total emphasis on Ecstasy, Samadhi, Satori and concentrate all their efforts to directly leading their disciples or chelas towards it. The Hinayana Tibetan School is different and although its two principle pillars are also “Vision and Action,” it is unquestionable that it places special solemnity on the latter and tirelessly struggles to lead its devotees to the Ninth Sphere (Sex).53

It is unclear to what “The Hinayana Tibetan School” refers, since Tibetan Buddhism, while inclusive of Theravadin and Mahayana, is broadly known as Vajrayana. In effect, Weor’s version of Buddhism converts it into a subset of Weorist multicultural sexual-​ magical neo-​ gnosticism. Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, shamanism, Kabbala, all are integrated into his system but subordinated to the all-​important key of abstaining from ejaculation. Thus for instance, “The great Black Lodge and all of its leftist hand Adepts normally abided within the distinct atomic regions of nature.” But now they are openly engaged in a battle with the White Lodge. Hence, the henchmen of Lucifer and Ariman, the followers of Bons and Dugpas, who are the enemies of the fourth path, along with the Nicolaitans and

86  American Gnosis the Tantric Anagarikas, have been entering into the abyss. Certainly, the Avitchi of the Hindustani is the same abyss. This abyss is also the Klipoth of the Qabbalah. These Klipoth are atomic, tenebrous and sublunar.54

The Weorian dualistic framework thus absorbs Christian, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Hindu, and Jewish esoteric traditions into itself, negating nearly all of them as “Black.” There are some interesting parallels between Weor’s work and some aspects of Gnosticism in late antiquity. Richard Smith recognized these parallels in one of the few scholarly works to discuss Weor’s work in any detail, “The Revival of Ancient Gnosis.”55 As Smith points out, Weor, like Basilides in late antiquity, held that our ordinary consciousness is actually an unstable collection of impulses, not a stable “I.” Weor writes, for instance, Authors who affirm the existence of a permanent or immutable ego or ”I” are sincere and well intentioned, but they are mistaken. We need to know that we have a pluralized “I” within our animal lunar bodies. Hatred, jealousy, anger, covetousness, lust, envy, pride, laziness, gluttony, etc, all emotions, all sensations, all thoughts, all sentiments, and all passions consist of small “ that are not in any way related to or coordinated with each other. There is no integral, unitotal “I,” but a multitude of wretched, screaming, quarrelsome “I’s” that fight among themselves, struggling for supremacy.56

Hence, he continues, “The truth is that the ego is a sum of various, distinct entities. There is no permanent or immutable ‘I.’ Only the pluralized ‘I’ (legion of devils) exists within our lunar bodies.”57 Smith comments: “This is proper Gnostic teaching. In the middle of the second century, the Alexandrian Gnostics Basilides and Valentinus taught the very same thing.”58 Smith points out a number of other parallels between Weor’s work and Gnostics or Gnostic practices in late antiquity, beginning with sexual practices. “Among the ancient Gnostics,” Smith writes, “similar distinctions [to those of Weor] were drawn between wrongful and spiritual sexual intercourse.”59 He goes on to give examples of Valentinians and of the Naassenes, who “drew a correspondence between a sevenfold heaven and a sevenfold arrangement of our interior anatomy,” teaching that a “saving energy propel[ing] the [seminal] seed up the spine was portrayed by the Gnostics as a serpent.”60 The parallels between this Gnostic sexual practice reported by

The Neo-Gnosticism of Samael Aun Weor  87 Hippolytus and Hindu Tantrism are evident, Smith recognizes, and both can in turn be seen as echoed by Weor’s work. Weor refers by name to various ancient Gnostics, and in fact wrote a commentary on the ancient Gnostic text Pistis Sophia, called Pistis Sophia Develado por Samael Aun Weor (Pistis Sophia Unveiled by Samael Aun Weor).61 This text is one of the few ancient Gnostic texts known prior to the discovery in 1945 of the Nag Hammadi library, and the most well-​known copy has been held by the British Museum since 1795.62 It was published in English translation and commented upon by G. R. S. Mead in 1896, and was thus made widely available, particularly in the Theosophical Society orbit.63 This translation is quoted more or less verbatim by Weor, with Weor’s commentary following each excerpt. The original publication by Mead is over 440 pages. Weor’s version of the Pistis Sophia at this point won’t surprise us, but as in a rock song, one can always use more cowbell. The early passages from the text quoted by Weor are cosmological, and he explains, for instance, the “three Amens” mentioned in the text as “the three weors,” meaning “the seven spirits before the Throne of the Lamb,” and the “seven planetary spirits.”64 Weor presents the following selection from Pistis Sophia: And it came to pass then, on the fifteenth day of the moon in the month Tybi, which is the day on which the moon is full, on that day then, when the sun had come forth in his going, that there came forth behind him a great light-​power shining most exceedingly, and there was no measure to the light conjoined with it. For it came out of the Light of lights, and it came out of the last mystery, which is the four and twentieth mystery, from within without,—​those which are in the orders of the second space of the First Mystery. And that light-​power came down over Jesus and surrounded him entirely, while he was seated removed from his disciples and he had shone most exceedingly, and there was no measure for the light which was on him.

On it he comments: The fifteenth day of the Moon is related with Lucifer. The code of Lucifer is the Arcanum A.Z.F., the sexual force. Unquestionably, the creative power of the Logos is in the creative organs. The splendorous, interior, profound Sun shines on the path of the Initiate.

88  American Gnosis The luminous sexual force shines most exceedingly in the aura of the Christified Ones. In the final synthesis, the sexual force comes from the light of lights, which is precisely the Logos.65

The original text is clearly about illumination through the light of Christ, and the commentary, as one may expect, is entirely about Weor’s particular teachings, referring to Lucifer, to the sexual force, the creative organs, and so forth. Thus, while in this posthumously published work and elsewhere during his lengthy body of work, Weor did refer to ancient Gnostics and sects, as well as (obviously) to the Pistis Sophia itself, his commentary on the translation by G. R. S. Mead is not about the original text itself; it is rather about an entirely Weorist view of that text, and the reiteration of various themes and ideas that we have seen elsewhere in his work. And in fact many of those themes—​for instance, the positive nature of Lucifer or Baphomet, the “Red Christ,” and much else—​likely would have been shocking or very strange for a third-​or fourth-​century Gnostic reader. But we should bear in mind that we are looking here at neo-​gnosticism, that is, a fundamentally new, contemporary religious movement for which the Mead edition of the Pistis Sophia is more grist for the mill. Neo-​gnosticism is emphatically a contemporary religious phenomenon, and here not understood as a riff on ancient Gnosticism but something essentially new and quite different, even if it may share some commonalities. This is clear from the anonymous prologue to Pistis Sophia Develado: This book fills one of the greatest necessities of the world. It is the forefather of a new civilization, of a new culture, and the re-​establishment of the holy Gnostic Church on the face of the Earth. You are close to the great cataclysm. The times of the end have already arrived. The struggle of the elements will begin to break loose in the diverse places of our planet. Be aware as a watchman in the epoch of war. You must put an end to the Kundartiguador organ, and with it, the ‘I’, the ego, will definitely be destroyed, and the Being will be born. Thus, you will achieve the inner self-​realization.66

In these remarks we do see many characteristic themes in Weor’s work, in particular the apocalyptic expectations regarding Weor’s revelation, the end

The Neo-Gnosticism of Samael Aun Weor  89 times, “the cataclysm,” being in an “epoch of war,” as well as a prophesy of coming new era with a new Gnostic Church. These themes, along of course with Weor’s signature emphasis on sexual intercourse without ejaculation, by many accounts came to characterize the Gnostic movement as it developed and expanded organizationally and globally over the decades following Weor’s death in 1977. While we do not have space here to discuss all of the byzantine figures, groups, and controversies of Weorist neo-​gnosticism, we will offer at least some indications, with an expectation that some industrious future scholar will catalogue and detail as many of them as possible, ideally organized with a timeline. In such an enterprise, one probably will need either old-​time fold-​out diagrams in a printed book, or elaborate family-​tree-​style diagram images in digital form. Here, we will only make some preliminary notes about organizational succession and influence. Weorist neo-​ gnosticism, as one might expect, is more prevalent in Spanish-​speaking countries, and especially in Latin America. But the various organizations that developed or continued to develop after Weor’s death are worldwide. Scholar PierLuigi Zoccatelli writes that when he and a colleague attended a neo-​gnostic retreat in Italy to do research on the Weorite “galaxy” of movements and influences, in the summer of 2000, there were more than 1000 participants.67 There are numerous Weorite organizations, but, for instance, there are five featured in an “esoteric pentagram of the Gnostic associations” in an article discussing Weorite neo-​gnosticism in Columbia by Carolina María Tamayo Jaramillo and Johann F. W. Hasler: “1. la Iglesia Gnóstica [IG], 2. el Movimiento Gnóstico Cristiano Universal [MGCU], 3. el Partido Obrero Socialista Cristiano Latino-​Americano [POSCLA], 4. la Asociatión de Estudias de Antropológicos y Culturales [EGACAC], and 5. el Instituto de Caridad Universal [ICU].”68 Glorian Press publishes the books of Samael Aun Weor, which can also be found in free English translations as well as in a comprehensive sequential edition in Spanish, available for free in PDF form.69 There are books by Weor available in paperback or hardcover formats for sale, but the widespread free availability of these books both in Spanish and in many other languages, because Weor formally waived copyright to his works, has undoubtedly contributed a great deal to the breadth of the neo-​ gnostic movement especially in Latin America, but also in the United States and elsewhere. There are multiple neo-​gnostic schools in the United States, as well as across Latin America and Europe.70 Some groups list themselves

90  American Gnosis as “monastery and convent”; others do not use the term “Gnostic”; some are listed as churches, and others not.71 So far as I know, there is no comprehensive mapping of the various schools, organizations, nonprofit statuses, affiliations, and disaffiliations. There is, in this area, a great deal of scholarship to be done. The primary successor leaders of the Gnostic Movement as a whole were “dos maestros principales: el maestro Rabolú ye el maestro Gargha Kuichines,” after the death of Weor in 1977.72 Rabolú (Joaquín Enrique Amórtegui Valbuena, 1926–​ 2000), was author of Hercólubus o planeta rojo (1998). Julio Medina Vizcaíno (Gargha Kuichines, 1908–​1994) was very active in the Movimiento Gnóstico Cristiano Universal. He is listed as a “member of the secret Agartha society of Tibet,” a “living Buddha,” and in August, 1978, he read a letter said to be from Weor at an event in Venezuela in which he announced he was the “successor patriarch” to Weor, but “Tal designación es ignorada y rechazada por la viuda del Maestro Samael, V. M. Litelantes, y por el V.M. Rabolú [This designation was ignored and rejected by Weor’s widow, Litelantes, and by Rabolú].”73 There were many schisms to come. In a single listing on an anticult website, for instance, there are 23 successor groups listed:



1. Asociación Cultural Gnóstica Samael Aun Weor A.C. 2. Asociación Gnóstica de Estudios de Antropología y Ciencias A.C. 3. Escuela Gnóstica Universal A.C. 4. Sociedad Gnóstica Samael Aun Weor, o Escuela de Antropología Gnóstica A.C. 5. Movimiento Gnóstico 6. Movimiento Gnóstico, A.C. 7. Instituto Gnóstico de Antropología 8. Instituto Cultural Quetzalcóatl 9. IGCA Iglesia Gnóstica Católica de Argentina) Obispo Daniel Alfazak, Osvaldo Alfazak y (Julio Kuchinsky—​expulsado) 10. Movimiento Gnóstico Cristiano Universal de Rabolú. 11. AGEACAC (Asociación Gnóstica de Estudios de Antropología y Ciencia, Asociación Civil), dirigida por una de las hijas de Samael luego de separarse de su madre Litelantes. 12. AGEAC (Asociación Gnóstica de Estudios Antropológicos, Científicos y Culturales), de Oscar Uzcátegui.

The Neo-Gnosticism of Samael Aun Weor  91 13. IGAT (Instituto Gnóstico de Antropología de Tailandia, de Osiris Gómez Garro, Presidente, Director Mundial y Representante Legal de las Instituciones Gnósticas difundidas por todo el mundo. 14. IGA (Instituto Gnóstico de Antropología), de uno de los hijos de Samael al morir Litelantes. 15. CIAG (Círculo de Investigaciones de Antropología Gnóstica), pertenecían al IGA pero se separaron luego de morir Litelantes, debido a que se pelearon con el hijo de Samael.CIAG (Círculo de Investigaciones de Antropología Gnóstica), pertenecían al IGA pero se separaron luego de morir Litelantes, debido a que se pelearon con el hijo de Samael. 16. CEG (Centro de Estudios Gnósticos),de Ernesto Baron, luego de separarse del IGA o del AGEACAC. 17. Asociación Gnóstica Pistis Sophia, de Cloris Rojo, ex-​esposa de Ernesto Baron. 18. Iglesia Gnóstica, fundada por Gargha Kuichines. 19. Iglesia Gnóstica separada de la de Gargha Kuichines, del “maestro Hi Shing.” 20. Iglesia Gnóstica Cristiana Universal 21. Instituto Cultural Gnóstico del maestro “Lakshmi” (discípulo de Gargha Kuichines), Tahuil, Luz Alba, Sardis y Liz Minerva 22. Iglesia Tao Cristica Universal de Kelium Zeus Induceus y su hijo Joab Bator Beor (la encarnación de Samael). 23. IGEOM (Iglesia Gnóstica Esenia de la Orden de Melchisedek) de K. Arkaom Zanoni Phidluz, el Tawa Manu (ex-​discípulo de Kelium Zeus Induceus)74 Many neo-​gnostic organizations are decentralized, and as a result there are numerous subgroups and suborganizations that in turn are very challenging to track. But anticult organizations have done at least some initial charting, albeit not necessarily always entirely accurately, not least since the landscape is constantly in flux. There are numerous byways to investigate. For instance, in the early 2000s, Mark Pritchard under the name Belzebuub organized a Gnostic movement in Australia, and without doubt there is a significant story here to be told. In the 1990s, Pritchard had been a very active organizer for the Universal Christian Gnostic Movement (UCGM) in the United Kingdom, and he returned to his native Australia to organize the UCGM there. About this

92  American Gnosis time, he announced that his teaching name was Belzebuub, meaning that he had reached the same degree of initiatory knowledge as Weor and Rabolú. This announcement was not greeted with universal approbation in the organization. Pritchard then went on to found a splinter group in Australia called the Gnostic Movement, which with online and in-​person courses reportedly became quite successful. But apparently due to controversy and bad publicity among other reasons, in 2010, Pritchard had ceased to teach publicly as Belzebuub. On a website devoted to explaining Pritchard’s history, former followers outlined the history of the movement he founded, beginning with the anticult movement (ACM) and its tendencies. Gnostic Movement courses alone reached more than 90,000 people, former students say. The website offers a spirited defense of Pritchard and especially of the Gnostic Movement in Australia, going through the accusations against the group. For instance, the Gnostic Movement was accused of engaging in mind control through sleep deprivation, but in reality, former students of the group say, they were engaged in collective efforts at astral projection by going to bed early on Saturday night, and setting alarms to wake them up at certain times so that they could all attempt astral projection at the same time.75 The authors term the accusations of sleep deprivation and attempted mind control as “specious and absurd,” being examples of “anti-​cult-​movement ideology” in practice.76 They vouch for the ethics of the Gnostic Movement against various insinuations or accusations, and give personal examples of the positive effects of the Gnostic Movement in their lives. We would be remiss if we did not also mention the pervasive efforts, within Weorian neo-​gnosticism, to identify itself with Tibetan Buddhism in particular, and more broadly to Buddhism. Weor claimed special past-​life connections to Tibetan Buddhism and as we also saw earlier, went so far as to identify himself as the Buddha Maitreya. This effort to identify with Tibetan Buddhism is also found elsewhere in the subsequent Weorite galaxy. To give an example: one of the organizations mentioned earlier is AGEAC, or the Asociación Geophilosofica de Estudios Antropológicos y Culturales, the head of which is Óscar Uzcategui Q., who identifies himself as V.M. Kwen Khan Khu. AGEAC is linked to VOPUS, the “digital magazine” of AGEAC, and to “Radio Maitreya,” its broadcasting function, as well as to a Samael website.77 When we go to the VOPUS site, we find there among numerous others an online book entitled The Answers Given By A Lama, attributed to Khwen

The Neo-Gnosticism of Samael Aun Weor  93 Khan Khu, from 1977. The book itself is available for sale, but is also free via a sleek format that does not allow downloads but does allow online paginated reading.78 The first section of the book is an encomium to “Master Samael Aun Weor,” who is extolled as having “reached the category of Solar Man,” attained “integration with his particular inner Real Being, called Samael,” the “Regent of Mars,” the “Lord of Force,” endowed by the “Sacred College of Initiates” with the “honorable and delicate title of Avatar,” “a messenger of the Avalokiteshvara,” so that “the Universal White Brotherhood also granted him the rank of Buddha Maitreya.”79 In addition, he was “a true Jivanmukta, liberated spirit,” who remembered “all his past lives.”80 The book goes on, with an apparently channeled preface by Weor, to declare itself a “magnificent work” that “informs the western world about unknown transcendental issues in its totality for today’s humanity.”81 Answers Given By A Lama begins with “My Return to Tibet,” but it is presented as a somewhat unusual return, since it begins: “It is time! A very special Lady-​Adept within the Sacred Order of Tibet exclaimed, saying ‘Die! Die! Die!,’ ” and then moves at once to quoting from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.82 After a few pages, the author resumes with recollections of “that ineffable patio and that sacred table where the Nirmanakayas of Compassion sit,” of “those working halls and all the multiple and varied ineffable corridors where the Adepts of Light circulate.”83 He then recalls seeing “the red soldiers [of Chinese invasion] “at the very gates of the sacred pagodas, cynically mocking what they do not understand.”84 This is probably as good a place as any to observe that the name assumed by Óscar Uzcategui, Khwen Khan Khu, is not a Tibetan name, and that Tibetan architecture is probably not best described as “pagodas,” however ineffable its corridors might be. There are some unusual admixtures of Tibetan Buddhist terminology with Hindu or nineteenth-​century occultist language. Thus the next chapter, “The Sacred Order of Tibet,” begins by citing the French occultist Papus, and we are told that “the Bhagavan Aclaiva, the Great Maharishi, is the secret regent of the mysterious order.”85 And further, that “through the Holy Eight, the sacred sign of infinite, any chela, on the condition of upright conduct, can place himself into direct contact with this secret organization.”86 He then discusses the “seven trials” he underwent in Tibet, under the guidance of the “eight Kabirs.”87 And he mentions “Master Luxemil,” before discussing his being flogged by a “Lady” “with the sacred whip.”88 It is perhaps superfluous, but still worth mentioning I suppose that literally none of this has anything to do with Tibetan Buddhism as it is traditionally understood—​the terminology,

94  American Gnosis the concepts, everything is foreign to Tibetan Buddhism itself.89 So what is this? In a series of questions and answers, we read in answer to the question how the author is a Tibetan lama, that “I was once reincarnated in Tibet,” and “even if I have lost that Tibetan body that I once had, my profound inner Being continues to be a Tibetan lama,” and “it is obvious that, as a Spirit, as a Being, I always attend the meetings of the Sacred Order of Tibet.”90 He goes on to declare that obviously he is immortal and “owns” a mummified body in a “state of catalepsy” in the Egyptian Valley of Kings, and that his guru is “Adolfito” from “Lemuria.”91 Interestingly, given his prominence in the works of Miguel Serrano, Hitler makes an appearance in this text. We are told that Hitler was “doing well, esoterically speaking,” but was “diverted” by the “Dad-​Dugpa clan—​Black Magicians of red cap.” Still, the “word Führer,” we are told, translates in Persian to “incarnation of the Logos.”92 We are also informed that a “very select group” “that lives in the Himalayas” has access to “interplanetary ships.”93 There is some subsequent discussion of intergalactic ships and aliens, as well as predictions of the Latin American and global future.94 I provide this brief excursion into details concerning one of the many Weorian neo-​gnostic groups because it illustrates some important aspects of the movement more broadly. As we explore different groups and leading figures, we see a recurrent theme that harks back to the Theosophical Society of Blavatsky, of absorbing Tibetan Buddhism into a European occultist narrative and to do that, constructing a new version (in this case, a “Sacred Order of Tibet”) effectively having nothing at all to do with Tibetan Buddhism itself. This leads, naturally, to the question of why. Why would a neo-​gnostic need to identify as Tibetan, even more, as a “Tibetan lama,” while giving not the slightest indication of substantial knowledge of that tradition? The answer is to be found in religious marketplace theory. The Central and South American religious landscape is a hotbed of innovation, with many new religious groups developing or taking root from Mexico to Brazil and Chile. Of course, Tibetan Buddhism has taken root as well, with established sanghas in exactly these countries. In this larger context of religious marketplace competition, establishing oneself as a “Tibetan lama” neo-​gnostic emerging from a European occultist milieu can be understood as a competitive move to take some of the Buddhist turf as well. While this might seem effective in a marketplace in which many in the audience know little of actual Tibetan Buddhism, as broader and more detailed knowledge have become

The Neo-Gnosticism of Samael Aun Weor  95 widely available, and actual Nyingmapa, Kagyu, Sakya, and Geluk as well as Bön centers and practices have been established in Latin America, it is very likely that posing as an occultist neo-​gnostic “Tibetan lama” might not be as effective as hoped, and might even turn out to have a boomerang effect. There’s no doubt that neo-​gnosticism is a global phenomenon at this point. I first encountered the new religious Weorian neo-​gnostic movement when I was living in Germany and teaching at a German university some decades ago. In my open lectures at the university, I discussed esoteric religions, and when local flyers appeared that advertised talks on sexuality and gnosis, a handful of undergraduate students drew my attention to them, so they and I made our way there. At that time, I’d never heard of Weor’s books, or of his Latin American neo-​gnostic movement. There were several representatives of the movement there, and a very small audience. After the talk, I walked back with my students, and asked what they thought. They expressed an uneasy sense that there was something awry with the group’s representatives, that they seemed almost like automatons. They wondered if it was a cult. I found their responses at the time memorable and now, many years later, I find myself writing about the very same group. But it is a good question exactly how wide-​ reaching Weorian neo-​ gnosticism is. That depends in part on how one counts members or practitioners. A major website in the tradition claims that there are millions.95 Certainly there are numerous organizations, each with its own membership and particular emphases; but then there is the widespread availability of free books and introductory courses and audio/​video resources, as well as public classes and other forms of outreach. Of all the figures and movements related to neo-​gnosticism in this book, Weorian forms are the most active in outreach or proselytizing, especially in Spanish and Portuguese-​speaking spheres. Online exploration inevitably will reveal fervent defenses of and anticult attacks on various neo-​gnostic figures and groups, as well as people who claim to have been harmed or benefited, or who have family members that claim to have been harmed or benefited. There is no question that Weorian neo-​gnosticism is a significant area for future research and religious mapping. What I am providing here are primarily introductory remarks to what clearly calls for more detailed investigation across numerous linguistic and cultural spheres.

6 The Enigmatic Dr. Musès Over the years, I have published a number of books that broke new ground because what interests me is exploration. I am drawn to topics that call for investigation, and sometimes mapping, as they represent relatively new scholarly terrain. This was true of American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions, certainly, also of The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance, The New Inquisitions, and American Gurus, as well as of books on Christian theosophy like Wisdom’s Children. What you are reading now, however, as far as I know, is entirely new: this is the first scholarly discussion of the life work of one of the more remarkable figures I have encountered. Charles Musès (1919–​2000) was born in New Jersey, and had a relatively impoverished childhood. He went on to study mathematics and chemistry, graduating with a Bsc in 1938 from City University of New York, thereafter doing graduate work at Columbia University, where he received a PhD for his doctoral dissertation on the mysticism of Dionysius Andreas Freher (1649–​ 1728), an English mystic in the tradition of Jacob Boehme (1575–​1624). To this day, Musés’s book remains the only major study of Freher. In it, and in his notes on Freher’s work in the Jacob Boehme Society Quarterly, which he edited in 1954–​1956, we see many of the themes that he developed in later life. To begin to understand Musès, we must first sketch his initial subject matter. In a series of books, including Theosophia: Hidden Dimensions of Christianity (1994) and Wisdom’s Children: A Christian Esoteric Tradition (1999), I introduced and surveyed a gnostic current in Christianity that centers on the exceptional figure of Jacob Böhme, a Protestant, who published a series of books that illuminated different aspects of his spiritual realizations and vision. To put it succinctly, his work combined insights into cosmology and metaphysics, drawing on all the main spiritual currents of his time, including alchemy, astrology, and mysticism. Some works, like Aurora, are more cosmological in focus, while others, like Dialogues on the Supersensual Life, are clearly metaphysical and very much aligned with the mysticism of an earlier German gnostic, Meister Eckhart (1260–​1328).

American Gnosis. Arthur Versluis, Oxford University Press. © Arthur Versluis 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197653210.003.0007

The Enigmatic Dr. Musès  97 There are two aspects of this Christian theosophic tradition that are especially relevant here, in the context of Musès’s life work. The first is that in Böhme’s works, but even more clearly in the English theosophic tradition as represented by John Pordage (1600–​1681) as well as Dionysius Andreas Freher, the spiritual process of ripening or awakening is understood via planetary astrological symbolism. In astrology, the planets are understood in their traditional way as archetypal psychological constellations of qualities represented in glyphs. Thus Mars is red, the warrior, representing courage, and so forth. The second is that in this theosophic tradition, there is a special kind of time that I term in Wisdom’s Children “hierohistory.”1 First, the alchemical process using planetary symbols. In his book on Freher, Musès summarizes the Böhmean process of spiritual alchemy, which is based on the planetary archetypes. The seven planets can be understood in different sequences, each of which have explanatory power in different ways. For instance, the combination of Saturn, Mercury, and Mars can be understood as symbolizing selfish constriction (Saturn) into discursive reason (Mercury) and impetuousness or passion (Mars), warring with one another.2 These three can be seen as opposite the group of Luna (potentiality, usability, releasement), Jupiter (beneficence), and Venus (joy and harmony), who together soften and transform the harsher male planets. And in the center between these groups is Sol, or the Sun.3 The process of spiritual alchemy is for the power of divine light to penetrate and transform these planetary energies, which in our fallen self are at war, into a higher unity. How does this process work? Through the transmutation of wrath by love.4 In Wisdom’s Children, I discuss this alchemical process, giving the planetary pairings as Saturn-​Moon, Mercury-​Jupiter, Mars-​Venus, Sun/​Sun, Venus-​Mars, Jupiter-​Mercury, and Moon-​Saturn, and remarking that “we are looking here at a process of psychological transmutation, a movement inward that does not reject any of the planetary qualities, but rather incorporates them in a dyadic harmony most closely akin to music.”5 After going on to discuss some of Freher’s remarkable illustrations of spiritual principles, I go on to observe that Christian “theosophy is a path by which our energies become more and more harmonized, turned from wrath and separation to love and union.”6 Thus, “just as in some Asian Tantric illustrations we see male and female deities in sexual congress, bearing all kinds of symbolic attributes, so too in these European illustrations we see male and female symbols in dyadic relationships.”7

98  American Gnosis Obviously this process can be understood in terms of male-​ female relationships and marriage, and here the primary planetary symbols are Venus (light) and Mars (fire) in the light of Sol (the sun). A sexual relationship can be understood here as the meeting and union of woman (Venus) and man (Mars) but rather than the two being at war, they are harmoniously joined, as fire and light. This is the “tincturing” of Mars and Venus by mutual love, so that envy or strife is replaced with mutual underlying will toward understanding one another, “with each contributing something.”8 In brief, Musès writes, there is “no more effective way” to realize this alchemical process than “through the harmonious and concordant relationship of man and woman, each learning through understanding and respecting the distinctive nature of the other, not only in marriage but in social and business relations as well.”9 The other relevant topic I discuss in Wisdom’s Children is what I term “hierohistory.” There, I discuss “the theosophic understanding of time, space, and eternity,” and how “theosophy consists in . . . transcending temporal and spatial restrictions.”10 “In essence,” “theosophic discipline allows one to enter into eternity, through trance states and visions to enter into realms that exist without the restrictions of time and space to which we are accustomed.”11 Theosophy focuses on and theosophers often record the exact dates and times “at which time and eternity intersect.” These may be specific days, but also could be spans of years over specific dates.12 These dates and times of Sophianic revelations are what I term “hierohistory,” that is, the history of revelation (hiero-​). Hierohistory has some precedent in other sources. For instance, drawing on occultists of his time, Rudolph Steiner advanced a hierohistorical perspective concerning dates and the present age. A pivotal date for him was 1879; he thought that humanity had moved into a new era governed by the archangel Michael, a time of world spiritual combat.13 Henry Corbin also discussed hierohistory in the context of Ismaili gnosis, providing an illuminating and unique study of esoteric Shi’ite perspectives and insights on how time can be a field of angelic or daemonic spiritual revelation.14 While he definitely knew Corbin’s work, and probably knew Steiner’s, they appear not to have much if any influence on Musès; his work drew from entirely different sources. It is a little uncanny for me to go back to my own work and cite these themes and specific passages from decades ago, but they are specifically relevant to understanding the life work of Dr. Musès, who, we need to recognize, developed in later life these precise two themes, which are very clearly and

The Enigmatic Dr. Musès  99 explicitly found in the Christian theosophic tradition as Musès outlined it in his doctoral dissertation. As author of Illumination on Böhme, and as editor and author of the Jacob Boehme Society Quarterly, producing special issues from 1954–​1956, Musès was arguably the most deeply versed in Christian theosophic spiritual alchemy and hierohistory of anyone in the United States at the time, and quite possibly in the world. While he did not continue to work in this Christian tradition as such, he definitely drew upon it in his later work, for which it provides a foundation. In the 1950s, Musès traveled to Egypt, where he focused on ancient Egyptian monuments and especially on hieroglyphics and Egyptian religious symbolism as it relates to spiritual development and continuity of human existence after physical death. He had begun to investigate hieroglyphics and codes, he said, already at the age of nine,15 and in the 1980s and 1990s especially, ancient Egyptian religion had an important place in his worldview. In 1961, he published a translation (with Chang Chen Chi), of Esoteric Teachings of the Tibetan Tantra, which also included one of the first texts discussing Mahamudra meditation practice to appear in English.16 He also published an epic poem, The Wings of Myrahi, in 1960.17 During the 1950s and 1960s, he also continued to develop his mathematical and scientific knowledge and interests, especially cybernetics, resulting in publications that included a coauthored book, Aspects of the Theory of Artificial Intelligence (1966) as well as articles on topics including “Systemic Stability and Cybernetic Control,” and “The First Nondistributive Algebras with relation to Optimization and Control Theory.”18 He held a number of scientific research positions, including Director, Mathematics and Morphology Research Centre (Switzerland, with editorial and research offices in the USA and Canada) from 1966-​2000. Dr Musès was also invited to join the Directorate of the World Organisation of Systems and Cybernetics, which is a federation of organizations and institutions from over 50 countries. He became the director of research and held the post until his death in 2000.19 Now, if you go back and reread the last two paragraphs, you might conclude that they refer to two different people. Indeed, from the memorials in the journal Kybernetes, one can see that the scientists who eulogized him after his death describe his dissertation and by extension, book on Freher and Böhme’s mysticism, as demonstrating his knowledge of “symbolic logic.” And in fact, this is true. What’s more, a close analysis of his commentary on Freher’s mystical diagrams reveals that Musès included some very interesting

100  American Gnosis elements, such as mathematical formulas and some multidimensional geometrical speculation as well. For instance, in the Jacob Boehme Society Quarterly, he writes that “Transcendence springs out of immanence, just as the three dimensions of length, breath, and depth are rooted in the point, which contains them all, as their origin. Mathematically, the equation of this diagram is x³ +​y³ +​z³ =​0, the so-​called point-​sphere, which, like so many great mathematical expressions, has hitherto gone uninterpreted.”20 In other words, Musès from very early on is quite comfortable working both in religious and in scientific or mathematical language at the same time. To give but one more example, also from the Jacob Boehme Society Quarterly: Musès is commenting on a Freher image of four funnels each moving outward in four directions from a central point. As part of his larger commentary, he observes that since 4/​3 π r3 divided by the volume of a cone, (1/​3) π r3h yields 4r/​h, it is clear that the four right cones shown in this diagram, with radii (r) equal to their altitudes (h), contain together the volume of a sphere of the same radius, the unity from which the four elements were derived.21

He goes on to remark that this is in fact the solution to the problem of how to “square the circle,” and adds in a note that this squaring of the circle goes back to the “schools of initiation in the ancient world.” The ancient Mysteries, “before their corruption and consequent loss of knowledge of their own symbols . . . had as their unfolding objective the solution of the mysteries of life itself, including birth and death.”22 In other words, even in his relatively early work, Musès moved fluidly between mathematics and spirituality, even within a few lines, because for him these were integrated. During the 1960s and 1970s, in addition to engaging with scientists, Dr. Musès began to edit and publish works in the area of consciousness. From 1968 to 1973, he edited The Journal for the Study of Consciousness. Selected articles from this journal were later published in the book Consciousness and Reality (1972), coedited by Arthur M. Young, one of whose achievements was inventing the Bell helicopter.23 Young and a number of others went on to found the Institute for the Study of Consciousness in Berkeley, California. Musès was part of their network, and some of them contributed to the book. Musès’s work in this area is distinctive, and while we can’t go into it in great depth here, it is important to survey it. In 1986, he published Destiny and Control in Human Systems: Studies in the Interconnectedness of Time

The Enigmatic Dr. Musès  101 (Chronotopology). In the beginning, he acknowledges “stimulating conversation and correspondence” with such figures as Ralph Abraham, John Casti, Paul Halmos, Marco Schutzenberger as well as Joseph Campbell, Francis Huxley and Jeffrey Burton Russell.24 This is an interesting mix of social scientists, scientists, and well-​known scholars of religion. This book synthesizes a wide range of sources, including religious ones, but expressed largely in scientific language. Destiny and Control is a very complex book that proceeds allusively and inductively, so it is not immediately clear, particularly to a general reader, where the sequential chapters and topics are moving. If, however, one is familiar with the spectrum of Musès’s work from his work on Böhme as well as the work that followed this one under the general name of “The Lion Path,” then one can see much more clearly what he was doing in Destiny and Control. In essence, in this book and in his scientific/​cybernetics works more broadly, Musès was expressing in scientific language what usually is expressed in religious or spiritual language. Essentially, Musès rejects simplistic quantitative, physicalist, or linear perspectives that so predominate still in contemporary science, in favor of a qualitative, nonlinear and nonphysicalist approach to understanding the profound mysteries of time. This new approach he terms “chronotopology,” that is, mapping time. He rejects also a simplistic phenomenology, on the grounds that its subjectivity effectively makes it merely a kind of cancelling out of materialistic premises without providing a higher basis of understanding beyond simplistic materialism.25 Hence his approach is not merely subjective but rather seeks to apply a scientific methodology and language to understand time as inclusive of nonmaterialistic, one could say, spiritual knowledge. At this point, Musès turns to syntax (meaning-​ making), which differentiates man from computers/​machines. Man is best understood not as homo sapiens (“wise” is a bit presumptuous) but as homo symbolens, as humanity is without peer on earth as symbol-​maker. The etymology of “symbol” reflects a “throw” (bolon), “with” (sym) in a particular direction, while “diabolic” refers to a “throw” against (dia), that is, that which opposes or counters, and “parabolic” refers to a “throw” in a parallel, higher or metaphoric level or way. A diabolizing approach is one that uses language to obscure or hide, to encode, through jargon for instance.26 These syntactic distinctions correspond to a later distinction between primary vital living systems and parasites, and we will explore this aspect of his work shortly.

102  American Gnosis Symbolic language is nonlinear, or “radiative” rather than simply descriptive or durational, and opens up into higher dimensions of meaning/​understanding. This corresponds to time (chronos) in that a moment of time encompasses all of space, including nonphysical dimensions, symbolized mathematically by −1, in that −1 is greater than and includes all other negative numbers after it.27 At this point in his discussion, Musès brings in Jacob Böhme, and in addition to him, alludes to the most profound works in the European gnostic tradition from Iamblichus and Porphyry through the Chaldean Oracles, the Hermetica, and Renaissance Platonism.28 This gnostic tradition philosophically expresses the transcendence of linear time that Musès is exploring here. Here, Musès briefly waxes lyrical. Poetry (and music) have the capacity to “radiate multidimensionally” and thus overcome “slow sequence” to generate “ecstasy of the mind.”29 True poetry, he continues, “ennobles by upliting, literally lifting one’s awareness of of the time line into a blossoming, paradisical time in which strict law and sequence need no longer be imposed. By a more sublime power of affinity, each thing joys in its appropriate place for its current stage of development, yet all still growing.”30 In short, “the message is that it is reachable, the land of all the rest, the best: the place where all the numbers are at rest.”31 Space and ordinary discursive language extend, but radiative language in-​tends, and corresponds to “negadimensionality,” because time, like meaning, is a “radial power.”32 This is why illumination or enlightenment come in a flash—​such an experience is immediate radial knowledge or gnosis corresponding to the negative dimensionality that is not subject to discursive or linear time. The point of symbols is precisely to point; they are a doorway through which we can walk “to a far better place than the merely symbolic.”33 In the following chapter, Musès discusses what he terms “chronosymbiosis,” meaning a symbiotic resonance theory of causal connections. He offers some biological examples, including grunions spawning according to the lunar cycles, as well as the palolo worm, but his focus ultimately is the connections between cosmic cycles and humanity, with a particular emphasis on astrology with reference to the quantitative studies of Michel Gauquelin.34 Astrology can be understood through wave theory as a combination of mathematics, physics, and resonance patterns in human life. Musès emphasizes the distinctive nature of temporal topology, which is fundamentally different from that of space. “The topology of time,” he writes, is highly dynamic, “governed by very interactive (nonlinear) resonances

The Enigmatic Dr. Musès  103 which are qualitatively released, maintained, and transformed. The only appearance of the quantitative aspect would be as ratios of intensity and, at the end of an analysis, as a set of predicted time spans for the occurrence of the kinds of events sought in the analysis.”35 Such an approach is found in “ancient Egyptian and Iranian traditions” concerning “an entire doctrine of the nature and meaning of time, inextricably bound up with the way our present universe arose, now functions, and will turn out.”36 In short, time is nonlinear and radial. In his next chapter, Musès explores higher symbolic language as a means of expressing qualitative distinctions, and while he recognizes for instance the three gunas of Samkhya tradition (tamas, rajas, and sattva), his primary sources are astrology and alchemy as mediated through the language of Jacob Böhme, but translated into modern objective language.37 He describes astrological symbols in the context of an alchemical process of transformation as a “basic set of seven oscillatory-​circuit elements” in a circuitry diagram, the energy circuit marked by “psyglyphs” or symbols of psychodynamism.38 These psyglyphs may be understood via twelve sets of circumstances, which correspond to the twelve astrological houses and their respective purviews, ranging from the personal (first) through the fourth (home) through the partner (seventh), to the unconscious (twelfth). In the subsequent chapter, Musès explores cosmology, in particular the origin and nature of evil, a theme important in the work of Böhme and, of course, Freher. His primary source for this discussion, though, is not only Böhme’s work, but also a confirmatory work of Yemeni Isma’ili mysticism that explicates a very similar system of a cosmic fall that resulted in the world of suffering we now inhabit. Of course there are complementary pairs like female/​male, day/​night, finite/​infinite, and so forth, but with a cosmic disjunction like that discussed in ancient Gnosticism, in the Yemenite Isma’ili tradition, and in Böhme’s work, we have a new development, that of “host/​ parasite.”39 Our cosmos of duration and suffering came to exist out of emanation and as part of that process, out of a fall from the unmanifest “pleroma” (a Gnostic term of course) into the “hepton” of the seven planets. Thus we must navigate out of the fallen cosmos and time into eternity, which is radial and immediate, allowing us to blossom and realize our true nature through love.40 At this point, Musès leaves behind scientific and mathematical language entirely and moves into spiritual discourse. We need to expel our persistent error of “lovelessness” and “practice maintaining the serenity and inner

104  American Gnosis harmony that can invoke the love-​wisdom energy under all conditions.” We need to “seek communion with beings of evolutionary stages beyond ours,” so that they are thus “able to help us and imbue us with inner strength, inspiration, and hope.”41 In brief, we need to return through completion of the stages represented by the seven planets to restore the primordial order prior to the fall, “to return to its lost higher octave of beginning.”42 While a good part of this section of his book is devoted to sophisticated cosmological analysis in historical context, Musès then moves to the observations of William James and his Varieties of Religious Experience: James recognized that we humans have a fundamental “uneasiness,” “a sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand.” However, “the solution is a sense that we are saved from wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers.”43 James continues that the solution is to develop our consciousness so “that this higher part is coterminous and continuous with a More of the same quality, which is operative in the universe.”44 Musès’s is not a simple explanation, nor a superficial one, but it is an ancient one, at least as ancient as Egypt while being aligned with the perspective of William James. Although Musès elucidates an abstruse cosmological doctrine, he also points toward a path intuited by William James as a way forward and out of the trap in which fallen humanity finds itself, whereby it is subject to parasitism in the forms of lovelessness and its bastard child, tyranny. In his final chapter, Musès discusses “Social Applications” of his book’s argument, and in particular, two essential principles: human individuality or uniqueness, and timing, both of which are typically ignored by systems theory. Human uniqueness corresponds to what Jacob Böhme termed our individual “signature,” that is, our distinctive combination of qualities and abilities that results in our unique flowering as an individual, be it as a Shakespeare, a Sibelius, or for that matter, a Musès. As to timing, this he discusses in an epilogue on “the birth of a new era.” Here, he addresses directly a topic implicit in the entire preceding book: the total inadequacy of materialistic perspectives. In the wake of materialism, he sees dawning a new era in which a new science, including a science of consciousness, may emerge.45 Not included in the book was a seventh chapter entitled “Conceptual Tools Relevant to Chronotopology” that developed themes discussed earlier in the book, beginning with the vital importance of individual flowering as opposed to dreary and oppressive social collectivisms. Unique flowering means psychological stability (one is not threatened by another, and can

The Enigmatic Dr. Musès  105 live harmoniously with others). In this chapter, Musès discusses how psychology and advanced physics “can become one science.”46 He develops a number of corollaries for such a science, including “that there are no absolute separations;” that “there is no absolute nothingness,” that “love is most fundamental,” and that “novelty is always possible;” and that “there is no absolute lifelessness.”47 He defines individuals this way: “Selves are singularities generating noëtic energy fields.”48 He develops a qualitative rather than quantitative theory of time, emphasizing three qualities: change, insight, and performance or power expression.49 And at the apex of qualitative time is freedom and love. Of course, “to be in love is to be in freedom, but to have freedom does not guarantee either being loving or lovingly using the freedom. In fact, that is rare.”50 Time (and its waves) represent the “unfolding of present potential,” the flowering of which is in love. And “love’s higher dimensionality guarantees its ultimate victory,” so “time is love’s ally.”51 Musès’s book on Destiny and Control in Human Systems is difficult not least because of its range of references. I am not familiar with any other author that draws on so many disparate fields, scientific, mathematical, and religious, in order to produce so novel an argument about time. In a review, Milan Zeleny, a professor of management at Fordham University, discussed Musès’s book in Human Systems Management journal. It is amusing, tongue-​in-​cheek, the author thoroughly nonplussed by Musès’s extensive cosmological discussion and his annoying citation of “poets and prophets in [a]‌non-​normal state of more powerful awareness.”52 This is definitely not the sort of text commonly reviewed in human systems management journals, but the reviewer did the best he could with it. In addition to his mathematical and cybernetics work, Musès edited the Journal for the Study of Consciousness from 1968 to 1973, and this resulted in the publication in 1972 of Consciousness and Reality: The Human Pivot Point, a collection of articles edited by him in conjunction with Arthur M. Young, a founder of the Institute for the Study of Consciousness in Berkeley, CA. Consciousness and Reality included articles by Musès and Young as well as Charles Tart and a number of others. It is, as might be expected, a quite unusual volume. The first article by Musès in the volume is “Trance-​induction Techniques in Ancient Egypt,” which discusses ancient Egyptian papyrus text instructions for trance auto-​induction or trance induction of another using a lamp. He surmises that from such text instructions developed the idea of Aladdin’s magic lamp in Islamic tradition, and further hypothesizes that in

106  American Gnosis effect, we are looking at hypnotic trance induction techniques of a very early period. From this he concludes that since today people in general have access to such techniques, “we may look forward to a time where all men and women individually and volutarily control their access to those levels of consciousness normally termed sub-​or supra-​conscious. We prefer the term trans-​conscious.”53 In his second chapter in this volume under his own name, “The Exploration of Consciousness,” Musès discusses first linguistics and syntax, and then “syntactical use of number” as a “second-​stage rocket” that can “compress, distill, and resolve meanings even more powerfully and finely than words,” while the “third stage is the interpretation of these “intensely concentrated meanings.”54 Numbers in this context are “qualitative” and understood as “powers of transformation.”55 Musès goes on to discuss states of blissful illumination, giving Jacob Böhme as an example of someone whose “insightful illuminations of great penetration, clarity, and perspicuity,” which he sometimes recorded “as rapidly as his hand could.”56 His point is that “the speechless” may be “the beginning of true insight,” but it “is by no means the end.”57 He cites Plato’s Seventh Letter, Plotinus, and Proclus concerning the exposition of sacred knowledge.58 Sacred knowledge is explicable, and “number is . . . the most powerful antidote to ineffability that man can use.”59 At this point, Musès introduces the subject of hypernumbers, beyond √ − 1. There are ten levels of Musean hypernumbers; √ − 1 is the third level. In Musean hypernumber theory, there are seven kinds of hypernumber that exist beyond √ − 1, and each has its own algebraic and geometrical rules.60 From Muse’s perspective, new forms of numbers open whole new vistas of consciousness, because the cosmos is pervaded with the same consciousness as humanity. Thus “great advances into the nature of consciousness itself and its relations to matter and energy are possible,” and, he continues, the contemplation and use of hypernumber forms and properties will prove and already has proved by both self-​experience and teaching to be a most efficacious and irreplaceable method of evolving into conscious access the powers and capabilities of our superconscious selves. And that way man’s future lies.61

In the latter sections of Consciousness and Reality, Musès continues the theme of hypernumbers and how to work with them, both under his own name and that of Kenneth Demerest. His primary focus, in “Some New

The Enigmatic Dr. Musès  107 Techniques of Awareness,” is in working with lunar cycles. What we need to explore is not outer but inner space, and in this exploration, knowledge of the lunar cycles with regard to consciousness is essential.62 In particular, “the moon may be used as a means of spiritual regeneration and the accelerated growth of a transcendental body allowing full freedom after the functional cessation or death of the carbon-​based body or temporary vehicle of continuing individual consciousness.”63 The lunar cycle, in this case, is not so much the usually understood movement from new to full moon, but rather begins with the waning cycle and is associated with sunset, that is, after the sun is beneath the horizon (also waning in terms of terrestrial life).64 At certain points in the lunar cycle, we are able to more easily connect with or raise noëtic energy and awareness. And in point of fact, many religious traditions are attuned to the lunar cycle, with religious holidays both in monotheistic and nonmonotheistic traditions of various types all being so determined. The Tibetan Buddhist calendar is determined largely by the lunar cycles, not only in terms of particular holidays but also, using a form of elemental calculation related to feng shui, for meditation and other practices and activities on every single day. Versions of this daily lunar calendar with associated positive or negative activities on specific days are widely available in English.65 The point here is that Tibetan tradition is very much attuned to the insight that meditation and other practices are better accomplished on some days more auspicious than others. The difference is that Musès’s calendar has ten calculated sessions, to be engaged at sunset, beginning at the time of the full moon and moving forward at set intervals during the ensuing waning cycle to allow the “focusing of conscious awareness upon a supraconscious opportunity in terms of proper timing.”66 He then goes through a copious series of Vedic and other texts concerning the lunar cycles and symbolism, then turning to a series of symbolic illustrations, and finally to alchemical tradition and the role of the moon, the Zodiac, and the body in alchemical practices including those of Zosimos.67 In essence, Musès is arguing for a lunar alchemical tradition—​ and one should not lose sight of his doctoral thesis on Freher and by extension, on Böhme’s spiritual alchemical tradition as explicated by Freher. Musès’s final chapter in the volume is “Working With the Hypernumber Idea,” in which he discusses hypernumbers and their significances in much more detail, providing some pages of formulas and diagrams. In contemporary physics, “the physical world seems to be a sort of iceberg, the vast

108  American Gnosis hidden portion of which involves the nature of consciousness.” Hence, “as we proceed up the ladder of the hypernumbers,” we “find that more and more we are enunciating the mathematical representation of the operations of the mind.”68 He then provides a number of further formulas and diagrams. To this final chapter, Musès added only a short, two-​page epilogue, “Man at the Evolutionary Crossroads.” In it, he rejects ideologies as “immature” instruments of domination, and observes that only the flowering of individual creativity brings us beyond being “the dupes of paranoid leaders,” “so easily psyched into accepting tyrannies or mobilized into mutual hatred, egged on by power seekers.” Those who “create in some way or who are lovers of life or nature are in fact the only free people today.”69 Educational systems, far from making people free, seek “to mould young people into effective tools of the reigning political establishment. That purpose is wrong because it uses people as means instead of recognizing that they are ends in and of themselves, which is what human dignity is all about. The political state exists for human beings, not human beings for the state.”70 In his final few words, he encourages readers away from toxic ideological conformity and toward political gnosis, beginning a “new world of happiness instead of misery” through “independent,” “self-​reliant,” “non-​conditioned thinking.” We need to “be ourselves” and “our own best hope,” making an “evolutionary mutation to the truly Human, a king salmon’s leap done by each.” Such a leap is “a deep change in human consciousness, signs of which are already on the horizon. So will Consciousness make new Reality.”71 While it was not yet clear in this book, nearly all the elements are already present for what he was later to develop explicitly under the name “The Lion’s Path.” But more on that shortly. While Musès’s main works for much of his life were in areas related to consciousness studies, he did publish specifically in the area of religion. In 1961, Musès published a translation by Chang Chen Chi of a Tibetan Tantric text that included discussion of Mahamudra meditation teachings, one of the very first such translations into English. Published first by a press he founded, Falcon’s Wing, it was later reprinted by Samuel Weiser in 1982 under the title Esoteric Teachings of the Tibetan Tantra. In his 1981 introduction, Musès discusses the nature of enlightenment, citing his own 1955 book East-​West Fire: Schopenhauer’s Optimism and the Lankavatara Sutra, where he wrote that “nirvana is no snuffing out but is simply the attaining of an awareness far beyond the ordinary ken.” Hence “those left behind the one who has reached the reality of nirvana see it as emptiness and nothingness, but the one who

The Enigmatic Dr. Musès  109 has attained it knows it as a pleroma, an all-​embracing fullness.”72 If ordinary consciousness is symbolized as “1,” and the nirvana process as zero, then 1/​ 0=​ ∞, or Limit 1/​n =​∞. Thus “the interpenetration of samsara by nirvana leads to an infinity of self-​realization.”73 Musès’s description of Vajrayana Buddhism is interesting. He summarizes it as “the attainment of a Wise and Powerful Love, culminating in a psychoenergetic ‘body of light,’ the vajra or diamond body that ‘rises phoenix-​like from the ashes of the final illusion.’ ”74 He discusses how a tantric relationship between a man and a woman can accelerate their spiritual awakening through “the all-​powerful love-​energy field generated between rightly matched partners.” He continues: “It is noetic energy that the practical tantra builds, focuses and equilibrates, leading to its blossoming in terms of a higher energy body actually transcending physical death and rising above its ordinary foetal-​like condition that characterizes the bardo state of most between incarnations. Thus tantra [provides] . . . the fullest possible acceleration of higher human evolution, whether during states preceding or following upon the dissolution of the physical body.”75 As we will see, the above characterization of Vajrayana Buddhism—​ reflecting themes already seen elsewhere in Musès’s work—​specifically forecasts also his later development of what he termed “The Lion Path,” in part a synthesis of many different spiritual traditions, but also quite distinctive for its emphasis on temporal windows within which spiritual transformation can be accelerated. His notes to the translation are well worth reading in detail, not least for their entertaining dissent from or correction of the translator. One can see in these notes that Musès had his own very clear ideas concerning Buddhism, and he had no qualms about asserting them. I will add, as a reader quite familiar with Vajrayana, that Musès is generally more right than wrong in his corrections of the translator. During later life, Musès continued to publish explicitly in religion, one result of which was his publication, with Joseph Campbell, of In All Her Names: Explorations of the Feminine in Divinity (1991).76 Other contributors to the book, in addition to Campbell, included Riane Eisler and Marija Gimbutas, but for our purposes the most relevant chapter is Musès’s own “The Ageless Way of Goddess: Divine Pregnancy and Higher Birth in Ancient Egypt and China.” This chapter begins with a very blunt definition of shamanism as “the development of communication with a community of higher than human beings and a modus operandi for attaining an eventual transmutation to more exalted states and powers. Those whom that goal does not

110  American Gnosis attract, authentic shamanism does not address.”77 Effectively, the principal subject of his chapter is the theurgic tradition of ancient Egypt, in particular the theme of divine pregnancy and rebirth of “a higher body” “far more endowed with energy and capability than the biomolecular body in which it forms, as within a womb or a chrysalid or pupal shell.”78 Musès directly attacks the premises of technological global society, in particular its fundamental nihilism. It is, he says, the first society to believe “without any rational basis, much less evidence” that there is “1) no scheme of things other than the molecular one in which we live on earth and 2) no higher than human intelligence and ability and hence 3) that individualized personality and living form cease with the physical dissolution of the molecular body.”79 Instead, he offers a circular map of the world’s religions, at the center of which is a “sacred door to the path home.”80 Passing through this door, Musès continues, is comparable to a caterpillar metamorphosing into a butterfly: it is the development before physical death of a higher body and greater individualization, allowing “communicating with beings already so endowed. The entrance into this higher community and fellowship is one of the principal causes for celebration in the Ancient Egyptian liturgy of the sacred transformative process—​sacred because it conferred so much beyond ordinary ken.”81 It is true we live in a society that tends to “block the perception of suprabiological fact and our participation in such a higher process,” the “sheer dulling effect” of contemporary society “leaving no time for such considerations in a person’s daily life, whereas in the anciently taught theurgic societies such truths and participation in them were the central core and point of human life.”82 At this point, Musès points us to The Lion Path, which he had recently published, and spends the rest of the article giving an overview of Chinese Taoism in relation to hexagrams, with an eye to how to master “the use of the celestial powers for the benefit of mankind and . . . how to realize an immortal body no longer subject to molecular dissolution.”83 Such practices he planned to publish in a companion to The Lion Path (based in ancient Egyptian religion) to be called The Way of the Tiger.84 So far as I know, the companion book was never published, and his summary here stands alone as an exposition of its argument. In essence, Musès’s argument is that Taoist alchemy conveyed a practice analogous to that of ancient Egypt for inner regeneration, for in both “the principal seat of the higher transformation governed by the All-​powerful Goddess whose title was that of Isis: ‘Mother of the Crown Prince and Heir’

The Enigmatic Dr. Musès  111 (i.e., Mother of Horus, heir [and self-​transform] of Osiris whose fourteenfold severed body symbolized the ‘fall’ from a higher energy-​substance into piecemeal molecular matter).”85 In other words, at the heart of ancient Taoism were practices for the enduring immortal spiritual rebirth of the initiate. Musès does not miss an opportunity to denigrate in passing “some egghead Buddhists and Advaita Vedantists” who pursue “puerile exercises in rather pointless intellectualism.”86 We will return to these kinds of remarks and their implications at a later point. Here suffice it to say that Musès believed he had found in Taoist alchemical tradition confirmation of what he outlined in detail in The Lion Path. At this point we move into the period of The Lion Path in its various forms or editions, as this book and the path it set out was revised and augmented from the time of its publication in 1989 through and to some extent even after Musès’s death in 2000.87 The Lion Path (by which I mean not only the book) is a somewhat complicated topic, not only because the book itself and various related titles synthesize astrological, alchemical, and religious traditions, but also because the books and the path they outline, based in dimensional and hypernumber theory, included individualized astrological timing for practitioners as well as audio files based in a 22-​tone scale using synthesized musical tones meant to activate special points within individuals to accelerate alchemical transmutation and spiritual rebirth. The Lion Path books were attributed to Musaios, one of Musès’s pen names. But this pen name is not like most of the others, such as Kenneth Demerest. It indicates, rather, by its single word, and its -​aios ending, that this is a nonordinary identity. Because the Lion Path is identified throughout with shamanism, we could reasonably say that this name indicates Musès’s shamanic identity or to put it another way, the shamanic (nondiscursive, revealed) origin of what is being provided here. At this point it is important to return to a theme introduced at the beginning: hierohistory. We will recall that Musès’s doctoral dissertation was on Dionysius Andreas Freher, a practitioner in the theosophic tradition of Jacob Böhme, and that Böhme’s visionary work was understood as divinely revealed. In theosophy, as discussed in Wisdom’s Children, the process of alchemical spiritual revelation in this tradition was understood as a process that manifested in time, and that particularly in the English theosophic tradition to which Freher belonged, specific times of revelation and transmutational change were recorded. Thus, John Pordage’s book Sophia, for instance, refers to specific days for particular chapters, and other theosophers,

112  American Gnosis such as Thomas Bromley in his Way to the Sabbath of Rest, also remarked on how their spiritual community was transformed and spiritually united (to the point of clairvoyance or shared experiences) in certain periods. “Hierohistory” refers to such specific times of revelation and individual and/​ or collective (group) transmutation.88 I mention Christian theosophy and hierohistory here because although Musès probably did not know this specific term (I first used it in 1999), he definitely knew about the alchemical spiritual process based in the seven planets in this tradition, and what is more, he knew about the English theosophers’ inclination to record specific dates when Sophia revealed herself and when there were specific transformative periods both individually and collectively in Pordage’s and Jane Lead’s circles. But with the Lion Path, effectively he reversed this tendency so that instead of divine revelation manifesting itself at specific times in peoples’ lives, which they recorded, in the Lion Path, Musés listed particular cosmic periods when spiritual transmutation was collectively possible. But this is still hierohistorical (seen retrospectively), or if predictive, then what we may term a form of hieroprediction. Relatively little has been published about the Lion Path, and even that little has often given a somewhat false impression. Thus in The Stargate Conspiracy, Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince provide some quite interesting context for understanding Musès’s later work, but summarize the Lion Path this way: “disappointingly, what really emerges from The Lion Path is a passive process, a series of meditation exercises, described in superficial and simplistic New Age speak, to be carried out at astrologically significant times, with the objective of enabling the practitioner to ‘tune in’ to higher intelligences in the universe —​specifically those in the Sirius system.”89 But in fact, as we will see, while it is true that there is a timing dimension to the Lion Path, it was not understood as a passive process. To give an overview of The Lion Path, I will be drawing on the first edition of the book, published in Berkeley in 1985, but there are actually at least five different editions, as well as other ancillary materials, books, or booklets and audio files. The Lion Path as a manual begins with political gnosis, that is, a direct rejection of contemporary global society: “This comparatively short-​lived civilization can already be seen to be on the road to collapse. The effects of such a collapse would case the greatest impact in large urban areas where the society is most ’advanced’ and therefore people most dependent on the products of the machine-​system.”90 It also begins with a rejection of the contemporary academic system, with a lengthy quotation from Steven

The Enigmatic Dr. Musès  113 Muller, former president of Johns Hopkins University, asserting that modern students have (and are provided by the university with) no enduring value system.91 What alternative does Musaios provide? He cites the Katha Upanishad, and an Orphic tablet reading “I am a child of the earth and the starry heavens, but my race is of heaven alone.” In his view, these point to two postmortem possibilities, one “leading to forgetfulness and recycling, and the other to remembrance and the gaining of an ineffable heritage.”92 It is on the latter path that he will focus in this manual. His primary focus on the early section is on the importance of the planet Pluto, and what he terms the “Plutonian gate,” because “Pluto is not only the lord of all physical treasure on earth, but is the guardian of an even more precious treasure of super-​biology: the metamorphosis of human to divine.”93 He is referring here to the planet Pluto, which “from 1984 to 1994” “is in its own zodiacal sector or sign of Scorpio—​the sector classically allocated to Death and Transfiguration.”94 There is during this period, he believes, a specific “time window” that makes possible accelerated spiritual awakening. At this point he goes into considerable detail about ancient Egyptian tradition regarding the mythology of Sothis, Osiris, and Horus, with a focus on rebirth or spiritual regeneration from an earthly larval state (symbolized by the mummy) to an awakened spiritual state. With this discussion he includes a number of line illustrations rendering ancient Egyptian illustrations showing the steps of regeneration as well as images of the regeneration.95 And he ties these stages to the seven traditional planets corresponding to the seven days of the week (Sunday =​Sun, Monday =​Moon, and so forth), while then outlining related midnight “octaves,” which are Uranus (Saturday), Neptune (Thursday), Pluto (Tuesday), Pan (Friday), Vulcan (Wednesday), Horus-​in-​ the-​Duat or Sirius B (Sunday), and Sirius (Monday).96 But at this point he surprisingly shifts to a quotation from Jacob Böhme, specifically from his Dialogues on Supersensual Life: The Disciple asked: What is love in its strength and power, in its height and greatness? The Master said: Its height is as high as God, in one sense greater than the highest manifest Godhead since Love contains the mysteries of even unmanifest divinity . . . Love has poured itself into all and is the innermost cause of all things. Even hell parasitizes on its power . . . Love is brighter than the sun, sweeter than food or drink and more joyous than all joy. Who

114  American Gnosis attains That is richer than any king on earth, nobler than any potentate, and stronger than all power and authority.97

Böhme is interjected into the heart of his discussion based in ancient Egyptian religious tradition tied to astrological stages of transformation. In fact, Böhme enters the discussion again later, because when Musaios discusses how “the first half of the Venus-​Sothic (T*) post-​session interval is occupied with the entry of the powers into the Egg-​Womb-​Eye (cf. Jacob Boehme’s ‘Wunderauge’ or Wonder-​Eye—​the supernal womb of all divine possibilities).98 Musaios then gives a table for astrological changes in sequence going from Venus (Isis/​Sothis), Friday, through the inner traditional seven planets and then to the other planets or stars listed above from Uranus and Neptune through Sirius.99 There are thus fourteen stages, which we see also, he says, in the ancient Egyptian texts. But these stages must begin with love, as Boehme mentions, and Venus symbolizes that. We will recall the importance of Sophia (the divine feminine) in the Christian theosophic tradition, which is echoed here in the Musean system in Sothis/​Isis and Venus. Mathematics and geometry, found already in Musés’s 1950s discussions of Freher’s geometrical diagrams of Böhmean theosophy, are here transposed into still more complex configurations. But what he is discussing, despite its technical astrological aspects, is “a sacred ceremony of your own higher growth and regeneration” engaging “the influx of uplifting and transformational energies that help you ‘become what you are.’ ” In brief, “it is a form of ‘time surfing’ using rarely occuring natural resonances.”100 The underlying idea is that there are certain times when “resonantly assisted theurgy” can best take place, because then one can “tune in and tap those reservoirs of higher energy.”101 There are three posthumous possibilities in Egyptian tradition: the “hippopotamus couch” for the dead, which symbolized return to earth for those who have not awakened at all; the “cow couch” for those who might be able to enter into the Lion Path from this intermediate, duat, or bardo posthumous realm; and then there is the Lion Path itself, so called because it is symbolized by a lion-​couch on which the body of Osiris lay, to which the “regenerating energies” of Anubis and the “rays of Horus” were summoned.102 Essentially, the Lion Path asserts that one can through various practices become immortal and live on in other worlds after death.

The Enigmatic Dr. Musès  115 Musaios also discusses possible pharmacological enhancements of the Lion Path, in particular mentioning LSD, which he did not think at all suitable, as well as exploring the identity of khat, a psychoactive shrub that probably provided “the ancient Egyptian Elixir” that “assisted in the human regeneration, the birth from the Time-​Womb.”103 Again he brings up Jacob Boehme, remarking that Boehme’s “classical mysticism” held “it was by Adam we fell and by the new Adam—​which he identified with the Christos—​ we shall rise and regenerate—​a very Egyptian idea, as ‘Adam’ here is a mere substitute for Osiris, and the ‘New Adam’ for Horus.”104 But psychoactive substances could be counter-​productive in that they could overwhelm the inner centers, whereas the key is the “resonant method” that “could” “bring one to the point where one would live in a normalized higher state of awareness without any external assistance, following the periods of waxing and waning resonances.”105 We may note the language here—​“could” and “would”—​indicating that this methodology is experimental. The operative part of the brain, he notes, is “stimulated into activity when the hypothalamus is resonantly and appropriately stimulated” with an “undulating intensity.”106 The process is to develop a higher body analogous to a caterpillar pupating into a butterfly. This happens, he postulates, when “the gland (ruled by Pan [-​Khnum] and particularly activated in the Pan and Sothi-​ Pan Sessions) is stimulated into activity by the already active hypothalmus in the Pluto [-​Anubis] and Sothic-​Pluto Sessions, we then experience the start of such a higher pupation ’pregnancy.’ ”107 He continues: “In the Vulcan [-​Ptah] Session we ready the seed-​pod (in terms of consciousness-​space, a ship) to travel to the domain of Sirius, and in the Horus Session we depart and arrive there.” Hence in the “Vulcan Sessions the final ‘re-​wiring’ and new circuitry for that super-​shamanic journey are prepared.”108 And in the “fourteen Sothic Sessions,” “all the prior powers” become “fully functional in the regenerative process that forms the higher body.” If this “programmed five-​year period is successfully undergone, then at death we pass right on through the Duat, Barzakh, or Bardo realm in the ‘divine boat’ or vehicle of the now formed higher body and we emerge into a world beyond imagining in wonder and beauty, never again to be subject to the life-​interruption of death.”109 Musaios then quotes at length from the ancient Egyptian Book of Coming Forth By Day (British Museum Papyrus 9900, sheets 23–​24):

116  American Gnosis I am Yesterday and Tomorrow, and have power to regenerate myself. Hail, Lord of the Shrine standing at the center of our Earth-​realm and stretching to celestial heights. He is I and I am He . . . The garment wherewith I am clothed is complete . . . . and the tears start from my eyes as I see myself journeying toward the Divine Festival and made strong. I have been working many days and hours at aligning the twelve star-​powers in me and connecting them, joining the hands of their Company each to each. . . . The Goddess hath given birth on earth to an overwhelming, life-​giving inundation [Hyt]: the hitherto closed door of the wall is thus thrust open. I rejoice thereat and come forth like one who forceth a way through the gate, and the radiance my heart hath made is enduring.110

He continues from the same text: I can walk in my new immortal body. I rise like Ré, I am strong through the Eye of Horus [self-​regenerative power source]. . . . I fly like the divine falcon. . . . Then I rise up like a god, being nourished by divine food, and go to the domain of the starry gods. The double doors of Divine Justice-​in-​ Mercy are opened unto me, the double doors of the great deep are unbolted before me, and I rise on the stairway to that heaven where dwell the gods. Now I speak with a voice and accents to which they listen, and my ­language is that of the star Sirius. . . . Here ends the Book in peace.111

He then adds a series of tables and timing instructions as well as “Some Practical Notes on the Lion Path,” noting that “when you begin a Cycle of Sessions you open a specific beam-​guided time track in which each Session builds upon and resonates with the preceding and following sessions of that cycle,” “under the archetype of the Cycle Ruler.”112 He suggests fasting eight to twelve hours before each session, and regarding each session as a sacred time, with open time afterward to absorb the energies.113 The method, he continues, “is designed to be a karmic dissolver and destiny accelerator as it were.” Hence one must be motivated by realizing one’s noetic potential.114 Appended to the edition I have is “Sirius Talk 1,” an occasional, somewhat lighthearted newsletter in which Musaios begins by remarking that “It is best not to think too much about where you are in your development or dwell on that. The Sessions do not automatically grant the Lion Path.” Some

The Enigmatic Dr. Musès  117 may be unprepared; others may lapse; and if one puts in no effort, then “garbage in, garbage out” (GIGO, the rule of computer programming).115 But have faith: “all loving persons, no matter what their intellectual level and where they are on the special Sessions Path or not, are included by a kind of higher gravitation, on a moving walkway of Light that carries them onward at various speeds.”116 The key here is love. “It is the degree of love (with its accompanying wisdom) which you are able and willing to live, that decides” the extent or swiftness of your movement on the Great Walkway, and whether or when you will enter the “Short Path,” which is to say, the Lion Path.117 It is clear from the various editions of The Lion Path and related books, talks, audio files, and materials that the idea of the Lion Path itself is specific to special astrological periods in the 1980s and 1990s, and there is an apocalyptic tenor to some of Musaios’s comments about trends in global society of that time—​i.e., environmental degradation, social decline, and so forth. What is more, the Lion Path as enunciated is very time-​centric, even to the point of emphasizing the astrological significance of days of the week for the session process, and denigrating for instance, astrological transits that are affected by space/​location, because they are “space-​dependent,” whereas what he is emphasizing is “space-​independent timing of the sessions”.118 It is also self-​evident from editions of The Lion Path as well as other source materials that the Lion Path is presented as a process of self-​transformation, which includes dealing with /​working through one’s karmic and personal issues or darkness. I mention this because in this and other regards, whatever judgment one makes about the Lion Path as presented, it does entail practice and inner transformative work, and it is not presented as automatic or passive but rather as an active process that depends on one’s aspiration and investment in it. It also appears that the process was individualized according to individuals’ astrological charts, calculated by Musès, so not everyone engaged in sessions beginning at the same times. At this juncture, it is important to discuss the audio files, which were in the form of cassette tapes distributed by the House of Horus. The first of these is called “Activation,” and it is narrated by Musaios himself. Musaios narrates a guided body meditation, relaxing the body from the feet upward. He then offers a guided breathing meditation, with instructions that resemble a guided hypnotic session, accompanied by music and rhythm meant to activate centers in the brain and body. Some of the other audio files include “Unheard Melodies 1 and 2,” “Extended Lion Path,” “Inner Healing,” “Advanced Lion Path,” “Leapfrog Attunement Vulcan to Pan,” “Lords of

118  American Gnosis Shambhala,” and “Pleromic Bathing.” Some were narrated not by Musaios, but by a woman, Ourania. Others have no narration, only sounds and rhythms, primarily electronic, though also sometimes bells.119 In The Eternal Door: User’s Manual for the Lion Path (1991), Musaios begins with the assumption that the reader will have gotten the “Activation” and the “Unheard Melodies” tapes, and read one of the editions of The Lion Path, done an initial protective session, and obtained an optimal time to begin the sessions.120 He then goes through a planetary sequence that begins with Venus (Friday) and goes through Saturn (karmic debt and ego), Sun (source of energy and life), Moon (the waves and tides of everyday experience), Mars (energy for tasks) and Mercury (the mind coming face-​to-​face with the heart).121 It is clear, from this sequence and his commentary, that we are looking here at an alchemical inner process expressed in astrological symbolism, very much aligned with the Boehmean theosophic tradition, even if expressed in ancient Egyptian terminology. Again we find Musaios citing Boehme.122 In The Eternal Door, we find this alchemical-​astrological process expressed in a kind of electrical diagram, with Venus as “capacitor,” Saturn as “resistance,” Sun as power “source,” Moon as “transducer,” Mercury as “wire or conductor of power,” Jupiter as “inductor,” Uranus as “released electromagnetic wave,” Neptune as “vacuum” “wave medium,” Pluto as “quantum annihilation operator,” Pan as “quantum creation operator,” and Vulcan as “dynamic operation, inherent energy.”123 He makes it clear that this process is voluntary and that it is sustained by love. Not everyone will go at the same pace, and not everyone at once will go through the later stages that can be understood as akin to the bodhisattvic path in Buddhism, that is, aimed at helping guide others.124 Personal transformation in a positive direction is essential, and it is possible that “noxious weeds” may still sprout in one, so one must in particular look out for anger and despondency. The “Sustaining” audio file is intended to further this process of personal transformation. The process is effectively a cleansing of the subconscious in the “athanor” of transmutation, followed by a union of the conscious and superconscious aspects of the mind.125 He expresses this same process in an explicitly alchemical image of an athanor (an alchemical vessel), with a central area of transformation, an airlock to the unconscious, and an opening to the superconscious mind (realm of Horus).126 Once again there is here a sequence of session times listed, alternating between August and March dates in each year, in this case all the way

The Enigmatic Dr. Musès  119 to 2023. These dates move from “the heliacal rising of Sirius” to “the acronical setting” of Sirius each year.127 In the final pages are some advisory remarks concerning the Lion Path, and how although we are “surrounded by the collapse and ruin of all previous ages,” the “so-​called ‘New Age’ ” is “waiting in the womb of each person’s consciousness.”128 In a memorable passage, he continues: “The real message is not a constant postponement of personal development or the submergence of our unique individualities in some collective, run by some parasitic oligarchy, but it is an individually unique and very reachable goal within each one of us—​a path that will unite us more and more in bonds of mutual love, respect, and insight as we all walk it in our special way.”129 The purpose of the audio files and meditations is to let go of and dissolve negative habit energies and to awaken your “true and heroic self ” and your own higher growth, the key to which is love.130 In 1993, House of Horus published Grail Most Ancient: An Advanced Guide to the Lion Path, which elaborates on themes introduced in the earlier books. It begins with Musaios [Charles Musès] writing this book in Thailand near the Gulf of Siam, where “the natural peace of Theravadin (“Old Way”) Buddhism still reigns.”131 There, he had met with abbots of a major monastery and a temple respectively, and discussed with them time theory in Buddhism, and in particular the overcoming of karma. He remarks that the Lion Path “if truly followed,” “activates the quickest possible precipitation and dissolution of latent karma—​all as a preparation for and as part of the supra-​biological process of forming the higher-​than-​molecular body or vehicle.”132 In this first part of the book, he discusses the esoteric symbolism of the number 17 (a wheel of 16 spokes with a central hub) with regard to time theory in Theravadin Buddhism, moving from that to the Fermat prime numbers, which include 17, and are as follows: 20 +​1 =​2; 21 +​1 =​3; 24 +​1 =​17; 28 +​1 =​257; and 216 +​1 =​65537.133 He adds that the last three numbers “have to do with the networks and flow of universal consequences throughout not only our solar system, but our entire universe, as well as through its two companion universes—​a combination we call the Multiverse.” “The Pleromic journey of the Lion Path will guide us even through this vast scheme, and wonders beyond imagination await us.”134 Musès does not term the Lion Path gnostic as such, but he does refer to Gnosticism with a small Greek acrostic consisting in PHOS (Light) as the vertical axis and ZOE (Life) as the horizontal access, with O (the Greek letter

120  American Gnosis Omega) in the center as a kind of “gate.” He explains: “This acrostic or simple crossword puzzle was current in Gnostic times in that centre of the religious quest, ancient Alexandria. And that Eternal Door lives again and has re-​ opened for all who want to walk through it.”135 The key term for that journey is “pleromatic,” “pleroma” (fullness) being a Gnostic cosmological term for the realms of divine manifestation. From Musès’s perspective, the accumulating world political, social, cultural and environmental crises all will contribute to a final grand systemic collapse, yes, but also prepare the way for us to realize the potential for our individual “hatching” into “higher powers of reality” “of which our conscious minds are not aware and often cannot be.”136 This process of inner awakening is not accessible to the “destroyers” but rather is “supra-​biological.” We can “hinder or help it, but we cannot do it, although the grace that does it comes only at our call, whether that cry from the heart is recognized by us or not.”137 It is interesting that he uses the term “grace” that comes only when we call for it, because this term harks back to the mysticism of Boehme. Here, however, the divine grace comes not in a Christian, but an ancient-​Egyptian-​ influenced contemporary context. At this point, Musès reiterates the stages of the different sessions in the Lion Path process, but with new emphases. He places special emphasis on two early sessions, the Vow (−1) and the Protective one (zeroth). The Vow, he writes, means making one’s higher development one’s main focus, above worldly goals. It is on the one hand, aspiration, and on the other, leaving behind what does not serve one’s higher development. This also means, he adds, not heeding deceptive counsel to make no judgments whatever—​it is important to be discerning.138 Unconditional love, or acting without discernment opens one to parasitism.139 His discussion of the Vow reminds one a little of the Bodhisattva Vow in Buddhism, and indeed, he mentions the Bodhisattva path and stages.140 Musès provides a neo-​gnostic cosmological sequence that reflects the discussion in the fifth chapter of Destiny and Control in Human Systems. At the top is the “Unmanifest Divine Source (Primordial Pleroma),” below which is the “First Intelligence,” then the “Second Intelligence,” then “the Cosmogonically interpolated Sevenfold Group or Manifest Pleroma of Regents whose domains chronotopologically reflect in bodies of our solar system.” These are in this order: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. This is different than the primary order in Musés’s chapter on the “seven properties” in his doctoral dissertation in Freher, but both orders are

The Enigmatic Dr. Musès  121 arranged with the sun in the middle, and in this case the traditionally male planets are one on side of the sun, the traditionally female (Venus, [Mercury], Luna) on the other, to some extent heightening in the Lion Path the male-​ female theosophic “tincturing” discussed in Wisdom’s Children.141 It is also worth noting that in Grail Most Ancient, Musaios develops signature Boehmean ideas. He writes that “the self is a caduceal entity [like a Hermetic caduceus]” because “the soul is made in the beginning from the light part and the fire part. The points of light and flame split off from the Great Light/​Fire source and then reunite as an individualized light-​fire soul.”142 If the fire [in Boehme, the male dimension of the self] is cut off from the light [the female aspect], then the soul can go extinct.143 Musaios succinctly describes the Lion Path harking back to Boehmean terms: “The purpose of the Lion Path is to bring the fire strand near enough to the unmanifest light strand, so that they can become a truly functional and interactive unit again. That is what undoing the ‘fall’, or separation from love, means.”144 Fire, light: male, female; the Fall—​this is effectively theosophic Christian cosmology. But “the caduceal self,” he adds, also appears earlier in ancient Egyptian esoteric texts, and in Coptic Gnostic texts including the Gospel of Thomas.145 Once we realize fully these two strands in us, “only then can the Pleromic Mercury function in reclaiming higher awareness and the appropriate bodily vehicle.”146 In his final remarks he quotes from the theurgic Platonists Proclus and Iamblichus as well as from theosopher James Pierrepont Greaves and from theosophy-​influenced Thomas Lake Harris.147 In this final section of Grail Most Ancient, Musaios emphasizes that higher transfiguration ultimately includes all beings, including plants and animals, and he draws on ancient Mazdean religion which looks forward to the “transfigured earth” “transported to a higher starry sphere by the power of the ever-​living fire, the xvarnah.”148 This vision of a transfigured earth is reminiscent of the theosopher Jane Leade, a contemporary of Freher.149 The last work by Musès himself is The Shamanic Lion Path: How to Manifest What You Have Attained, published in 1999, the year before his death. In that same year, he traveled for a couple of months to Siberia to visit with traditional shamans there. This book begins with his remarks on May 25, 1999, at the California Institute of Integral Studies. It is interesting how, in this final period, he emphasized that the Lion Path was shamanic. He explains: “shamanism is a religion made operative, no longer a theory. You do things. And like any power, the surgeon’s scalpel in the hands of a murderer will kill, while

122  American Gnosis in the hands of a surgeon it heals. It’s not the scalpel’s fault.”150 These initial remarks are more or less extemporaneous. In the latter section of the book, Musès explores shamanism, defined as sharing “in an ongoing community of higher beings—​a journey of healing and liberation.”151 The shaman(ess) engages in “Protection and guidance of others in the patterns of destiny; Healing; and Journeying between this realm and others.”152 It is interesting that, in the end, it is with shamanism that he primarily places the Lion Path. Ultimately shamanism’s cosmological focus differentiates it in praxis and worldview from either Christian mysticism or Buddhism, both of which center on transcendence, whether described in terms of the mystical theology of Dionyius the Areopagite or Meister Eckhart, or in terms of the Prajnaparamita Sutra, Mahamudra, or Dzogchen in Buddhism. In this late book, Musès emphasizes that the date August 4, 1999, represents a cosmic “turning point” among the many dates of the Lion Path.153 This date inaugurates what he terms a “manual reset” of the cosmic powers symbolized by the planets, with a sequence in which Samhain (the Celtic pagan festival day) would play an important role. At this point in history (1999), he emphasizes the importance of the four primary Celtic festivals at the four seasons of the year: Samhain (late fall), Imbolc (winter), Beltane (spring/​ early summer), and Lughnasadh (summer). He sees these Celtic seasonal festivals as marking hidden releases of spiritual power, and remarks that “it is the internal spiritual marriage, the harmonious partnership or marriage (wedding of powers) between the Sun and Moon within us, that allows access to hitherto inaccessible realms.”154 The Shamanic Lion Path is, as the title suggests, much more thoroughly shamanic in presentation than earlier Lion Path works not only explicitly, as when Musaios discusses shamanic journeying on the world tree for instance, but also implicitly, in terms of the development of a higher body that can enter into higher worlds, of which he discusses 34.155 In brief, “once a candidate has traversed the Lion Path and completed the connection with the Pleromic Mercury power (that alone can enable functioning of the new senses and awareness of his or her higher body) s/​he can be actively awake in the bardo and able to perform shamanic actions such as even healing others on earth.”156 This is “a specially empowered bardo body,” capable of journeying to higher bardo-​realms.157 This journeying is presented in terms of the world-​tree of Norse and shamanic mythology, but also in terms of dimensional theory.158 Musès warns

The Enigmatic Dr. Musès  123 against well-​meaning political activism because the root problem of society is actually “our current psychological condition.”159 And the purpose of the Lion Path is to heal us so that not only we, but all beings on our world can be freed from this predatory one with all its suffering, into symbiotic higher-​ dimensionality in which higher beings help those below them instead of preying upon them.160 Basically, Musès sees this predatory world as botched by a “fallible creator,” a very Gnostic idea, and he again cites Boehme.161 He specifically quotes Boehme from his Signature of All Things about this Gnostic “Pleromic Process”: “All seven forms must be purely precipitated if the universal shall be revealed; and each form carries its own process to be brought out of the wrath into the clear light of the glorified body. There several seeds within you must all unite into one love-​will.” This process, Boehme says, takes place “when the Mercury shut up in death receives into itself the baptism of love” . . . and is transformed into “the Heavenly [Pleromic] Mercury.”162 It is quite interesting how closely Boehme’s remarks here track to the Musean Lion Path system (or, one might better say, vice versa). In the final words of the book, Musès offers advice both on how to work with the audio files, which “can work only on the quality of consciousness and awareness brought to their use,” and hence also on meditation.163 Thus even though the audio files work on hidden levels to help transmute one, he advises pranayama, or meditation practice using the breath, emphasizing eight seconds of in-​breath, eight seconds of holding, and eight seconds of out-​breath. Eventually “you may well find that your state of consciousness will alter and leap like a living flame after only a short time.”164 At this point “you are now working in the non-​molecular reality.”165 As we step back from Musès’s individual works and survey the whole, we can see the larger continuity across decades that culminates in his Lion Path and related books, audio files, and other materials. While it may look like Musès was exploring in many unrelated areas—​world religions, shamanism, pharmacology, virology and parasitism, cybernetics, mathematics—​in fact all of these areas in his work are connected and part of a single larger vision. In his publications on Christian theosophy of the 1950s, already we see his discussions of spiritual alchemy and stages symbolized by planets, mathematics, geometry, and dimensional theory. In some respects we could say that his life exemplified T. S. Eliot’s lines in “Little Gidding” in Four Quartets: “We shall not cease from exploration /​And the end of all our exploring /​Will be to arrive where we started /​And know the place for the first time.”

7 Psychedelic Gnosis In American Gurus, I discussed the influence of psychedelics on the development of the counterculture, as well as how psychedelics contributed to the American theme of what I term “immediatism.” As I put it there: “with a tiny dose of a synthetic chemical, one’s entire consciousness changed—​one could, or seemed to, experience religious transcendence, enter illuminated states, see nature as paradisiacal, experience one’s own reincarnation, in short, be thrown into mystical and magical awakening.”1 Psychedelics, it appeared, allowed one to vault “at once into his throne,” as Emerson phrased his injunction to spiritual awakening. Historical examples I discussed there include Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, William S. Burroughs, Robert Anton Wilson and Discordianism, Peter Lamborn Wilson, and others.2 Here, we will continue that discussion, but with a particular focus on psychedelic explorers that exemplify our larger thesis about psychedelic neo-​gnosis: that it is, fundamentally, cosmological. In 2000, Christopher Bache published a landmark book, Dark Night, Early Dawn: Steps to a Deep Ecology of Mind. At the time, he was a professor of religious studies at Youngstown State University, and had earlier published a book on reincarnation titled Lifecycles: Reincarnation and the Web of Life, as well as some articles that touched on the primary subject of his book Dark Night, Early Dawn: the prophetic results of his years of working with high doses of LSD in a controlled, standardized setting and approach. Dark Night, Early Dawn features a foreword by Stanislav Grof, who writes in it that “the conclusions of Bache’s critical analysis of selected observations from transpersonal psychology and consciousness research . . . are fully congruent with the great Eastern spiritual philosophies and mystical traditions of the world, which Aldous Huxley referred to as the perennial philosophy.”3 Grof continues that in experiential [psychedelic] research, we realize “all of existence is a manifestation of one Being that has been known throughout the ages by many different names—​Atman, the Tao, Buddha, the Great Spirit, Allah, Keter, the Cosmic Christ, and many others.” This, “the deepest secret of all great spiritual traditions,” “Bache chooses to call the Sacred Mind.”4 American Gnosis. Arthur Versluis, Oxford University Press. © Arthur Versluis 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197653210.003.0008

Psychedelic Gnosis  125 As Grof points out, Bache goes beyond experiences of the transcendent to apply his insights to resolving the coming human ecological crisis through “mass inner transformation,” and in this respect his work can be described as prophetic.5 I met Christopher Bache some years after Dark Night, Early Dawn was published, and subsequently published a conversation with him in JSR: Journal for the Study of Radicalism.6 By this time, he had retired from university teaching and was able to speak more freely about exactly how he had come to his transpersonal experiences and insights as described in his university-​press-​published books. At the time, he was writing his spiritual autobiographical account, later published as LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven.7 In our published conversation, we discussed at length the prophetic aspects of Bache’s work and his current views of them after two decades had elapsed. In our conversation, Bache discusses how he came from a fairly conventional, even conservative background, raised Roman Catholic, went to seminary, studied theology, and went on to study philosophy and religion in graduate school, emerging as an atheistic agnostic.8 From his background he was, he said, “the last person you would think would ever do high-​dose LSD work.” But he encountered the work of Stanislav Grof, and soon realized that he needed to work with psychedelics, with strict protocols, to explore new philosophical-​religious territories experientially. In those early sessions, he was aiming for private transformation, and only later did he discover that he was engaged in exploring the “deep structure of consciousness and our universe.”9 He had graduate school experience in analytic philosophy, but “when you create the conditions that allow this deep, unrestricted exploration of consciousness to take place, the results transcend the expectations of analytic thought. You end up affirming many of the insights and values of this earlier Neoplatonic tradition.”10 In our conversation, Bache explains that by maintaining consistent research protocols, he was able to more accurately record and reflect systematically on his psychedelic experiences, and that his work was effectively a dialogue between his analytical mind and deeper awareness. He said, “By following this same protocol month after month, a systematic deepening of the visionary conversation takes place. A cognitively coherent, well structured dialogue begins to unfold between the consciousness doing the exploring (me) and the consciousness being explored.”11 He was engaged, he realized, with “consciousness that radically transcended my personal consciousness.”12

126  American Gnosis Bache had assumed that others were also engaged in such experimentation, but in fact, he later realized, his rigorous approach as documented in Dark Night, Early Dawn was uncommon, if not unique.13 What he experienced, he describes as entry into “Deep Time, deep trans-​ temporal experiences,” “breaking out of spacetime reality and having a deep experience of the spiritual universe.” But he then faced the challenge of integrating what he had learned through his psychedelic exploration into a conventional life, with a teaching position, children, a marriage, doing yoga, meditating, and “staying grounded.”14 This integration was made a little more difficult by the fact that he had to create a “firewall” between the two sides of his life—​he couldn’t mention his LSD experimental regimen at all because of its illegality.15 Still, he found his hidden and outward life were interconnected. As Bache continued his LSD experimental work, he discovered that the inner changes he was experiencing had reverberations for his students, and “I found that some of my students began to be activated by my psychedelic practice.”16 He summarizes what he discussed at length in his book The Living Classroom this way: I began to realize that my mind and my students’ minds were becoming selectively porous to each other. The walls between our minds were coming down in meaningful ways. Some students also began to have deep spiritual openings around some of the concepts I was presenting in class, such as impermanence, interdependence, oneness, no-​self, and the divine within. My experience of these realities in my sessions changed my energy in a way that caused my person to become a kind of lightning rod, triggering these kind of experiences in some of my students. They were being activated less by my words and more by an energetic resonance to my person. I was not trying to make this happen, and in fact I was quite concerned about it, but my students were demonstrating a simple, ancient truth—​that states of consciousness are contagious.17

The Living Classroom is not ostensibly about psychedelics in relation to teaching, but rather about how collective or shared consciousness can develop in the context of teaching. Yet psychedelics are obviously in the background, since that was the hidden trigger for the unusual learning phenomena Bache was discussing at length in the book. Essentially, The Living Classroom explores the synergies between groups of students and their

Psychedelic Gnosis  127 professor. In general, pedagogical theory is based on the notion that we are all discrete individuals, with “private minds,” and as a result ideas like shared consciousness, or porousness of consciousnesses, or fields of consciousness do not enter into contemporary education. The very idea may seem outlandish for many.18 Nonetheless many of us who have taught courses for years, particularly courses that include subjects like mysticism or meditation, but also literature or art, for instance, have experienced aha! moments not only for oneself, but with others, shared discoveries that emerge only in the context of the classroom. What distinguishes The Living Classroom from other books on pedagogy is the nature of the phenomena and interactions Bache discusses. It is a very interesting book for anyone engaged in university-​level teaching, or teaching more broadly, because in it he explores pedagogy in the context of quantum entanglement and nonlocality—​and in terms of what also could be termed paranormal phenomena.19 He gives examples, for instance of public speaking in which he mentioned a name more or less randomly, as an example name, and it turned out that a member of the audience unbeknownst to him actually had that name and always felt it wasn’t really her name. She was so moved that she wrote him a letter explaining that he had unwittingly touched in his talk on a central issue for her.20 In our conversation, Bache summarizes his work this way: “In The Living Classroom I’m developing a ‘quantum pedagogy’ that recognizes the subtle connectivity of minds and collective fields of consciousness.”21 For our purposes, though, the most salient is c­hapter 9, “Spiritual Experiences,” in which Bache discusses what can certainly be described as gnosis, although he doesn’t use that word. He defines spiritual experiences as those “that appear to reflect a reality that lies beyond space-​time as we know it.” Those who have such experiences, in the modern university especially, largely “feel they have no alternative but to take what was perhaps the most meaningful, most beautiful experience of their lives and either hide it or set it aside as untrustworthy.”22 Students who have such nonordinary experiences typically do have faculty members with whom to share them because voicing their accounts of them would be discouraged by basically materialistic faculty members should such subjects ever have the opportunity to arise, which is itself unlikely. But arguably Bache’s most important book is Dark Night, Early Dawn. In Dark Night, Early Dawn, Bache provides an extensive account of the results of a Stanislav-​Grof-​inspired “therapeutic regimen” of working with

128  American Gnosis psychedelics that lasted an extended period of two decades, and resulted in many insights not only into personal spirituality, but also into deep ecology and ultimately into what he believes is the destiny of humanity as a whole, as well as into the philosophico-​religious cosmological and metaphysical structure of our universe.23 Bache begins by discussing nonordinary states of consciousness, then transitions to psychedelic, near-​death, and out-​of-​body experiences, followed by a section on what he terms “the field dynamics of mind.” Part of his discussion includes after-​death experiences not only of heaven or paradise, but also of hell, which is analogous to some very difficult psychedelic experiences. He draws conclusions beyond strictly personal ones, concluding that “if the human family is entering a collective descent into hell, then it is critical that we understand what hell really is.”24 At the same time, he draws conclusions about the nature of the human being, observing that “when one lets go of the separate self in time and space, there is no logical place where one can grab on to it again. From here it is a free-​fall into the Divine,” which one can term “transpersonal mind,” “holotropic mind,” [Grof ’s term], or Bache’s preferred term, “Sacred Mind.”25 There are many insights in his book, too many to detail here, but the heart of Bache’s Dark Night, Early Dawn is its prophetic message about humanity as a whole. In chapter eight, “The Great Awakening,” Bache explains how in therapeutic psychedelic work, especially death/​rebirth experiences, one is in touch with more than one’s own personal continuity. One connects with and manifests much larger aspects of consciousness, including not only our own historical and cultural context, but also, by extension, even the collective karma and continuity of humanity as a whole. What is more, Bache realized, just as the individual mystic may go through the dark night of the soul and come out into illumination, so too humanity as a whole may do so.26 Essentially, profound transformative psychedelic experience, which entails individual spiritual death and rebirth, and which “destroys the deep feeling of ontological separation that organizes our most basic sense of egoic identity,” “cannot be isolated from the rhythms of the species we are part of,” and “every step each of us has taken toward our individual awakening has been, at a deeper level, part of humanity’s journey toward collective realization.”27 Bache’s account is too extensive to detail fully here, but briefly, he said that during a high-​dose LSD session, following his “cleansing” experiences, he was met by “a large assembly of beings” that he recognized as “master

Psychedelic Gnosis  129 shamans.” They guided him into “deeper and deeper modes of archetypal experience of incalculable age and expanse” until finally “spacetime reality was left behind entirely” and he found himself in transcendent “bliss and clarity.”28 From this experience, he then was shown the meaning of the vastness of human suffering over millennia, which was so that humanity could ultimately awaken as a whole. “What is emerging,” he wrote, “is a consciousness of unprecedented proportions, the entire human species integrated into a unified field of awareness.”29 “It was simultaneously something to be accomplished and something already accomplished,” he continued, as humanity climbed “out of a valley and just ahead, on the other side of the mountain peak and beyond our present sight, was a brilliant, sun-​drenched world that was about to break over us.”30 Humanity, he was shown in this vision, will enter a new epoch, literally a new age. But before this new age dawns, Bache writes, there will be a traumatic transition, akin to the spiritual death experience preceding rebirth. He sees that in the imminent time of transition, conditions of life will continue to worsen. The world “as they knew it was falling apart.”31 Humanity on the earth as a whole was “forced into the melting pot of mere survival.” “No one could insulate themselves,” “families were torn apart,” and “life as we had known it was shattered at the core” as “we were reduced to simply trying to survive.”32 Then, as the peak of the storm passes, humanity develops new values, new perceptions, new social forms, all reflecting new states of awareness that were shared across humanity.33 “The time of rebuilding was suffused with an inner luminosity that signaled a profound awakening within the human heart,” because “the whole of humanity” had gone through a death-​rebirth experience.”34 From this set of visionary realizations, Bache drew his title, Dark Night, Early Dawn. After these realizations, he said, he felt “like someone visiting Hiroshima a week before the bomb was to be dropped, with unbidden knowledge of the devasation that lay just ahead.”35 It took him a year to recover, and even much later, he obviously was deeply affected, remarking that “sometimes the darkness stands out for me, sometimes the dawn. Increasingly, it is the dawn.”36 He provides a number of authors and works to contextualize his own insights, mentioning Peter Russell, author of The White Hole in Time, and Richard Tarnas, author of The Passion of the Western Mind, but what is most striking about Bache’s work is his own reflections on his visionary experiences and realizations.

130  American Gnosis Effectively, Bache is prophetic. His work is quite literally new age, but not in a superficial way—​in that it forecasts a coming era of ecological and cultural apocalypse, followed by rebirth of humanity as a whole. In Dark Night, Early Dawn, he forecasts a coming era of “great pain,” “the collective karmic legacy that lives within each of us, fueling the historical forces that are driving us to the brink of self-​extinction.”37 This is the “dark night” of the title, the collective dark night of the soul of humanity that will be followed, he thinks, by an “early dawn” of a “shared joy” of the collective rebirth of humanity so that we can all participate, to a greater or lesser degree, in higher, joyous consciousness. Is this his perception of what is actually happening and about to happen, or is this his projection of our human future? Perhaps this question is unanswerable at present, but it is worth posing. Bache’s prophetic vision clearly exists in a Tibetan-​Buddhist-​framed context. Bache, we will recall, was engaged in Tibetan Buddhist practice during the time of his LSD experiments, and he mentions in The Living Classroom and in our published conversation that he incorporated specific Buddhist practices, for instance, Chöd, a Vajrayana Buddhist practice, into the frame for his teaching of undergraduate students.38 He also said that the coming ecological and cultural crisis can be understood as “a crescendo that is building in the cycle of reincarnation” resulting in “the emergence of a new baseline consciousness in history, what I call the birth of the Diamond Soul.”39 The term “diamond” here, also in the subtitle of his later psychedelic autobiography, is one translation of the word “vajra,” in Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhist language and conceptualization is everywhere in Bache’s books, once one is attuned to recognizing it, as in the above passage about reincarnation. Bache also reflects on Tibetan Buddhism in some very provocative ways, as when, in thinking about “the fate of individuality,” he asks whether it is really true that in enlightenment, individuality completely disappears. He wonders: “A cadre of Bodhisattvas pictured in Buddhist art, whose ethereal forms depict a beatific existence beyond any I can imagine, suggest to me that there is an exquisite form of living that only begins once the self dies. Their idiosyncratic features suggests that this form preserves our uniqueness even while opening the floodgates of the universal.”40 Tibetan Buddhism is also important in other ways. In one of his LSD session accounts, for instance, he finds that “Tibetan chanting carried me into a deeply chaotic state.”41 He continues: “The power of the thundering chants was dissolving me, breaking me into incoherent pieces. I kept feeling fear, but could not find anything to be afraid of.”42 Then, later in the same

Psychedelic Gnosis  131 session account, he entered into new capacities for consciousness, which was followed by “still another quantum jump that was even larger than the first,” so that “the insights and experiences” were from “a different order of reality altogether.”43 In this new realm of higher or deeper consciousness, the “unresolved fragments of other spacetime experiences,” “karmic impressions from former lives,” are resolved so that we are not “being unconsciously dragged around by our past,” and “our physical existence begins to be transparent to choices originating in our deep consciousness, our soul, and in the larger field our soul is part of.” Our goal becomes “becoming a fully conscious creative being.”44 What Bache is describing here is “not an intellectual exercise,” but “a series of profound experiential realizations” that could certainly be termed gnosis.45 Bache refers to the culmination of this as “Diamond Luminosity,” the culmination of “Diamond Energy.”46 This experience of gnosis was “both personal and collective. It felt like some enormous ball of intertwined threads that did not begin or end in my private life was dissolving into this Light,” so that “this tangled knot dissolved into the Light,” and “the luminosity flowed into the field of the species-​mind.”47 Because he is a professor of religious studies, Bache is able to muster an array of comparative references, beginning with the great German mystic Meister Eckhart’s advice that “as long as your soul is operating like a mind, so long does it have images and representations. But as long as it has images, it has intermediaries, and as long as it has intermediaries, it has neither oneness nor simplicity.”48 Bache recognizes that his LSD sessions are “cluttered with intermediaries,” and that these are indicators of the distance still to go, as gnosis is not a single static state, but dynamic growth.49 Our task, he concludes, is not cosmic escape, but “just the opposite, greater Presence. Our individual and collective goal is to draw the Divine Impulse ever more completely into physical incarnation.”50 Here, he concludes, “is the meeting point between the wisdom traditions of East and West, between Buddha and Christ, between nirvana and the kingdom of heaven on earth.”51 Our purpose is to awaken more completely inside creation,” which “shatters all dualities and completely reframes the spiritual impulse,” for “where shall we ‘escape’ to?”52 In short, “I believe that this divine marriage of Individuality and Essential Ground, of the Masculine and Feminine, of samsara and nirvana, is the dawn that humanity’s dark night is driving toward.”53 If we realize this, humanity will be “healed of the scars of its history,” and we will be a people reborn with “new capacities born in the chaos of near-​extinction.”54

132  American Gnosis Although he is primarily describing LSD visionary experiences and his reflections on them, Bache’s work is clearly shaped by Tibetan Buddhist practice, more than any other figure in our discussion so far, including Musès. Bache’s terminology, his conceptual framework, his own practices including meditation, all are shaped by Buddhism, even if there is a consistent Christian monotheistic current running through his work as well. He refers to a creator-​god as an important part of his narrative’s conceptual framework, for instance—​his work represents a synthesis that could be described as perennialist.55 But within his comparativist framework, Tibetan Buddhism has an essential, even determinative place. In speaking with Bache, and in reading his books, it occurred to me that in this kind of psychedelic exploration, having multiple explorers’ accounts would be potentially quite useful. After all, it is one thing for Bache, on his own, to engage in these specific explorations using a particular high-​dose protocol, but what if there were multiple such accounts using the same protocol that could be compared? That might begin to tell us the extent to which this account of the terrain is corroborated by someone else’s similar account. To what extent is it an objective larger map, and to what extent is it individually subjective? To what extent is the terrain affected by the experiencer? Is Bache a singular prophet, or would five other people engaged in a similar series of expeditions discover roughly the same terrain? Of course there are other psychedelic explorers that published extensively about their experiences, too many to survey everyone’s work thoroughly here, and much is documented in detail in Christopher Partridge’s High Culture: Drugs, Mysticism, and the Pursuit of Transcendence in the Modern World.56 Partridge discusses the modern history of psychedelic exploration and its cultural significances, referring to “psychedelic gnosis,” and “gnostics” frequently throughout the book, and concludes the book by summarizing the extensive and influential work of the psychedelic provocateur Terence McKenna (1946–​2000) and his brother Dennis McKenna (b. 1950).57 Here, I would encourage you—​if you are interested in provocative cosmic speculations about machine elves from other dimensions and related topics—​to delve into Terence McKenna’s wild explorations.58 Partridge points out early in the book why terms drawn from ancient Gnosticism are so naturally appropriate to psychedelics: because “psychedelic states are interpreted as moments of gnostic redemption that awaken the user from the sleep of ignorance.”59 “Drugs,” Partridge continues, “enable individuals to transcend discourses of domination in society,” so “high

Psychedelic Gnosis  133 cultures are always countercultures.”60 He quotes Wouter Hanegraaff, who observes that psychedelics fit exactly into the neo-​gnostic dynamics that we are seeing throughout this book: psychedelics are held to break “mainstream society’s spell of mental domination and [restore] us from blind and passive consumers unconsciously manipulated by ‘the system’ to our original state of free and autonomous spiritual beings.” Hence “they are seen as providing gnosis in a ‘gnostic-​dualistic’ . . . sense [of liberation] . . . from the dominion by the cosmic system.”61 In an article, “Gnostic Psychedelia,” Erik Davis continues this discussion.62 Here, he discusses in particular the emergence of neo-​gnosticism and in particular the concept of archons in discourse about psychedelics and psychedelic spirituality. He looks in particular at the writing of Jim DeKorne, who speculated about the persistent appearance in psychedelic visionary experiences of entities that are not necessarily allies or friendly, but might actually be seeking power over us or to feed on us. These archons, DeKorne thinks, “feed off of our allocation of energy to their dimension, and compete with other [a]‌rchons on other levels in the overall hierarchy for their nourishment.”63 Davis also discusses Jonathan Talat Phillips, author of The Electric Jesus: The Healing Journey of a Contemporary Gnostic, and here also we are on familiar territory. The Electric Jesus is introduced by Graham Hancock, who writes about how “a new kind of humanity is beginning to emerge in the twenty-​first century” and continues: “These new humans recoil from the growing power and intrusion of the large, centralized State into their lives and believe they are capable of finding new ways to cooperate with others that don’t depend on State supervision, regulation, or taxation.”64 The new humanity is, Hancock continues, best understood in terms of Gnosticism, which is authentic Christianity that doesn’t believe in “the entity called Yahweh or Jehovah, who is worshipped as the one God in the Judaeo-​Christian tradition, is seen in quite a different light by the Gnostics. To them, he is nothing more than an evil demiurge, a low-​class sub-​deity, a sort of devil in disguise, who has created the earth as his personal fief.”65 The demiurge’s purpose, supported by conventional churches and materialistic society, is to keep us in ignorance, but people are waking up and “spiritual warriors” are emerging.66 Phillips’s narrative in The Electric Jesus is engaging and chock full of his fantastical visionary psychedelic experiences, mingled with all kinds of neo-​ gnostic themes, including ones that we will meet again soon in this book. In particular, Phillips incorporates ideas not only of the ignorant demiurge

134  American Gnosis but also hostile archons into his narrative, combined with contemporary popular authors’ discussions of shapeshifting reptilians. Since Phillips had encountered reptilians in psychedelic experiences, he made sense of it in these terms: in some of the ancient Gnostic reports I had read, the world-​dominating archons bore a disturbing resemblance to the sci-​fi rhetoric of the purported Pleiadian and Sirian channels. The Gnostics often spoke of demonic ruling forces that manipulated humans to serve them, blocking out the pleroma’s healing light and feeding off our misery. In a sense, they had formed a type of ‘World Management Team’ that trapped the earth in darkness.67

Phillips tells the story of his friendship and work with Daniel Pinchbeck and others in creating a global network for psychedelically inspired spiritual awakening, and concludes “I know that my hopes for an energetically synchronized network that can shift reality on a global scale represents the mother of all Hail Mary passes . . . [but] there is no way to tell if we are the pioneers of a visionary new age, whisking humanity into the high vibrations of an interdimensional love party, or post-​modern Don Quixotes attacking techno-​industrial windmills with our flimsy, rolled-​up yoga mats.”68 Phillips’s The Electric Jesus demonstrates that the building blocks of neo-​ gnosticism work on the left, as on the right, and perhaps off the left-​right spectrum entirely. Those groups that perceive themselves as social outcasts from a materialistic, bureaucratic, dominant paradigm and as forefront cultural creators, whatever their political orientation, can assimilate the neo-​ gnostic framework quite naturally. It is also interesting that many in the psychedelic, Burning-​Man, posthippie movement and the alternative-​right movement began their journeys in reaction against the George Bush, Jr. presidential administration.69 Neo-​gnosticism serves as a means for the excluded or persecuted to understand systems of oppressive power and control. There is a prophetic dimension to Phillips’s work, just as there is to Bache’s. Near the end of his book, Phillips writes of his prophetic vision: It’s my hope that an archipelago of permaculture gardens, ecovillages, and organic farms can help stave off potential global-​warming famines and GMO contamination; that we can forge new initiatory systems and educational paths to resurrect the depleted spirit of our youth; that a network of healers, shamans, yogis, and tantric masters will serve as spiritual

Psychedelic Gnosis  135 mid-​wives to bring about planetary ascension and, perhaps, an introduction to our galactic neighbors; and that rising human awareness can end the destructive patterns and karmic wreckage from several thousand years of systematized violence—​healing our water, land, sky, and hearts.70

Phillips’s prophetic vision reflects its origins in the hippie-​countercultural movement, and is not as apocalyptic as Bache’s, but as we will see, the apocalyptic and prophetic recur in the realm of psychedelic gnosis. The nature of psychedelics lends itself to apocalyptic and prophetic visions for the future, as we saw in Bache’s work, which is similar in many ways to that of Phillips here, and more broadly to perspectives in the psychedelics community of the early 2000s.71 It was around this time, though, that a more specific prophecy became much more widespread, and that was the belief that the year 2012 was millenarian, that is, it would usher in a new age. An influential voice for this prophecy, which was based on an interpretation of the Mayan calendar, was Phillip’s friend in the psychedelic community, Daniel Pinchbeck (b. 1966), who was quickly becoming a kind of psychedelics celebrity. In 2006, Pinchbeck published 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl with Tarcher, a division of Penguin, in other words, a New York publisher with reach. The book, on its first page, announced that “human consciousness is rapidly transitioning to a new state, a new intensity of awareness that will manifest itself as a different understanding, a transformed realization, of time and space and self. By this thesis, the transition is already under way—​ though largely subliminally—​and will become increasingly evident as we approach the year 2012.”72 He then discusses traditional Mayan, Hindu, and Greco-​Roman cyclical views of history, and the idea of moving from one age to another, noting the “alignment of the Earth and the Sun with the ‘dark rift’ at the center of the Milky Way on the winter solstice of December 21, 2012.”73 He does hedge his bets, suggesting that the coming transition might be a psychic one and hence take place in the realm of consciousness, rather than involving visible transformation. Pinchbeck assumes a prophetic role, and in this role he writes: “I offer this book as a gift handed backward through space-​time, from beyond the barrier of a new realm—​a new psychic paradigm that is a different realization of temporality, a reordering of thought that embraces prophetic as well as pragmatic dimensions of reality.”74 And in the context of how he gained this prophetic knowledge, through mushrooms and LSD, Pinchbeck explicitly references

136  American Gnosis his discovery “that the pursuit of a postmodern Western gnosis remained a secret current, running beneath the massive momentum of our corporate mono-​culture’s drive to dominate the Earth, its shuddering inhabitants and quickly disappearing resources.”75 He specifically references the Gospel of Thomas in the Nag Hammadi Library, and how in it Christ “proclaims the necessity of achieving direct knowledge—​gnosis—​of the Divine.”76 Late in the book, Pinchbeck tells the story of a trip to Brazil where he took ayahuasca and as part of the ensuing process, concludes that he may have been the Buddhist emperor Ashoka in a previous life, and he received a “transmission” from the Great Serpent Quetzalcoatl, who says “I am an avatar and messenger sent at the end of a kalpa, a world age, to bring a new dispensation for humanity—​a new covenant, and a new consciousness.” In this transmission, Quetzalcoatl prophesies that the “global capitalist system” “will soon self-​destruct.”77 “You have just a few years yet remaining to prepare the vehicle for your higher self,” he continues. He announces himself in Jewish terms as “the Tzaddik—​‘the righteous one’ and the ‘gatherer of the sparks’ of the Qabalah,” and as a “philosopher.”78 The communication refers to Pinchbeck as “the vehicle” of this communication, as in: “Almost apologetically, the vehicle notes that his birthday fell in June 1966—​6/​66—​“count the number of the Beast: for it is the number of the man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.”79 This is an interesting, self-​recursive move, in this “transmission” in which by ostensibly removing himself and becoming a “vehicle,” Pinchbeck also inflates himself to being a Mayan-​Jewish-​ Arthurian-​Tibetan-​Buddhist-​Book-​of-​Revelation “avatar” of apocalyptic world-​importance. Although the “transmission” from Quetzalcoatl at the end of the book “forewarns” that the “End of Time” is nearly upon us, and of course the book’s very title foretells the significance of 2012, like the imminent apocalypses of the Millerites in the 1840s, the specificity of this date meant it could not be postponed. And of course 2012 came and went without too much discernible difference, though Pinchbeck did include the notion that the change would be a “quantum mind-​shift” or a change in consciousness, hence perhaps not so easily recognized as the second coming of Christ on, for instance, March 21, 1844. In any case, Pinchbeck immodestly wonders aloud if his “quest for prophetic knowledge” might itself have changed the nature of reality and even produced “’a new covenant’ for humanity.”80 Pinchbeck coedited a follow-​up volume of contributions called Toward 2012: Perspectives on the Next Age.81 Published in 2008, the collection

Psychedelic Gnosis  137 includes contributions from many psychedelic and shamanic explorers ranging from Pinchbeck himself to Stanislav Grof, Erik Davis, Peter Lamborn Wilson, and Jonathan Phillips. A number of its contributions read like a memory capsule, a snapshot from a bygone era in which people could imagine social media as encouraging “telepathy” and shared consciousness, not distraction, attention deficit disorder, and mob attacks, and digital identities could be seen as beneficial and not means of governmental and corporate tracking and privacy invasion.82 An exception to this is Phillips’s contribution on “Gnosis,” in the center of the book, which is not prophetically focused on a date four years ahead, or on prophesying at all, really, but rather explores its eponymous subject in some detail.83 Interestingly, neither archons nor a digital demiurge make an appearance even once in this collection, whose authors often identify themselves as on the left. In subsequent years, we do see the terminology of gnosis being adopted more frequently in the academic study of psychedelics.84 In “Gnosis Potency: DMT Breakthroughs and Paragnosis,” Graham St. John explores at length the DMT (N,N-​dimethyltryptamine) “breakthrough” experience in terms of gnosis, but he emphasizes the term “paragnosis” for the scholarly discussion as well. Paragnosis refers to “extraordinary and paranormal means of knowledge acquisition. Known to expose users to ‘worlds’ previously hidden from view, encounters with sentient otherworldly ‘entities,’ and transmissions of ‘visual language’ . . . [are] persistently recognized within the user community as a state of paragnosis.”85 Paragnosis here corresponds to cosmological gnosis—​the “knowledge acquisition” is essentially knowledge of the cosmos, including hidden entities, symbols, and aspects of being revealed through the use of psychedelics. Also corresponding with cosmological gnosis is the subsequent description by St. John, which emphasizes the neo-​gnostic aspects of gnosis. In paragnosis, the user arrives at, or approximates, a direct and unmediated awareness of the intrinsic nature of reality (i.e., as it truly is), a reality that had previously been occulted. This awakening not untypically involves (a) the awareness that nebulous and normally unseen forces are the cause of tyranny, oppression, and alienation and (b) that one is intrinsically connected to the divine universe. The first condition is sometimes articulated using a term attributed to Gnosticism, i.e., “archons” (DeKorne 1994).86

138  American Gnosis Ironically, the term “paragnosis” puts the implied emphasis on metaphysical gnosis or transcendence, and by implication shrinks its own purview into a “para” category, even though this is the primary area of psychedelic exploration. The term “cosmological gnosis” by contrast implies insight into hidden aspects of the cosmos and while it is related to metaphysical gnosis, “cosmological gnosis” does give a more capacious separate status to a range of the gnostic spectrum.87 It is interesting, while we are considering terminology, that the far, antignostic end of the spectrum is represented in terms of the banning of psychedelic research for many decades, in many nations. In reflecting on psychedelic exploration with regard to the gnostic spectrum, on the whole it clearly is primarily in the cosmological gnosis range, although Bache’s work indicates that psychedelic insight is not necessarily limited to the middle part of the spectrum, but could extend into metaphysical gnosis. This is suggested as well by a contemporary Dzogchen meditation teacher, Keith Dowman, who in his introduction to his translation of a tantric text, Everything is Light, remarks that “if durability of the epiphany is the criterion used to evaluate our best psychedelic experience, entheogens must be demoted to the level of ritual initiation, which provide a variable reflection dependent upon external conditions, showing us what is possible, like the petit mort of orgasm.”88 Still, “a taste of an ultimate state, though ephemeral, still unfamiliar and quickly forgotten, turns the mind away from cloying samsaric attachment,” Dowman observes.89 Perhaps we can leave the last word, here, to the inimitable Terence McKenna, who, a friend reports, proclaimed the power of the tryptamines (i.e., psilocybian mushrooms and DMT in its various forms, derived from either nature or a chemistry lab) to purposefully, by a suprahuman Voice, impart the secrets of the eternal Mysteries, the aim of evolution, and the End of History. The very purpose of these plants, he insisted, is to reveal to us the wisdom of the gnosis, the esoteric truths held by the Gnostics to be essential to salvation, and the Logos, the divine mind at the heart of all Creation.90

But psychedelics open the door to our “encounter of the Alien Other,” producing “a shockwave generated by an eschatological event at the end of time.”91 McKenna describes the DMT experience this way: ““Since there’s been no sense of travel, it’s not like a journey. It’s like a place. It’s as though you’ve just transited through the membrane and now you’re in this other

Psychedelic Gnosis  139 dimension and you have no idea of the planet you left behind. It’s fully realized. A door opens and then you’re there.”92 His descriptions are exotic: “The tryptamine entities offer the gift of new language; they sing in pearly voices that rain down as colored petals and flow through the air like hot metal to become toys and such gifts as gods would give their children. The sense of emotional connection is terrifying and intense.”93 In McKenna’s view, [cosmological] gnosis is dualistic, indeed, an encounter with the Absolute Other. There is much room for mapping this terra incognita of the psyche and cosmos, and the conceptual elements of gnosis and neo-​gnosticism provides some fundamental coordinates for doing so. Here, my primary purpose is to show that those neo-​gnostic elements are long since already present for those exploring the hidden aspects of the cosmos through psychedelics, and represent still another area of American popular culture that deeply resonates with and reflects the language of neo-​gnosticism and gnosis.

8 American Archontic Neo-​Gnosticism Earlier in this book, we explored the work of three influential neo-​gnostic authors: Miguel Serrano, Samael Aun Weor, and Charles Musès, who despite their major differences, as we saw, share some themes in common. In the last section of our book, we’ll explore their work together with that of this section in order to draw some larger conclusions about American Gnosticism and American gnosis. But at this point, we will undertake a journey through lesser-​known aspects of the contemporary American religious landscape. We will begin with the work of John Lamb Lash (b. 1945), author of a number of books, the most well-​known of which is Not In His Image.1 But as we will see, to explore and understand this landscape, we will need to move through a variety of religious and political networks in order to develop a fuller grasp of contemporary American neo-​gnosticism. I am confident at least some of where we are going will surprise you. We will begin with Not In His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief, John Lamb Lash’s most influential book. Not In His Image is a meandering journey through the history of European Paganism including the ancient Mysteries, the emergence of confessional Christianity, the nature of Gnosticism in late antiquity in relation to the pagan Mysteries, all framed in the context of how the Sophianic aspect of ancient Gnosticism can be understood as a solution to the contemporary ecological crisis. Lash argues that Gnosticism is best understood not as a variant of Christianity, but rather as an alternative to monotheisms in general and indeed to religions in general, writing that “Gnosticism is not an alternative religion, it is an alternative to religion, a path and practice that must be lived and expressed one person at a time. Gnosis is psychosomatic illumination, the full-​body rush of cognitive ecstasy and direct sensorial reception of the vital intelligence of the earth.”2 Lash’s book emphasizes the importance of Sophia in relation to ecosophia. His aim, he writes, is to restore a vision of Sophia as she “whose name is wisdom, whose sensory body is the earth. My first objective is to recover and restore the Sophianic vision of the Mysteries celebrated in ancient Europe and the Near East. The guardians of this vision were called gnostikoi, “those American Gnosis. Arthur Versluis, Oxford University Press. © Arthur Versluis 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197653210.003.0009

American Archontic Neo-Gnosticism  141 who know as the gods know.”3 But to restore a Sophianic vision, he continues, he has to also show how the ancient Sophianic vision was destroyed, and in doing this “to complete Nietzsche’s critique by showing what is basically wrong, indeed, pathologically dangerous, in salvationist theology and Judeo-​ Christian ethics.”4 The book as a whole proceeds then along twin paths, on the one hand looking at what is to be affirmed: deep ecology, spirituality, direct spiritual experience (“ecstasy,” “ego death”)5 on the one hand, and patriarchy, materialism, authoritarianism, and salvationist theological dualism on the other. There are two primary aspects of Lash’s book that we must highlight here, because both of them have much broader implications. The first has to do with the rejection, by at least some of the ancient Gnostics, of the Old Testament deity. Perhaps the most well-​known Christian rejection of the Old Testament deity was by Marcion of Sinope (~100–​160 AD). Marcion, whether or not one terms him a “Gnostic,” is most well-​known for regarding the deity of the Old Testament as a demiurge-​creator figure—​not the same as the true divinity (transcendent love and mercy) Christ represented—​that was responsible to some extent for the existence of evil and suffering in this world. The radical division between Marcionitic Christianity and Judaism could have become the dominant Christian interpretation, and even though Marcionitic Christianity was not ultimately dominant, the theme that Christ brought a transcendence of Judaism, a kind of loose Marcionism, remained as a major theme in Christianity thereafter. Lash recognized the Marcionitic rejection of Judaism and the Jewish deity, and incorporates it into his larger argument. He writes, Gnostics such as Marcion categorically rejected this continuity [of the Old and New Testaments] and insisted that the wrathful, capricious father god of the Old Testament could not be a source of superhuman love, and ought not to be the object of human love. In 144 C.E. Marcion nearly succeeded in having his model of the then existing gospel materials accepted as canonical by the Christian community in Rome.6

Marcionism is an important aspect of Lash’s argument but is only one part of his larger case that the monotheisms are a collective wrong turn, following a deluded entity: “Arrogant by nature, the Demiurge deems himself to be at the center of creation,” but in reality “Gnostic texts state plainly that Yaldabaoth is insane, a demented god, or imposter deity . . . God exists,

142  American Gnosis but he is insane. And he works against humanity. Such is the startling message carried in the Sophianic vision of the Mysteries. Gnostics warned that humans coexist in a planetary system with a demented entity who can access our world through our minds.”7 Lash argues that ancient Gnosticism was actually contiguous with the ancient Pagan Mystery traditions, and that inherent in it was a rejection of the monotheistic delusion and continuity with the ancient Pagan perspective that the earth is sacred. This perspective, while advancing an argument about the ancient Gnostics as proto-​ecological in their vision, inadvertently does raise some questions about the extent to which ancient Gnostics actually were cosmos-​rejecting, as that is a more common view of them. In fact, a treatise (Ennead II.9) termed “Against the Gnostics” is attributed to the Platonist Plotinus, which essentially asserts that the Gnostics or a group very much like them were mistaken in their anticosmism. This treatise indicates a discontinuity rather than a continuity between ancient Paganism and Gnosticism. But Lash’s argument is a distinctly modern one—​it represents a neo-​ gnosticism, and for all the quibbles one might have with this or that point or claim he makes, the fact remains that his book Not In His Image both represents and feeds into a larger current in contemporary society. This perspective may be termed “antiSemitic,” but that term obscures more than it conveys, because fundamentally Marcionitism and any broader Gnostic rejection of the Old Testament and the Old Testament deity is also a rejection of Judaism. Anti-​Judaism and anticonfessional Christianity (and by extension, anti-​Islam as well as antimonotheism) all would be more accurate terms here. I will remark here that this line of argument corresponds in interesting ways with the influential writings of Theosophical Society founding figure Helena Blavatsky (1831–​1891), which also clearly critiqued the monotheistic “tribal god.”8 There is a second, related aspect of Lash’s argument about ancient Gnosticism that is important here: that of the archons. The archons are, he writes, understood as an “abortion or miscarriage in the Nag Hammadi texts. This anomalous species comes into existence prior to the time when the earth emerges by direct transformation of Sophia’s own divine substance. Archons are Sophia’s offspring, in a sense, but in an entirely different way than humanity and . . . swarm around like an insect colony blown savagely across interstellar space, sucked toward Sophia’s currents and repulsed again.”9 Out of them emerges a “drakona” or “reptile” chief figure that becomes their leader,

American Archontic Neo-Gnosticism  143 and this is the deluded demiurge.10 Thus the archons represent false beings that both are deluded and delude. As we can see in the quoted description, and as is amply expanded elsewhere in the text, ancient Gnosticism is understood here as providing a kind of science fiction or space narrative. Archons are “deceptive,” they “counter-​mimic” Christ and the true divine; “deception and counterfeiting are the signatures of the Archons.”11 Lash writes that the role of the Archons is essential both to Sophianic cosmology and the Pagan critique of salvationism. The ideological virus released on a pandemic scale by Saint Paul was incubated among the ancient Hebrews by the Archons—​so says Gnostic countermythology . . . From the outset, the delusional beliefs of an alien mindset infected the Judeo-​Christian religion, but Gnostics saw the infection as it set in. They taught that finding humanity’s true path depends on refuting and rejecting these beliefs, all the way back to their origin.12

These archons and their demiurge are identified with the seven-​planetary system in which we find ourselves; they essentially can be understood as a kind of mind-​virus, and as actively encouraging delusion.13 In effect, the monotheisms are “an ideological virus insinuated in the human psyche by an alien species.”14 Lash concludes Not In His Image with a call to return to the Pagan Mysteries, and regards his book as a “first chapter” in a “true history” of Europe, one in which the monotheistic delusion is finally thrown off. Lash’s final rousing call to arms is this: With regard to the deep-​seated soul sickness of Western civilization, the bad news turns out to be the good news. Knowing how we are deviated could be the very truth—​the deeper education we so resist—​that leads us to participate in Sophia’s correction . . . The enlightenment of the last thirty years looks extremely promising.15

He continues: Still, the resurgence of the Mysteries is not a matter for magical thinking. It is neither a utopian dream nor a mystical fantasy, but a call to genuine, real-​ life consecration. The Dark Ages that began when Hypatia was murdered

144  American Gnosis have never really ended. We live in the last days of Piscean Age, the Kali Yuga in Hindu mythology. This is a time, the old legends say, that affords exceptional gains along spiritual lines in some individual cases, but they occur against the background of extreme decay and degeneration for society at large. It remains to be seen who can and will respond directly to the voice of the wisdom goddess. Who will listen in the clairaudient rapture of silent knowing, taking instruction from the wellspring of the Organic Light?16

The answer to his final question, as it turns out, is Lash himself. It is Lash who “listen[ed] in the clairaudient rapture of silent knowing, taking instruction from the wellspring of the Organic Light.” In a series of rather sprawling websites—​ for instance, metahistory.org, truthcontrol.com, kalirising.org and especially nemeta.org (The School of Sophianic Arts & Sciences)–​Lash expanded his neo-​gnostic and Sophianic vision, central to which is his claim to being a “terton” who revealed a Sophianic earth “terma.”17 A terton in Tibetan Buddhism is someone prophesied by Padmasambhava to find a treasure text destined for a future time, often hidden inside rock and miraculously revealed at an appointed time, but the term is here appropriated for a very different use. Lash divides time between his “preterma” [April, 2008] and “postterma” revelation period. One wonders, though, whether terms like “prophet” or “prophesy” might be more appropriate for a psychedelically inspired neo-​gnostic vision of this kind.18 We saw this prophetic aspect in our chapter on psychedelic gnosis. In Nemeta: The School of Sophianic Arts & Sciences, Lash has created a series of courses, which he designates “preterma” [April, 2008] and “postterma.” Referring to himself in third person, he divides the curriculum this way, first “preterma”: A considerable selection of John’s accomplished work previous to 2008 finds its way into the curriculum of NEMETA. Included in this material are selections from his published but out-​of-​print books The Seeker’s Handbook (1991), Twins and the Double (1993), The Hero (1995), as well as unpublished manuscripts such as Dendera Decoded, which is earmarked for release by Terma Publishing.19

Then “postterma”:

American Archontic Neo-Gnosticism  145 The outpouring of creativity in the ten years since the Terma is extensive. It would be tedious to list it all here in detail, but principally it encompasses all the writings of Planetary Tantra, the Gaian Navigation Experiment (GNE) which appears as a vocation in NEMETA, the Gnostic investigation of the Mandela Effect (YouTube Mandela Effect Decoded) to be edited, streamlined, and reframed for learning path 10, Mythophrenia, the Nousletters and Nousflashes to be broken down and redistributed where they fit into the 12-​path curriculum . . . and still more that does not even come to mind as these words are written. Finally, there is Severed Rose, John’s attempt at a quasi-​autobiographical account of the long trajectory of mystical experience leading to the revelation of the Organic Light and the eruption of the Terma. See Projects for proposed release of this material in book form. Severed Rose is a good example of the condition of metahistory.org, contrasted to the clarified and amplified structure of NEMETA now underway. Selections from Severed Rose will be features in learning path 9, Biomysticism, as well as 3, Grail Studies, and 6, Living Myth. In each locale, the selected material will be framed so that it becomes intelligible within the overall curriculum.20

But the organization of these websites leaves more than a little to be desired, and in fact the author wryly adds the following note: “At the writing of these words, the author himself does not know how to find Severed Rose on metahistory.org!” Whatever the long-​term influence of Lash’s writings and personal prophetic revelations, the two primary aspects of ancient Gnosticism singled out earlier—​the identification of the Old Testament deity with a demiurge, with the concomitant rejection of Judaism, confessional Christianity, and monotheisms in general, and the concept of the archons as the “weird minions” of the demiurge—​turn out to be enduring contributions to what we may term the neo-​gnostic metanarrative within American (and global) politico-​religious life.21 It is not that Lash invented these contributions, as they preexisted him, but by singling them out, he helped give them new life. There is another chapter to the Lash story, though, and we need to look at that as well, because it so corroborates my larger argument here. That story begins with an anonymous site, one of a number of sites evidently created by Lash, that inaugurates what he calls the “Kalika War Party.”22 This site, with the subtitle “Eliminating Social Evil,” “presents the morality and method for

146  American Gnosis eliminating psychopaths and enemies of life from the world.”23 A friend of mine dryly said, when I mentioned this site to him, “that sounds healthy.” The Kalika War Party site, in its section entitled “Manifesto,” clearly endorses violence against the “psychopaths” that are destroying the earth for selfish reasons, and proclaims “The KWP sees the solution for a better life on earth arising through many forms of non-​violent activism and dissent, yes, but it holds itself to the unique mission of contra-​violence. The application of violent force against those who use violence to harm life and perpetrate social evil is the heroic calling of our time.”24 “The KWP adds to the peaceful solution its proper measure of violence, homeopathically dosed. This strategy may be called contra-​violence: the use of intentional, targeted violence against those who rule by force and never concede their power voluntarily. The striking force applied by warriors in the Party is moral, mental, psychological, material, and magical—​including the lethal measure of force, death by a killing spell.”25 Lash provides, via a fairly lengthy (over 20 minutes) and detailed Youtube video, detailed instructions on how to do such a killing spell, using thread, a clay tablet, a nail, and other accoutrements.26 His “Manifesto” details the rationale. He is seeking “Arthurian knights” in the contemporary era, for “The KWP emerges as a resurgence and remolding of the Eurocentric Arthurian tradition, deployed now on a planetary scale. Why and how it is the Arthurian warrior ideal that now returns, shapeshifted into the KWP, becomes clear as the warriors assemble, recognize each other, and undertake their missions.”27 But, he continues, Kalika warriors also recognize a supernatural and extra-​human factor at play in the world-​wide battle now underway. Somehow, an alien force intrudes upon the human mind and intervenes in human affairs, taking advantage of the evil done by humans and worsening it beyond the scale of correction. This intrusion comes from the Archonic factor described in Gnostic writings found in 1945 in Egypt. Kalika warriors heed the unparalleled insights of the Gnostics, intellectual shamans of the Pagan Mysteries, and doing so, they do not require other or different explanations for the alien problem.28

Many people have come to believe that there is a harmful magical dimension to contemporary exploiters of the natural world and of other people, but “where is the countermagic?” Lash asks. The answer he provides is this “Kalika warriors” who “battle the presumed magic of those who perpetrate

American Archontic Neo-Gnosticism  147 social evil with a superior countermagic. They call their secret source of power, ‘the boost of the earth.’ ”29 We have hints that Lash wrote the “Manifesto,” (internally dated to “November 2014”) even though it is not attributed, because it quotes directly from his book Not in His Image. He draws on his own work and asserts the power of the goddess Kali, the destroyer, meaning in this case the destroyer of “salvationist” and “theocratic” narratives of those who practice “predation” on their own kind and on nature. And he concludes: The ultimate act of war is amor fati: to love the fate you realize when you take that stand. Amor fati is the motto of the Kalika War Party. You look up when you desire to be exalted. And I look down, because I am exalted. Who among you can at the same time laugh and be exalted? Who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary. Untroubled, scornful, outrageous—​that is how wisdom wants us to be: she is a woman who never loves anyone but a warrior. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885), Part I, ch. 7, “On Reading and Writing.”

But in his interview with Henrik Palmgren on Red Ice Radio, Lash explicitly remarks that he is the creator of the Kalika War Party.30 Henrik Palmgren is the founder and host of Red Ice Radio, a podcast and video show, and his guests have included a number of prominent figures, some associated with the dissident right, including Russian author Aleksandr Dugin, and Greg Johnson of Counter-​Currents Publishing, as well as others with whom our readers will be familiar, like David Icke and John Lash, who has been a guest on numerous Red Ice shows. Lash’s series of appearances on Red Ice Radio clearly links him with the dissident right, and his conversation with Palmgren about the Kalika War Party develops and extends the points that Lash made in his Kalika War Party Manifesto, chiefly that the Kalika War Party is directly animated by the European grail mythology, of which it is in his view an active manifestation. And he adds that he envisions the Kalika War Party as shamanic, and the warrior-​killers he hopes to attract, as shamans with the power to both heal and kill. Lash’s appearances on Red Ice Radio, and his videos and online publications locate him in the political right, and this is particularly interesting because it once again both indirectly and directly links emergent

148  American Gnosis archontic neo-​gnosticism with the right. Lash, like David Icke, represents the convergence of an array of different currents, but what we see in his work is a natural linkage between the archontic neo-​gnostic worldview that is highly critical of the archon rulers of contemporary society and that identifies naturally with the “dissident right.” Lash’s Kalika War Party is among the more unusual types of dissidence I have come across, since it represents an endorsement of targeted killing using black magic in order to rapidly transform (liberate) nature and humanity from archon overlords in, for instance, finance, technology, and corporate realms. How widespread is the Kalika War Party itself, or more broadly, its ethos? It’s hard to say. There are some online progeny sites, for instance, Andy Lewis’s Targeted Individuals site, and others that may have been influenced by Lash.31 The Targeted Individuals site is quite visually chaotic, for instance asserting on its front page that those pages “critical of Zionism, Israel, and Jewish Bolshevism were removed” after “this website” was “removed by the United Nations Directorate.”32 The site is linked to one of Lash’s, and there is definitely overlapping material in this one. But because the Kalika War Party project is expressly covert and decentralized, one can’t say to what extent it has had influence or taken on members, or even whether this or that site is formally associated with it. However, as we see with some figures in American Gurus, ideas can resurface in very unexpected ways or places.33 A paradigm like archontic neo-​gnosticism seems to be encoded into contemporary popular entertainment, replicating in all kinds of unexpected ways, and is not limited only to the works of particular authors.34 Nonetheless, there are particularly clear examples of this paradigm, and it is important to consider them, because they represent distilled, potent cases that push archontic neo-​gnosticism into broader consciousness. One important figure in its dissemination is David Icke (b. 1949).

Shapeshifting Reptiles from Another Dimension It is impossible to introduce David Icke without beginning with his most controversial assertions, outlined in a video series and a series of books in the 1990s and early 2000s, that humanity is threatened by alien species that take human form but in fact are reptilian. In books influential in the U.S., as in the U.K., like Children of the Matrix: How an Interdimensional Race Has Controlled the World for Thousands of Years—​and Still Does (2001) and its

American Archontic Neo-Gnosticism  149 sequel, Tales from the Time Loop (2003), as well as in his video series The Reptilian Agenda, Icke advances ideas of human-​ alien “interbreeding ‘bloodlines of the gods’ ” who “ruled the ancient world” and “continue to rule today.”35 Icke continues today to advance his belief in shapeshifting reptilians from another dimension, particularly taking the form of the global ruling elite. The archons take many forms, including a range of aliens that include reptilians, greys, and others. The archons are characterized as having a “counterfeit spirit,” and The specific role of what Gnostics called the counterfeit spirit is to isolate Body-​Mind/​Soul from Upper Aeon Spirit. The infesting process with regard to five-​sense Body-​Mind is described in terms of the biblical theme of the sons of God interbreeding with the daughters of men. The ‘sons’ (Archons/​demons) of ‘God’ (the Demiurge) infusing the body or biological energy field with a ‘counterfeit spirit’ could well be the source of the term ‘Original Sin’. Archonically-​possessed extraterrestrial entities taking a Reptilian and other forms were also central to this interbreeding.36

In 2001, Icke had published Children of the Matrix, “the book most focused on the reptilian aspect of the Archonic conspiracy,”37 and in 2003, he published Tales from the Time Loop, in which he discusses how “the Illuminati” are able to maintain multigenerational power because “shapeshifting reptilians” are able to maintain continuity, both because of their multidimensional nature, but also because of their genetic interbreeding experiments on humanity.38 But the books on reptilian shapeshifters did not center on the archontic neo-​gnostic model—​this came later. Icke incorporated the reptilian shapeshifters and Illuminati into a more and more complex neo-​gnostic model very similar to that of John Lamb Lash. In his book Everything You Need to Know But Have Never Been Told (2017), Icke discusses Gnosticism and the pernicious archons, and quotes John Lamb Lash favorably. Icke introduces Lash this way: But the Archonic force has been working to distort, invert and destroy the original beauty. Witness what has happened and is happening to Planet Earth and its environment. Author John Lamb Lash writes in Not In His Image, a book about the Nag Hammadi works:

150  American Gnosis Although they cannot originate anything, because they lack the divine factor of ennoia (intentionality), Archons can imitate with a vengeance. Their expertise is simulation (HAL, virtual reality). The Demiurge fashions a heaven world copied from the fractal patterns [of the original] .... His construction is celestial kitsch, like the fake Italianate villa of a Mafia don complete with militant angels to guard every portal.39

Icke then continues with this explanation: Portals that Archons are said to guard are energetic frequency gateways out of the Lower Aeons of which our visible light/​speed of light reality is only a part. The Demiurge’s constant goal is to imprison awareness in the reincarnation cycle within the Lower Aeons by a perception deception that maintains a state of spiritual ignorance and what the Gnostic texts call ‘forgetfulness’. Why do only a comparatively tiny few remember ‘past lives’, where we come from and the nature of reality? All experience is downloaded to Soul, but this mostly doesn’t filter through to the levels of conscious mind.40

This is a sophisticated analysis of contemporary archontic neo-​gnosticism, and it’s obvious from his discussion that Icke is quite familiar with the Nag Hammadi Library texts as well as with the discussions of Lash and others, and furthermore has integrated them all into his own application or iteration of archontic neo-​gnosticism. However, in John Lamb Lash’s view, Icke is not that familiar with ancient Gnosticism, and drew his archontic neo-​gnosticism from Lash’s work without attribution. Lash writes in one web page, “Who Wrote the Reptilian Agenda?”: The ‘Reptilian Agenda’ propounded by David Icke and others is an extrapolation of the Sumerian cuneiform story. If the Gnostic critique of the Annunaki script is correct, this would amount to the unwitting perpetuation of an ancient hoax. Icke and others such as Michael Tsarion and Jordan Maxwell appear to be completely uninformed about Gnostic teachings on the archons. If so, they cannot benefit from the critical commentary of those veteran seers and clairvoyants, the initiates of the Mystery Schools.41

Lash continues, referring to his own website claims that ancient Gnosticism was linked to the ancient Mystery Schools, and that humans are connected

American Archontic Neo-Gnosticism  151 to the Orion Nebula: “And until now these two features have been unique to this site, as far as I know. Is Icke now borrowing some insight or thematic material from metahistory.org? That is up to him to say.”42 How indebted is Icke’s archontic neo-​gnosticism to that of Lash? In a Youtube video, Lash implies Icke plagiarized him, but also (as in the earlier webpage) corrects Icke, in this case by wondering why Icke does not recognize at all the central importance of Sophia.43 Lash also criticizes Greg Braden (a popular speaker and author) and Graham Hancock (a popular author) for similar reasons, asking why they never mention Sophia (“Aeon Sophia”). Why not? “They are omitting the most important part of the Gnostic message,” and he urges the reader that one “Must love her. Feel that you are in her presence.” He concludes with the salutation “I’ll be seeing you in the beauty to come.”44 When we search more broadly, we begin to see why Lash seems a little aggrieved. An online television presentation by David Icke, Greg Braden, and Graham Hancock does discuss the “Alien Origins of Gnosticism: The Dead Sea Scrolls & the Nag Hammadi Text,” and doesn’t draw on Lash’s work.45 And to given another example, an earlier online work by Gary Lite, “The Lost Forbidden Teachings of Jesus,” which draws on the Gospel of Thomas, cites not Lash, or even Icke, but Braden as its main reference.46 Thus the line of influence probably goes Lash —​> Icke —​> Hancock/​Braden, and in the sequence Lash dropped off as a reference point as the memes of archontic neo-​gnosticism spread. Lash has a point. Actually, several points, because his corrections or clarifications about ancient Gnosticism (for instance, about Sophia) as part of a larger Gnostic set of narratives have some validity. But there is a still larger point also to be made, and that is this: in this tangled farrago of popular narratives concerning UFOs, aliens, reptilians shapeshifters, “the Annunaki,” ancient Sumeria, and Hitler’s Germany, no individual owns memes or narratives. We are considering here a continuing morphing confluence of popular streams, one of which is archontic neo-​ gnosticism. Yes, Lash contributed to the stream with his book and with various subsequent website and video presentations, but the larger current is one that no one owns and to which many contribute. In fact, as Lash himself points out, the idea of aliens as parasitic archons long predates all of these works and authors, being found back in the 1990s, for instance, in Nigel Kerner’s The Song of the Greys (1999).47 Icke is much more attuned to this larger narrative flow on which he draws and to which he contributes. Rather than being annoyed when someone else mentions reptilians, he uses the citation for further proof, and is able to

152  American Gnosis incorporate the new elements added into his own narrative that in turn feeds into the larger metanarrative flow. For instance, in Everything You Need to Know, Icke cites William Tompkin’s Selected by Extraterrestrials: My Life in the Top Secret World of UFOs, Think-​Tanks and Nordic Secretaries. Tompkins discusses the reptilian threat to humanity as well as a “Nordic” (blond and blue-​eyed) appearing group of aliens with which the US Government is said to have been working, which Icke tells us are “trying to help humanity end the Reptilian control of our reality.”48 Icke goes on to discuss Tompkins’s claim that Hitler’s Germany had access to UFO technology that then passed to the United States. It is well worth quoting Icke’s discussion of Tompkins’s claims at some length here. Icke summarizes Tompkins’s claims this way: William Tompkins said that what [Neil] Armstrong saw [when landing on the moon] were ships floating above the crater with hundreds of Reptilian entities standing below them. He said the International Space Station is connected to this background of extraterrestrial activity and he described Earth as a laboratory for Reptilians and other ETs to experiment on humans. “You have Draco Reptilian guys running your governments of every country on the planet,” he said. They had the same skin as lizards and reptiles, but all had the ability to shapeshift into human form—​which I [Icke] have been saying since the 1990s. Tompkins said all recent presidents up to Obama and including the Bushes and Bill Clinton have been shapeshifting Reptilians taking human form.49

Icke goes on: [Tompkins] said Reptilians have bases throughout the solar system and under the Earth including an infamous one under Antarctica which I wrote about two decades ago and was shared with a breakaway group of Nazis who fled there after the war. Saturn researcher and insider Norman Bergrun said that he saw an image of a non-​human craft on the ground in Antarctica during his time with top secret clearance.50

Thus Icke draws on Tompkins’s work as confirmation and also elaboration of his own assertions, feeding into the larger narrrative current.51 What’s perhaps most fascinating here, in addition to the extraordinary claims being made, is that Icke’s summary of Tompkins’s assertions about

American Archontic Neo-Gnosticism  153 UFOs and Hitler’s Germany, as well as Icke’s about a secret base in Antarctica, are quite close to those of Miguel Serrano in his books on Esoteric Hitlerism. It is not that Icke, or Tompkins for that matter, is necessarily aware of Serrano, though I suppose that is possible—​it is rather that all of these authors are tapping into and contributing to religio-​political currents that are much larger than their own individual works. And that is part of my larger argument: although it is important to detail individual contributions to the larger stream, it is also vital to look at the larger patterns that develop, often quite independently of the original author’s work or ideas. Archontic neo-​gnosticism is a group of memes and although Icke presents a very detailed narrative of it with relation to Reptilian alien shapeshifters and in this regard is perhaps Reptilianism’s biggest proponent, those memes manifest itself in society independently of him as well. In subsequent works, in particular The Answer (2020) and Perceptions of a Renegade Mind (2021), Icke advances an array of different arguments that integrate with his archontic neo-​gnosticism, which functions at the center of a series of spoke-​arguments. In these books, Icke integrates many critiques of contemporary global society into a master argument that Earth is under the domination of global archons whose goals are to exploit human beings through “counter-​mimicry” [dissembling, pretending to be human, creating artificial reality], vampirism, and keeping humans in ignorance and fear. The Answer develops these larger connections, which are made much more detailed and explicit in Perceptions of a Renegade Mind. In both books, Icke advances the idea that there is a global “Cult” (sometimes referred to as the Illuminati) that headquartered itself in Britain (hence the British Empire) after its journey of the centuries out of Sumer and Babylon (today’s Iraq), Egypt, Asia, and elsewhere. Italy and Germany are other major Cult centres (so is China) and it expanded into North America with colonisation while establishing itself in the pivotal land of Palestine through Sabbatian-​Frankism with the creation of Israel (see The Trigger).52

Instead of referring to Judaism or Jews, he uses “Sabbatian” or “Sabbatian-​ Frankism,” referring to the Jewish radical apocalyptic mystical movements of Sabbatai Sevi and Jacob Frank. It is hard to convey the sweeping breadth of Icke’s argument: he sees “archon consciousness” controlling the “global banking system” as well as

154  American Gnosis entertainment and social media across the globe, including in “Archon-​ controlled China.”53 In Icke’s vision, “humans have the creativity and Archons exploit that for their own benefit and control.”54 In making his argument, Icke does indeed cite Lash directly, as in the following passage: I remember how Hong Kong, now part of China, became notorious for making counterfeit copies of the creativity of others—​"countermimicry.” With the now pervasive and all-​seeing surveillance systems able to infiltrate any computer you can appreciate the potential for Archons to vampire the creativity of humans. Author John Lamb Lash wrote in his book about the Nag Hammadi texts, Not In His Image: Although they cannot originate anything, because they lack the divine factor of ennoia (intentionality), Archons can imitate with a vengeance. Their expertise is simulation (HAL, virtual reality). The Demiurge [Yaldabaoth] fashions a heaven world copied from the fractal patterns [of the original] ... His construction is celestial kitsch, like the fake Italianate villa of a Mafia don complete with militant angels to guard every portal. This brings us to something that I have been speaking about since the turn of the millennium. Our reality is a simulation; a virtual reality that we think is real. No, I’m not kidding.55

This passage about living in a simulated or virtual reality reminds us of film versions of archontic neo-​gnosticism like The Matrix and its sequels, and indeed, Icke specifically cites The Matrix more than once. In Perceptions of a Renegade Mind, Icke recalls looking at the night sky and thinking that it was a simulation, a virtual reality, akin to the illusory world portrayed in the Matrix movies. I looked at the sky one day in this period and it appeared to me like the domed roof of the Planetarium. The release of the first Matrix movie in 1999 also provided a synchronistic and perfect visual representation of where my mind had been going for a long time. I hadn’t come across the Gnostic Nag Hammadi texts then. When I did years later the correlation was once again astounding.56

The archons’ hive-​consciousness, Icke writes, is disconnected “from the Source of All.” [This]

American Archontic Neo-Gnosticism  155 means that you withdraw from that source of energetic sustenance and creativity [so ] you have to find your own supply of energetic power and it has—​us. When the Morpheus character in the first Matrix movie held up a battery he spoke a profound truth when he said: “The Matrix is a computer-​ generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change the human being into one of these.” The statement was true in all respects. We do live in a technologically-​generated virtual reality simulation (more very shortly) and we have been manipulated to be an energy source for Archonic consciousness.

And indeed, the term “red pill” (which we will consider in more detail in the next chapter) aptly describes Icke’s books, especially his most explicitly neo-​gnostic ones: to read and accept his arguments is to take the “red pill” as in The Matrix, and to see the reality behind the appearances of contemporary society. Icke’s recent works have much larger implications than his earlier books—​ now, he presents a much more fully developed heuristic. If one takes the “red pill,” or to use the analogy of the film They Live, if one puts on the special glasses that allow one to see reality, then everything in modern society looks fundamentally different. And this is exactly what we see in The Answer and even more in Perceptions of a Renegade Mind. Readers familiar with what at one time was called “alt-​right,” or “new right,” but also has been termed “the real right” or “the true right” may be familiar with the same film analogies. In The Answer and in Perceptions of a Renegade Mind, Icke’s archontic neo-​ gnosticism is applied to many aspects of contemporary society, and in quite interesting ways. Icke discusses energy vampirism of children and of the population in general, seeing the ascent of “Wokism” or far leftism as part of this vampirism. Icke writes that The Woke mentality has been developed by the Cult for many reasons: To promote almost every aspect of its agenda; to hijack the traditional political left and turn it fascist; to divide and rule; and to target agenda pushbackers. But there are other reasons which relate to what I am describing here. How many happy and joyful Wokers do you ever see especially at the extreme end? They are a mental and psychological mess consumed by emotional stress and constantly emotionally cocked for the next explosion of indignation at someone referring to a female as a female. They are walking, talking, batteries as Morpheus might say emitting frequencies which both enslave

156  American Gnosis them in low-​vibrational bubbles of perceptual limitation and feed the Archons. Add to this the hatred claimed to be love; fascism claimed to ‘anti-​ fascism’, racism claimed to be ‘anti-​racism’; exclusion claimed to inclusion; and the abuse-​filled Internet trolling. You have a purpose-​built Archonic energy system . . . all founded on Archonic inversion. We have whole generations now manipulated to serve the Archons with their actions and energy.57

The same is true of what Icke regards as the “Covid hoax,” meaning the worldwide generation of fear and panic that the archons’ consciousness feeds upon. To explain this, Icke quotes a passage attributed to Rudolf Steiner, the well-​ known Christian occult thinker of the early twentieth century. The passage attributed to Steiner had been published on the Gnostic Warrior website, and reads There are beings in the spiritual realms for whom anxiety and fear emanating from human beings offer welcome food. When humans have no anxiety and fear, then these creatures starve. If fear and anxiety radiates from people and they break out in panic, then these creatures find welcome nutrition and they become more and more powerful. These beings are hostile towards humanity. Everything that feeds on negative feelings, on anxiety, fear and superstition, despair or doubt, are in reality hostile forces in super-​sensible worlds, launching cruel attacks on human beings, while they are being fed . . . These are exactly the feelings that belong to contemporary culture and materialism; because it estranges people from the spiritual world, it is especially suited to evoke hopelessness and fear of the unknown in people, thereby calling up the above mentioned hostile forces against them.58

Icke points out how the global responses to Covid in 2020–​2021, with government-​mandated lockdowns, masks, social isolation, and constant panicked messaging in the news all contributed to negative emotional “food” for the archons.59 But the Covid hoax, as Icke calls it, had a larger social-​reorganizational purpose, characterized by the “Great Reset” of Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum. Essentially, Icke argues, the Covid panic provided the means for the world elite, which he terms “the Cult,” to impose their will and reorganize society in a top-​down, authoritarian model. He continues that

American Archontic Neo-Gnosticism  157 “the instigation of DNA-​manipulating ‘vaccines’ (which aren’t ‘vaccines’) [were] justified by the ‘Covid’ hoax.” But the larger plan is to transform the human body from a biological to a synthetic biological state and this is why synthetic biology is such a fast-​emerging discipline of mainstream science. ‘Covid vaccines’ are infusing self-​replicating synthetic genetic material into the cells to cumulatively take us on the Totalitarian Tiptoe from Human 1.0 to the synthetic biological Human 2.0 which will be physically and perceptually attached to the Smart Grid to one hundred percent control every thought, perception and deed. Humanity needs to wake up and fast.60

In The Answer, Icke outlines how communism and corporatism are fundamentally linked through top-​down authoritarian power. He discusses how the Covid panic began in China, and how China is largely uncriticizable in the world technocracy because the Chinese authoritarian model is the worldwide goal of the elite in the first place. The long-​term goal, he writes, is compliant masses controlled and exploited by a tiny elite who are themselves, like the elite in China, Washington, or in the former Soviet Union, able to live with privileges unavailable to the ordinary people.61 Icke sees the Chinese model as the envisaged worldwide future: In China when they want to impose a new stage of dystopian control they simply do it (and now so does the West). If you want to see what is planned for the rest of the world tomorrow look at China today and therefore we have “New Woke” billionaires and corporations owned by the Cult, including Google, working closely with the Chinese dictators while claiming to care about “values.”62

To achieve a global authoritarian society, Icke argues, the elite need to break down and destroy Western European societies globally, because of their historical traditions of individual, family, and local autonomy as well as individual rights including the right to bear arms and the right to freedom of speech. This is being achieved through the “New Wokeness” agenda of political correctness, and “When you connect New Wokeness to the Cult everything falls into place.”63 Political correctness feeds directly into global authoritarianism driven by Archonic manipulation. A partial list of common goals includes

158  American Gnosis 1. Centralisation of global power (demanded by New Woke to save the world from climate change). 2. Censorship of all criticism and exposure of the Cult and its agenda for humanity (demanded by New Woke through political correctness). 3. Enslaving perception in ever-​smaller self-​ identities (promoted by New Woke through identity politics). 4. Divide and rule (promoted by New Woke through identity politics and the ‘I am right’ mentality). 5. Transformation of Western society and the dismantling of its culture and way of life (promoted by New Woke through identity politics and opendoor immigration from other cultures). 6. Targeting of men, white people and Christianity for reasons I will come to shortly.64

Additional shared goals of the global authoritarians and the politically correct include breaking human beings down into a no-​gender, nonprocreating human and disarming the American population in particular so a criminal cartel can be installed. Icke is quite direct about the antiwhite and anti-​European animus of the global authoritarian Cult. In The Answer he writes, White people are being targeted to a large extent for being the dominant race of Western society which the Cult seeks to destroy. Were that position held by another race it would have been targeted and the white race more PC-​protected. “Nothing personal, mate, it’s just business” although I do think there are other reasons, too, for the Cult to seek the subjugation of white people.65

The war against men is also part of this subjugation. Beyond destroying Western societies, the goal is also to destroy religions: “The endgame is to remove any concept of another force beyond human reality and ‘New Woke’ is being used to achieve that end in Western countries.”66 Icke is clear that he is not attacking the politically correct believers as people. Rather, he clarifies, Many are genuine in what they believe and in my view just seriously misguided. It’s the manipulation and its source and goal that I am exposing. I understand why Wokers do what they do, think what they do, and feel such anxiety about the world around them. The programming is merciless and incessant on the say-​so of psychopaths moulding the young into adults that will demand “social justice and inclusivity” which is code for

American Archontic Neo-Gnosticism  159 the post-​fact, post-​freedom, post-​industrial Big Brother Hunger Games Society.67

Icke’s focus, in other words, is to warn people about what is happening globally. It’s not personal. And the center of his model, its essential organizing explanatory principle, is archontic neo-​gnosticism.

Out of the Rabbit Hole, Into the Wider World While the primary public sources for archontic neo-​gnosticism are authors including Icke and Lash, the conceptual framework has moved into a broader public, which we can see in Reddit postings. For instance, in r/​ EscapingPrisonPlanet, we find an array of posters who have internalized a pessimistic archontic neo-​gnostic worldview, many of whom appear to believe they are inhabiting a “prison planet,” under the domination of a demiurge and hostile archons. Many of them seem to have become nihilistic and nearly all are pessimistic. One expressed great regret for having “gone down the rabbit hole,” because Now I know so much and yet I know nothing. I have no clue where the hell it is all leading . . . In the past weeks I have had a sense of huge regret for trying to go deeper. I am not sure what I have gained from being so called awake. I almost want to have my memories erased and forget about all the theories. At this point I do not give a damn who god is, but life was easier when I blindly believed in that entity.68

Another user writes, The archons are the elites that are in control of the global monetary and power structures worldwide. They are doing the bidding of the psychopathic demiurge who is calling the shots behind the scenes. They aren’t some mysterious other world entities. They are the Bill Gates, George Soros, David Rockefellers of the world. And they know damn well what they are doing and have a very sinister agenda in store for us and our families. They know the suffering we endure but don’t care, this world thrives on our abuse, suffering and misery.69

160  American Gnosis In a related Reddit thread, r/​conspiracyNOPOL, the summary reads, Demons (Archons) are masters of deception who masquerade as false “higher” light beings, such as Angels, Ascended Masters, Spirit Guides, and The Lords of Karma. Who on behalf of the false God known as the “Demiurge”, have bonded spirit (our true nature) into an illusory reality rooted in ignorance, manipulation, and control. All to hold the spirit (through Samsara) in a Matrix away from the true source, in order to feed off of its divine energy. (Samsara =​the cycle of death and rebirth) The way out is enlightenment—​firsthand experiential knowledge of the true self, God.70

The author suggests the following readings: Look into Robert Monroe and his Loosh farm concept, Look into Val Valerian, Cameron Day, Wes Penre, Simon Parkes, Alex Collier, Wayne Bush, George Kavassilas, Nick Hinton, Philip K Dick, William Thompkins, David Icke, OverWatchChannel, Forever Research Channel, Michael Tsarion, Tibetan Book of the Dead, Tom Montalk, Michael Newton, John Lash, Max Spiers, declassified CIA metaphysical studies, Ancient Vedic Yogi Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, Shamanism, Gnosticism, Saturn and the Black cube, Annunaki.

He adds, “There are reasons why this world seems to be incredibly wrong and corrupt, one that is based in ignorance, manipulation, and control, as if the central force in charge is doing it on purpose. Watch the YouTube channel enemyof322 if you prefer videos.”71 The “rabbit hole” here is following up each of the authors and ideas mentioned, one leading to the next, and to others, all intersecting in different ways, but interwoven with pessimistic or nihilistic perspectives. Many of the posters seem more or less depressed, as one might expect if they are convinced that Earth is a “prison planet” under the domination of (depending on the interpretation) aliens, including shapeshifting reptilians, archons, or others; a hostile demiurge and/​or demiurges presiding over a botched creation; “forced” reincarnation; and/​or psychopathic or sociopathic human elites. This is important because on Reddit we’re seeing how archontic neo-​ gnosticism can play out when disseminated into and propagated among a younger population.72 At least one Reddit poster seemed to others

American Archontic Neo-Gnosticism  161 “schizophrenic,” and it would not be surprising to find correlations between mental distress and these kinds of pessimistic or nihilistic perspectives.73 In one Reddit thread we see how nearly all the various themes we have seen interconnect. The posters seek to “ascend” out of the matrix; their shared view is that we exist in a multidimensional reality; some of them encourage sexual continence—​specifically, advising not to ejaculate; they tell readers to “raise your vibration;” and see “sexual transmutation” as vital to spiritual awakening.74 All of this is striking because these posters are not citing any of our authors—​not Icke, not Weor, or anyone—​yet they clearly have assimilated what we can definitely term an archontic neo-​gnostic worldview that includes elements we have seen repeated across multiple authors and movements. Of course, it is virtually impossible to trace all of the various iterations of archontic neo-​gnosticism in relation to beliefs about aliens, shapeshifters, multidimensional travel, and so forth. Some authors, like Val Valerian or Michael Tsarion, are critical of others or of “Gnosticism” or neo-​gnostic authors but nonetheless provide closely related perspectives.75 Furthermore, links to videos by these authors are posted on social media and thus archontic neo-​gnosticism is replicated memetically, well beyond the remit of individual authors like Icke himself. A number of examples are the works of Carol A. Reimer, who published a series of books explicating themes directly related to the works of Lash and Icke.76 Lash and Icke’s memetic archontic neo-​gnosticism is highly replicable. Archontic neo-​gnosticism provides a larger framework, a contextual operating system for what has been termed by some scholars “conspirituality.” The term “conspirituality” was introduced into scholarship on religion in a 2011 article by Charlotte Ward and David Voas.77 There are two apparently oppositional aspects to what Ward and Voas term “conspirituality”: “(1) A secret group covertly controls, or is trying to control, the political and social order. [and] (2) Humanity is undergoing a ‘paradigm shift’ in consciousness, or awareness, so solutions to (1) lie in acting in accordance with an awakened ‘new paradigm’ worldview.” The first is “conspiracy theory,” typically more male, the authors think, while the second, “New Age,” is typically more female. Ward and Voas give a number of examplars of conspirituality, the first of which is David Icke, followed by David Wilcock, Steven Greer, and John Perkins. In a subsequent article Egil Asprem and Asbjørn Dyrendal claim that this definition of conspirituality is “deeply problematic,” and seek to situate

162  American Gnosis “conspirituality” within “esotericism,” although they admit that “ ‘esotericism’ is certainly not ‘a tradition’, but rather a contentious historical category that covers very diverse and complex cultural developments.” In fact, they admit that claims concerning “esotericism” must be “read with care. There does, however, seem to be a system to the madness.”78 The “madness,” in this case, is that “esotericism” has no shared or established definition, so to make conspirituality a subset of it is simply, as they say in the article, an academic “move” to assimilate this development in new religions into “esotericism.”79 Given that “esotericism” has no established definition, however, one could say this “move” is itself “deeply problematic.” In fact, archontic neo-​gnosticism is a new religious phenomenon. Ward and Voas are correct that conspirituality includes mutually contradictory elements of “conspiracy theory” and “New Age” thought, and Asprem and Dyrendal are right that it also incorporates earlier strands of occultism, especially Blavatskyite Theosophical Society elements as well as Crowleyism and other currents. As we have seen, there are many currents feeding into particular versions of neo-​gnosticism, and indeed, syncretism is inherent in all the neo-​gnostic groups we have looked at, from Serrano and Weor to Lash and Icke. Syncretism can even be seen to define neo-​gnosticism. It exists in a pluralist world among multiple traditions upon which it draws. Is this “conspiracy”? No. Is this, strictly speaking, “New Age”? Not specifically or literally, in that neo-​gnosticism tends toward the pessimistic, not toward a grand new age dawning upon us. Although they may be cute, portmanteau words like “Branjelina,” or “conspirituality” can be misleading. First, the “con-​” of “conspiracy” is not quite accurate for describing archontic neo-​gnosticism, definitely not for neo-​gnosticism more broadly. “Conspiracy” or “conspiracy theory” refers to a cabal, a group of individuals that conspires against others, and of course it is true that this broadly characterizes David Icke’s and some others’ works. However, there are nonhuman dimensions atttributed to the archons, for instance, whether they are seen as reptilian shapeshifters, or aliens, or as demonic, or in some other way. The word “conspiracy” implicitly assumes a human cabal of conspirators, and while that is part of archontic neo-​ gnosticism, it is by no means the whole. Then there is the word “spirituality.” Typically, “spirituality” refers to matters concerning the human spirit or soul, rather than corporeality, physical, or material reality alone. Often spirituality is associated with otherworldliness, and with activities like meditation or some practice aimed at spiritual, i.e., incorporeal results.

American Archontic Neo-Gnosticism  163 What spirituality, what practices do we find enjoined by archontic neo-​ gnosticism? That’s a good question. Of course, Weor enjoined nonejaculative sex; Serrano enjoined recognition of Hitler as an avatar; Lash wants recognition of himself as a “terton” with a “terma” revelation about sacred ecology from a neo-​gnostic perspective. Icke, in a recent book, encourages people toward developing their heart consciousness (which sees others as connected with it) rather than the divisive head-​consciousness. He, like the others, refers to chakras, or energy centers in the body; and he encourages people toward “oneness,” redefining our “self-​identity” and opening our heart chakra.80 Are there specific practices suggested here? No, but what Icke encourages can be understood as “spiritual,” or “New Age,” broadly speaking. Nonetheless, the actual synthesis we are looking at here under the name “archontic neo-​gnosticism” is distinctive and new. It directly reflects and is a response to developments in contemporary global society. What makes archontic neo-​gnosticism so distinctive is exactly what the name itself suggests: Gnosticism. But it is not an antiquarian impulse—​rather, what we are looking at here is a broad phenomenon that manifests more or less spontaneously in an array of venues, often without clear lines of influence or coordination. This is because archontic neo-​gnosticism in particular is best understood as memetic. Its ideas replicate and also can be rediscovered independently, precisely because they directly reflect and respond to developments in contemporary global society. The memetic replication of archontic neo-​gnosticism can result in either eternalism or nihilism, both of which we have already seen. Those who seek to extend their consciousness past the barrier of corporeal death, like Musès, or Serrano, or Weor, are eternalists, but because memetic replication can take place with little or no reference to a religious context, a pessimistic archontic neo-​gnosticism that sees the modern world as governed by a pathocracy can easily give way to a suicidal nihilism. Eternalism and nihilism are the primary outcomes of archontic neo-​gnosticism; I have found no examples that fall clearly outside these two categories. Of course, as we have seen, some exponents of neo-​gnosticism, for instance in the Weorian line, seek to ally themselves with Buddhism either through lip service or through claims of some sort of Buddhistish authority. But Buddhist tradition itself explicitly rejects both eternalism and nihilism. It also rejects reification, including reification of the self, or conceptual reification of ideas like archons or of a creator-​deity demiurge. These aspects of Buddhism—​at the center of which is the sheer transcendence of Buddha

164  American Gnosis nature, emptiness, shunyata, or rigpa—​are uniquely its own. While neo-​ gnostics may attempt to claim a mantle, like being a self-​styled “lama,” the putative titular assumption is without reference to the deeper dimensions of the tradition itself.

The Synergy Between Archontic Neo-​Gnosticism and the Right One of the most ubiquitous uses of the term “red pill” from the 1999 film The Matrix is associated with the right.81 Online, “taking the red pill” has meant beginning to see that universities, corporations, churches and other religious organizations, even the military reflect the hegemony of the left. On the social media network Gab, which is fiercely dedicated to free speech and thus has become a home to many on the right, a search for “red pill” yielded 25 results, including not only hashtags but people posting under titles like “Red Pill Times,” and “Red Pilled Nation,” as well as groups that include “Red Pill 101,” “Red Pill Help & Resources,” and “Red Pill Recon.”82 In other words, “red pill” is firmly established as referring to those who “are awake and fighting for our religious and constitutional freedoms,” and/​or those who recognize “the ridiculous world of identity politics, virtue signaling, and political correctness,” or as a well-​known conservative online outlet put it, “to get red pilled” “became a popular phrase among conservatives to describe the moment when someone breaks free of the mental control exerted by the establishment media and other left-​wing forces.”83 In other words, the term “red pill” has enough elasticity of meaning to include not only coming to embrace conventional Republicanesque conservatism, but also movements or perspectives that could include variants of libertarianism, Trumpism or MAGA, “Men Going Their Own Way,” “The Alt-​right,” the Q-​Anon movement, White nationalism, and various others on the right. But “red pill” is not the only meme from the world of films that is widely used on the right. And it is not just happenstance that essentially neo-​gnostic memes are well established across the right range of the political spectrum. In fact, as we will see, there is a natural correspondence between neo-​gnosticism and the right, especially archontic neo-​gnosticism. But before we explore this in more depth, we should turn to an apparent contradiction, which is a fairly widespread in some circles on the right itself, and that is a commonplace use of the word “Gnostic” as a pejorative for

American Archontic Neo-Gnosticism  165 the left. How could this be, one might well wonder? Let’s have a look at a few examples. In “Our Gnostic World,” conservative author Rod Dreher tells us that online he “has been talking about modern Gnosticism,” and he cites two exemplars on “the new Gnosticism,” evidently Roman Catholic authors Benjamin Wiker and Edward Feser, both of whose cited articles espouse similar views about how terrible the “heretical” “Gnosticism” of the left is.84 Feser cites Eric Voegelin as his authority for showing how “various gnostic ideologies” are “manifestly present in Critical Race Theory and the rest of the ‘woke’ insanity now spreading like a cancer through the body politic.”85 Feser’s article is relatively typical for this kind of writing. He sees Marxism, communism, national socialism, critical race theory, and its exponents all as “Gnostic,” and their adherents as somehow possessing “gnosis,” that is, knowing the truth of their ideological revelation. Feser posits six characteristics of the left’s “Gnosticism”: 1. evil is all-​pervasive 2. only the elect have gnosis 3. reality is dualistic [“Manichaean”] 4. Gnostics live in a “dream world” 5. “Gnostic moral practice veers between the extremes of puritanism and libertinism” 6. Gnostics “posit a final victory of the pure over the evil forces that govern everyday reality.”

In brief, “As Voegelin famously put it, modern forms of Gnosticism ‘immanentize the eschaton’—​that is to say, they relocate the final victory of the righteous in this world rather than the next, and look forward to a heaven on earth.”86 Now every bit of this, following in the wake of Voegelin, is the result of a terrible misreading of ancient Gnosticism, with which it effectively has nothing to do. But once Voegelin set in motion this kind of anti-​ Gnosticism on the right, it just kept replicating itself over and over. And that is exactly what we see in all these recent examples.87 When we go back to the beginning, Voegelin’s work, we can see he was right in some respects with regard to his analysis of modern ideologies. He posited that “progressive” or other ideologues imagine a “second reality” disconnected from actuality, and their motivation is to make the imagined “second reality” manifest in the world. This was, of course, true from the French Revolution through the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, to the Maoist Revolution in China, to the Khmer Rouge Revolution in Cambodia. In each case, leftists imagined a wonderful future reality, a “second reality,” into place. And to realize their vision, they imprisoned, tortured, and murdered

166  American Gnosis millions. The atrocities of each of these revolutions are, of course, legendary. “Second reality” is a relatively useful descriptive tool.88 The problem with Voegelinism is not so much in its analysis of leftist ideologies—​ rather, the problem is the grotesque misuse of the term “Gnosticism” in its adherents’ analysis. As I discussed at length in an entire chapter on this in The New Inquisitions, Gnosticism and neo-​gnosticism are spiritual/​religious categories. They are not contiguous with materialistic modern political ideologies, which in general see religions and spirituality as enemies. The religious category of “Gnosticism” has nothing whatever to do with the ideologues of the former Soviet Union, or to give another instance, with the antireligious Maoist invasion of Tibet and genocide of Tibetans. Marxism, and leftism more broadly, are materialistic and antireligious in their premises. It is depressing to see the same cockamamie claims repeated by still someone else who discovers Voegelinism and once again lumbers forth with a critique of how left-​wing antireligious ideologues are somehow “Gnostic.” There is, sadly, little evidence Voegelin fully realized the absurd error he made in pretending that the word “Gnosticism” could be used to describe extreme contemporary left-​ wing (materialist and antireligious) political ideologies. In a revealing paper, McKnight discusses a lecture given by Voegelin in 1971. McKnight quotes directly Voegelin’s second thoughts from an audio tape he had made of the lecture in which Voegelin reflected on his earlier works on “Gnosticism.” Voegelin had begun to see the dogmaticization which sets [in] whenever a book is published, [which was] perhaps more dangerous with regard to this subject [Gnosticism] . . . Because immediately the problem of gnosis as characteristic of modern political ideas . . . was absolutized, and every day I get questions of this kind: is, for instance, the Russian government a Gnostic government? Of course things are not that simple—​gnosis is one element in the modern compound, but there are other elements . . . for instance, the apocalyptic traditions and Neoplatonic experiences and symbolizations.89

There is in this quotation at least a little sense of unease with his own poorly chosen terminology. But instead of correcting the obvious error, Voegelin (like some of his followers) sought to expand his witch hunt for the sources of the evils of modernity among the Renaissance Neoplatonists, practitioners of magic

American Archontic Neo-Gnosticism  167 and alchemy, and the like, as if the murders of the Khmer Rouge could be ascribed to an English hedge witch several centuries before. I suppose that ascription would itself be a kind of magical thinking. Thus we have his follower Stephen McKnight’s project to identify the “source of modern epistemological and political disorder” with “other esoteric traditions like magic, alchemy, and Renaissance neoplatonism.” Voegelinian anti-​ Gnosticism is effectively a new form of heretic-​hunting, and it drives its adherents to make some very strange claims. McKnight asserts, for instance, that “the gnostic regards the search for innerworldly fulfillment as a sign of ignorance (agnoia), not gnosis.”90 In Voegelinism, gnosis must be imagined to have nothing to do with inner spiritual life so that it can be deployed as a pejorative label for dissidents. This is ironic because the dissident right is the primary home for dissidents in the contemporary American political world, and is itself often deeply neo-​ gnostic. But these Voegelinian “anti-​Gnostic” authors on the putative right would be unable to see this, because they have constructed the bogeyman “Gnosticism” as a descriptor of Marxism, communism, and the left in general. Having done so, they are caught, like Voegelin himself, in their own terminological confusion and are unable to dissociate themselves from it or to recognize that “Gnosticism” or even more importantly, “gnosis,” might be valuable for the right itself, indeed, might already be embedded in many dissident right narratives. However, I would not be surprised if many such Voegelinian authors, having been apprised of all this, turned upon those in the right as “Gnostic” “heretics” worthy of an inquisition. All of this reveals a very interesting tension within the right itself. One saw this tension manifest around 2016, when the Trump campaign emerged and then became victorious—​on the one side was the insurgent Trump movement, of course with Donald J. Trump at its center, but more broadly understood as a resurgence of earlier aspects of conservatism including patriotic nationalism, and America-​first industrial and other policies, which we could term MAGA conservatism. MAGA conservatism, with the characteristically forthright and even fiery rhetoric of President Trump at its center, does not self-​align with the conventional Republicanism represented by figures like George Bush, Jr., Jeb Bush, or John McCain. Indeed, it sees these figures as betrayers of the values represented by MAGA conservatism, as “grifters,” or in the case of McCain, as someone who would campaign on immigration control, out of political expedience, but who once back safely in office, would become an immigration “reformer.”

168  American Gnosis MAGA conservatism is not identical with what during the first Trump campaign was termed the “alt-​right,” meaning the “alternative right,” or with what later became known as the “dissident right,” meaning a right that argues on behalf of diasporic and indigenous European values and traditions, or that is critical of what it terms “globohomo,” meaning the homogenous global left as manifested in “woke” corporations, universities, or NGOs.91 But there definitely is overlap across the right end of the political spectrum beyond what we can term conventional Republicanism. We see neo-​gnostic memes replicating on Gab, or www.gab.com, the free-​speech social media network founded by Andrew Torba (b. 1986). But first, some background. Gab’s primary logo is a green frog. While a full history is too much to delve into here, the green frog harks back to Pepe the Frog, which emerged during the first Trump campaign era in 4chan, and subsequently appeared in an array of dissident right critiques both of the left, of course, but also of the conventional Republican right. The ubiquitous green frog images on Gab indicate that the Pepe symbol has not disappeared; if anything, it proliferated and lost some but not all of its specificity from the era in 2016 when presidential candidate Hillary Clinton formally denounced Pepe the Frog and the “deplorables” of the white American populace.92 The Clinton campaign pronounced “that cartoon frog” “more sinister than you might realize,” generating derision from an array of perspectives.93 But as it turned out, despite the high-​profile denunciation, or perhaps because of it, that cartoon frog had quite a long subsequent life as a political symbol. The cartoon frog, Pepe, lived on as a symbol not only of the alt-​right—​ which essentially disappeared within a few years under that name—​but also more broadly as a light-​hearted symbol of a broader populist right manifested on Gab. Because of its emphasis on the principle of free speech, Gab became home to many across the spectrum of the right, especially after the numerous mass bans, prohibitions, and specific speech controls instituted by Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms on political, medical, or other grounds, around and after Gab’s founding in 2016. Pepe was featured in a Christmas sweater, holding a mug of hot chocolate, and in numerous other anodyne images, while a more generic frog, and frog green, characterized Gab and Gabwear like hats or shirts. When we look at political terminology, it’s valuable to recognize that more often than not, political labels have no shared definition but are simply applied by someone who has a political intent behind using the term. What is

American Archontic Neo-Gnosticism  169 meant by the term “progressive,” for instance, especially when its use means eschewing the term “leftist”? What is meant by “far right”? Or “extreme right,” particularly if there appears to be no “extreme left”? What does “conservative” mean in relation to the “dissident right”? These kinds of probably uncomfortable questions are raised when we begin to explore the contemporary right when bearing in mind the range of views that could be grouped under the term “dissident right,” but that also might be grouped under headings like “deep right” or “patriotic right.” I bring up terminology because close study of what is happening on Gab provides some interesting insights into the right. By “right,” I mean the full range of the emergent American and to a lesser extent global European right that can be understood as sharing a disdain for the career political class represented in the different political parties, be they Democratic, Republican, Labor, or Tory as the case may be. Those on the right would not in general describe themselves in terms like “extreme” or “far,” but rather are self-​understood in affirmative patriotic or nationalistic terms, and increasingly, also in religious terms. Many explicitly self-​identify as dissidents. Andrew Torba, the founder of Gab, is an outspoken evangelical Christian whose motto is “Christ is King.” In numerous posts and Gab newsletters, Torba has argued not for the victory of Republicans—​in general, he seems very disenchanted with the Republican political class, which he sees as consisting largely in “grifters”—​but for the creation of a “parallel economy,” by which he means Christian patriots buy from and sell to Christian patriots, outside an economy dominated by leftist-​supporting corporations, universities, NGOs and media.94 Torba writes When you purchase products and services from brands and businesses who hate you, those businesses turn around and use your money to destroy our way of life. They run anti-​American ad campaigns promoting communist groups. They hire “diversity trainers” to force hateful anti-​White propaganda into the workplace. They run ad campaigns promoting and encouraging anti-​Christ, anti-​God narratives. So instead of providing these businesses with money to do all of these things and more, you should instead go out of your way to shop local and support family-​owned businesses in the Parallel Christian Economy on Gab.95

Supported by and integrated with the free-​speech social media and Gab television network, as well as with the Gab payment system, Torba is positioning

170  American Gnosis his company to be at the center of a new and transformative economic and political movement. There are (or were, as the case may be) competitive social media sites, including Trump’s Truth Social, Gettr, and Parler, though these were or are subject to varying degrees of censorship, and for uncensored discourse, there is also an extended network of decentralized social media sites called the Fediverse, which function as “instances” using the Mastodon open software as Gab initially did, or using Pleroma, a blogging server software that federates with other supported servers. Pleroma (after Mastodon the second leading server software) was created 2016 by a user named “Lain,” and is cleaner and less resource intensive than Mastodon, allowing decentralized, anonymous posting of, for instance, dissident right thought. Of course the name Pleroma (fullness in Greek) derives from Gnosticism in antiquity.96 It is clear that the dissident right more broadly perceives itself as oppositional to the existing corporate, political, educational, and media systems. This is a vitally important point to understand. Reagan Republicanism, or the Republicanism of Main Street in the United States, was not so clearly self-​ perceived as oppositional to the mainstream economic, political, educational, or media establishments. But what we see in the emergent dissident right is something qualitatively different, new. It is not supported by corporations such as Amazon, known for banning dissident right books; its adherents are frequently banned by social media corporations like Facebook or Twitter; it has no visible presence in the universities or colleges. The dissident right is fundamentally an oppositional and transformational movement. When we look at some dissident right publications, that is what we see. Let us take two primary examples. The first is Greg Johnson’s The White Nationalist Manifesto, published in 2018. In his manifesto, Johnson puts it bluntly: “if whites have no future in the current system, then we will simply have to set up a new one. That is the goal of White Nationalism. To give our people a future again, we need a new political vision and new political leadership.”97 His manifesto is clearly organized to put forward an oppositional metapolitical agenda. He begins with the demographic decline of Europeans in Europe, but also diasporic European populations in the United States and elsewhere in the world. Johnson then proceeds to the solution, which begins with a White ethnostate. An ethnostate means “not just racially but also ethnically homogenous sovereign homelands,” “wherever that is possible.”98 In particular, he is thinking of European ethnostates first of all, and not of a unified European

American Archontic Neo-Gnosticism  171 superstate, which in the case of the EU has already been weaponized against Whites, and were it to fail, it would be a catastrophic failure.99 Hence one must have European and European diasporic ethnostates, and “the leadership caste of each ethnostate will be selected to be both deeply rooted in its own homeland but also to have the broadest possible sense of European solidarity,” encouraging “pan-​European cooperation.”100 In essence, there are two aspects to Johnson’s manifesto: first, that Europeans both in their homelands and in diaspora are endangered by uncontrolled immigration; and second, that the solution is establishing ethnically homogenous ethnostates. That this manifesto represents oppositional transformative metapolitics would seem to be obvious, but to underscore the point, on February 24, 2019, Johnson’s White Nationalist Manifesto was banned by Amazon—​not just banned in the sense of not offering the book, but banned by leaving no trace that it existed, even its Amazon customer reviews removed. Johnson makes the point that while his book was banned by Amazon, the same company continued to retail copies of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, the Communist Manifesto, the Unabomber’s Manifesto, and the writings of Osama bin Laden, to give only a few examples.101 The point here is to underscore the importance of the word “oppositional” in terms of the dissident right. To give a second example, let us take John Q. Publius’s The God That Failed: Liberalism and the Destruction of the West (2020), which was also banned by Amazon shortly after publication. This is another book offering a very clear agenda for sociopolitical transformation. The God That Failed is a full-​frontal attack on “the equality lie,” “the many lies of diversity,” “cultural corruption,” “liberal censorship,” and “the religion of markets,” arguing the underlying connections between feminism, social atomization, and consumerism. It is not only a well-​documented jeremiad, however. The last chapter of The God That Failed offers an agenda for the future. While the list is too long to quote in detail, here are some of the main points: • Immediate cessation of property taxes and the ability of law enforcement to engage in civil asset forfeiture. • End unnecessary foreign “aid.” • Institute severe penalties for job outsourcing and for offshoring. • Forgive all interest-​based accruals to student loans and establish a fair payment plan. • End government subsidies of private oligopolies. • Term limits for House Representatives and Senators.

172  American Gnosis • Ending of affirmative action and all race-​, sex-​, and sexuality-​based hiring and collegiate acceptance quotas. • Establish severe penalties for pollution. • Increase the number of parks, land trusts, and general conservation efforts. • Outlaw the barbaric practices of kosher and halal slaughter. • Close all international army bases and end all foreign wars and entanglements. • Repeal and/​or allow to expire the provisions of the Patriot Act/​the USA Freedom Act and eliminate most of the surveillance state beyond what is absolutely essential; abolish the CIA as it has been compromised for some time and is nothing but a nation de-​stabilizing cancer. • Only permit bi-​lateral trade deals and only allow for barter-​based international trade such as that of the economic miracle in the mid-​1930s in central Europe. • Banning of all seditious NGOs, advocacy groups, 501(c)3s, and racial caucuses. • Outlaw all subversive “disciplines” in the academy and establish compulsory courses in public education relating to civics, home economics, rhetoric and philosophy, and national history; protect the arts and expand subsidies to the arts, including music. • Provide for free trade school and certification courses such as commercial driving licenses. Institute protectionary tariffs. • Heavily tax remittances to foreign countries. • Deport all illegal aliens and heavily punish companies or individuals who employ and/​or harbor illegal aliens. • Significantly curtail if not eliminate all foreign worker visa programs. Now I offer this selection from the book’s much larger set of specific proposals in order to show that while the agenda here is obviously clearly oppositional to the “nameless” system of global consumerism, many elements of the agenda (like restoring civics, or protective tariffs) are also relatively contiguous with historical conservatism.102 What’s more, a number of elements in this agenda are usually associated more with the left, such as forgiving student loans, penalties for polluters, and more national parks. It is a somewhat heterogenous list that, without saying so directly, does not correspond to a clear division between left and right and that harks back to the left-​right fusionism of National Socialism in Germany, something the mention of parks and wilderness reserves signals.103

American Archontic Neo-Gnosticism  173 While in Publius’s book National Socialism is in the background, it is explicitly discussed in Johnson’s White Nationalist Manifesto, where it is termed “the Old Right,” by which he means “German National Socialism, Italian Fascism, and related interwar national-​populist movements.”104 Johnson sees the Old Right as having emphasized themes including nationalism over globalism, the common good over individual liberty, and ethnic commonality over pluralism, but he arrived at the same conclusions more or less independently.105 Hence while he sees the Old Right as similar, he sees it from a “critical distance,” with “an open but critical mind.”106 “The least productive engagement with the Old Right,” he concludes, “is when people who lack a worldview of their own go shopping for a complete and ready-​made system of ideas that they can adopt as a package deal. Common examples in our circles include Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Traditionalism, and National Socialism.”107 Instead, he encourages readers to develop their own independent perspective. While “the Old Right” “has much to teach us,” “it is dead, and it needs to stay that way.”108 We can also find reference to ancient Gnosticism in the pseudonymous, popular writing of a man who calls himself “Bronze Age Pervert,” who began with an acerbic Twitter account (later banned) that had a substantial audience and some influence, and who published a book titled Bronze Age Mindset, a book aptly titled because it expresses in a meandering and largely unedited way not an argument so much as a perspective—​of a highly intelligent and well-​read devotee of body-​building who encourages a return to a bronze age worldview—​that pervades the whole.109 To give a sense of its popularity, the book has over 1,500 reviews on Amazon at this writing. In it, the author observes that a man today can’t help but experience this new state of things in late civilizations except with dread, the dread suspicion . . . an uncanny suspicion . . . that the world is artificial. He begins to sense that this hothouse he lives in is the malevolent creation of a demiurge that likes to observe our sufferings, that He and his minions feed on them.110

Gnosticism is not a primary theme of the book, but it is definitely a familiar reference point visible in it. In the future, the author speculates, should the evil of human innovation continue unchecked, we really will live in the world the Gnostics feared, and that spark of vital life and energy that is the gift of nature to all youthful peoples born from its womb, that spark will

174  American Gnosis remain entrapped in ‘matter wrongly configured,’ matter entirely foreign to its inborn desires and workings, but fashioned instead for the benefit of something else.111

In many ways, he continues, “the world we inhabit now already anticipates this living hell of the Gnostics, and the response of those in whom the pain of civilization and modernity is most advanced, the transsexuals, unwittingly help to further uncouple reality from nature and to make our progressive domestication more totalitarian and aggressive.”112 Hence, he provides the avuncular advice to “discredit authorities, to mock all public pieties, to show the leaders of government, bureaucracy, finance, corporations, big tech, and media for the pathetic ghouls they are. Keep up the pressure of true samizdat.”113 It may well be that outgroups or dissidents of almost any variety in a centralized society will resonate with neo-​gnostic metaphors, but there is obviously a synergy currently between what I am terming the dissident right and neo-​gnostic metaphors. This resonance is intensified by censorship and banning, which in turn adds to the mystique or fascination of that which is banned, in turn confirming the neo-​gnostic metaphors of hostile archons, digital demiurge, and the like. In our next chapter, we will explore how to understand the different levels and types of American political neo-​gnosticism.

9 Understanding American Gnoses In the course of researching and writing this book, I came to realize the importance of recognizing different levels/​types of gnosis. Even in the general context of American archontic neo-​gnosticism, for instance, gnosis has different meanings, dependent on the model. For instance, gnosis can mean coming to understand that the prevailing government, corporate, finance, and entertainment sectors of society have been colonized and corrupted. Or gnosis could refer to this realization, as well as to the realization that we are spiritual beings whose consciousness is not limited to our space/​time bodily presence, so that we may become “lightworkers” or “ascend.” These two perspectives are not in conflict, but exist side-​by-​side, as we will see. In what follows, we will sketch an epistemological model for understanding gnosis in different contexts. But it is valuable to begin with some contextualization, beginning with aspects of a conceptual structure provided by Andrew M. Lobaczewski (1921–​2007). Lobczewski was a Polish psychologist trained at Jagiellonian University in Krakow who, under Soviet Communist occupation, began to secretly study with some colleagues the nature of psychopaths in organizations. Naturally, this kind of research was threatening to the Communist authorities, and Lobaczewski says that he had to destroy his research manuscript in a furnace moments before a Communist security search. He later sent a copy to the Vatican, which apparently disappeared without a trace, and so he created a third copy, which was published under the title in English Political Ponerology (2006). It is a book about evil (ponerology) understood in terms of psychopaths in political and especially organizational contexts. In Political Ponerology, a remarkable book, Lobaczewski discusses the psychological factors that contribute to the macro-​social degeneration that takes place when pathological people gain control of the levers of power, as under Soviet or Chinese Communism. He discusses the psychology of psychopaths or “spellbinders,” and how they use “states of societal hysterization” to gain control. Such a society under the domination of psychopaths he terms a “pathocracy.” Lobaczewski writes, “A pathocracy” takes hold during “a American Gnosis. Arthur Versluis, Oxford University Press. © Arthur Versluis 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197653210.003.0010

176  American Gnosis period of a society’s general spiritual crisis, and cause its reason and social structure to degenerate in such a way as to bring about the spontaneous generation of this worst disease of society.”1 A pathocracy, once in power, seeks to generate more pathocrats, and to suppress all those upon whom it preys, that is, normal people. Lobaczewski continues: “In a pathocracy, all leadership positions, (down to village headman and community cooperative managers, not to mention the directors of police units, and special services police personnel, and activists in the pathocratic party) must be filled by individuals with corresponding psychological deviations, which are inherited as a rule.”2 However, he continues, a pathocracy cannot last forever: The achievement of absolute domination by pathocrats in the government of a country cannot be permanent since large sectors of the society become disaffected by such rule and eventually find some way of toppling it. This is part of the historical cycle, easily discerned when history is read from a ponerological point of view. Pathocracy at the summit of governmental organization also does not constitute the entire picture of the “mature phenomenon.” Such a system of government has nowhere to go but down.”3

Lobaczewski’s insights are quite valuable for understanding sociopolitical gnosis. In the original context, Lobaczewski’s insights concerned communism, in particular Soviet Communism, under which he lived in occupied Hungary, but also Communist China, Cuba, North Korea, and so forth. But just as his hopes were dashed by the Vatican when he sent an earlier copy of his book manuscript covertly to them, so too his hopes for the United States were dashed when in New York he discovered that, contrary to what he had thought, the communists’ reach extended to the United States, and worse, he could not generate much interest in the insights represented by his book, nor did he land a publisher. He returned to Poland, where he died in 2007. So let us try a thought experiment. Let us imagine that in the United States—​to which Lobaczewski came as a political refugee—​an enforced consensus of thought was imposed in academia, in corporations, in government, across virtually all of mainstream society, including films and television, and further, that dissent on the internet was vigorously censored through thoughtcrime bans, “deplatforming,” removing the ability for financial transactions, all to enforce an official thought consensus. Let us imagine

Understanding American Gnoses  177 an example in this fictional world someone who, in creating a social media network, experienced all kinds of bans, censuring, and deplatforming when he insisted he would not budge on the principle of free speech. In such a context, from the perspective of a dissenter who identified with the principle of free speech and with the creator of the network, what would “gnosis” consist in? Its first stage would be seeing that something is amiss in the prevailing system, perhaps even that much of what previously the dissenter took for granted about society was not true. Gnosis here consists in believing that one sees through the lies imposed and perpetuated by the system as a whole. It is not necessarily spiritual or religious, though it could be that too, but it is primarily a political-​cultural realization. This realization can be expressed in different ways, symbolized most commonly on the “dissident right” by the terms “red pill,” along with “white pill” and “black pill.” “Red pill” of course comes from The Matrix, while “white pill” refers to information about the dissolution of the prevailing system and establishment of a healthy society, and “black pill” to information about even stronger suppression of alternative views or about the further intensification of the prevailing system and its paradigm. On the most basic level, gnosis can be understood in political terms as realizing one’s separation from the prevailing social system. In a post on Gab, Andrew Torba wrote “Going ‘into town’ can be pretty black pilling when you live a happy and peaceful rural life.”4 He compares the city dwellers as “masked and triple vaxxed zombies,” and adds that because he doesn’t wear a mask, “some even physically jump away from me when I pass them. It’s so sad.” He adds that in the city “I’m always watching my six for something crazy to happen and prepared to defend myself and my family if needed. It wasn’t always like this. I no longer recognize my country.”5 The following day, Torba posted remarks about how “our enemies refer to the Gab community as the ‘fringe far right’ but the reality is the things people post here are what tens of millions of people in America are thinking, but are often too afraid to say out loud.” People having “the courage to state the obvious out loud” means “more and more” will “join our cause.”6 This post was followed by numerous community member comments, confirming and expanding on Torba’s remarks. One commenter remarked “they love to call us far Right only because they themselves have moved so ridiculously to the Left.”7 Many of the commenters identify themselves as centrists in the past, but some go further, like one who wrote “They fear you because they know when you full[y]‌learn what Gab has to teach you, you will never go back. You

178  American Gnosis normie conservatives who think Gab would be better off without the Nazis, know that the Left agrees with you, because they don’t want you realizing that we are correct, and the implications of that.”8 It’s important to recognize here an epistemological hierarchy of knowledge. 1. At the bottom is an unreflective acceptance of social conditioning as well as more or less wild emotional reactivity, which is typically intensified by social media technologies. 2. Above that is gnosis understood as a more limited awakening from social conditioning. This is not absolute freedom, but relative, and itself has gradations as one gets closer to transcendence and further from entrapment in social conditioning and emotional reactivity. 3. Even though it may not be relevant in our discussion of the transition from level one to level two, I should remark that above these is gnosis understood as absolute transcendence, which is also freedom from subject-​object dualism, including in this freedom from suffering as well as freedom from social conditioning and freedom to fully realize one’s own nature. Gnosis can be understood as a spectrum, and in terms of movement from one level to the next. Gab is itself a social media platform that consists primarily—​though by no means exclusively—​in short posts and topical information, thus representing the same kind of dynamics visible on Twitter or Facebook. Social media platforms like this, with their vast array of posters, do provide immediate knowledge of events and event background that is not necessarily available on mainstream media. And they also provide access to opinions or perspectives not widely available previously. Gab is different than these others because it does not engage in the suppression of unpopular views, and as a result can be understood as a use of social media not as an extension of the prevailing system, but at least to some extent against it. It is true, of course, that broadly speaking, social media platforms can exercise a centrifugal force on consciousness, intensifying political rancor and mob thinking, and creating more objectification of others and generating an array of negative emotions, including fear, anger, jealousy, and so forth. There is actually ample literature on the negative effects of social media. Indeed, when I have spoken before large groups of students about anxiety and stress, and meditation practice that addresses these, the students consistently have cited the number one cause of their anxiety and stress as social media, in particular, Instagram, and to a lesser extent Twitter and Facebook. They said that they and their friends create falsely happy and well-​to-​do online profiles and streams, and as a result they feel insecure, stressed, and anxious about their

Understanding American Gnoses  179 own actual lives. In general, social media platforms reinforce social conditioning as well as negative emotional reactivity.9 Gab, being a social media platform too, is subject to similar dynamics, but effectively, Gab also reverses this dynamic, by providing an open forum for a wide range of views, many of them dissenters from the prevailing system. Of course some posts generate anger or fear—​emotional reactivity is certainly present on the platform. But nonetheless, by so firmly insisting on the principle of free speech, Torba and his platform provide a place where dissident views can be expressed openly (albeit under pseudonyms for the most part). For this reason, it is very valuable for looking at the transition from level one to level two, that is, recognition and rejection of social conditioning. The subject of memes is itself quite interesting. Memes are typically images with text embedded in them, designed to crack or break a conventional perspective on a subject—​they are effectively a visual rejection of social conditioning, while themselves conditioning toward a new perspective. Neo-​ gnostic memes convey condensed neo-​gnostic themes related to our broader subject—​for instance, they show archons controlling the American government, or differentiate between “hylic,” “psychic,” and “pneumatic” people, those who don’t know, those who are beginning to awaken, and those who have taken the “red pill.”10 The phenomenon of meming is quite interesting, not least because its visual medium to some extent evades, or is designed to evade, textual censorship or banning. A collection of memes related to this book can be found at arthurversluis.com.11 To return to Lobaczewski’s work on pathocracy, level two begins, one could say, at the point of becoming aware that the prevailing system is unhealthy, or in his terms, pathological. In the former Soviet Union, dissent itself was often characterized as disease and even treated as mental illness—​ something that also happens in Communist China. The reverse would be the realization that the system itself is pathological, and that health requires being free from it. This would begin with the realization that something is wrong with society. The only way to prevent such realizations is to suppress them, banning and criminalizing dissident thought, and this only works to a limited extent. The famous Soviet dissident Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, for instance, became world-​renowned despite being incarcerated in the gulag and having his work circulated by samizdat, clandestine distribution networks. In a political context, gnosis can be described as “society-​rejecting” in that one isn’t rejecting “the world” as such, but rather the prevailing social system. We see this in the works of David Icke, John Lash, and others—​as in

180  American Gnosis neo-​gnostic films like They Live—​it isn’t that there’s something wrong with “the world” as such, but rather that society has been taken over by reptilians, or by archons, or by parasites or a parasitic human group, as the case may be. Society, not the world, is the problem, but what is the solution? This is where the movement from level one (“the red pill”) to level two becomes relevant, because effectively there are two primary paths. One is political—​outward—​the other also political in some respects, but inward. To some extent, Torba and various political figures on Gab represent the first of these. Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and a number of others represent within the main political system more or less what is sometimes termed “the dissident right.” But there is another group that also emerged, in part out of the congery of the New Age movement, however one wants to define that nebulous term. These are people who term themselves “lightworkers.” Online, one can easily find arrays of indicators about how to tell one is a lightworker, and what they are. One, Sylvia Sallow, a lightworker and life coach, writes that Our times have been prophesied in many ancient sacred texts as the times when the light returns to the Earth. Slowly we’ve begun preparing for the Age of Light since the period of enlightenment. Since the [19]60s, we became more ready, and ultimately we entered the Age of Light in 2012. The year 2012 was highly misunderstood, and the true meaning was covered under layers of fear and control-​driven agendas. Nevertheless, a powerful shift has happened, and many lightworkers have heard the call and started waking up massively. Perhaps you’re one of the lightworkers since you’ve been drawn to this article. There are no coincidences.12

A lightworker, she continues, is someone who has “chosen to come to Earth, especially at these times, to transmute the darkness into the light.” Such a person’s role is to transform “each fear-​based thought, feeling, or action” into light.13 Lightworking is not entirely clear as a practice, in many such online discussions, and for that matter in direct conversations. It seems to be more a way of being. Elle, whom I mentioned at the beginning of this book, sees herself as a lightworker. She said she meets regularly with a handful of older women, most in their 60s and 70s, who playfully refer to her as their youthful member or daughter. Elle saw President Trump as hated because he was independently

Understanding American Gnoses  181 wealthy and “couldn’t be bought,” and because he was motivated by genuine patriotism. She didn’t think he was perfect, no one is, but despite his foibles, he was fulfilling a mission larger than himself. This is a role emphasized by many lightworkers: they feel called to a mission larger than themselves. In her view, one role of lightworkers is to spread the light of truth against oppressive darkness imposed by ideological regimes. President Trump did this too, in her view. Specifically, Elle said, he was a force of light against the darkness of communism and totalitarianism. America is a beacon of freedom and light in the world, she said, and that was why she emigrated. “But where is our free speech now?” she asked. She saw mask and vaccine mandates as fear-​ based and not worthy of a free country or courageous people. She referred to her “awakening,” and I asked her what that meant. She said it meant seeing through the lies and fear-​mongering of the left, and in realizing that we are spiritual beings, not just material ones. On Gab there are several groups of lightworkers. One is simply called “Lightworkers,” while another, the largest, has the ponderous name “Starseeds, lightworkers, empaths, 144,000, Galactic Federation, New Earth, 5D, and extraterrestrials.” The latter adds that “Any post related to metaphysics is welcome in this group, including meditations with channeling/​ light language, UFO experiences, ancient aliens,” as well as “energy healing, spiritual practices, etc.”14 In the “Lightworkers” group we find, for instance, a “Light Bath Activation,” a “group healing and transformation session designed to calibrate your energetic system. We will focus on opening up pathways and releasing density held in the body that blocks you from moving forward in your Divine Path.”15 This “light bath activation” group session has interesting resonances with Charles Musès’s Lion Path activations, which worked through audio and spoken instructions. I’m not suggesting a direct line of influence, but rather some commonalities between them. Whereas Musès emphasized evolution to other worlds, in this case the activation is “designed to bring you forward to higher consciousness, as we call in and bathe you in high-​frequency light. Essentially, we are clearing out the old and bringing in New Earth reality, both collectively and personally.”16 It would take a bit to unpack all of these terms, let alone their history—​ New Earth, 5D, and so forth—​and probably that would be too much of a digression here. What is most important is that we are looking at a transitional process self-​understood in terms of spiritual awakening. The word “gnosis” is appropriate here, but what it describes is much closer to level two than to level one. Here, it is not about “red pill” political awakening, although that

182  American Gnosis may have been part of an individual’s story, but rather about understanding oneself on a higher, collective, transhuman level, not too dissimilar from what Chris Bache discussed at length apropos his high-​dose psychedelic experiences, revelations, and reflections. He too described a “new earth” after the end of fear-​based human misbehavior, as part of an individual and collective awakening. One could argue that Gab is the home, or certainly a home, for a new Great Awakening. There are hundreds of thousands in Christian groups on Gab, not only evangelical, but also Eastern Orthodox. Gab’s Pro Feed, the general posting area, is alive with Bible quotations and Christian admonitions, homilies, and exhortations. Influential in this new, twenty-​first-​century Great Awakening is the Christian Nationalism of Gab founder, Andrew Torba. And it is definitely a dissident right Great Awakening, as we see in for instance, Isker and Torba’s book on Christian Nationalism published in 2022.17 But political and spiritual awakening are not mutually incompatible, and sometimes seem almost indistinguishable. Consider Josh Neal, a relatively prominent figure in the 2016 “alt-​right,” who in his reflective book American Extremist, describes his political awakening as being hit by a “lightning bolt”: 2016 was an event, a revelation, an apocalypsis. The cosmic hand of God reached through the clouds to slap a little sense into as many receptive people as he could, and I, fortunately (and I hope, not hubristically), happened to be one of them. Today, people mistake the man (Trump) and his movement (nationalism) for that specific moment in time in which it was possible for genuine Truth to be disseminated by an otherwise sterile and stultifying political circus. Trump, himself, is not an agent of awakening, nor is the continuation of Trumpism a guarantor of continued revelation. The significance of that disruptive political moment elevated many good people into a more sophisticated mode of consciousness, but only those capable, humble, or visionary enough to respond to the revelation. Such people will respond to future events of that magnitude, but there is no reason to believe that is a unique feature of Trump or Trumpism.18

Note the references to “a more sophisticated mode of consciousness,” one that is “visionary,” a “revelation.” Is this political or religious? Political religion, or political spirituality?

Understanding American Gnoses  183 Neal’s book is quite detailed in its psychological analysis of the “American Extreme Left” (AEL) and the “American Extreme Right” (AER), too much so for me to provide a full summary of the book’s argument. Suffice to say that it is an extended analysis of both the left and the right with a eye to Lobaczewski’s seminal book on pathocracy, that is, on when a society is taken over by a pathocratic class of people bent on purportedly creating a new society in which traditions, history, and religion are largely extirpated, hence effectively driving it to destruction. Neal draws specifically on Lobaczewski’s book and conceptual framework, even more on an array of psychological theories, as well as on his own experiences in the 2016 to 2018 period as an active “alt-​right” podcaster who worked with Richard Spencer and others. One particular aspect of Neal’s life, though, is quite important to understand the book and the nature of its argument. Neal was working as a college adjunct or fixed-​term instructor and his alt-​right career was under a pseudonym, Josh Neal. His actual name became publicly known after he was “doxed” not by members of the activist or extreme left, but by members of his own circle on the alt-​right.19 He writes that the alt-​right circles in which he moved included exceptional, courageous, intelligent people, but also “a group of snakes,” a “tiny but vocal group” that “hand-​delivered” his personal information to “their supposed mortal enemies—​anti-​fascist activists and their sympathetic friends working as journalists.”20 Within 48 hours, his personal information was in national American publications—​“close friends issued hand-​wringing statements of disavowal through social media,” his “graduate school professors opined about [his] ‘dangerous insanity,’ ” and his life as he knew it before was suddenly over. But this shock—​being betrayed by people in his own political circle—​“was not without its silver lining.”21 While the experience of being doxed by his own circle was traumatic, it also moved him, he concluded, to reflect and to analyze American politics more objectively than he otherwise would have, since he had experienced what he understood as the darkness of both the left and the right. As a result, he realized that many critics of the American political zeitgeist “ended up reinforcing the prevailing myths and misperceptions of our time.” Figures like Jordan Peterson are “intelligent and thoughtful” but “have proven themselves utterly incapable of rupturing the psychopolitical paradigm that dominates America’s collective mind.”22 Doing so requires rising above received political opinions, going beyond the conventional categories and analyzing from a new vantage point.

184  American Gnosis Neal felt that in entering into the alt-​right circles meant “rupturing the psychopolitical paradigm that dominates America’s collective mind.” In his book, he writes: delving into the intellectual world of the alt-​right did feel a bit like being spoken to by a burning bush or having a UFO descend into my backyard and making the acquaintance of little green men. I was introduced to alternative ways of thinking, texts I never knew existed, and whole ideological movements I was utterly and completely unaware of. Of course, I was wholly ignorant to their existence because nobody in polite society would dare mention such things if they even knew anything about them. For as long as I can remember, it had always been more important for me to know the truth, to know what was real and how things truly are as opposed to how we imagine them to be; it was that very impulse which drove me in this direction. I have no idea how regularly people experience Oz moments, where the curtain is pulled back and all is revealed, but when I started reading and listening to alt-​right publications and broadcasts I had them virtually every week.23

Neal’s language here is extremely interesting with regard to our larger argument in this book. Essentially, when he entered the alt-​right circles, Neal had a series of spiritual epiphanies: he was initiated into “alternative ways of thinking, texts I never knew existed,” and it was vital for him to “know the truth, to know what was real and how things truly are as opposed to how we imagine them to be; it was that very impulse which drove me in this direction.” In this case, the reference to the Wizard of Oz is revealing. The Wizard of Oz, you may recall, was a kind of demiurge figure that appeared to have authority, but actually was more or less a confidence game, that old American staple. By entering into the alt-​right, Neal was convinced he was penetrating the fog of political empty rhetoric and gaining genuine political knowledge with a spiritual dimension—​a kind of gnosis, if you will. Neal goes on to remark that “intellectual and spiritual journeys [like his in the alt-​right] can often be more threatening to those around you [than something foolhardy like base jumping] because they challenge ontological and epistemological certainties.”24 For this reason, there is an energy to such circles, whether designated “alternative” or “dissident” or some other category, and this in turn means that although efforts at banning such figures and thought from social media or other platforms may work with regard to

Understanding American Gnoses  185 individual figures, but it also fuels the exact kind of thought that it seeks to extirpate, precisely because there is a special kind of energy that comes with the exhilaration of breaking out of conventional or received political/​religious or political/​spiritual polite thought. This energy cannot be extirpated by banning, Neal concludes.25 At this point, we need to return to our primary theme of American gnosis, and its subset, archontic neo-​gnosticism. We already have seen that Neal’s narrative has a spiritual dimension—​as we saw, he discusses at length the gnostic insights into deeper truths about the nature of the American political system that his time in the alt-​right had given him. He speaks of his experiences as a whole as akin to a “lightning bolt,” as “revelation,” as “epiphanies.” But there is another aspect to his work, which is very much akin to the American archontic neo-​gnosticism with which we’re already familiar. As we saw earlier, in some widely influential works in the twentieth century, such as Hans Jonas’s The Gnostic Religion, Gnosticism is depicted as asserting a cosmos hostile to spiritual progress because of deluded entities that are inimical to authentic spirituality. Such a worldview can be seen as closely analogous to living under communist regimes in which dissident thought is censored and religion is controlled, persecuted, outlawed, or exterminated. Whether the hostile entities ascribed to ancient Gnosticism in modern accounts actually were there or understood that way originally, they are prevalent in contemporary neo-​gnosticism, and in fact something akin to archons, and an ignorant demiurge figure can be seen in Neal’s account. Neal, as mentioned earlier, draws on Lobaczewski’s account of the psycho-​ dynamics of pathocrats and a society’s descent into pathocratic dysfunction. A central mechanism in Lobaczewski’s account are what he terms “spellbinders,” people who move, as Neal says, the normal majority away from what Lobaczewski calls its “congenital instinctive infrastructure” (p. 60). He repeatedly emphasizes the necessity for the “common sense” (p. 188) of the normal majority to prevail for a society to maintain its moral center and to thrive intellectually, creatively, economically, and spiritually. To separate the majority from their common sense, the spellbinder employs the use of doubletalk as his chief strategy for nudging people away from their natural instincts.26

Neal continues, summarizing Lobaczewski: “The process of ponerization (the overcoding of a society’s ethical structure from moral to immoral)

186  American Gnosis necessitates a dual semantic layer, wherein the outer layer is used rhetorically against the target while the inner layer reinforces membership among those psychopaths embedded within the power structure.” The two layers of meaning “re-​stratify the classes of a ponerogenic culture. The spellbinders (and their collaborators) immediately recognize its hermeneutic meaning,” whereas the masses, the “targets of this ponerogenic speech,” don’t realize its true import until it is essentially too late.27 The “spellbinders” are akin to the archons in the archontic neo-​gnosticism as elaborated by Lash and Icke among others—​they are the ones who impose through subterfuge and misdirection the pathocratic totalitarian society by promoting rhetorical double-​speak. Such language, Neal observes, does not just “does not just overcode cognition; in its final phase cognition is suspended entirely.”28 How does it do this? By being what Robert Jay Lifton termed a “thought-​terminating cliché,” a slogan that essentially cuts off dialogue, such as “silence is violence” or “support our troops.”29 Neal continues: “these spellbinders are people who cannot function in a healthy society, and moreover, feel wronged by it. As part of their paranoid ideations, they perceive themselves as marginalized and persecuted (although in a certain sense they are correct; given their predilection for manipulation and harm, the natural response is one of ostracism).”30 Spellbinders assert themselves as “saviors” or “heroic” and effectuate their hegemony by asserting “1) the exaltation of a wronged other, 2) the radical redressing of that wrong, and 3) the higher values of the characteropathic individuals who have usurped the organization.”31 Through their pathological propogation and enforcement of linguistic-​moral confusion, and resulting mental compartmentalization (what Czeslaw Milosz referred to as ketman) in the general population, the spellbinders are the distributed propagators and enforcers of the alien regime imposed against the common sense of the majority.32 Effectively, ketman refers to how the majority is forced into a double role, publicly pretending to accept the lies told by the pathocratic elite, while privately knowing better. The enforcers of ketman are, in effect, the archons. Parenthetically, I will note that Neal also analyzes how, once the pathocracy is entrenched, it becomes endemic in society and is transmitted generationally, infecting virtually every aspect of life (hence, of course, the origin of the word “totalitarianism”). Pathocrats raise pathocrats, the masses are immersed in the pathocratic lies and slogans, and the situation becomes ever worse for the ensuing generations. Those who escape find they are cut off

Understanding American Gnoses  187 from their familiar community, relatives, friends. The pathocratic realm is, or seeks to be, all-​encompassing, to ban all forms of alternative knowledge, to assert total pathocratic control through spellbinders and police/​military/​ governmental/​corporate enforcement. In contemporary America, and indeed globally, society is also online, and the online realm is, of course, technological, that is, a human-​created technology that generates a false or duplicate world, which is of course the theme of such films as Dark City, The Matrix, The Truman Show, and so forth. Indeed, the social media company Facebook announced its name change to “meta,” which refers to the “metaverse,” an online simulacrum of the living cosmos, its very name indicating the hubris of the concept, since “meta” “verse” is of course above and/​or beyond the cosmos itself. Who creates the new digital cosmos? Neal points out in a section title (Book III: The Digital Demiurge), that we must beware of the “digital demiurge.” While there isn’t a single demiurge at present—​the title is metaphorical—​one could hazard that soon the digital demiurge will be artificial intelligence even more fully deployed to create and control the general population through their participation in a virtual (meta) world, in which takes place what Neal refers to as the “parapolitical” diversion of various segments of the population into dead ends. He gives the example of the “Infowars-​adjacent QAnon” movement that whispered into peoples’ ears that they didn’t need to act politically in the real world because a “wave of arrests lie just beyond the horizon,” arrests that naturally never happened.”33 Neal continues his discussion of what he terms “the misanthropic spell of the digital demiurge”: “Even for the highly functioning and eusocial person, online activity is an increasingly irresistible and alluring scene for social engagement (if not altogether obligatory). For all their personal strengths, they, too, fall under the misanthropic spell of the digital demiurge.”34 And imagine what happens to those who do not have internal self-​regulation and become completely caught up in the realm of parapolitical incitements and diversions? Neal observes that we need to be aware the entire digital system is not accidentally propagating evil: it is consciously engineered to produce “debasement” and “degradation.”35 Essentially in the contemporary world, the digital realm has supplanted the real world, and is now where mobs form, who then are excited by “digital demagogues who can harness the latent psychic energy of their audiences and direct them to their own ends.”36 Neal discusses the immediate successes of banning from social media popular figures who represent unpopular viewpoints, and concludes that

188  American Gnosis although banning does work initially, it has the effect of confirming all the biases of that figure and of many of that figures’ followers, so that ultimately banning paradoxically strengthens the resolve of those being banned, and compels them to seek alternatives, some of which may be less desireable. Ultimately, Neal concludes that the best path forward is “to seek a life of virtue” and to make certain that free speech and therefore dialogue between those of opposing perspectives is actually possible.37 Not a fiery conclusion, rather a very reasoned and reasonable one. There is a related movement centered in Germany that we should mention here: Querdenken. This may seem a digression, but bear with me. The German Querdenken movement emerged in the wake of the Covid-​19 lockdowns and mask and other mandates during 2020, and it is socially broad-​based, so although includes some from the dissident right, it also includes people from across the social and political and age spectra. The term Querdenken is difficult to translate, but is sometimes defined as “lateral” or “open” “thinking.”38 Its members or supporters include, BBC tells us, “a motley crew of hippies, spiritualists and some evangelical Christians.”39 They are linked by their shared distrust of government-​corporate restrictions on freedom due to Covid-​19. Querdenken is relevant here for two reasons. First, the movement is socially and politically broadbased, so it can’t be only situated on the right, and it shares with many of the figures we have been discussing a strong distrust of political, corporate, and educational elites. Second, it has been subject to banning—​in fact, I learned about the group when social media firm Telegram banned 64 channels in February 2022, at the request of the German government.40 Paradoxically, the ban brought the group into the purview of this book because the dynamics we have been discussing are not limited to the United States or to the particular political-​religious figures, works, and thought we have been discussing. The dynamics in play have larger implications, to which we will turn in our next chapter. But we return now to the theme of gnosis, here understood in terms of a spectrum in the form of a pyramid. At the base are those who share recognition that something has gone awry with society. A catalyst might be mask and vaccine mandates, which are seen as intruding on personal freedom prized historically in Western countries in general, especially in the United States. When people discover that there seems to be a clear disconnect between what they are told and what they see with their own eyes, amplified by social media, then their discontent produces a broader movement like

Understanding American Gnoses  189 Querdenken. Even in this example, we can understand it in terms of a kind of gnosis, that is those who are aware that there is something wrong with the official line, and those who don’t see that. As a result, affinity groups begin to form, constellating around their shared knowledge. The base of the pyramid in this context can be understood as disbelief in the prevailing or enforced ideological paradigm. The Querdenken movement, and related movements—​like the rallies in London featuring David Icke voicing his antimask, antimandate, antivaccine perspective—​ exemplifies such disbelief. Icke shares with some in the Querdenken movement strong skepticism about the reality of the pandemic which, as noted earlier, Icke sees as a globally coordinated deception under the guise of which a panopticon tracking system using “vaccine passports” and other aspects of a “Great Reset” can be enforced. Those who identify with such system-​ skepticism are not necessarily at all on the right or the dissident right, but the affinity of shared system-​narrative skepticism brings together hippies, spiritual practitioners, libertarians, and others from a range of allied perspectives asserting the primacy of personal freedom over centralized state power. In some respects, this ragtag or motley crew resembles the ragtag crew seeking to overthrow the matrix in the Matrix films. The next level of the pyramid can be understood as recognition of a spiritual dimension to the system-​narrative skepticism. In this group we can include the lightworkers, those who believe in ascension, “metaphysics,” battles between light and darkness, evangelical Christians, as well as what some journalists term (anachronistically) “hippies.” This is not a comprehensive list, only an indicator of the kind of range of perspectives we find on Gab, for instance, where the spiritual dimensions of the battle between good (those who champion freedom and light) and evil (the centralized-​state-​dominated narratives replicated in many corporations, educational institutions, films, and so forth). Torba, a devout Christian, refers to demons, as in the same demon tranny hackers that attacked Gab last year are now attacking our friends at @GiveSendGo. I just spoke with the team at @GiveSendGo and they are working on a fix, please keep them in your prayers. When you have foreign governments and degenerate freaks attacking you, you are doing something right.41

Expressions of spiritual perspectives on life seem relatively widespread on Gab. A member named For instance, Jeff Sekerak wrote “In a demented

190  American Gnosis world, most people BECOME demented. Not you. Perhaps because 1) You’re an old soul who’s seen this shit before. 2) You chose to align with Nature at an early age. And thus built a healthy skepticism for the machinations of Man. 3) A combination of the two.”42 Yardeniya Ariela wrote “Today and Tomorrow there will be this HUGE influx of energy on our planet. Your body will feel it physically and it will effect your Akash, your DNA, emotions, and past lives.”43 Michael (@Hermes313), posted this meme from @projectknowledge: “These people are magicians. They know that Human consciousness co-​creates reality based on what the mind believes to be true and real. This process is amplified when instilled in the crowd consciousness. They are projecting what they WANT into your mind so you build it for them.” To this Michael adds the injunction: “Neo. Unplug, Neo.”44 This kind of post represents another level compared to inchoate anger against perceived deception by elites—​it represents metaanalysis based on a magico =​spiritual perspective. And it is couched explicitly in neo-​gnostic terms of Neo, the red pill, and the Matrix. So too is a post by @origin8: “When the Red Pill starts to enter your system: ‘If they lied about this, what else are they lying about?’ ” “When the Red Pill fully kicks in: ‘Oh my god...they lied about everything.”45 Or again, another poster writes “It’s not about how many people you piss off. It’s about how many people you wake up.” The first is accompanied by an image of the “agents” in The Matrix series of films, and the second image, very common on Gab, is of the main character in They Live, comparing what he sees with his sunglasses on and off.46 Here neo-​gnosticism is implicit, but it can also be found in both explicit and implicit ways. For instance, one poster on Gab writes “What we think of as Aliens are actually beings called Archons who manipulate our beliefs in order to control us and harvest our creative force. Our reality is a prison and these beings are the prison guards. They are a constant negative voice in your mind.”47 Sol Luckman posted a video link entitled “The Fallen Goddess: A Conversation with Sol Luckman on Humanity, Gaia, Archons, & the Alien Agenda.”48 Trumpgrl PureBlood posted a meme featuring a four-​eyed cat with a sun and moon in its forehead, and this message: “Being ‘awake’ isn’t cool. It means having to dumb down 98% of your conversations every day so you don’t sound like a lunatic.” To this, she posted “yeah.”49 In another post, she included an image of a human body with butterfly or angel wings, and the phrase “When you’re too rare for people to fully comprehend what the fuck you are.”50 And she added “Because I’m me and a lil different, I know intentions in the blink of an eye...thanks for keeping me sharp.”51

Understanding American Gnoses  191 Then there are quite explicitly neo-​gnostic posts, like that of Queenieofthe­ south, who writes, “Jesuits/​Sabbateans>Archons>Fallen angels currently trapped in the Abyss. (Cern is the project to free them ala Revelation 9).”52 Or Furio Pureblood, who writes “Fortunately some are born with spiritual immune system that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory world grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening.”53 This is his signature homepage post, accompanied by a photo from the series The Sopranos. Or there is Diecast Fire’s post to the Starseeds, lightworkers, empaths group proclaiming “Yahweh/​Johovah/​Allah/​’God’=​the Demiurge,” going on to explain that the “Chief of the Archons” is a “malicious, jealous, eogistical minor supernatural,” that has “deluded many into believing that he is “god,” our creator, and the creator of the world.” The meme continues: “Envying the divine spark within us, the Demiurge and his archons seek to mislead and ensalve mankind and work to prevent us from ever awakening to our true potential. Thus they spread fear, hatred, and suspicion amongst us.”54 Occasionally, but rarely, one finds anti-​Gnostic posts, as when Christ First writes “Age old gnosticism is the goal of the seducing spirits which is a Genesis 3 lie that states a man can usurp the sovereignty of God and establish his own sovereignty.” This, the author continues “is why we see the rise of the tranny churches and ‘Christian’ nationalism. The deception capture [sic] the entire antichrist political realm.” The poster is specifically critical of “the incels of the ‘Christian’ Nationalist Right” who think “when you are a ‘god’ why marry.”55 Here the poster is highly critical of “Gnosticism,” which he identifies specifically with the Christian Nationalism championed by Andrew Torba. One also finds a post for instance featuring Catholic Traditionalist author Wolfgang Smith on “Scientism as Neo-​Gnosticism.”56 Here “neo-​gnosticism” is understood as a Christian deviation or heresy, also more or less in a Voegelinian sense. But anti-​Gnosticism in general is rare on Gab, for obvious reasons. Gab.com is home to an array of neo-​gnostic posts, although one comes across links to countless other viewpoints and sources from across the web, as in this case—​it was not itself posted on Gab, only a link. Still, as we have seen, there is a history of such anti-​Gnostic views on the right. Evangelical author Peter Jones, for instance, published The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back: An Old Heresy for the New Age (1992), in which he

192  American Gnosis imagines that somehow persecuted “heretics” from the early Christian period established a “Gnostic Empire” in the contemporary era, which is responsible, he thinks, for “militant feminism, Eastern religions, homosexual rights, nature worship, and political correctness.”57 Of course, it is hard to square the idea that there is a “Gnostic empire” with reality. Nonetheless, this kind of anti-​“Gnosticism” does recur on the right, particularly from perspectives that assert conventional Christian emphases on the primacy of belief in theological systems, be they Protestant or Roman Catholic.58 But such views have not been prevalent across the dissident right, even though one can expect them to recur since the coding for them, one could say, is already in place. And I am not arguing that an explicitly neo-​gnostic worldview is dominant on Gab, or more broadly in dissident right circles. However, there is ample evidence that a loosely neo-​gnostic language (red pill, black pill, white pill, and so on) is common, and that archontic neo-​gnosticism resonates well with the perspectives of those who see social media, entertainment like films or series, much of the national government, academia, and so forth as overtly hostile to what they see as their own normative, more or less traditional worldview based in patriotism, family, and religion. In other words, if one sees much of institutional America as hostile powers busily engaged in banning, censuring, denigrating and despising them, then a perspective asserting that there are hostile spiritual powers (whether they are termed archons, aliens, or something else) corresponds quite well to people’s lived or observed experience. This resonance between the dissident right and neo-​gnosticism is why one can’t really dissociate the two very easily. Two writers for the film Matrix: Resurrections film (2021) said that in their view the term “red pill” “was kidnapped by the right wing, the verb ‘to red-​pill’ and so on.” They continue: “So one thing we were mindful of is how to reclaim that trope. To renew the meaning of Red Pill/​Blue Pill.”59 But in fact the use of the terms by those on the dissident right, like neo-​gnostic language more broadly, reflects a natural consonance that can’t be so easily gainsaid, precisely because the self-​described “dissident right” is dissident against a system that, in turn, sees the dissident right as its primary enemy. The opposition of the dissident right to the prevailing politico-​social dominance of the left is obvious. Less obvious are what I am terming the higher aspects of the pyramid, which may well be because those represent a limited part of the broader

Understanding American Gnoses  193 population as well. In other words, many people may find themselves dissidents with regard to some aspect or another of the prevailing social system. Fewer will be referring to “archons” or to a “digital demiurge” and the like; fewer yet will express their perspective creatively; and fewer still will be espousing an explicitly spiritual emphasis on meditation, contemplative life, prayer, or other aspects of religious practice and inner life. Nonetheless, there are people espousing or emphasizing religious practices as well as what we could term related paranormal phenomena. For instance, Terry Nicholas posted “Energy from the ether for vimanas (anti-​magnetic flying machines) and lifting these cut megalithic stones. This was common technology to the ancients . . . but forbidden for us today. Why? Our controllers hide, censor, & alter history still today.”60 A stronger example is The Daily Lama, the nom de plume of Jesse Martijn Braun, a Zen practitioner who lives in Kizugawa, Japan, and is author of The Meme-​ing of Zen (2019). Braun’s primary online image is that of a llama wearing Zen robes. He offers a continuous stream of memetic images and assertions highly critical of the prevailing politicosocial system in the contemporary world, but particularly in the United States. Braun describes the contemporary situation this way: “The West is currently dominated by YIN (mind/​ego). This is why everything is now about feelings, emotion instead of truth and reason. We went too far and we need to go back to basic reality, YANG (matter). We need to bring back balance because imbalance always leads to destruction. With these memes the Lama aims to expose the nonsense of mind/​ego with Zense and pull us out of the one-​sided state of mind the West is currently in. Once we learn to see without mind, we will be truly free.”61 Braun posts on multiple social media platforms, including Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Minds, and Gab, and his work combines many of the themes we’ve already discussed. He was a sardonic critic of Covid vaccines, mask mandates, lockdowns, and other punitive approaches to Covid-​19, providing observations like “Yesterday covid. Today WAR. Tomorrow slavery.”62 Or again, “Bureaucracy destroys everything with rules, regulations, and tax. Bureaucrats are the enemy of life. With too many rules, the essence is lost. Don’t let the bureaucratic mind destroy the tea with too many rules.” The accompanying image is of a cartoon llama in Zen robes wearing a rakusu in lotus posture with a cup of green tea in front of him.63 His llama image in robes often features a Japanese warrior sword, and many of his posts have a martial quality—​effectively, he is declaring war on the status quo. His

194  American Gnosis assertions are often fierce, as in “Don’t like WAR? Stop paying TAX. All wars and government disasters begin with TAX.”64 Braun often features a cartoon llama in meditation posture. In one such post, he featured two, and the first asks “So what are the hipsters up to now?” The other says “They found ayahuasca and now they think they are being spiritual.” The first replies “They never learn, do they?” “No,” he concludes, “they always want the easy way out...”65 For Braun, “waking up” means meditation practice, but it also means a fierce critique of mainstream narratives: “I don’t do conspiracy theories. I do ‘Wake the Fuck Up It’s So Fucking Obvious’ Theories.”66 He posts an image of a white women with children, one a nursing infant, on a poster from Germany, which reads “Future or Climate killer?” He adds: “What they mean is, die white people.”67 These kinds of themes—​antibanksters, antigovernment, antitax, anti-​Covid-​­narrative [anti-​covidiots], antiwhite narratives—​all are linked back to Braun’s Japanese Zen Buddhist practices (including not only zazen, but also sword/​samaurai and tea ceremony references). Broadly speaking, in American Buddhism, leftism prevails—​one sees it in bestselling publications, and in many Buddhist centers, the very notion of Zen from the dissident right would be almost inconceivable.68 Yet when we look at the history of Japanese Zen Buddhism, it is fundamentally a very conservative tradition closely allied historically with the samurai tradition. When I practiced Rinzai Zen Buddhism in a Rinzai monastery, it was fundamentally martial training, in winter sitting in the zendo with winter wind and snow coming in at times. Brad Warner, well known for “hard core zen,” remarks at length on his surprise at being characterized by an American academic as tainting predominantly left-​wing American Buddhism with his “hard core” perspective, and he further observes that “the leftism of American Convert Buddhism is an anomaly. In the rest of the world, Buddhists tend to be mostly politically conservative. This is what I discovered much to my surprise when I lived in Japan.”69 And he thoroughly rejects applying notions of “collective karma” to groups of people, for instance, that whites or others today are guilty for what was done by others in the past. And he observes that “the idea that only liberals or leftists care about saving all beings and treating people with loving kindness is incorrect.”70 And he adds, “I just want to say that we shouldn’t automatically attribute bad motives to people with whom we disagree. It’s better to learn more about those who hold different views from you on these kinds of things.”71

Understanding American Gnoses  195 Warner’s view here is expressed in an even-​handed way—​he is not asserting right over left, only pointing out that normative American Buddhism is not aligned with the more conservative Buddhism that he experienced in Japan. Braun’s The Daily Lama stream of posts confirm Warner’s view, but are more clearly asserting a perspective situated in the dissident right. While prevailing or mainstream American Buddhism is largely on the left, as Warner points out, I have encountered practitioners in American Tibetan Buddhism from a range of perspectives, including those identified as dissident right, regarding with alarm what they see as the invasions of Europe or the United States for instance. It is interesting to compare Warner’s or Braun’s perspectives with that of Ken Wilber. In 2017, after President Trump’s election, Wilber published a book Trump and a Post-​Truth World, which he admitted he wrote quickly, out of a sense of alarm and urgency. This book takes for granted Wilber’s notion of color-​coded social stages (red, amber, orange, green), each superseding the last, the current stage of good thinkers being green, and President Trump representing the resurgence of an earlier superseded stage by “an actual buffoon-​in-​action, displaying the utter absurdity of such a notion [that there is no truth] day in day out.”72 Wilber’s conclusion is that the [by definition left-​wing] “green” stage “simply cannot function, not even on its own level, if it continues in the extreme, mean-​green-​meme (vindictively seeing “deplorables” everywhere), hyper-​ sensitive, over-​ the-​ top politically correct, dysfunctional, and pathological form in which it now exists.”73 In other words, the left needs to accept and understand the right on its own terms. Wilber then affirms an Integral worldview rooted in the “Good, the True, and the Beautiful” that incorporates and transcends all other (previous) perspectives, and thus encourages us to “Show Up,” “Grow Up,” “Wake Up” (in terms of enlightenment, moksha, or satori) and “Clean Up” (“our shadow-​ elements”) so we can enter an “inevitable” “leading-​edge of evolution the likes of which humanity has literally never seen before.”74 In his final paean to waking up, he seeks to go beyond “the suffocating suffering of a Trump win” to the superabundant “utter fullness of the Great Perfection in each and every moment of existence.” We can try to “endlessly” “fix this dream,” or we can “wake up”—​or, he adds, we can discover “the integral embrace that does both.”75 What distinguishes the left is its belief that “this dream” can be “fixed.” In Wilber’s worldview, the right as a whole belongs to earlier stages of humanity, which is evolving toward higher integrated consciousness that

196  American Gnosis is inherently leftist. Hence President Trump’s victory was a terrible shock for him personally, explicable as a recidivist tendency on the part of benighted Americans who nonetheless were thereby helping shock people already in the “green” phase to reconsider their animosities toward patriots, conservatives, traditionalists and so forth. While there is certainly a supercilious aspect to Wilber’s opinion regarding many of his fellow citizens, his perspective represents nonetheless something analogous to what I am arguing here, which is that spirituality, understood as the transcendence of subject-​ object divisions, is also the transcendence of political-​social dichotomies. Ultimately, if we look at spirituality as movement of individuals or groups from subject-​object dualism toward transcendence, while one may see neo-​ gnostic opposition to a hostile social system or pathocracy, that can be seen as a phase in a larger quest for a more authentic way of being in the world, one that transcends dualistic politico-​social opposition. From this perspective, neo-​gnosticism is not an end-​state, but a transitional perspective rooted in diagnosing what is wrong with society. Society rejection is not world rejection; it is an awareness of, for instance, pathocracy. One could, in fact, be society rejecting but world affirming. Gnosis itself is apolitical; it is grounding in and transcendence of all dualisms. But in the context of this chapter, we can also speak of gnoses, that is, of different levels or kinds of gnosis. The first is an awareness that something is awry in society, which can be described as a pathocracy or as pathocratic control; the second is an awakening of an awareness of higher spiritual dimensions to human life, understood in various terms ranging from lightworking to ascension to meditation or other contemplative practices, as well as interest in ancient civilizations and alternative health or other practices. The third level is less common, but is characterized by fuller engagement in a spiritual practice, integrating all three levels. This model of levels or types of gnosis is politically neutral, in that exactly the same aspects can be seen both on the right and the left. That is, someone who sees what is amiss in society—​the signs of a pathocracy—​could be on the left, just as lightworkers and others engaged in alternative spiritual practices or perspectives may be on the left, or again, engaged spiritual practitioners may be on the left, and the same sequence would apply to them as to those on the right. One could easily imagine that, were Christian nationalists to gain hegemony, dissidents in that case might very well draw from neo-​gnostic metaphors to express their critique by referring to a “demiurge” or “archons”

Understanding American Gnoses  197 or “waking up.” What we have seen here, however, is new, in that our primary focus has been on how this applies to the dissident right, to some degree providing an index in quasi-​religious terms of its radical social alienation. New, too, will be the topic of our next chapter, in which we begin to sum up the implications of what we have seen.

10 Political Religion and the End of Modernity It wasn’t too long ago that an author could publish a book extolling the “end of history,” the notion, still widespread, that contemporary global corporationism represents the end-​stage of humanity.1 Such an idea is implicit in progress—​the notion that society inexorably evolves to a better and better end-​state, and that all earlier stages belong to our collective, collectively superseded past. Indeed, the American political left has fastened on the label “progressive” for itself, claiming the very idea of progress as its alone. In this context, considering an end to modernity may seem anachronistic or even fantastical. Nonetheless, many of the figures we have discussed point toward the end of our era (which is not the end of time, of course, just the end of modernity), and it may be useful to consider the implications of what they have to say, since it provides deeper context for the views we have seen reflected in social media. Of course, the first question is what we mean by “modernity.” The term itself effectively means “now,” deriving from the Latin modo “just now” or modus, “in a certain manner,” and the idea of being modern, or of modernity, emerged in the seventeenth century in Western Europe. For our purposes, modernity can be understood as a fundamentally materialistic perspective or worldview that sees the natural world and humans instrumentally, and that privileges technology, capital, and centralized power. A social system, it is corrosive to cultures and religions, at best indifferent, but at worst overtly hostile to them. “Modernity” described this way can apply equally, for instance, to the Chinese or to the American systems. The question our subjects in this book raise is this: are we on the cusp of the end of modernity? Such an idea has been entertained before. In the 1980s, Gianni Vattimo published The End of Modernity, for instance, which advanced the notion that “modernity” is over (understood as “primarily the era in which the increased circulation of goods . . . and ideas, and increased

American Gnosis. Arthur Versluis, Oxford University Press. © Arthur Versluis 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197653210.003.0011

Political Religion and the End of Modernity  199 social mobility . . . bring into focus the value of the new and predispose the conditions for the identification of value (the value of Being itself) with the new.”)2 What has superceded this “modernity”? The “postmodern.”3 The “postmodern,” that which by definition follows “modernity,” is an awareness of “the problem of modernity as decadence,” and the solution to the contemporary “historical sickness” of modernity is not a “return to foundations and, via this route, to rediscover the novum/​Being/​value.”4 Rather, the solution, Vattimo thinks, is “postmetaphysical” “nihilism.” Vattimo discusses his proposed postmetaphysical nihilism by drawing on both Nietzsche and Heidegger at length. He asserts, more or less following Nietzsche, that in this postmodern perspective, “the real world has become a fiction and even the ‘apparent’ world has dissolved with it.”5 It is “not a question of thinking about the non-​true, but rather examining the process of becoming of the ‘false’ constructs of metaphysics, morality, religion and art that alone constitutes the wealth, or more aptly put, the essence of reality.”6 What is left after we have preemptively asserted the falseness of what he deems “metaphysics”? Nihilism. Specifically, “accomplished nihilism,” because the “accomplished nihilist has understood that nihilism is his or her sole opportunity.”7 He thinks that “dehumanizing technology” and a “wholly administered” “totalizing” society in “late modernity” are “metaphysical accretions,” producing “fables” or “myths,” whereas “an accomplished nihilist” “calls us to a fictionalized experience of reality which is also our only possibility for freedom.”8 And Vattimo specifically eschews “negative theology” or mysticism because that would provide “deeper meaning.”9 I will offer just a few observations on Vattimo’s “end of modernity” here. First: what I wrote in Platonic Mysticism about Richard Rorty is applicable here as well.10 Vattimo, like Rorty, assiduously practices the rhetorical fallacy of preemptive assertion. In other words, his work is filled with presumptive assertions beneath which are many unexamined assumptions, the examination of which would cause the entire flimsy set of assertive claims to collapse in upon themselves. To assert that nihilism is our “only” collective and individual option is just that—​an assertion. Likewise, rejecting “negative theology” or mysticism because it would provide “deeper meaning” merely says that one wants to reject deeper meaning. But what does that demonstrate, really? And what underlies it? In Vattimo’s work, the “end of modernity” is just a catch-​all phrase for the same kind of simplistic antiessentialism or antifoundationalism claimed presumptively by Rorty and others, here ramped up to assert “accomplished

200  American Gnosis nihilism.” As I put it earlier, “there is no ground, no basis, other than bald assertion,” for these kinds of authors, and so Rorty can proclaim ex cathedra that “No theory of the nature of truth is possible.”11 Vattimo, for his part, seeks to build a set of roadblocks that force everyone into a dead-​end nihilism, as if these authors’ life projects were to construct an offramp from a highway into an abyss. That is, I suppose, one “end of modernity.” There are other efforts to see the present era as “at the end of an age,” for instance, the work of the historian John Lukacs (1924–​2019). Lukacs’s approach is, of course, much more grounded in the history of our era, and his conclusions are more modest. In At the End of An Age (2002), Lukacs thoughtfully explores the late twentieth and early twenty-​first centuries with regard to the ends of previous eras, reflecting on “history at the end of a historical age.”12 By “historical age,” he refers to the classical delineation of the classical pagan period of antiquity, the medieval, and the modern eras, and in this book he advances the idea that we are now in the midst of a shift to a new historical era as different from the past as each of these were from their predecessors. While the outline of the change in eras Lukacs has in mind is a bit nebulous, still, he provides some key indicators of the end of the modern era and the advent of a new one. He begins by sketching what characterizes modernity: the modern state, popular sovereignty, the age of money (and its inflation), the urban age, the age of productivity and a surfeit of goods, the age of personal privacy, the age of institutional schooling (and its inflation), the “devolution” of literature and art, concluding that “if ‘post-​modern’ has any proper meaning at all, it should mean an advance to a new and rising sense of historicity,” by which he means “an oceanic” “historical consciousness.”13 What characterizes the coming age, now becoming visible? In his answer, Lukacs reflects on history and historicity in light of quantum physics, and then provides “An Illustration,” one entirely grounded in his more than fifty years (at the time of writing) of published scholarship. This example will be very familiar to us, given some of our earlier chapters: Adolf Hitler. Lukacs begins by quoting himself on Hitler, who “had very considerable intellectual talents. He was also courageous, self-​assured, on many occasions steadfast, loyal to his friends and to those working for him, self-​disciplined, and modest in his physical wants.”14 Of course this is not to excuse him, only to remark on some of Hitler’s actual personal characteristics. Lukacs, at this point an eminent historian, goes on to point out a variety of misconconceptions regarding Hitler—​for instance, that he was not a totalitarian, expressed “disdain for the

Political Religion and the End of Modernity  201 supremacy of the state,” was very popular, and, his “extraordinary power, his extraordinary rise, his extraordinary successes, his extraordinary appeal to his people were largely due to his conviction of the primacy of mind over matter.”15 And he concludes that there is still fascination with “a new third force, youthful and vital, the opposite of anything ‘reactionary,’ attractive to many young people.” While American materialism is unlikely to “inspire many young people throught the world,” it is quite possible, he thinks, “that a new kind of ideology [along the lines of Hitler’s] may fill what is unquestionably a spiritual and intellectual vacuum.”16 We are living in an era, he says, of “unrestricted spiritualisms [av: spiritualities?], beliefs in mythical faiths, involving more and more beliefs in the existence of supernatural and superterrestrial phenomena,” and while we should not regret the slow decay of materialism and desiccated rationalism, “aware we must be of the grave dangers and sickening irrational appearances of idealistic determinisms.”17 In his final chapter, Lukacs reveals his own perspective: straightforward confessional Christian faith. He presents “the most dramatic proposition of this book. Contrary to all accepted ideas we must now, at the end of an Age, recognize that we, and our earth, are at the center of our universe.”18 Our era, at the end of the modern age, is characterized by an “evolution, not only of our churches and of our religion, but of our God-​belief,” and we must recognize our human centrality both in space and in time, because “the coming of Christ to this earth may have been? No, that it was, the central event of the universe.”19 He is clearly distrustful of interest in “spiritualism,” paranormal phenomena, mysticism, or the supernatural—​rather, he is asserting at the end of his book a confessional Christian perspective centered in belief. This assertion doesn’t come as a natural outgrowth of conclusions or predictions about the age to come, but rather is a personal statement. Both primary aspects of Lukacs’s book are quite interesting for our inquiry here. First, in this late and summative book, Lukacs clearly foregrounds the power of a “third force” or a “third way” of political religion. As a distinguished historian of the modern era, he knew just how fascinating Hitler and the history of that period are to a broad audience. This is not to say he was endorsing Hitler, of course, rather that he as an erudite historian was recognizing the nature of something the attractive power of which is not limited only to the 1930s and 1940s. Second, Lukacs’s own perspective as a confessional Christian has interesting resonances with what we see on Gab and more broadly in the American First movement, which is nationalism

202  American Gnosis rooted in Christianity—​“Christ is King!” This is not to say that Lukacs would have endorsed Christian nationalism any more than he endorsed Hitler, but rather to point out that in this book, he definitely dealt with themes visible in contemporary American politics. Whereas Lukacs’s confession he was a conventional Christian believer was, by the early twenty-​first century, a somewhat radical act for an academic historian, a number of Christian authors of the early twentieth century also had reflected on the end of the modern era and their presentiments of the coming era. One of the more well-​known of these was Romano Guardini (1885–​1968), during his lifetime an influential academic lecturer and theologian whose most relevant books for us are The End of the Modern World, and Letters from Lake Cuomo: Explorations in Technology and the Human Race. Guardini is an elegant, elegaic author whose books express a pensive nostalgia for what was being lost in the early twentieth century, and an uneasiness about what is emerging. In The End of the Modern World, Guardini discusses the organic unity of the medieval European cosmos, and contrasts it with the new modern world in which the technological mind “sees nature as an insensate order, as a cold body of facts, as a mere ‘given,’ as an object of utility, as raw material to be hammered into useful shape; it views the cosmos similarly as a mere ‘space’ into which objects can be thrown with complete indifference.”20 Man, he continues, has developed immense power, but is not prepared morally to handle it—​hence the “dissolution of the modern world” is already underway.21 This is because we now live in a “noncultural culture,” in which chaos is before us, while “machines are running on schedule and because the authorities function as usual.”22 And decline is everywhere: so also the “cultural deposit preserved by the [Catholic] Church thus far will not be able to endure against the general decay of tradition.”23 Already, Guardini says (in his 1956 book), “Today the modern age is essentially over.” Even now we fill the “yet nameless epoch . . . breaking in on us from all sides.”24 The core of the new epoch will be how we answer the question of how to curb power. How does man “employ power without forfeiting his humanity?” If he cannot curb power, or strengthen his humanity, he will “surrender his humanity to power and perish.”25 “A type of man is evolving” (in vast modern cities) “who lives only in the present, who is ‘replaceable’ to a terrifying degree, and who all too easily falls victim to power.”26 Hence, “increasingly effective social engineering” treats people “much as a machine treats the raw materials fed into it.”27 “Modern nationalism,” he suggests, may

Political Religion and the End of Modernity  203 be “the peoples’ last attempt to defend themselves against absorption” into the technological maw.28 In the end, only a renewed man, truly realizing his humanity, can be the “genuine ‘regent’ who alone can save our age from going down in violence and chaos.”29 This “coming man,” Guardini thinks, “is definitely un-​liberal, which does not mean that he has no respect for freedom.”30 He is aware of the true choices: “dignity or slavery; growth or decline; truth or lie; the mind or the passions.”31 His tasks: to establish “an authority which respects human dignity,” to re-​establish asceticism, that is, self-​control and responsibility, to develop the real command that comes from authentic dignity, above all recognizing God as the “point of reference for all existence.”32 In his earlier book Letters from Lake Como, written and published during the 1920s, Guardini was more elegaic, recognizing the cultural decline happening all around him even then, and mourning what was being lost. “To me,” he wrote, “it is as if a terrible machine were crushing our inheritance between the stones. We are becoming poor, very poor.”33 And yet “perhaps it is only in this way that we can arrive at what is truly essential.”34 While modernity is a time of destruction and chaos, we must “say yes to our age,” for “only a new initiative can bring a solution. It has to be possible to tread the path of developing awareness until we achieve an inner standard, not one imposed by external limitations.”35 He envisions in this book too the possibility that a new aristocracy of the spirit can emerge, ultimately providing our (utopian) salvation from the darkness and oppression of the totalizing centralized state and its apparatus. It is interesting to read Guardini today, not only because his books are sometimes almost eerily resonant with contemporary society, but also because he is a contemplative, an uncommon perspective. Thus unlike another contemporary Catholic author, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira (1908–​1995), Guardini did not argue for an active “counter-​revolution,” or for a Catholic revival based on “Tradition, Family, and Property,” an organization Oliveira founded that is still active today, especially in Brazil. Oliveria’s most influential work was Revolution and Counter-​Revolution, which fiercely combats the decline of traditional culture, and the onslaught of mass society, revolutionary movements, and communism.36 Guardini’s view was much more introspective, one could even say, monastic in approach. We will have more to say about the significances of contemplative practices in our final chapter. Another contemporary of Guardini’s whose influential works on the end of modernity must be included here is René Guénon (1886–​1951). Guénon

204  American Gnosis articulates quite clearly a perspective found in Greco-​Roman antiquity as well as in Hinduism, essentially that in the distant past was a golden age, followed by silver, bronze, and finally iron ages, in which we find ourselves now. Such a perspective is the opposite of the widespread modern belief in continuous evolutionary progress—​it is a clearly expressed narrative of decline, of things falling apart and the center not holding. I include it here not least because Guénon’s expression of it is singularly forceful. There are two books by Guénon specifically addressing how modernity itself is a collection of deviations from tradition and not just a decline in a general way, as Guardini suggested in Letters from Lake Como, but fundamentally in crisis. Guénon discusses the crisis of modernity in an early book, Crisis of the Modern World, published in 1927, and remarks there that “we really do seem to be approaching the end of a world, or in other words the end of an epoch or of an historical cycle, which may furthermore correspond with the end of a cosmic cycle, in accordance with the teaching of all the traditional doctrines on the subject.”37 But, he adds, we need not remain passive; instead, we should strive “to the utmost to prepare the way of escape out of this ‘dark age,’ for there are many signs that its end is approaching, if it not be immediately at hand.”38 Guénon’s lucid, relentless, almost mathematical style of expression lends special power to his exposition of the decline that modernity represents and that is coming to a head. Adding to the force of his work is that he marshals references to traditional texts of Western Europe but also of Hinduism in order to explain how modernity is the advent of atomized individualism, social chaos, rampant materialism, scientism, and antireligious and antitraditional activity undermining or erasing the very nature of what it means to be human. He concludes that “if men really came to understand what goes to make up the modern world, that world would there and then cease to exist, because its existence, like that of ignorance itself . . . is a purely negative one: it has come into being solely through the denial of traditional and superhuman truth.”39 Realized true knowledge would bring about a transformed world without a catastrophe, but is that possible? He leaves the door to that possibility open, adding that “nothing accomplished in this [higher] order can ever be lost” and that in the end nothing, least of all lies and delusion, ultimately can prevail against truth.40 Guénon’s magnum opus on the end of modernity, though, is The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times. In this bracing and uncompromising work, he explicates a singular vision of the modern world in short, crisp

Political Religion and the End of Modernity  205 chapters on topics such as how modernity consists in the apparent victory of quantity over quality, of materialism, of factory production over crafts, of ugliness over beauty, of uniformity over personality, of surveillance and public-​ shaming over privacy, and of pseudo-​religions over authentic spirituality. For many readers, this explication may arrive as a kind of thunderbolt, and its fundamental pessimism concerning modernity may be shocking. The last half of the book, roughly, consists in his explanations of how demonic forces have inveigled their way into this world and are perverting authentic religion and even religious sites, producing inverted, that is, demonic effects that speed up the decline and final denouement of this world.41 So wide-​ranging is the analysis, I can only suggest the reader investigate the book directly; here, we have only room for a brief overview. While it may appear that Guénon’s work is utterly pessimistic, in fact it is not. The end of the modern world has two aspects, he concludes, one maleficent, the other beneficent. The maleficent is what comes into play to destroy and dissolve at the end of an age, and the beneficent is what spreads the seeds of the good and the true for the future golden age. After all, ancient traditions see the ages of the world not as linear, but as cyclical, and after an iron age comes a new golden age. Even though what we are witnessing in modernity is “clearly a progressive ‘descent’ or ‘degradation,” and this is what may be called its ‘maleficent’ aspect,” nonetheless after the catastrophe cleansing, “all that is positive in its existence” is suddenly re-​established in a “primordial state.”42 Thus “the end of a world” never is and never can be anything but the end of an illusion.”43 Finally, we must mention Oswald Spengler (1880–​1936), whose two-​ volume The Decline of the West presents the view that civilizations go through phases like a biological being—​birth, childhood, adulthood, old age, and death—​and he held that we are in modernity living through the long-​term, slow collapse (old age) phase of Western civilization. In Spengler’s view, modernity would go into a period of caesarism, as one saw in the latter stages of the Roman empire, until finally modern civilization would collapse entirely. This caesarist phase would begin in the early 2000s, he predicted.44 Spengler features in our conclusion, so I need not say more here. What would an end to modernity mean? Obviously there are multiple ways to see this. One is that, more or less like the Soviet Union, the modern era understood in terms of what some derisively term “globohomo,” meaning global, homogenized, centralized, corporationist and materialistic leftist-​ run society, falls apart more or less on its own. In this case, the system as a

206  American Gnosis whole is unsustainable and simply collapses. Fragile, complex supply chains and systems do make this outcome feasible. Another, perhaps related to Spengler’s caesarism, is that other models emerge and one or more of those becomes dominant. In this scenario, a system fundamentally different than modernity replaces it, for instance, an Islamic caliphate, which dramatically would change the economic system, outlawing usury, and thus much of the contemporary debt-​based system. The totalitarian Chinese system could become dominant, but it would not be an alternative to modernity as understood above, only an intensification of it. There is still another scenario. Andrew Torba has consistently argued not only on behalf of free speech, but also for what he terms a “parallel economy.” Torba writes “There is literally nothing ‘united’ about the United States. Balkanization is inevitable, accelerating, and already here. Embrace it and get to work building parallel systems to defend our way of life from the decay.”45 Torba’s having been banned by credit card companies and banks, as well as by existing cloud companies like Amazon, led him to develop the Gab social media system with its own servers. Overcoming these circumstances led him to the idea of developing a parallel economy, or more broadly, a parallel society with a cultural-​religious center, essentially similar to what he did with Gab. And actually separatism has fairly deep roots in American society. Near where I live in rural Michigan is a Mennonite community, and north of that, an Amish community, both of which have developed their own networks and a kind of parallel economy. In the 1960s and 1970s, there were a number of counter-​cultural or hippie utopian ventures, one of the more famous of which was The Farm in Tennessee, led by Stephen Gaskin.46 Nineteenth-​century America of course also saw efforts to develop alternative communities with their own distinctive organizational and economic structures, among them Brook Farm, Oneida, Ora et Labora, and a number of others. Indeed, the history of the United States could well be understood as a collection of such experiments. Furthermore, there is a long history of American secessionism—​in fact, the American founding was itself a secession from Great Britain. Although in current usage the term “federalism” is often confused with centralized state power, in fact the term refers to a federated system like Switzerland, one in which the smaller units (cantons, states) retain primary status, and only certain powers are understood as delegated to the national level (military protection, for instance).47 Arguably the primary advocate for secessionism in

Political Religion and the End of Modernity  207 the United States is Kirkpatrick Sale (1937–​), an ardent decentralist, luddite, bioregionalist, and opponent of gigantism who began on the left and ended up more or less on the right.48 American secessionist movements in the late twentieth and early twenty-​ first centuries were largely though not exclusively on the right. Probably the most enduring of these is the Pacific Northwest separatist movement, often listed since at least the 1980s as the Northwest Territorial Imperative, which was envisioned by Harold Covington (1953–​2018) in a series of novels.49 There were other secessionist movements and efforts in the United States during this period, including Northern California, Vermont, and Texas, but the Pacific Northwest separatist movement is unusual, as it lasted multiple generations and generated multiple spokesmen over five decades. In the context of secessionism, the term “political religion” can be understood in different ways. The first is the way the term is usually understood, in terms of a state-​enforced set of ideological constructs that resemble a kind of ersatz religion, and that suppress or extirpate traditional religions.50 Examples include Maoist China, in which Maoism became an ersatz state religion with rituals and a sacred text of sorts (Red Book), while especially during the “Cultural Revolution,” traditional forms of Chinese religion and its exponents were persecuted and destroyed. Likewise, the Chinese invasion and persecution and destruction of Tibetan religion can be understood in the same way as an enforcement of a new, ideological political religion over traditional Tibetan Buddhism. In the contemporary American context with regard to the dissident right, we find a fairly widespread set of beliefs that the prevailing system, including federal and in some cases state government, corporations, social media, the entertainment industry and so forth constitute a kind of quasireligious ideological system. This idea became more widespread during the Covid-​19 panic of 2020–​2021, when dissidents circulated memes concerning external signs of one’s salvation (masks) and communion with the faithful (vaccines), while at the same time social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) banned critiques of the prevailing narrative. In a comment on a post by Andrew Torba, Shane expresses his sense of an ideologically driven American leftist political religion this way: “I don’t identify with the far right personally. I’d probably be a centrist ten years ago. But the spectrum has changed dramatically in a short time. The left have went so far completely batshit demon possessed insane that I honestly wonder if I should be carrying around holy water and a crucifix to keep them at bay.”51 The Daily Lama, for his part, posted this: “Because

208  American Gnosis it’s not based on truth and reality, Leftism has to be totalitarian by definition. Having no arguments, they can only use emotion, censorship and eventually gulaging their opposition.”52 But there is another way to reflect on the question of political religion with regard to the contemporary right. Are there forms of political religion in the dissident right? Or to put the question a different way: how and to what extent are politics and religion intermingled on the right? One way, represented vocally by Andrew Torba and others, is the fusion of Christianity and politics, compressed in the slogan “Christ is King!” which rests on the biblical expression “King of Kings!” This perspective is also represented in the America First group and its events, most notably AFPAC, and its leader Nick Fuentes and his groypers. It’s also represented by E. Michael Jones, and his contingent.53 It is not yet clear how Christian nationalism may manifest itself in legislative, let alone administrative political agendas, as it continues to develop and appears to be in its infancy as a political movement. Still, it is certainly a form of political religion, or certainly of religiously inflected politics. One finds widely varying fusions of the religious and the political across the dissident right, however, and many of them cannot be described as Christian or as Christian nationalism. In fact, what we find over several years on Gab can be grouped into the following. First, there is a group that can be loosely described as national socialist. These are people who have come to the conclusion that the mainstream view of Hitler and national socialism is incorrect, and that both represent models or at least provide keys for a path forward. For example, one commenter on Gab posted this: “You have been lied to about HITLER, he was NOT a monster!!! Jews vilify 2: Hitler and Jesus, think about that!”54 The commenter also posts a link to a Texe Marrs video: The Bad War, which makes a similar argument.55 There are around 25 commentators on Gab who post using variants of the name Codreanu, the name of course of the founder of the Romanian Iron Guard movement, Corneliu Codreanu. Some of these commentators fuse Christianity and national socialism, while others explicitly reject Christianity as Jewish and hence part of the problem. Another writes: “Your life will never be the same once you discover that it was all atrocity propaganda to hide the deeds of the Allies and to punish the German people for daring to seek a nation free of Jewish influence. The destruction of all white nations is an extension of this aim.”56 Then there is a Pagan contingent. Probably the most prominent of these is Stephen McNallen of the Wotan Network, whose Gab page describes him

Political Religion and the End of Modernity  209 as “Author of the book Asatru: A Native European Spirituality. Dedicated to Odin for the last 49 years. Head of Wotan Network. Army veteran, Ranger. Completely devoted to the survival and welfare of the European-​descended peoples (AKA white people). ‘The existence of my people is not negotiable.’ ”57 He posts multiple versions of the same posts to an online group, Paganism, with about 1300 members, a “group created for European descendents practicing polytheism, animism, pantheism, and other native European nature-​based religions.”58 A characteristic post by a contributor is a series of statements—​“Leadership, not Authority; Permaculture, not Agriculture; Craft, not Production; Kin, not Society”—​superimposed on idyllic images of natural Europe.59 There also is a group of Pagan Patriots. Then there are the Lightworkers and related groups and individuals, which could be grouped under the heading “New Age.” There are at least half a dozen Lightworker groups, including “Patriot Lightworkers,” who “work together to help save Humanity.”60 A characteristic post shows a tall white-​ light figure in a crowd of ordinary people and the slogan “If you feel like you don’t fit in this world, it is because you are here to help create a new one.”61 Broadly speaking, those who post in the Lightworker-​related are the most optimistic or one could say utopian of these contingents, and also are somewhat less politically oriented, at least in terms of practical politics. What do all of these contingents have in common? Obviously they are disparate in many respects. Still, one can see some commonalities. Among those is a shared sense that (1) we are at or nearing the end of the “modern” era; (2) individual and local autonomy and freedom must be championed in the face of global authoritarianism (Klaus Schwab, the World Economic Forum, “The Great Reset,” and so forth); (3) many support nationalist and/​or populist political movements or figures; (4) many are highly skeptical of or contemptuous of dominant political parties and mainstream figures, whom they see as “grifters” out for their own enrichment;62 (5) While posited conspiracies vary somewhat, there are common elements, including the recurrent themes of global parasitic elites, sometimes expressed in terms of “adrenochrome” harvesting, reptilians, Satanism, or Luciferian rituals; (6) anti-​Jewish memes or critiques of Jewish power, which are widespread on Gab and on various websites.63 Fundamentally, these elements of what I am terming the “dissident right” can be summed up: in the current stage of modernity, elites seek to control the mainstream narrative and to shut down dissenters in order to put in place authoritarian systems of control. These authoritarian systems—​expressed

210  American Gnosis in finance, in entertainment, in social media, in what news is disseminated (seen as “fake news”), in political announcements, legislation, and so forth—​ effectively seek to put in place a falsified or second reality disconnected from what is really happening. Such a perspective is very much akin to archontic neo-​gnosticism, with its hostile archons, its demiurge, and so forth—​and this resonance, being natural, means that archontic neo-​gnostic metaphors of archons, and implicit gnosis understood as “red-​pilling” are going to continue. What’s more, censorship of the dissident right and specifically of criticisms of mainstream or system narratives have a paradoxical Streisand effect: the more censorship, the more the attraction of the forbidden, the more the sense that there must really be something to all this, otherwise why go to all the trouble of marshaling all systems against it? This is the same fascination as we find with Hitler, with German National Socialism, in Serrano’s work, with the Black Sun, and so forth—​the lure of the forbidden certainly plays a role. People are creative, and will find ways to discover and to communicate regardless of and indeed, because of censorship, as samizdat showed even in the Soviet Union. The dissident right is more powerful than numbers alone would suggest because of I am terming here political religion, meaning the distinctive fusions of religion and politics or of spirituality and politics that we find across these various groups. Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox Christianity, Ascension cosmology, UFOs or aliens, Paganism, Lightworkers, National Socialism seen in religious or spiritual terms, all to a greater or lesser degree are mingled with nationalism, populism, distrust of elites, and a longing for a new or renewed political future. This in turn fuels and no doubt will continue to fuel local, regional, national, and international variants of the dissident right not only despite but also because of efforts to suppress it. Then there is the related question of the end of the modern era. What all of these groups have in common is a sense that we are reaching the end of modernity, that we are entering a new era. They differ in what kind of era that is—​for Pagans, of course it will be Pagan; for Christians, Christian; for New Age people, a New Age, and so forth. But there is definitely a general sense that we are at the end of an age, and that what we do now or in coming years will determine the nature of that era, whether it is authoritarian or whether it affirms freedom and individual/​group autonomy, however that is understood by particular people.

Political Religion and the End of Modernity  211 In this sense, what we are discussing as a whole is apocalyptic both in the popular sense of the term—​in the sense of the end of an age—​but also in the more technical sense of revelation, of the hidden being revealed (apocalypsis). Neo-​gnosticism could be understood as an apocalyptic language whose ultimate meaning consists in pointing toward gnosis. And it is to the very different but related topic of gnosis that we now turn.

11 Future Gnosis Much of this book has focused on American variants of neo-​gnosticism, which has become widespread enough to warrant including (typically under the heading Gnosticism) alongside such religious identifications as Paganism, Atheism, New Age/​Conscious, or Spiritual But Not Religious, even if it’s not always quite clear what people mean by identifying themselves as “Gnostic.” But now we must return to the titular subject of gnosis. The term “gnosis,” as we have seen, can be understood contextually in different ways, as “redpilling,” a politico-​spiritual awakening, or as transcendence of subject-​object consciousness. The last of these will prove to be the most important. It is to this latter, metaphysical gnosis, that we now turn. At this point, we will shortly see another of the many synchronicities that have marked the writing of this book. Some readers may have noted that we did not until this point discuss the work of Stephan Hoeller (b. 1931), a Gnostic bishop in San Francisco, California, and author of a number of books from a contemporary Gnostic perspective. This is because his work belongs at this point in our narrative, as it pulls together so many of our themes. It is important to note that Hoeller was born in Budapest, Hungary, and that means, like Milosz and Lobaczewski, for instance, he experienced totalitarianism directly. His early life experience, as we will see, is directly relevant for our narrative. In terms of Gnosticism as such, in his book Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing, Hoeller outlines Gnosticism in a way that at this point will be very familiar to us. He discusses for a general reader the Gnostic worldview, the fallen nature of the cosmos, the demiurge and archons as hostile or negative cosmic entities retarding human spiritual growth, the Gnostic Christ, the figure of Sophia, and the nature of gnosis itself as “an intuitive process that embraces both self-​knowledge and knowledge of ultimate, divine realities.”1 In his introduction to Gnosticism for a general reader, he draws specifically on the perspective provided by Hans Jonas, inflected by Carl Jung.

American Gnosis. Arthur Versluis, Oxford University Press. © Arthur Versluis 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197653210.003.0012

Future Gnosis  213 The way he concludes this well-​conceived introduction is of considerable interest. Hoeller writes: It was true two thousand years ago and is still true today that, to the large majority of humankind, Gnosticism is disturbing and at times even infuriating; it represents a challenge to what most have believed and practiced. Those who are determined to make more of this world than it is are horrified by Gnosticism and its sober recognition that secular salvation is not possible. The world cannot be lifted up by its own bootstraps, whether these are envisioned as political, economic, scientific, or ecological in nature. What the world needs is something outside of itself—​a wisdom, an interior knowledge that transcends the boundaries of the planet and of the cosmos. Such a position appears detached and otherworldly to the modern or postmodern mind, obsessed with the virtues of social change.2

But to others, we may call them the few: Those . . . who have come to recognize life as tragic, who have felt the forlornness and alienation of their consciousness amidst their own powerlessness, are far more likely to be responsive to the Gnostic message. Those who have suffered enough in their earthly lives and who have managed to add a maximum amount of consciousness to their suffering, so that they now possess the necessary right intent and sincerity, are likely to listen to the strange and ancient voice of the Gnostic that calls to them—​nowadays with renewed strength. These are the souls and minds who are likely to turn their gaze from the harsh daylight of rationality and extroversion to the mysterious luminosity of the night sky, where the light of gnosis may be perceived. For them, the encounter with the Gnostic teachings is beneficial. The light of the stars, so long blotted out by the daylight, reappears, and the dark shadows cast by the daylight recede. And amidst the stars, the mysterious midnight sun seen by the initiates of old makes its welcome appearance.3

It is useful to reflect on Hoeller’s remarks here. We will recall that he came to the United States more or less as a refugee from communism, and in this regard shares a perspective on totalitarianism and freedom with Lobaczewski and Milosz. Milosz wrote memorably about what life was like

214  American Gnosis under communist rule, the surveillance and censorship, the enforced ideological codes, the kind of double life it imposed, in The Captive Mind. Lobczewski provided similar, but much more detailed analysis of what he termed “pathocratic rule,” as well as recommendations about how to avoid it or, should it become entrenched in one’s own country, how to overcome it. Hoeller’s remarks here are more general, but seen in this context take on added meaning. Some of Hoeller’s remarks are particularly striking when understood in this context of American freedom and communist totalitarianism. For instance, he writes, “Gnosticism is disturbing and at times even infuriating” because it asserts that “secular salvation is not possible. The world cannot be lifted up by its own bootstraps, whether these are envisioned as political, economic, scientific, or ecological in nature.”4 Rather, he continues, “What the world needs is something outside of itself—​a wisdom, an interior knowledge that transcends the boundaries of the planet and of the cosmos. Such a position appears detached and otherworldly to the modern or postmodern mind, obsessed with the virtues of social change.”5 What I would emphasize in these remarks is that Hoeller thinks what is needed is “interior knowledge” that “transcends the boundaries of the planet and of the cosmos,” and this is alien to a modern or postmodern mind “obsessed with the virtues of social change.”6 For Hoeller, the United States and its history represent freedom, in particular the freedom of individual choice of religion, in this case, Gnosticism, which had been suppressed and denigrated by confessional Christians in late antiquity, later by the Catholic Inquisition, and in cases like Catharism and Bogomilism, also suppressed, right up until the late twentieth century in the United States, when for the first time it could be practiced as a religious path because of the American emphasis on religious freedom. In other words, Hoeller’s contemporary delineation of Gnosticism brings together nearly all of our primary themes: communism and dissidents from it, cosmological and metaphysical gnosis, imposed contemporary secular political and quasireligious ideology and freedom from it, outer and inner knowledge, and the possibility of individual awakening. In his book Freedom: Alchemy for a Voluntary Society, published only several years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Hoeller makes clear his core political perspective. The book is “dedicated to the captive peoples who have regained their freedom and to those still awaiting their liberation from captivity.” Its epigraph is from the great Russian philosopher Nicholas

Future Gnosis  215 Berdyaev, from his The Beginning and the End: “The natural world, society, the state, the nation and the rest are partial, and any claim to totality is an enslaving lie, which is born of the idolatry of man.”7 In his introduction, titled “The Gnosis of Freedom,” Hoeller sketches what it was like to live under communist tyranny, and reflects on his embrace of American freedom, as well as on his growing alarm that in the United States “a diminishment of freedom was settling in,” that “freedom was waning in the land of the free.”8 Hence he felt called to become an advocate of freedom. Hoeller’s analysis of the United States and of the history of American religion is quite interesting, because it centers on the uniqueness of American religious freedom, which he sees as having its roots in “the Hermetic Renaissance” from around the time of Elizabeth I, and in Rosicrucianism.9 Essentially, American religious freedom and the separation of church and state were meant by the founders as a guarantee that individuals could practice and realize their own destinies. Hoeller terms this “Hermetic America,” and contrasts with it the always-​present potential for the re-​assertion of “Puritan America,” which is “antagonistic toward the Hermetic Enlightenment,” and would impose a tyrannical moralistic regime if it could.10 But he also recognizes another possible kind of tyranny, this one from the left. Marxism asserts “an atheistic religion, following the prophets Marx and Lenin, or for that matter, Mao.”11 In fact, “the tyrannical welfare state is . . . the best symbol of Great Mother Unconscious,” embodied in the state, who says “I will feed you; I will house you; I will give you work. If you don’t [toe] the line, I will punish you, even devour you. I will put you into a concentration camp, into the Gulag. I will sacrifice you” because “you cannot ever be an individual apart from me.”12 While the tyranny of the Great Mother Unconscious state is possible in the United States, the great American potential is to provide individual freedom that allows and encourages the development of spiritual (gnostic) consciousness, a very different kind of “new world order” than that of centralized power.13 With regard to the history of Gnosticism, Hoeller is an historic figure. Founder of the Ecclesia Gnostica, a Gnostic congregation whose home is in California, more than any other individual, he brought into being Gnosticism as a contemporary lived religion. Ecclesia Gnostica published his A Gnostic Catechism as part of this project, and this catechism is interesting for our purposes here. In it, he clearly defines and discusses Gnostic teachings, including the nature of gnosis, the demiurge, angels and spirits, the archons, and many related topics, drawing specifically on Nag Hammadi

216  American Gnosis and other texts from late antiquity. For this reason, I do not here refer to neo-​ gnosticism, as he clearly sees this as a renewal of ancient Gnosticism. While it would be out of our way to go too far into the details of A Gnostic Catechism, there are some aspects of it that are relevant here. First, he discusses the demiurge and archons, understood as analogous to the fall of Lucifer and the fallen angels or demons, but “flawed and foolish but not utterly evil.” “A good many” of the descriptions of God in the Old Testament are of the Demiurge, whose associates are Archons (rulers) that “desire to rule over humans and other beings.”14 Freedom comes from “the experience of Gnosis,” “mystical knowledge that liberates,” accompanied and preceded by “a kindred kind of Gnosis that informs.”15 He discusses Sophia, the divine feminine, and the Pleroma or fullness of God, and the Sacraments. But for our purposes one of the most interesting sections of A Gnostic Catechism is the last, “The Gnostic in the World.” There, Hoeller remarks that “the world is in large part the domain of the Archons” and “as such it is not perfectible.” Thus Gnostics can “improve the world” “by improving themselves through Gnosis.”16 Gnostics neither uphold or rebel against worldly “establishments,” because in the end “their [rulers’ and rebels’] works are as naught,” but rather “the chief requirement of the Gnostic in worldly society is an optimum degree of freedom, for without freedom the pursuit of Gnosis becomes very difficult.” Thus “the freer all human beings are, the better this is for Gnosis and Gnostics.”17 These final remarks summarize the same perspective that he outlined in much more detail in Freedom, and they resonate in interesting ways with many of the politically inflected neo-​gnostic references that we saw scattered across social media on the right more broadly. Essentially, Hoeller’s remarks, which conclude A Gnostic Catechism, advise adherents not to put their faith in worldly movements, but rather to focus on gnosis and liberation. There is a juncture point between those political movements that include neo-​gnostic allusions, and those who pursue gnosis and leave behind political activism, and in the remainder of our chapter here, we are going to look into the latter. The distinction between cosmological and metaphysical gnosis is essential in understanding the phenomenon of archontic neo-​gnosticism, especially in popular forms not only in literature and film, but also as manifested somewhat more broadly in social media with political/​conspiratorial aspects. Arguably, nearly everything we’ve looked at throughout our journey through the American politicoreligious landscape belongs roughly in the cosmological category. Very little belongs to the category of metaphysical gnosis. And

Future Gnosis  217 that is, on reflection, understandable. Metaphysical gnosis is, by its very nature, the transcendence of antimonies; it is beyond the fray or, if one prefers, the apocalyptic battle. When we turn to the major American figures of metaphysical gnosis in the twentieth or twenty-​first centuries, what we find is quite different than what we saw in the bulk of this book with regard to cosmological gnosis. In American Gurus, and in Magic and Mysticism, I discussed, however briefly, Franklin Merrell-​Wolff (1887–​1985), as well as Catholic mystic Bernadette Roberts (1931–​2017), and would add to these here such figures as A. H. Almaas (A. Hameed Ali, 1944–​), Adyashanti (Stephen Gray, 1962–​), Ken Wilber (1949–​) and Joel Morwood (1942–​).18 These authors exist in the larger context that includes the American perennialist movement of the nineteenth century I discussed in detail in American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions. Here, however, the purpose in looking at some of these authors (in particular, those not discussed in American Gurus) is different. What we are looking at is a particularly interesting development in twentieth-​and twenty-​first-​century American religion, one that crosses over between Buddhism and what we may discern as an emergent type of American religion. What do Franklin Merrell-​Wolff, Bernadette Roberts, A. H. Almaas, Adyashanti, and Joel Morwood have in common? Obviously I am not arguing that these authors are the same, or even part of the same group or movement. But they do have some things in common. All are spiritual practitioners who published autobiographical narratives about their spiritual awakenings; all are founders of distinctive spiritual practice lineages, some more organized into groups and centers than others; and all to a greater or lesser degree incorporate Buddhist teachings into their systems in order to create new religious lineages. Certainly among the most important of these is Franklin Merrell-​ Wolff. Author of landmark books on his spiritual awakening and its implications, he was trained as a mathematician, but spent much of his long life in the mountains of California. Two major compilations of his work were published by SUNY Press under the titles Experience and Philosophy: A Personal Record of Transformation and a Discussion of Transcendental Consciousness, containing his account of his awakening process (including the Philosophy of Consciousness Without An Object, and Pathways Through to Space), and Transformations in Consciousness: The Metaphysics and Epistemology, a philosophical

218  American Gnosis discussion and contextualization of his spiritual awakening that includes his discussion of what he termed “introceptualism.” Merrell-​Wolff ’s life work calls for much more detailed discussion than I have room to provide here. His work exemplifies metaphysical gnosis defined explicitly as the transcendence of subject and object in what he termed “primordial consciousness,” which is “ontologically prior to the existence or absence of objects or subjects,” and which transcends “both subject and object” and is “entirely unaffected by the presence or absence of either.”19 Merrell-​Wolff ’s entire life’s work may best be understood as an unfolding, including in mathematical implications, of his process of realizing metaphysical gnosis and its significances. Merrell-​Wolff knew the work of Spengler, who “asserts the primacy of time.” However, Merrell-​Wolff holds that in his experience “in the highest sense Nirvanic Consciousness transcends space as well as time,” but “is nevertheless approachable by human consciousness as being of a space-​like quality.”20 Political power belongs to time, and its “final instrument is brute force,” “controlled by psychological means” and “the psychological use of language.”21 But “that space is the greater power as compared with time is indicated by my own Recognitions,” for “in the metaphysical sense, it is not correct to speak of the Recognition as an event, however much It may seem to be so from the standpoint of relative consciousness. I simply Awakened to an eternal Thereness” “that had absolutely nothing to do with Becoming.”22 Merrell-​Wolff ’s conceptual language here is complex, but essentially, transcendence is beyond political power because it is also beyond time and, ultimately, space as well. Merrell-​Wolff died in 1985, and in the last years of his life, he had a visitor in Lone Pine to whose work we now turn, and who continues once again our primary themes in this book. This guest was Joel Morwood. In his autobiographical account of his own spiritual quest, Naked Through the Gate: A Spiritual Autobiography, Morwood provides us with a narrative (endorsed by Merrell-​Wolff as an “invaluable document”) directly reflecting many of the same dynamics we have seen throughout this book, and in some ways encapsulating central aspects of our argument as a whole. Joel Morwood’s spiritual autobiography was published in the year of Merrell-​Wolff ’s death, and it tells in brief the story of Morwood’s life to that point, framed in the language of Gnosticism and Buddhism. His spiritual autobiography, reflecting on his time in the military during the Vietnam War and his return to 1960s counter-​culture, is told in a somewhat hallucinatory

Future Gnosis  219 style, and is framed in terms of the Gnostic narrative of the Garden of Eden (hence the title, Naked Through the Gate) and in terms of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, the first of which is, of course, the truth that life is suffering. Naked Through the Gate begins with a retelling of the seminal story of the Garden of Eden, a Gnostic retelling in which eating the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is to fall into dualism, a “separation between ‘I’ and ‘That,’ ‘self ’ and ‘world,’ ” and thus into bewilderment and suffering.23 But, “lest we forget, there also stands in that original Garden another tree, which is the Tree of Eternal Life and the fruit of this tree is not knowledge but Gnosis.”24 “It cannot be named because It stands prior to all names; it cannot be imagined because It is the ground of all images . . . nor can anything be compared to It because nothing exists outside, or beyond, or above, or below It.” Further, “It can only be remembered before all remembering; and what is remembered is this very World, radiant and perfect just as it is.”25 Only when we have shed all vestiges of the illusions of self and other can we enter naked through the Gate into the primordial Garden, he writes. Morwood engagingly recounts the story of his life, growing up in New York City, dropping out of college, going on Kerouac-​style wanderings, becoming a film producer, then in 1965-​1966, getting drafted and going to Vietnam. He tells the story of his nightmarish time in the Vietnam war with laconic clarity, and when he returns to the United States, it is with the stench of death—​he had seen the truth of the Buddha’s insight that life is suffering. He lived with hippies in San Francisco in 1968–​1969, and was seduced by Marxism and communism, to such a degree that he and a few others flew clandestinely to Maoist China to see the glorious “Cultural Revolution” there firsthand. In Maoist China, Morwood and his fellow travelers were shunted around to various hospitals, factories, and other sites, regaled with production statistics and told what a glorious future was being created for the “New Man” being produced. But eventually it dawned on him that “China would go the way of Russia, as would, by implication, all other Marxist revolutions. The communist utopia was undeliverable, and the ideology on which I had based my life collapsed almost overnight.”26 While he apparently didn’t register fully the nature of the totalitarian society or the vast number of deaths and the suffering in the Maoist society he had visited, he, like so many others, turned away, disillusioned, from bureaucratizing totalitarianism. He came home, moved to California with his wife, and eventually became a well-​to-​do film producer, but his life still felt empty, and he was still traumatized by Vietnam. He and his wife divorced, his life seemed hollow, and

220  American Gnosis all of his suffering culminated in his going on a spiritual quest. The quest was marked, first, by an archetypal dream in which he met the goddess Athena, who gave him a sword, and said “I’ve been with you always.”27 Athena, we may recall, is the goddess of wisdom who sprang, fully grown, from the head of Zeus—​an ideal metaphor for spontaneous spiritual awakening. At this point in his journey, Morwood went to a public talk that he saw has his first spiritual teaching—​by Stephan Hoeller, on the Grail legend and its significances for the spiritual journey. He gives a charming description of Hoeller’s lecture, and concludes that he was himself on a Grail quest. Undoubtedly much of the Gnostic language of Morwood’s book comes, indirectly, from Hoeller, whose lectures he continued to attend during this period of his life. He moved through a number of New Age groups, workshops, and speakers as well. The middle part of Morwood’s book discusses his search through many spiritual texts, citing Buddhist sutras, the Gnostic texts of Nag Hammadi, Meister Eckhart, and Hindu works, while at the same time he was practicing a form of yogic meditation that produced “certain psychic effects and altered states by an active concentration and manipulation of the mind.”28 He set out on a spiritual quest, and on it met Franklin Merrell-​Wolff, who, he realized, “was a genuine Gnostic, and yet he was also and proudly a product of Western culture.” “It is true,” Merrell-​Wolff told him, “that Realization is beyond the grasp of the rational mind, but, that does not make it ir-​rational.”29 Morwood moved, in his journey up the West Coast, into a state of disconsolate lostness, and “the further I went, the more lost I became.”30 It was in this state, with a broken heart, in a dirty hotel, that he suddenly experienced an enduring sense of “supreme bliss in a measureless sea of bliss,” the joy of freedom in the realization that “in Gnosis ‘I’ is understood to be simply a trick of the imagination,” and he recognizes “the obliteration of all separateness.”31 Gnosis, he realizes, is that “in Reality the seeker and the sought are also only One, and I am already the Grail.”32 He hears the gentle laughter of Athena, his Guru, and concludes, “I am home.” In his epilogue, Morwood tells the story of how he rented a cabin in Lone Pine and for the next year, wrote this book in the company of Franklin Merrell-​Wolff, and in these last few pages, reflected on the larger significances of his awakening experience, but also on what he sees as the major work of our era. What he envisions is nothing less than “a new Sacred Civilization,” one that brings us beyond contemporary materialism, “establishing a new vehicle, or nava yana, grounded in those universal principles discovered by

Future Gnosis  221 our ancestors but expressed in modern terms, free from cultural accretions and parochial prejudices.”33 This new vehicle will draw on the “Superessential Wisdom flowing down to us from the dawn of time,” and with it “a thousand springs” of different traditions “will become a mighty stream.”34 Aspects of this new yana or vehicle have been developed since 1985, when Morwood’s spiritual autobiography was published. The first is the Center for Sacred Sciences, based in Eugene, Oregon, which was founded and is guided by Joel Morwood. The Center for Sacred Sciences lists more than half a dozen teachers with their own awakening narratives, and along with those narratives come some related historical anecdotes. To give one example, Andrea Pucci’s narrative, “Breaking Through . . . A Journey to Awakening,” tells the story of how she served as a nurse and caretaker for Franklin Merrell-​Wolff near the end of his life, how she met Joel Morwood and others, including B. Alan Wallace, who “drove up the hill on his BMW motorcycle,” and soon thereafter went into solitary retreat.35 “What Dr. Wolff did for philosophy in the West, and Joel was doing with the great traditions, Alan was doing with science and Buddhism.”36 Eventually Wallace was teaching Dzogchen meditation, which “was really very effective for me.”37 She then provides sharply described details of her awakening experience at a later retreat led by Joel Morwood, linking it together with Wolff and with Wallace as well. All of this is relevant for the larger narrative here, because what we can see is a constellation of remarkable people whose visions converge, and who can be seen as part of a larger American religious current that goes back at least to the American Transcendentalists, and that emphasizes both drawing upon the world’s religious traditions, and individual spirituality. When we look at the work of Wolff, or Morwood, or for that matter, B. Alan Wallace, we find that they all, to a greater or lesser degree, advance a vision that draws on the world’s religious traditions and in particular, on the great mystics, linked to an emphasis on one’s independent spiritual path toward realization. Later, early in the twenty-​first century, B. Alan Wallace became much more widely known not only as an author of scholarly books on the intersection of science and religion, and as a translator of Vajrayana Buddhist works, most notably major works by Dudjom Lingpa, but also as an unusual and widely influential Buddhist teacher. In his scholarly work, Wallace clearly indicated his perennialist leaning, while as a teacher remaining very clearly in and representing the Tibetan Buddhist religious tradition, and affirming relatively wide access to what in the past were teachings (for instance on

222  American Gnosis Dzogchen) of limited availability.38 Wallace provides an Americanization, or an American contextualization, we can say, of Vajrayana Buddhism. Joel Morwood’s work, both through his Center for Sacred Sciences, and also via publishing, accomplishes something related, but new. Whereas Wallace’s Buddhist teachings are squarely within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition—​he frequently references his root teachers, in addition to being an accomplished translator—​what Morwood provides in a summary book for practitioners, The Way of Selflessness, is effectively Buddhist practices and instruction in a clearly perennial context, that is, drawing on Buddhist, but also Hindu, Christian mystical, Sufi, and other sources as well. The very title, The Way of Selflessness, is revealing, for while it can be understood as generic, a key insight of Buddhism is anatman, which translates to absence of enduring self-​identity. The first chapter concerns suffering, just as does the first of the four noble truths in Buddhism. The second and third chapters are about the indescribable nature of enlightenment, while the fourth is about how delusion arises in consciousness. Later chapters concern how to find a teacher, working with dreams, how to meditate, going on retreat, and related practical subjects. Here too, the tenth chapter is on “the chain of conditioning,” which is a condensed version of the Buddhist teaching of dependent origination. The meditation instructions are on shamatha and vipassana, which are fundamentally Buddhist in origin. He also gives instructions for “sending and taking,” which is called tonglen in Tibetan Buddhism. All of this said, The Way of Selflessness is not a specifically Buddhist work; rather, it draws extensively on Buddhism, but also on other religious traditions. While it includes chapters on “Choiceless Awareness,” and “Contemplating Impermanence,” both of which have Buddhist origins, it also includes “Entering the Path of Devotion (Bhakti),” as well as “”Prayer-​ in-​the-​Heart” and “Remembrance Through Unceasing Prayer,” which center on practices from Eastern Orthodoxy (hesychasm) and to a more limited extent, Hinduism and Sufism, for entering “into the Presence of the Divine.”39 In other words, The Way to Selflessness represents a perennial approach to religious practice. A perennial approach to religion is, in fact, the mission of the Center for Sacred Sciences as a whole: Founded in 1987, the Center for Sacred Sciences is a non-​profit spiritual organization whose mission is as follows: 1. To demonstrate that, despite their outer (or exoteric) differences, the world’s great religious traditions

Future Gnosis  223 share an inner (or esoteric) Truth testified to by their mystics. 2. To help develop a new worldview in which the Truth realized by the mystics and the truths of modern science can be seen as compatible ways of understanding the same underlying Reality. 3. To foster and maintain a community of spiritual practitioners who wish to follow the teachings and practices of the mystics of all the great traditions, presented in generic, contemporary terms.40

Nonetheless, The Way to Selflessness is about how to work with the mind, and its detailed instructions and terminology in this regard are definitely Tibetan Buddhist, specifically, from Mahamudra and Dzogchen. Thus the chapter on working with time emphasizes stabilizing the mind, while generating thoughts of past, present, or future, and then allowing them to “self-​ liberate.”41 The term “self-​liberate,” or “self-​liberating meditation” (gompa rangdrol) comes directly from the Dzogchen (Great Perfection) tradition.42 And in addition to drawing on Merrell-​Wolff as well as Meister Eckhart and many others, Morwood also draws on Longchenpa, a revered master of Dzogchen.43 At the same time, Morwood takes care to differentiate a Gnostic understanding. Thus the “fruit of Gnosis is Truth,” and “in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, this is called omniscience.” But while some Hindu and Buddhist believers do, indeed, believe that Enlightenment confers such knowledge [omniscience], this is not what Gnostics themselves claim. What Gnostics do claim is that, since everything shares the same nature, if you have Gnosis of the true nature of any one thing, you will have Gnosis of the true nature of everything.44

This gnosis is not necessarily passing, but rather, when complete, is “Waking Up once and for all.”45 Gnosis here is enlightenment in Buddhism, but understood in a perennial or universal context. The larger contexts here are important. First, there is the context of Franklin Merrell-​Wolff and those who are connected with him either directly or indirectly. Merrell-​Wolff ’s nonsectarian American mysticism, and his autobiographical spiritual narrative form, are what we also see in Joel Morwood’s first book, replicated in the enlightenment narratives of those connected with the Center for Spiritual Sciences. Indirectly, at least, we see a perennial approach, or at least, a broad, nonsectarian approach to Vajrayana

224  American Gnosis Buddhism also in the life work of B. Alan Wallace and his networks, including the Center for Contemplative Research in Crestone, Colorado. But then there is the broader context I discussed in American Gurus and before that, in American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions. This broader context begins with the American Renaissance, first with Transcendentalists Emerson, Thoreau, and Alcott, then with their successors, then emerges in the work of William James, in Merrell-​Wolff, in Hoeller, and in the work of Morwood and his colleagues. All of these provide the precedent in different ways for an American synthesis of world, but especially Asian and European religious currents. In this much larger historical context, Morwood’s work in creating an American nonsectarian, perennial “new yana” or new vehicle is not at all sui generis. Of course, even the associations of the term yana [the nine yanas of Nyingma Buddhism] suggests that this new vehicle is in some fundamental ways an offshoot of Buddhism. Is there something larger emerging here? As we saw earlier, the term “gnosis” appears in translations into English of important Tibetan Buddhist works on meditation practice, often translating the terms jnana (Sanskrit) or yeshe (Tibetan), referring to recognition of the primordial nondual true nature of reality. But to what extent is or must gnosis be culturally religiously embedded? One well-​known author, translator, and teacher, Keith Dowman (1945-​), forcefully argues that Dzogchen in particular can be taught in a more or less secular, contemporary way, and he terms this “Radical Dzogchen.” Dowman, born in Britain, traveled to India and Nepal in the mid-​1960s, and spent many decades there with famous Nyingma Tibetan teachers, beginning to teach himself in 1992.46 At first he taught “as a conduit for the lamas’ buddhadharma,” but as time went on, he left “even the Dzogchen that is embedded in Vajrayana behind,” and now what “he calls radical Dzogchen is his primary concern.”47 What is “radical Dzogchen”? In his book Spaciousness: The Radical Dzogchen of the Vajra-​Heart, Dowman asserts that “the reality of radical Dzogchen is not dependent on any religious culture, although the priests of the Buddhist and Bon religions of Tibet have been the custodians and occasional exemplars of it.”48 “The truth of Dzogchen is the legacy of being human,” and “we do not need kind and sympathetic, gradualist, buddhist culture in order to enter the Dzogchen mandala.”49 Hence “Dzogchen surely has a life independent of Buddhism.”50 What’s more, “Dzogchen is not a religion [or] . . . a subject of comparative religion.”51

Future Gnosis  225 What then is radical Dzogchen? Dowman writes “the radical Dzogchen path is a formless path and, therefore, may be called a pathless path.”52 It is “direct experience of a unified field.”53 Nonetheless, it can be taught, and his website continues: Now (2021) based in Tepoztlan, Mexico, [Dowman] leads a nomadic lifestyle, teaching Dzogchen nonmeditation worldwide. This Dzogchen, derived from the early Nyingma tantras, free of the tendency toward the spiritual materialism so evident in western Buddhism, nonculturally specific, easily assimilable into Western culture, can, he believes, provide a key to a renaissance, or at least a reformation, of Western mysticism in the existential mold.54

On his website Radical Dzogchen, he defines it this way: “Radical Dzogchen points at the nondual reality that is the nature of mind, the nature of our being, the nature of our every timeless moment of experience in the here and now.”55 And he adds this coda: “Radical Dzogchen has no specific home in any religion or culture. Rather, every religion and culture is home to radical dzogchen. Although different labels may identify it in those diverse human contexts, its existential reality is the same.”56 Described this way, Radical Dzogchen appears relatively close to Merrell-​ Wolff ’s perspective, or Morwood’s (and those affiliated with the Center for Sacred Sciences) nonsectarian, perennial mysticism as described in The Way to Selflessness. And of course there are other spiritual teachers who have abstracted from the cultural matrix of Advaita Vedanta in India, or from Japanese Zen Buddhism, or from Tibetan Vajrayana, a more or less secular or contemporary path or pathless path—​I discussed or mentioned a number of them in American Gurus. This is a set of questions that author Sam Harris considered in his bestselling book Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. In Waking Up, Harris, known for his books critical of faith-​based religions, discusses his meeting with a renowned Dzogchen master.57 Harris goes on to add that he did “recognize the needless confusion and harm that inevitably arise from the doctrines of faith-​based religion. [But] I did not have to believe anything irrational about the universe, or about my place within it, to learn the practice of Dzogchen. I didn’t have to accept Tibetan Buddhist beliefs about karma and rebirth.”58 In other words, Harris’s book is effectively

226  American Gnosis an argument that with Dzogchen one can have gnostic spirituality without a surrounding religious infrastructure. It is worth noting that Harris went on to create a popular meditation app also termed “Waking Up,” which in the Google Play store alone has been downloaded more than a million times. It promises, in slick advertising memes, that it provides “a new operating system for your mind,” and that you will in using it “discover the true purpose of meditation.” Since it is on a monthly subscription model, it is possible to roughly estimate how much money the app makes, and one can see that it appears to be quite lucrative, especially over a period of years. In this, and in other ways, Harris differs dramatically from many of the others mentioned, who don’t seem to have prioritized Napoleon Hill’s advice to think and grow rich.59 The larger questions raised by these perspectives concern the extent to which particular religious teachings and practices really can be disembedded from the religious and cultural matrices that produced and conserved them, sometimes over millennia, and effectively continued more or less separately. To what extent do religious and cultural teachings and practices serve as essential supports for the practitioner? Is a stripped-​down set of secularized instructions, absent a larger religio-​cultural context with its millennia of custodial and initiatory lineages necessary in a contemporary, atomized global and pluralistic society? Even if so, does secularized or stripped-​down spirituality really include as much as the complete, dense, profound cultural-​ religious matrix from which it is taken and which, effectively, produced it in the first place? My answer to the last question is no. Of course it is possible to offer a stripped-​down, secularized product that includes one or two aspects of Vajrayana Buddhism, but what makes the Vajrayana tradition so extraordinary is its vastness, profundity, supports and range of practices and possibilities. There are traditionally in the Nyingma Vajrayana tradition nine yanas or vehicles, including the shravakas, or hearers, and the sutra tradition, the bodhisattva or Mahayana, through the different kinds of tantric yogas, as well as ati yoga or Dzogchen.60 This vast tradition, and its related traditional practices, provides the context, the preliminaries, and extensive guidance and support for realization or awakening, often in recent scholarly translations referred to as gnosis. Once again, gnosis and gnostic spirituality (including contemporary condensed or secularized types) must be clearly distinguished from neo-​ gnosticism. Gnostic spirituality is a completely different phenomenon from

Future Gnosis  227 whose vantage point one can gauge a society by whether or not it allows one the freedom to pursue a gnostic path. Essentially, the gnostic path is toward spiritual awakening and realization—​if individuals have the freedom to pursue such a path, that is what matters. Neo-​gnosticism as such may or may not serve as a framework. For the most part in the examples we’ve looked at, though, it doesn’t so serve. Neo-​gnosticism has little or no role for Merrell-​ Wolff, Morwood, or for that matter, those who pursue meditative paths in general, such as Mahamudra, Dzogchen, or Rinzai Zen. What matters in such a gnostic path is gnosis understood as transcendence of subject-​object dualistic perception. When we step back and look at the wider vista here, we can see emergent patterns. First, there is a clear, shared definition of gnosis as the transcendence of subject-​object dualism. This understanding is visible in a Tibetan Buddhist context, especially in translations, but it is also found in what we could term a para-​Buddhist perennial context. Second, some of our authors drawn to gnosis, including B. Alan Wallace, also express a strong interest in contemporary science and scientific methodology applied to the study of consciousness. A related interest concerns the possible roles for mathematics in relation to transcendent consciousness, a theme we saw in the work of Charles Musès, also visible in the work of Franklin Merrell-​Wolff, and in Joel Morwood’s Center for Sacred Sciences, whose very name conveys the larger point here. Third, some of these authors call for a scientific renaissance centered in what B. Alan Wallace terms “contemplative observatories” for the scientific study and realization of the nature of the mind through meditation praxis. In Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic: A Manifesto for the Mind Sciences, B. Alan Wallace forcefully argues against the implicit arrogance of materialistic scientism in a chapter entitled “From Agnosticism to Gnosticism.”61 Here, Wallace cleverly points out that those who dogmatically assert materialism and rationalism are actually thereby claiming that they have the gnostic knowledge to make materialistic claims about the ultimate nature of the mind and of reality. The chapter as a whole moves toward his discussion of the importance of the practice of shamatha (mind stabilization meditation) for realizing the true nature of the mind (vipashyana). Later, Wallace writes “By means of such vipashyana, or contemplative insight meditation, one realizes that the mind does not truly emerge from anywhere, is not located anywhere once it has arisen, and does not go anywhere when it vanishes. Having no shape, form, or color, it is a luminous

228  American Gnosis emptiness that transcends every mental construct.”62 This, in other words, is gnosis. While he recognizes how Buddhism has adapted itself historically to different cultural contexts, and expects it is adapting to modernity as well, Wallace does criticize what he has witnessed as “the dismal outcomes of . . . decontextualized, fast-​track approaches” to enlightenment. Among such approaches he mentions the Modern Vipassana Movement in which some “marginalize or skip the foundational practices of ethics and meditative concentration (Skt. Samadhi) and proceed immediately to the pinnacle of Buddhist meditation as they perceive it: insight meditation.”63 And some Mahayana and Vajrayana practitioners also ignore foundational teachings, seeking to leap into the most esoteric practices, while often “commoditization and marketing” take precedence over depth.64 By contrast, he writes, “I have attempted to present the Buddha’s teachings in full accordance with ancient tradition, while articulating them for a contemporary audience.”65 We could visualize the broader group here, if we may so call it, on a spectrum from completely independent of any religious affiliation to completely identified with a particular religious tradition. In the middle of the spectrum are those that are to some extent within, and to some extent outside a particular tradition. On this spectrum we could see Wallace close to the complete identification part, Merrell-​Wolff closer to the independence part, and Morwood somewhere nearby, Dowman somewhere between Wallace and Morwood. Ken Wilber’s Integralism, A. H. Almaas’s Ridhwan School, Eckhart Tolle, probably would be past all of these on the independent end, though they too may correspond to or incorporate elements of Buddhism at certain points. But all those who represent an individual gnostic path—​ though they may belong to different points on this spectrum—​nonetheless do, very broadly speaking, share an understanding of what gnosis is, and further, an understanding that integrative contemplative science and contemplative practice centers drawing on a broad range of human knowledge should continue to develop. The authors we have looked at in depth, again broadly speaking, share the view that religious and personal freedoms are essential, and they oppose authoritarian secular or religious systems that restrict or seek to eliminate religious freedom and knowledge or worse, as in cases of Marxism/​communism, that seek to extirpate entire religions, cultures, and peoples. Opposition to centralized power, especially that used to suppress religious or spiritual freedom, is in effect a desire to ensure that, as Stephan Hoeller made clear,

Future Gnosis  229 the gnostic can pursue, realize, and teach gnosis, that is, individual spiritual liberation. Looking forward, we can anticipate that gnostic centers, monasteries, small communities of practitioners with local yogis or ngakpas—​that is, advanced lay practitioners—​will continue to develop. Detailed knowledge of how to work with the mind is now broadly available and will continue to become integrated into contemporary American society. There are Christians, and certainly people born into Christianity, who are trained in Buddhist meditation, in particular, Mahamudra and Dzogchen. I have spoken with a number of American practitioners whose hidden European family tradition over generations was mystical, or theosophic, or folk magical, and who now incorporate that into their own synthesis that draws on a range of practices, though most often, variants of Vajrayana Buddhism.66 Looking still further ahead, we can see that the long view is the local view, meaning that we can envision different localities as home to substantially different but related gnostic circles or communities. Such communities will be perennial—​which, with regard to plants, we will recall, means perpetually recurring or renewing themselves each year. They will also be synpraxic, meaning that they draw together diverse religious and practice strands, for instance, combining European folk traditions with Vajrayana Buddhism, or Christianity with Buddhist meditation. And they will have at their center the aspiration for the realization of gnosis, understood as spiritual freedom or liberation from suffering. From time to time, I encounter people who seek or who’ve had mystical experience, and here will share some of one exchange. An American woman said that over her life she had had occasional fleeting mystical experiences, but that in the past year, she had begun to realize a more stable state that she termed “absolute-​being,” which is realization of what transcends “this apparent object-​form manifestation.” She said she didn’t think of herself as enlightened, but perhaps a term like “self-​realized” would be appropriate. What was realized? “God,” or “True Self,” might be helpful or misleading terms. It cannot be expressed in human language but must be known in direct experience, she told me. She did practice some kind of meditation, but hadn’t been engaged in any formal meditation training, knew little if anything of Buddhism, and primarily identified with Christianity, even though in her experience, Protestantism offered no precedent or context for what she was experiencing. Thus, she had no one in whom to confide, no advisor or guide, and was happy to find that

230  American Gnosis there were teachers of nondual awareness or neo-​Advaita who did provide some validation of what she was experiencing. And she had begun to investigate the Christian mystical tradition, where she had found some precedent, about which no one had ever told her. In the nonprofit organization Hieros Institute (www.hie​ros.instit​ute), some of us have convened a few small groups of kindred spirits to begin to explore together the new terrain in which we all find ourselves now. We term these groups spiritual explorers, or coexplorers, because the model is of sharing and shared exploration. At the center of our inquiries are the twin areas of cosmological and metaphysical gnosis, with our inquiries understood as being in a shared space not limited to academic and nonacademic, secular, religious, spiritual, cultural, and scientific categories. We shall see, but it may well be that in this way, we will begin to understand much more clearly what we may term future gnosis.

12 Conclusion We should begin by returning to the distinction between cosmological and metaphysical. For our purposes here, cosmological is understood inclusively, meaning from material to very subtle or non-​physical dimensions, which also is to say, explicitly or implicitly dualistic. Metaphysical refers to the transcendence of dualistic subject-​object divisions, as in classical via negativa mysticism such as the Mystical Theology of Dionysius the Areopagite or of Meister Eckhart. We can visualize a spectrum that goes from extreme subject-​object dualism on one end to absolute transcendence of subject-​ object dualism on the other. When we look at contemporary American neo-​gnosticism on a spectrum from dualistic to non-​dualistic, we see neo-​gnosticism is in general cosmological, that is, it is explicitly or implicitly dualistic and emphasizes materiality, even if it is subtle or spiritual materiality (if we can put it this way). This is true across the gamut of the figures we’ve looked at. In fact, one could reasonably say that on the whole, neo-​gnosticism is dualistic across the spectrum. As we’ve seen, neo-​gnosticism as expressed in American literature, at least from Melville on, incorporates an anti-​cosmic gnosis. In nineteenth-​ century figures like Melville and Poe we certainly see a cosmos hostile to man’s spiritual well-​being, a deep rift in the cosmos itself, one could say, and this becomes even more explicit in authors like Lindsay, Lovecraft or Ligotti. Ligotti, like his Romanian predecessor, aphorist Emile Cioran, sees this-​worldly life in neo-​gnostic terms as futile and hollow, and openly reflects on whether it is worth living at all. Philip K. Dick, perhaps the most well-​ known neo-​gnostic late-​twentieth-​century author of all, presents a kind of reincarnation saga in which late antiquity and the late twentieth century are superimposed upon one another, and it is certainly primarily cosmological, while one is hard pressed to say whether it represents gnosis or a psychotic break. In Cormac McCarthy’s work we cannot see any redemption or salvation—​ it could be described, particularly in masterworks like Blood Meridian American Gnosis. Arthur Versluis, Oxford University Press. © Arthur Versluis 2024. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197653210.003.0013

232  American Gnosis or No Country for Old Men, as an unrelentingly hostile cosmos populated by more or less numinous but monstrous characters and victims. While McCarthy’s work is beautifully written, it offers little or no transcendence for its characters beyond that of an indifferent but beautiful hallucinatory nature as represented in the severe landscape settings. This serene severity, if we may so call it, or the aloofness of nature is similar to the perspective we see in Robinson Jeffers’s poetry—​nature is indifferent to human suffering or death, one might term it a kind of American naturalistic stoicism. With regard to American film, comics, and other media, one also finds a neo-​gnostic hostile cosmos (or hostile social system) widely represented. Arguably the archetypal film in this regard is They Live, in which America is under occupation by alien creatures that mimic being human and that control government, media, virtually all aspects of society. The hero, Nada, and the heroic but small resistance, does appear to overcome them, though there is no transcendence as such. The same, to a lesser extent, is true of Dark City, in which even though the film is about a main character is trapped in a noirish “second world” in which alien archons constantly change the surrounding environment, in the end that character takes on the transformative power of the archons himself. While this is not transcendence as such, it is a bit further along the spectrum towards it. In general, whether in the conceptually confused Matrix series or in films like The Truman Show, and arguably across the board, we broadly can say that neo-​gnostic American films, like literature, are variations on the theme of being trapped in a hostile cosmos or hostile society. Certainly Miguel Serrano’s neo-​gnostic esoteric Hitlerism is dualistic: it is predicated on an enduring global battle between good and evil, between the powers that seek to dominate and destroy humanity, and those noble souls who take the narrow path of yogic and magical praxis to realize their potential and to join in the battle of the “last battalion” against those allied with the demiurge, the false Jewish God. In terms of the individual, though, it is not strictly speaking fully dualistic—​through yogic, tantric, magical praxis, the individual can realize identity with the Absolute. Nonetheless, as Nicholas Goodrick-​Clarke concluded in Black Sun, dualism is inherent in Serrano’s work and in that of many in the dissident right. Neo-​gnostic conspiracy theories, Goodrick-​Clarke observed, may be traced to ancient religious ideas involving humanity’s thrall to an evil, lower god who created matter and the inferior realm. Only the

Conclusion  233 intervention of a higher, merciful god can enable man to attain spiritual redemption. These dualist ideas were integral to Gnosticism, Marcionism, Manichaeanism, and other heretical movements in the early history of Christianity.1

What’s more, he continues, “the patriot movement discourse of the Illuminati spreading AIDS, negotiating with evil extraterrestrials and enslaving mankind through microchip mind control in a demonic New World Order,” and the broader “cultural pessimism” it reflects are “deeply hostile toward liberalism in modern politics and society,” and thus a much broader group in society have become very susceptible to “millenarian and mystical ideas” on the right.2 The neo-​gnosticism of Samael Aun Weor and his sucessors is also, as we have seen, cosmological in focus and inherently dualistic. It divides into those who refrain from ejaculation and those lost masses whose destiny is, in the end, to become nothing. It also divides into those who belong to the light (those who do not ejaculate) and those dark spirits that endorse ejaculation and thus draw people into the abyss. And those who become “Masters of the Jinn State” and can make the leap through “Jinn Science” to other planets or planetary dimensions can live on there as individuals in hyper-​physical realms. Despite some of Weor’s successors attempts to absorb or take on a titular pseudo-​Buddhism, a fundamental teaching of Buddhism is the emptiness of the individual self (anatman) and a concomitant transcendence of dualism. The complex body of work, under various names, of Charles Musès is more difficult to characterize. Certainly Musès was familiar with non-​dualism, both in the Christian mysticism of Dionysius Andreas Freher and Jacob Böhme, and in the Buddhist tradition. In fact, we may recall Musès spent time in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand, and was editor and publisher of one of the very first books in English to discuss Dzogchen and Mahamudra, however briefly, still, accurately. What’s more, intriguingly, in some of the rare video footage of Musès, when an audience member asks about who wrote one of his books, his reply indicates that it was written—​implying that he did not identify as a “self ” who wrote the book.3 Musès belongs much closer to, or perhaps to some extent touches on the non-​dualistic end of our spectrum. That said, when we look at the totality of Musès’s voluminous published or privately printed work, we find it difficult to so easily characterize it.

234  American Gnosis Definitely, like our other authors, Musès believed that we were/​are at the end of the modern era, that in fact linear time is coming to an end soon. Environmental catastrophe is looming, he thought, and further, the predatory and destructive nature of our cosmos itself, a kind of cosmic mistake, urgently needs redemption. This redemption some cosmic powers or entities are seeking for us, and his Lion Path was, he thought, a way (through special time windows especially during the period 1979-​1999) to enable a human transition from this realm to more beneficent dimensions where we could continue our evolution to higher consciousness. One can find this kind of idea on the contemporary dissident right.4 Is Musès’s Lion Path system dualistic? That is a difficult question to definitively answer. His work is so unusual—​linking together musical theory and practice, resonances and frequencies, time theory and astrology, multidimensional theory, shamanism, apocalypticism, and quantum physics with multiple religious traditions including a theory of a cosmological “mistake” or fall found both in Böhme’s work and in a late variant of Gnosticism in late antiquity—​it is almost impossible to easily characterize it. One could say that the Lion Path in its various iterations seeks to provide a transitional process of spiritual growth taking advantage of time cycles, thus seeking to move individuals from dualistic and materialistic stages of consciousness toward more enduring transcendent forms of consciousness that involve developing a subtle body that exists after death and allows future spiritual growth to continue. At the same time, Musès’s Lion Path, while it did in some of the audio files provide instructions on a kind of meditation praxis, emphasized particular time windows or cycles that closed in the early 2000s, and did not emphasize or even to my knowledge include meditation instruction along the lines of that found in the various traditions of Buddhism. What’s more, Musès himself occasionally expressed criticisms of contemporary Buddhist practices or practitioners he had encountered, as by the 1990s, a number of Vajrayana and Mahayana Buddhist meditation teachers had established centers in California. While he did refer throughout his work to the writings of Jacob Böhme, and indeed, the Lion Path could be understood as an Egyptian-​ inspired transposition of many aspects of Christian theosophy with its unique combination of alchemy, astrology, and mysticism, still, Musès did not teach Christian mysticism (certainly non-​dualistic in its via negativa tradition) as such either. Rather, he focused on what we can term life extension on other worlds or in other realms.

Conclusion  235 Musès fits perfectly into the thesis of this book, as his work combines a deep interest in traditional forms of religion with a distinctively American emphasis on freedom, individual spirituality, and personal development. He also combined a deep distrust of communism, which he deemed a kind of parasitic “fungus” on humanity in oppressive systems like those in the Soviet Union, China, or Cambodia, with an apocalyptic view of predatory modernity as a whole, which he felt was coming to an end. This book is the first extensive discussion of Musès’s remarkable body of work in scholarship, and I think it warrants more attention. In particular, his groundbreaking work with music, resonances, frequencies, and temporal and quantum theory is unique, not least because he explored it both in terms of practical application and in terms of its theoretical background and meaning. But in terms of our argument, his work does exemplify it. When we turn to the work of John Lamb Lash, whose work clearly is neo-​ gnostic, we can see that it also manifests the themes of contemporary environmental collapse and renewal, apocalypticism, and incorporation of some elements or at least terms from Tibetan Buddhism, like hidden scriptures or terma, with a developed system (demiurge, archons, Sophia) drawn explicitly from ancient Gnosticism as found in the Nag Hammadi Library texts. As we have seen, Lash also encourages a somewhat elaborate black magical praxis that targets prominent predatory economic or political figures in modernity for magical elimination. Obviously, encouraging the black magical targeting of undesirable political or corporate figures is dualistic in the extreme. Lash’s work more generally is very much cosmological—​he sees archons, Sophia, the demiurge, and so forth as existing in space, and framed in terms of an alien galactic war. In this respect, his work is not that far on the spectrum from that of Serrano, that is, non-​human spiritual entities are conceived as very real, as existing in time-​space, and as part of a cosmic war in which humans participate whether they know it (knowing it would be gnosis) or not. In this regard too, Lash’s work fits much closer to the dualistic end of the spectrum. By comparison, the work of related figures, like David Icke for instance, actually are closer to the non-​dualistic end of the spectrum, because Icke definitely has a New Age dimension to his work. It’s true that he insists on the existence of reptilian shapeshifters from another dimension that are seeking to control humanity, and he also argues that the human world is under threat from Gnostic archons via, for instance, technological surveillance and control systems. But Icke also emphasizes that individuals can

236  American Gnosis break free from these control systems and realize their authentic human spiritual identity and potential, and because he includes this kind of message in his work, often concluding with it, his work does point toward a less dualistic way of being in the world than the one being imposed by archons or predatory elites. The same is true of psychedelic gnosis—​inherently, it is fundamentally different than ordinary subject-​object consciousness. But is it, as Chogyam Trungpa said, and Bache agreed, “super-​ samsara”? Does that mean psychedelics produce intensified delusion? At the same time, Christopher Bache implies in his narratives of his high-​dose LSD experimentation that the high states of bliss-​consciousness he experienced were directly related to and perhaps the same as those in Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice, in which he was also engaged as part of a Buddhist sangha. Regardless of how one evaluates psychedelic gnosis, and indeed, there has been debate in the Buddhist community concerning it, in terms of our spectrum, definitely it is closer to the non-​dualistic end.5 At the very least, we can say that psychedelics span the spectrum from extreme dualism (bad trip, paranoia, horror) to some point on the spectrum near to or in the range of non-​dualism. As to the prophetic aspects of Bache’s work, those do correspond more or less to what we are terming neo-​gnosticism, meaning a sense that modern society is fallen, corrupt, profoundly destructive, ecocidal, as Musès might have termed it, and must go through a dark period of suffering before a new society can be born. Bache, and to some extent McKenna and Pinchbeck, all prophesy variants of decline, revelation, and renewal. Of course this is a kind of apocalyptic narrative one finds much more broadly, and not only on the political right, although one finds it definitely on the right. With regard to social media—​and especially, in the 2020s, Gab and Telegram—​we also find variants of neo-​gnosticism as a more or less symbolic expression of hostility toward the ruling elites of the left in politics, government, media, entertainment, and corporations. This is often combined with the sardonic memes that emerged in 2015-​2016 along with the “chans” and the figure of Pepe, the “alt-​right” frog. Thus, for instance, in the 2020s, we find on Gab the more than 90,000 posts of PoisonDartPepe, whose image is a blue-​black version of the Pepe frog, and whose profile begins “Akasha and Gnosis to slay the Demiurge.”6 This particular Pepe, of which there are many, also posts “you’re not going to win against zog by just pumping life energy into white people . . . You need to project death energy towards the woke trash. But Pepe that’ll get us in trouble. Yeah it will. Why do you think that is?

Conclusion  237 Because it works.”7 To what is this post referring? Essentially, magic, that is, a magical war. In his book The King in Orange: The Magical and Occult Roots of Political Power, John Michael Greer, former head of the Druid Order and a well-​known author on magic, discusses how magical practitioners, in particular of chaos magic, worked behind the scenes to ensure the unexpected victory of Donald Trump in 2016. Greer writes “There were people performing magical rituals for Trump’s benefit during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, and their story is an essential part of the Trump phenomenon.”8 “Magic,” Greer explains concisely, “is the politics of the excluded.”9 He continues: “Magic, as we’ve seen, is the art and science of causing changes in consciousness in accordance with will. If you are denied access to any other source of power, you can still exercise power over your own consciousness,” and further, if “you get good at it,” you’ll find you can also “shape the thoughts and feelings of others, with or without their consent or knowledge.”10 Of course, there is also a magic of the excluders—​it is that which reinforces the existing system, disallowing any criticism or alternative views. But this intensifies the discontent of the dissenters. Who are these dissenters? “Not all of the losers in question live in their moms’ basements and spend their days playing video games, but a significant number do,” because “what used to be the normal trajectory toward an independent adult life has been slammed shut for a very large number of young people,” whom Greer terms “the educated failures.”11 These, Greer observes, form the disaffected group that “overthrow governments and bring nations crashing down,” and they are “dangerous” because “they have a freedom their successful classmates lack: the freedom to think and say whatever they want” in the anonymous online chans, in pop-​up online curated-​music forums with live-​chat functions, on Gab, for instance.12 This group, he says, generated practitioners of political chaos magic that contributed to President Trump’s victory in 2016.13 Greer’s discussion of an American magical political war from 2015 to 2020 (roughly) provides some useful background information, including sociological and psychological analysis that may well describe many of those anonymous posters and authors whose work references archontic neo-​ gnosticism, but in his final chapters, he also discusses likely scenarios in the future. Greer is well-​known as an author on magical or occult subjects, but he also has published a number of books about the coming collapse of the modern technological-​industrial global system.14 These books are not,

238  American Gnosis strictly speaking, apocalyptic, but they definitely predict the collapse of the prevailing economic and political systems of what is often called the modern era. In the concluding chapters of King in Orange, Greer discusses at length the cyclical perspective advanced by Oswald Spengler (1880-​1936) in The Decline of the West, namely that civilizations go through natural phases of rise and fall, and that Western European civilization (considered both on the continent and in diaspora) is going through a period of decline. But Spengler expects that in the future, new cultures and new civilizations will emerge. Greer provides some indications of where and what he thinks the new civilizations will appear, in particular, in Russia and in America because in his view culture is autochthonic, that is, it arises out of the land itself. In the American case, for several centuries, the East Coast of the United States has been beholden to Western Europe, but that hold is breaking, and even as the “temporary hegemony of the United States over most of the world is cracking around us,” he also has “the sense of a land pregnant with the future that American poet Robinson Jeffers explored.”15 He continues: “I’ve felt the same sense of something stirring as I’ve walked various corners of the American land.”16 Greer sees “a future marked, across the Western world, by the exhaustion of creative potentials; the winnowing of the past to produce an enduring canon of scientific, literary, and artistic achievements; the coming of irreversible economic and political decline, and the rest.”17 “If anything,” he remarks, “the rejection of the myth of progress may be even more sudden and sweeping.”18 But “on the far side of that trajectory lies the emergence of new cultures with their own values and insights and ways of understanding the world.”19 This is where Greer sees hope. In particular, Greer sees new cultures emerging in two places: Russian, and America. With regard to Russia, Greer thinks we “will see a newborn Russian great culture shake off or radically repurpose the cultural inheritance of Europe in the service of a wholly different vision of humanity and the cosmos, in which sobornost (collective or shared identity) will emerge as a central theme.”20 In America the future can be encapsulated in this way: “There is a different right way for each individual.”21 New cultures will emerge, he remarks, from the land itself, especially near great waters, the Volga in Russia, the Great Lakes in America.22 Both Russia and America will leave behind the superficies of Europeanism, and their inhabitants will begin

Conclusion  239 to autocthonously realize their own indigenously arisen potentials, shaped by the land in which their cultures will be rooted. To summarize the argument in this book as a whole: broadly speaking, we have seen neo-​gnosticism without gnosis, or gnosis without neo-​gnosticism. Throughout the book, the bulk of what we’ve looked at is more or less dualistic neo-​gnosticism of various kinds, mainly because archontic neo-​gnosticism is woven, implicitly or explicitly, into the fabric of American intellectual life, not least via popular films like The Matrix, but also because neo-​gnosticism provides an effective mythological or theological basis for understanding individual freedom in opposition to hostile systemic overlords. As a result, these themes are bound to continue. In fact, I would go further, and suggest that we may expect many of the currents we have seen at some point will form a much stronger and more visible wave, including for that matter esoteric Hitlerism, if we may so call it, with its constellation of related themes (black sun, occultism, secret orders, and world conspiracy) as well as the various memes drawn from Gnosticism, including archons, a (digital) demiurge, botched society, and so forth. For after all, especially that which is excluded and forbidden has numinous power.23 Seeking to ban subjects makes them all the more fascinating. Such themes can be seen to recur independently on social media, and replicate memetically, so it is safe at the very least to say we have not seen the last of them. When we consider the themes discussed in this book as a whole, we can see neo-​gnosticism engages some of the most fundamental questions about politics and religion in a contemporary context, and foregrounds the opposition between the political left and right. The left, looking at the right, labels it “supremacist” or “elitist;” the right, looking at the left, sees it as “leveling” or as denying individual and shared achievement, and this fundamental difference is what we see reflected in memes like those featuring gray NPCs (non-​ player characters), or termites, or referring to the “hive-​mind” of the left. This opposition is expressed in a neo-​gnostic meme showing the ancient Gnostic categories of hylic, psychic, and pneumatic.24 On one side we see a group of gray NPCs, and the caption reads “Hylics have no souls and no spirits, they are only matter and will be destroyed with the material world when the last of [the] Pneumatics . . . leave. they worship Yaldaboath the Demiurge. they are dogmatics entirely dedicated to defend the New World Order.” In the middle are “psychics,” who “have no spirit but they have a

240  American Gnosis soul,” “are on a quest of knowledge,” “reject the Demiurge, understanding [it is] a false god and hate dogmatics.” On the other side are pneumatics, who have “achieved their knowledge of gnosis, they have both soul and spirit.” Their “spark of good will reunite again with the true god, finishing the loop of reincarnation.” “They are aware of the malevolence and ignorance of the Demiurge and the Archons. Sophia is their guardian and they will follow her to the Pleroma.”25 In this neo-​gnostic meme, we do see a crossover between the two halves of this book, if we may so call the distinction between neo-​gnosticism and gnosis. Neo-​gnosticism is, broadly speaking, a critique of centralized state and technological control systems using terms like “demiurge” or “archon.” But often unsaid is what accompanies the critique—​in other words, what gnostics affirm. And what gnostics affirm, as we see in this meme, is gnosis, that is what Hoeller succinctly defines as “freedom,” meaning spiritual awakening or transcendence. And this is an individual journey, just as in the cases we’ve seen from Hoeller and Merrell-​Wolff to Morwood, Pucci, Wallace, and others. Thus, even though we’ve seen in this book both gnosticism without gnosis, and gnosis without gnosticism, these both exist on a spectrum, and there is definitely crossover between them. There is a long history of American universalist gnostic religion, traceable from before the nineteenth century into American Transcendentalism and then into the twentieth and twenty-​first centuries, as I outlined in American Gurus. Hoeller, but especially Merrell-​Wolff, Morwood and those in his circle, as well as others mentioned, do show that non-​sectarian, perennialist religion with gnosis at its center is a persistent and continuing current of American religious life. But on the far left end of the spectrum is anti-​gnosis, meaning actual hostility to the very idea of gnosis or more broadly, to religion or spirituality. I mentioned the Inquisition, but twentieth-​ century inquisitions (show trials) are a communist affair. Religion is in Marxist eyes an “opiate” to be eliminated. Materialism, mandated ideology enforced by coercive centralized state power, these are the instigators of anti-​gnosis. Anti-​gnosis is a form of extreme dualism that objectifies the heretic from the perspective of its mandated anti-​gnostic belief-​system or ideology. Collectivism entails undermining or eliminating even the idea of individual achievement (including objective testing). Hence one metaphor fairly common on the right, in addition to “hive-​mind,” is the termite. To give one example, a meme shows a termite image, with the text: “This is a termite.

Conclusion  241 The problem with termites is they attack a structure from within, hollowing it out until it fails by collapsing under its own weight. The left is basically doing the same thing to Western civilization.”26 Anti-​gnosis includes critique and destruction of one’s own cultural inheritance, as in the Chinese cultural revolution. My point here is that when we focus on these particular topics—​neo-​ gnosticism and gnosis in particular—​we are actually engaging with fundamental questions that go deeply into how we see the world, and what our human purpose is in this life. After the Soviet Union ended, many Americans apparently soon forgot the battle with communism, but the same battle is found throughout the modern world: on the one side, collectivism and state-​ centered power, on the other, individual freedom for growth and creative flowering. In The Beginning and the End, Russian philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev—​ who had seen what happened with the communist takeover of Russia—​ reflected on such questions. There, he wrote, “the image of the State will be shown in the final end to be the image of the Beast which issues out of the abyss.”27 What is more, technology throws us more and more into the external, and objectifies us, so more and more we lose our spiritual center and integral nature.28 And “the part played by technology raises the problem of spirit and the spiritual mastery of life in an acute form.” “A group of men who have seized power with the help of technology can hold the whole world under the tyranny of their rule” and even may destroy the world due to the “debased spiritual state” of those in power.29 By contrast, “Freedom, in the spiritual sense, is aristocratic, not democratic. . . . Freedom is a spiritual thing, it is spirit.”30 Likewise, Swiss economist Wilhelm Röpke, in his The Moral Foundations of Civil Society, remarked on the opposition between “the ever more uniformed and inescapable official and police apparatus of the centralized state,” and the free individual who is “sufficiently independent to express criticism of the ruling powers,” the “heroic characters sufficiently suicidal not to bend the knee” to the collectivist state.31 How, he asked, do we maintain a healthy culture in which people can be free? His answer, like that of Thomas Jefferson, is to decentralize, to encourage small businesses and small farms that in turn make for a stable society of free individuals and flourishing families and regions. The vital questions raised by neo-​gnosticism and gnosis go to the very heart of how we understand what it means to be fully human. Ultimately,

242  American Gnosis many of our authors, in their various ways, however extravagant, ask: which is it to be? Collectivism? Totalitarianism? The panopticon of surveillance and control? Or freedom? Economic freedom, yes, but also creative freedom, the capacity to flourish. And the freedom to freely seek gnosis, spiritual liberation. What is the purpose of human life? Is it to be servile? To be a functionary in a vast collective ideocratic system? Or to engage in that most profound of individual quests, to realize our own true nature? Which is it to be? The choice, now and always, is ours.

Notes Introduction 1. Arthur Versluis, Platonic Mysticism: Contemplative Science, Philosophy, Literature, and Art (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017), 62. 2. See Charlotte Ward and David Voas, “The Emergence of Conspirituality,” in Journal of Contemporary Religion 26, no. 1 (2011): 103–​121. 3. See Arthur Versluis, “Parahistory and Madame Blavatsky’s Progeny,” in Octagon: The Quest for Wholeness, ed. H.T. Hakl (Gaggenau: Scientia Nova, 2016), 275–​297. 4. See Roy Wallis, The Elementary Forms of the New Religious Life (New York: Routledge, 1984/​2019). 5. See Barry Cooper, New Political Religions, or an Analysis of Modern Terrorism (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004), 6. Cooper, New Political Religions, 45–​46. 7. The term “dissident right” is widely used as a self-​identifier among those discussed in this book. The term “alt-​right” is dated, and currently not or rarely used as a self-​identifier.

Chapter 1 1. See Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity (New York: Norton, 1971 [1989]), 45. 2. Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity (Boston: Beacon, 1958). 3. See Arthur Versluis, Magic and Mysticism: An Introduction to Western Esotericism (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 32. 4. The term “archontic neo-​ gnosticism” derives from “Archontic Gnosticism” or the Archontics of antiquity, but describes a contemporary phenomenon. It is characterized by a view of society as controlled by hostile entities (archons). 5. Ioan Petru Culianu, Gnosticismo e Pensiero Modern: Hans Jonas (Rome: L’Erma, 1985), 138. 6. Giovanni Filoramo, A History of Gnosticism (London: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 104–​105. 7. Filoramo, A History of Gnosticism, 104–​105. 8. Ioan P. Couliano, The Tree of Gnosis: Gnostic Mythology from Early Christianity to Modern Nihilism (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 249–​266. 9. Couliano, The Tree of Gnosis, 57. 10. Couliano, The Tree of Gnosis, 57.

244 Notes 11. Couliano, The Tree of Gnosis, 57–​58. 12. Couliano, The Tree of Gnosis, 63. 13. April DeConick, The Gnostic New Age: How a Countercultural Spirituality Revolutionized Religion from Antiquity to Today (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). 14. Edward Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1951), 39. 15. Conze, Buddhism, 40. 16. Edward Conze, Further Buddhist Studies (London: Bruno Cassirer, 1975). 17. Edward Conze, Memoirs of a Modern Gnostic, Part 1 and Part 2 (Ann Arbor, MI: Samizdat, 1979), Part 1.147. 18. Theodore Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972), 19. Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends. 20. Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-​Christian Nation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992); Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection (New York: Riverhead, 1996). 21. Bloom, The American Religion. 22. Bloom, The American Religion. 23. Bloom, The American Religion. 24. DeConick, April, “The Countercultural Gnostic: Turning the World Upside Down and Inside Out,” Gnosis 1–​2 (2016): 7–​35.164. 25. DeConick, April, The Gnostic New Age: How a Countercultural Spirituality Revolutionized Religion from Antiquity to Today (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 300. 26. Moshe Idel, Kabbalah and Eros (New Haven: Yale, 2005), 86, 214. 27. Elliot Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York: Fordham, 2004), 209–​210. 28. See Versluis, Magic and Mysticism, 1–​9. 29. See Garry W. Trompf, ed., The Gnostic World (New York: Routledge, 2019), 2. 30. See, for an extended discussion of Inquisitionalism, Arthur Versluis, The New Inquisitions: Heretic-​Hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 31. See Tsering Woeser, Forbidden Memory: Tibet During the Cultural Revolution (New York: Potomac, 2020). 32. Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind (New York: Vintage, 1990 [1953]). 33. Vladimir Lenin, “ ‘Left-​Wing’ Communism: An Infantile Disorder,” 1920, https://​ www.marxi​sts.org/​arch​ive/​lenin/​works/​1920/​lwc/​ch09.htm. 34. See Arthur Versluis, American Gurus: From Transcendentalism to New Age Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 35–​51. 35. Newman, John Ronald, “The Outer Wheel of Time: Vajrayana Buddhist Cosmology in the Kalachakra Tantra” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1987), DAI 48.9. 36. Dominic Sur, trans., Rongzom Chökyi Zangpo’s Entering the Way of the Great Vehicle: Dzogchen as the Culmination of the Mahayana (Boulder, CO: Snow Lion, 2017).

Notes  245 37. Rongzom, Entering the Way of the Great Vehicle, 29 38. Rongzom, Entering the Way of the Great Vehicle, 23 39. Rongzom, Entering the Way of the Great Vehicle, 133. 40. Rongzom, Entering the Way of the Great Vehicle, 23 41. Peter J. Carroll, Liber Null & Psychonaut (York Beach, ME: Weiser, 1987), 31. 42. Carroll, Liber Null & Psychonaut, 31. 43. Phil Hine, Prime Chaos: Adventures in Chaos Magic (Tempe, AZ: New Falcon, 1999), 232. 44. Andrieh Vitimus, Hands-​On Chaos Magic: Reality Manipulation Through the Ovayki Current (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn, 2009), 71. 45. Vitimus, Hands-​On Chaos Magic, 71. 46. Ken Wilber, The Religion of Tomorrow: A Vision for the Future of the Great Traditions—​ More Inclusive, More Comprehensive, More Complete (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2017), 160. 47. Wilber, Religion of Tomorrow, 234. 48. Wilber, Religion of Tomorrow, 246. 49. See for a more detailed discussion, “What Is Gnosis? An Exploration,” in April DeConick and Jeffrey Kripal, eds., Gnostic Afterlives in American Religion and Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 85–​104.

Chapter 2 1. See David G. Robertson, Gnosticism and the History of Religions (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022). Essentially, Robertson has come to roughly similar conclusions about how Jonasian “Gnosticism” is a distinctly modern phenomenon, for instance, 79–​80. A difference is that I deploy a new term, neo-​gnosticism, to clarify its contemporary nature. 2. See Arthur Versluis, The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 72–​104. See also Arthur Versluis, Gnosis and Literature (St. Paul: Grail, 1996) for related background, though not detailed discussion of these particular authors. 3. See Barton Levi St. Armand, “Usher Unveiled: Poe and the Metaphysic of Gnosticism,” Poe Studies 5 (1972): 1–​8; see also Michael Auer, Angels and Beasts: Gnosticism in American Literature (PhD diss., University of North Carolina, 1976). 4. St. Armand, “Usher Unveiled,” 1. 5. See Plotinus, Enneads, II.9. 6. Versluis, Gnosis and Literature, 174–​175. 7. See for instance Kao Shu-​ting, “Gnostic Philosophy in Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’” Intergrams 16, no. 2 (2016): https://​dfll.nchu.edu.tw/​int​ergr​ams/​162/​162-​ kao.pdf; Eric W. Carlson, “The Transcendentalist Poe: A Brief History of Criticism,” Poe Studies/​Dark Romanticism 34, nos. 1 and 2 (June/​December 2001): 47–​66; Nora Celina Casanova, “Hell, Heaven, and Alchemy in Hawthorne’s “Scarlet Letter” according to Gnosticism,” Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Biblioteca Digital, 2013,

246 Notes https://​bdigi​tal.uncu.edu.ar/​fic​has.php?idobj​eto=​5148; Thomas Vargish, “Gnostic Mythos in Moby Dick,” PMLA (June 1966): 274–​276; Melanie May Bloodgood, Gnostic Nature of the World View and Fictional Themes of Herman Melville (PhD diss., Oklahoma State University, 1984). 8. See St. Armand, “Usher Unveiled,” 5–​7. 9. Nora Celina Casanova, “Hell, Heaven, and Alchemy in Hawthorne’s ‘Scarlet Letter’ according to Gnosticism,” Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Biblioteca Digital, 2013, https://​bdigi​tal.uncu.edu.ar/​fic​has.php?idobj​eto=​5148. 10. Casanova, “Hell, Heaven, and Alchemy,” 2. 11. Casanova, “Hell, Heaven, and Alchemy,” 9. 12. Casanova, “Hell, Heaven, and Alchemy,” 9. 13. Casanova, “Hell, Heaven, and Alchemy,” 12. 14. See Arthur Versluis, Esoteric Origins, 212; see Pierre Bayle, The Dictionary Historical and Critical of Mr. Peter Bayle (London, 1734–​1738); see also Arthur Versluis, American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 121. 15. Lawrence Thompson, Melville’s Quarrel with God (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 1952), 425 16. Thompson, Melville’s Quarrel with God, 425. Curiously, however, Thompson makes little mention of Gnosticism. Yet demonstrably Gnosticism was essential in Melville’s perspective. 17. Vargish, “Gnostic Mythos in Moby Dick,” PMLA (June 1966): 274, 276. 18. Moby Dick, ch. CXIX. 19. Moby Dick, ch. CXIX. 20. Moby Dick, ch. CXIX. 21. Moby Dick, ch. XLII. 22. Clarel, II. 20 ff. 23. See for instance Tara Smith, “Knowledge and Cosmos: Discovering Gnostic Tropes in Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker,” Literature & Aesthetics 28, no. (2018): 1–​12; Douglas Mackey, “Science Fiction and Gnosticism,” The Missouri Review 7, no. 2 (1984): 112–​120; Bruce Henricksen, “Heart of Darkness and the Gnostic Myth,” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 11, no. 3 (1978): 35–​44; Walter Sokel, “Between Gnosticism and Jehovah: The Dilemma in Kafka’s Religious Attitude,” The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory 60, no. 2 (1985): 69–​77. 24. David Lindsay, A Voyage to Arcturus (New York: Ballantine, 1973), 164–​165. 25. Bernard Sellin, The Life and Works of David Lindsay, trans. K. Gunnell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 166–​167. 26. Mackey, “Science Fiction and Gnosticism,” 112. 27. Mackey, “Science Fiction and Gnosticism,” 119. 28. See William Everson, The Excesses of God: Robinson Jeffers as a Religious Figure (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988) 18, 68; see also Peter O’Leary, Thick and Dazzling Darkness (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), ch. 2, “Robinson Jeffers: The Man From Whom God Hid Everything.” 29. O’Leary, Thick and Dazzling Darkness, ch. 2, epub 89.

Notes  247 30. Robert Hass, introduction to Rock and Hawk: A Selection of Shorter Poems by Robinson Jeffers (New York: Random House, 1987), xxxvi. 31. Tim Hunt, ed., The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 630. 32. Hugh Urban, The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 54. 33. See L. Ron Hubbard, “Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science,” Astounding Science Fiction 45, no. 3 (1950): 43–​87. 34. See Hugh Urban, “Fair Game: Secrecy, Security, and the Church of Scientology in Cold War America,” Journal of the AAR 74, no. 2 (June 2006): 356–​389. 35. See Urban, “Fair Game,” 371. The full narrative was available at www.xenu.net, but legal action against the site forced the owners to remove it. However, many “secret” materials are widely available online. 36. See Urban, The Church of Scientology, 75–​76; see also Hugh Urban, “The Knowing of Knowing: Neo-​Gnosticism from the O.T.O. to Scientology,” in Gnostic Afterlives in American Religion and Culture, ed. April DeConick and Jeffrey Kripal (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 105–​121. 37. See for instance Donald Westbrook and James R. Lewis, “Scientology and Gnosticism: L. Ron Hubbard’s The Factors (1953)” in The Gnostic World, ed. Garry Trompf (London: Routledge, 2018), ch. 59; Hugh Urban, “Typewriter in the Sky: L. Ron Hubbard’s Fiction and the Birth of the Thetan,” in Scientology in Popular Culture: Influences and Struggles for Legitimacy, ed. Stephen Kent and Susan Raine (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2017), 33–​52; Michel Clasquin, “Gnosticism in Contemporary Religious Movements: Some Terminological and Paradigmatic Considerations,” Journal for the Study of Religion 5 (1992): 41–​55. 38. Philip K. Dick, Valis (New York: Vintage, 1991), 20–​22 39. Dick, Valis, 109. 40. Dick, Valis, 236. 41. Philip K. Dick, The Divine Invasion (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981), 178 42. Dick, Divine Invasion, 216. 43. William Gibson, Neuromancer (London: HarperCollins, 1984), 67. 44. Gibson, Neuromancer, 68. 45. Gibson, Neuromancer, 193: “ ‘You are worse than a fool,’ Michèle said, getting to her feet, the pistol in her hand. ‘You have no care for your species. For thousands of years men dreamed of pacts with demons. Only now are such things possible. And what would you be paid with? What would your price be, for aiding this thing to free itself and grow?’ There was a knowing weariness in her young voice that no nineteen-​year-​ old could have mustered.” 46. Gibson, Neuromancer, 289. 47. William Gibson, William Gibson Blog, Tuesday, 28 January, 2003, https://​willia​mgib​ sonb​log.blogs​pot.com/​2003/​01/​. 48. William Gibson, William Gibson Blog, Tuesday, January 28, 2003, https://​willia​mgib​ sonb​log.blogs​pot.com/​2003/​01/​.

248 Notes 49. Harold Bloom, “Introduction,” in Thomas Pynchon, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House, 1986), 3. 50. Dwight Eddins, The Gnostic Pynchon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990). 51. Eddins, The Gnostic Pynchon, 4–​5. 52. For various views on a Gnostic Pynchon, see for instance Ron S. Judy, “The Nacre of History: Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day as Gnostic Comedy,” NTU Studies in Language and Literature 34 (2015): 27–​55; Joshua Pederson, “The Gospel of Thomas (Pynchon): Abandoning Eschatology in Gravity’s Rainbow.” Religion and the Arts 14, no. 1–​2 (2010): 139–​160; Harold Bloom, ed., Thomas Pynchon (New York: Infobase, 2003). 53. Eddins, The Gnostic Pynchon, 7. 54. Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day (New York: Viking, 2006), 956–​957. 55. Pynchon, Against the Day, 956–​957. 56. Pynchon, Against the Day, 957. With regard to Zalmoxis, the ancient deity of this region, see Mircea Eliade, Zalmoxis: The Vanishing God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). 57. Eddins, The Gnostic Pynchon, 15. 58. William S. Burroughs, Cities of the Red Night (New York: Holt, 1981), vii, xviii. 59. William S. Burroughs, The Western Lands (New York: Viking, 1987), 196. 60. Burroughs, The Western Lands, 124–​126. 61. Bill Laswell, producer, Material, Seven Souls (Virgin Records, 1989). 62. See Gregory Stephenson, “The Gnostic Vision of William S. Burroughs,” The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 4, no. 1 (1984): 40–​49. 63. See Tommy P. Cowan, “What Most People Would Call Evil: The Archontic Spirituality of William S. Burroughs,” La Rosa de Paracelso 1 (2018): 105. See also Matthew L. Stevens, The Magical Universe of William S. Burroughs (Oxford: Mandrake, 2014), 103 64. Cowan, “What Most People Would Call Evil,” 103. 65. S. T. Joshi, H. P. Lovecraft: The Decline of the West (Cabin John, MD: Wildside Press, 1990). 66. H. P. Lovecraft, “The Horror at Red Hook,” in The Tomb and Other Tales (New York: Ballantine, 1965) 73–​74. 67. Lovecraft, “The Horror at Red Hook,” The Tomb, 90. 68. See for instance Henrik Bogdan, ed., Servants of the Star & the Snake: Essays in Honour of Kenneth and Steffi Grant (London: Starfire Publishing, 2018); Peter Levenda, The Dark Lord: H. P. Lovecraft, Kenneth Grant, and the Typhonian Tradition in Magic (Lake Worth, FL: Ibis Press, 2013). 69. Robert M. Price, ed., The Azathoth Cycle: Tales of the Blind Idiot God, (San Francisco: Chaosium, 1995). 70. “What we will do . . . is try to understand how the Necronomicon Gnosis fits in with the Thelemic Current,” in Levenda, The Dark Lord, 21. 71. Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (New York: Penguin, 2018), 199. 72. Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, 113. 73. Thomas Ligotti, Teatro Grottesco (London: Random House, 2008).

Notes  249 74. Douglas A. Anderson, “Foreword,” in The Shadow at the Bottom of the World (Cold Spring, NY: Cold Spring Press, 2005). 75. See for instance, Federico Bellini, “The Gnostic Dark Side of Nature in Herman Melville and Cormac McCarthy: Carrying the Fire out of Arcadia,” in Dark Nature: Anti-​Pastoral Essays in American Literature and Culture, ed. R. J. Schneider (Lanham: Lexington, 2016), 61–​ 74; Petra Mundik, “Striking Fire Out of the Rock: Gnostic Theology in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian,” South Central Review, 26, no. 3 (2009): 72–​97; Steven Frye, “Histories, Novels, Ideas: Cormac McCarthy and the Art of Philosophy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthy, ed. Steven Frye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); John E. Sepich, Notes on Blood Meridian: Revised and Expanded Edition (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008); Leo Daugherty, “Gravers False and True: Blood Meridian as Gnostic Tragedy,” Southern Quarterly 30, no. 4 (1992): 122–​133; Petra Mundik, A Bloody and Barbarous God: The Metaphysics of Cormac McCarthy (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2016). 76. Dianne Luce, Reading the World: Cormac McCarthy’s Tennessee Period, 68. 77. Sven Birkerts, “The Lone Soul State,” New Republic (July 11, 1994): 39. 78. Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian Or the Evening Redness in the West (New York: Vintage, 1992), 309–​310. 79. Petra Mundik, A Blood and Barbarous God, 7–​8, citing Garry Wallace, “Meeting McCarthy,” Southern Quarterly 30, no. 4 (1992): 134–​139. 80. Wallace, “Meeting McCarthy,” 138–​139. See also Garry Wallace, Meeting Cormac McCarthy Plus 9 Notable Essays (n.p.: CreateSpace, 2012). 81. Pheme Perkins, The Gnostic Dialogue: The Early Church and the Crisis of Gnosticism (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 210 82. See Bloom, The Flight to Lucifer (New York: Farrar, 1979), 235–​240; see Perkins, The Gnostic Dialogue, 210. 83. Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of a Post-​Christian Nation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 50. 84. See Graley Herren, “Cosmologial Metafiction: Gnosticism in Don Delillo’s Libra” Religion and Literature 47, no. 2 (2015): 87–​116.

Chapter 3 1. See The SWRPG Wiki, April 11, 2022, https://​swrpg.fan​dom.com/​wiki/​Ial​daba​oth; The Demonic Paradise Wiki, https://​the-​demo​nic-​parad​ise.fan​dom.com/​wiki/​Yal​ daba​oth. 2. Jessica Davidson, “Assassin’s Creed: A Film Confused by Its Gnostic Roots,” https://​ jess​icad​avid​son.co.uk/​2017/​01/​16/​assass​ins-​creed-​a-​film-​confu​sed-​by-​its-​gnos​tic-​ roots/​. 3. “Matrix Virtual Theatre,” November 6, 1999, “Wachowski Chat,” http://​www.warn​ ervi​deo.com/​matri​xeve​nts/​wachow​ski.html. 4. The Matrix (Warner), 1999.

250 Notes 5. See for instance Jordan Moreau, “Matrix Co-​Creator Lilly Wachowski Slams Ivanka Trump, Elon Musk for Using Her Movie Reference,” May 17, 2020, https://​vari​ety. com/​2020/​film/​news/​mat​rix-​lilly-​wachow​ski-​iva​nka-​trump-​elon-​musk-​red-​pill-​ tweet-​123​4608​887/​. 6. See Matt Schimkowitz, “Matrix Resurrections Co-​Writers Aleksandar Hemon and David Mitchell on Reclaiming the Red Pill,” December 21, 2021, https://​www.avc​lub. com/​mat​rix-​resurr​ecti​ons-​co-​writ​ers-​ale​ksan​dar-​hemon-​and-​da-​184​8234​303. 7. See Eric Wargo, “The Space Jockey and the Future of Enjoyment: Alienated Sentience in the World of H.R. Giger,” in Gnostic Afterlives in American Religion and Culture, ed. April DeConick and Jeffrey Kripal (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 211–​232. 8. A collection of memes related to this book can be found at https://​art​hurv​ersl​uis. com/​ameri​can-​gno​sis-​politi​cal-​relig​ion-​and-​transc​ende​nce/​. 9. Gersh, “modern culture is satanic,” post on Gab.com, March 28, 2022, 4:38 p.m. 10. John Carpenter, @TheHorrorMaster, January 3, 2017, twitter.com, 10:29 p.m. 11. See Steven Hyden, “John Carpenter’s They Live Was Supposed to be a Warning. We Didn’t Heed It. We Didn’t Even Understand It.,” The Ringer, October 4, 2018, https://​ www.therin​ger.com/​mov​ies/​2018/​10/​4/​17933​020/​they-​live-​john-​carpen​ter-​amer​ ica-​don​ald-​trump. 12. Hyden, “John Carpenter’s They Live Was Supposed to be a Warning,” The Ringer. 13. Hyden, “John Carpenter’s They Live Was Supposed to be a Warning,” The Ringer. 14. See “Alex Jones Talks to Roddy Piper, They Live, Illuminati, and More!” Posted August 2, 2015, https://​www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​qM_​d​2qKr​1tA. 15. See, just for a couple examples, John Patterson, “They Live: John Carpenter’s Action Flick Needs to Be Saved From Neo-​Nazis,” The Guardian, January 9, 2017, https://​ www.theg​uard​ian.com/​film/​filmb​log/​2017/​jan/​09/​they-​live-​john-​carpen​ter-​neo-​ nazis; Brian Raftery, “Bigots Are Trying to Ruin They Live, Because of Course They Are,” Wired, January 5, 2017, https://​www.wired.com/​2017/​01/​they-​live-​the​ory-​ debun​ked/​. 16. Oxford English Dictionary, “New Words Notes June 2017,” https://​pub​lic.oed.com/​ blog/​june-​2017-​upd​ate-​new-​words-​notes/​. 17. See Arthur Versluis, Magic and Mysticism: An Introduction to Western Esotericism (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 32. 18. See for a very detailed reading of Dark City, Fryderyk Kwiatkowski, “How to Attain Liberation from a False World? The Gnostic Myth of Sophia in Dark City,” Journal of Religion and Film, 21, no. 1 (2017): 1–​35. 19. See Arthur Versluis, Entering the Mysteries: The Secret Traditions of Indigenous Europe (Minneapolis: New Cultures Press, 2016). 20. See Plutarch, Moralia, Fragments from Other Named Works (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1969), 317–​318, from John Stobaeus, Florilegium 120, quoting Plutarch, On the Soul [attributed to Themistius]. 21. See for instance Rich Cohen, “Behind the Mask of Corruption,” April 6, 2020, The Paris Review, https://​www.the​pari​srev​iew.org/​blog/​2020/​04/​06/​beh​ind-​the-​mask-​ of-​cor​rupt​ion/​; Andrew Whalen, “In Eyes Wide Shut Stanley Kubrick Captured Horrors of Jeffrey Epstein Era,” July 12, 2019, Newsweek, https://​www.newsw​eek. com/​eyes-​wide-​shut-​miss​ing-​foot​age-​epst​ein-​kubr​ick-​death-​1449​108.

Notes  251 22. See Illuminatiwatcher, “Illuminati Symbolism and Analysis of Eyes Wide Shut,” March 25, 2015, https://​kun​dali​nian​dcel​ltow​ers.com/​Ill​umin​ati%20sy​mbol​ism%20 and%20a​ n aly ​ s is%20of%20%E2%80%98E ​ y es%20W​ i de%20S ​ hut%E2%80%99. pdf; see also Adam Gorightly, “An Interpretation of Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut,” The Konformist, n.d., http://​www.kon​form​ist.com/​fli​cks/​eyesw​ides​hut.htm. 23. One finds occasional references on Gab.com to Eyes Wide Shut, sometimes to the Illuminati, more often to Satanism or to demons on the left, or the demonic left. 24. See for instance Texe Marrs, The Power of Prophecy, Texemarrs.com, as well as the related books, such as Twilight Language (Independent History and Research, 2021) or Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare (Independent History and Research, 2001), by Michael A. Hoffman II.

Chapter 4 1. Nicholas Goodrick-​Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity (New York: NYU Press, 2002), 173–​192. 2. Miguel Serrano, The Golden Thread: Esoteric Hitlerism, trans. Alex Kurtagic (London: Wermod and Wermod, 2017), 188. I have cited translations available in English, but have consulted and in some cases cited originals, including Miguel Serrano, El Cordón Dorado: Hitlerismo Esotérico (Santiago: Edicioneself, 1978); Adolf Hitler, el Último Avatâra (Santiago: Ediciones La Nueva Edad, 1984); Nacionalsocialismo, única solición para los Pueblos de América del Sur (Santiago: n.p., 1986); Manú: Por el Hombre que vendrá (Santiago: Ediciones La Nueva Edad, 1991). 3. Serrano, The Golden Thread, 287. 4. Serrano, The Golden Thread, 149–​150. 5. Serrano, The Golden Thread, 150. 6. Miguel Serrano, Son of the Widower and Interviews with Miguel Serrano (Cape Schanck: Heritage Helm, 2013), 9. 7. Serrano, Son of the Widower, 22. 8. Serrano, Son of the Widower, 18–​19. 9. Serrano, Son of the Widower, 17. 10. Serrano, Son of the Widower, 45, 56, for instance. 11. Serrano, The Golden Thread, 171. 12. Serrano, Son of the Widower, 56. 13. Miguel Serrano, Hitler’s UFOs Against the New World Order (n.p.: 55 Club, 2016), 85. 14. Serrano, Son of the Widower, 57–​58. 15. Serrano, Son of the Widower, 58. 16. Serrano, Son of the Widower, 45. 17. Serrano, Son of the Widower, 46. 18. Serrano, Son of the Widower, 56. 19. Serrano, The Golden Thread, 76. 20. Serrano, The Golden Thread, 76. 21. Serrano, The Golden Thread, 76.

252 Notes 22. Serrano, The Golden Thread, 288. 23. Serrano, The Golden Thread, 288. 24. Serrano, The Golden Thread, 289. 25. Serrano, The Golden Thread, 289. 26. Miguel Serrano, The Resurrection of the Hero (n.p.: 55 Club, 2015), 124. 27. Serrano, The Resurrection of the Hero, 124. 28. Serrano, The Resurrection of the Hero, 125. 29. See Arthur Versluis, Platonic Mysticism. 30. Serrano, The Golden Thread, 149–​151. 31. Serrano, The Golden Thread, 149. 32. Serrano, The Golden Thread, 150. 33. Serrano, The Golden Thread, 150. 34. See for instance Gedaliahu A.G. Stroumsa, Another Seed: Studies in Gnostic Mythology (Leiden: Brill, 1984); Giovanni Filoramo, “The Transformation of the Inner Self in Gnostic and Hermetic Texts,” in Transformations of the Inner Self in Ancient Religions, Studies in the History of Religions 83, ed. Jan Assmann and Guy G. Strousma (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 137–​149; April D. DeConick, “Gnostic Spirituality at the Crossroads of Christianity: Transgressing Boundaries and Creating Orthodoxy,” in Beyond the Gnostic Gospels: Studies Building on the Work of Elaine Pagels, Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 82, ed. Eduard Iricinschi, Lance Jenott, Nicola Denzey Lewis, and Philippa Townsend (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 148–​184; Dylan M. Burns, Apocalypse of the Alien God: Platonism and the Exile of Sethian Gnosticism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014); Dylan M. Burns, “Gnosticism, Gnostics, and Gnosis,” in The Gnostic World, ed. Garry Trompf, Gunner B. Mikkelsen, and Jay Johnston (London: Routledge, 2019), 9–​25. 35. Miguel Serrano, Adolf Hitler, el Último Avatâra (Bogotá: Editorial Solar, 1984/​2008), 230, 548, 555; Miguel Serrano, Manú: Por el Hombre que vendrá (Santiago: Ediciones La Nueva Edad, 1991), 220–​240. 36. See Miguel Serrano, Nos: Book of the Resurrection (n.p.: 55 Club, 2013). 37. Serrano, The Golden Thread, 222. 38. Serrano, The Golden Thread, 222. 39. Serrano, The Golden Thread, 228. 40. Serrano, Son of the Widower, 70. 41. Serrano, Son of the Widower, 86. 42. Serrano, Son of the Widower, 81. 43. Serrano, Son of the Widower, 98–​99. 44. Arthur Versluis, “Savitri Devi, Miguel Serrano, and the Global Phenomenon of Esoteric Hitlerism,” in Occultism in Global Perspective, ed. Henrik Bogdan and Gordan Djurdjevic (Durham: Acumen, 2013), 121–​134. 45. Serrano, Adolf Hitler, el Último Avatâra, 205. 46. Serrano, Son of the Widower, 48. 47. James Pontolillo, The Black Sun Unveiled: Genesis and Development of a Modern National Socialist Mythos (Kingsport, MA: Morryster and Sons, 2013); James

Notes  253 Pontolillo, The Black Sun Revisited: Further Chapters in the Development of a Modern National Socialist Mythos (Kingsport, MA: Morryster and Sons, 2017); Goodrick-​ Clarke, Black Sun. 48. Serrano, The Golden Thread, 29, 36. 49. Goodrick-​Clarke, Black Sun, 4. 50. An example of this would be William Gibson, whose Neuromancer series strikingly corresponds to dualistic Gnosticism, but Gibson himself has said that he did not have Gnosticism in mind. 51. Arthur Versluis, “What Is Gnosis? An Exploration,” Gnosis: A Journal of Gnostic Studies 4, no. 1 (2019): 81–​98. 52. It is not surprising that translators of Vajrayana Buddhist texts, as well as scholars of those traditions more broadly, have more or less regularized the use of the term “gnosis” in the contexts of Mahamudra and especially Dzogchen. But this arguably quintessential metaphysical gnosis has little to do with the narratives related to the Black Sun. 53. Savitri Devi, R.G. Fowler, ed., The Lightning and the Sun (San Francisco: Counter-​ Currents Publishing, 2015).

Chapter 5 1. Samael Aun Weor, The Three Mountains (Bondi Junction, NSW: Gnostic Movement Inc., n.d.), ch. 5, 40. The works of Weor are widely available for free download both in English and Spanish versions. The complete works (Obras Completas) can be downloaded in a single file from http://​gno​sis-​samael​aunw​eor.org/​descar​gar-​lib​ros-​ y-​confe​renc​ias/​. 2. Weor, The Three Mountains, ch. 12, 105–​106. 3. Weor, The Three Mountains, 106. 4. Weor, The Three Mountains, 103. 5. Weor, The Three Mountains, 103. 6. See for instance n.a., “What is the Kundabuffer or Kundartiguador?” May 12, 2015, https://​gnost​ices​oter​icst​udyw​orka​ids.blogs​pot.com/​2015/​05/​what-​is-​kund​abuf​f er-​ or-​kun​dart​igua​dor.html 7. Weor, The Three Mountains, 103. Nida Chenagtsang, Karmamudra: The Yoga of Bliss—​Sexuality in Tibetan Medicine and Buddhism, Ben Joffe, ed., (Portland: Sky Press, 2017), 201, a Tibetan physician and teacher of Tibetan Tantra, suggests that men ejaculate periodically for prostate and overall sexual health. Chenagtsang, a major lineage holder in the well-​known Yuthok medical tradition, is acknowledging contemporary allopathic medical advice that for one’s prostatic health, regular ejaculation “can be really good for you.” 8. Weor, The Three Mountains, 18. 9. Weor, The Three Mountains, 19. 10. Weor, The Three Mountains, “The Dionysian Wave,” 63.

254 Notes 11. See Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1978), 1.38, 274–​275. See also Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, II.162, II.512 on Lucifer for instance. 12. Weor, The Three Mountains, 19. 13. Weor, The Three Mountains, “The Heaven of the Sun,” 262. 14. Weor, The Three Mountains, “The Dionysian Wave,” 63. 15. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, Introduction, 5. 16. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, Introduction, 5. 17. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, ch. 3,19. 18. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, ch. 3, 19. 19. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, ch. 3, 13. 20. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, ch. 3, 13. 21. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, ch. 3, 14. 22. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, ch. 3, 16. 23. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, ch. 3, 19. 24. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, ch. 3, 15. 25. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, ch. 3, 17. 26. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, ch. 3, 15. 27. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, chs. 4–​6, quotation from 6.28. 28. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, ch. 7, 35, 36. 29. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, ch. 7, 35. 30. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, ch. 7, 44. 31. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, ch. 24, 133. 32. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, ch. 24, 134. 33. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, ch. 26, 143–​144. 34. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, ch. 28, 150–​151. 35. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, ch. 23, 126: “Intermolecular space corresponds to the fourth dimension.” 36. Weor, The Perfect Matrimony, Conclusion, 187. 37. Samael Aun Weor, El Libro Amarillo: Un Libro Occultismo Absolutamente Practico (Columbia: Edición Bogotá, 1959/​1971); The Yellow Book, ch. 14, 30. 38. Weor, The Yellow Book, ch. 14, 31. 39. Weor, The Yellow Book, ch. 14, 31. 40. Weor, El Libro Amarillo, book cover. 41. Weor, The Message of Aquarius, Introduction, 4. 42. Weor, Buddha’s Necklace, ch. 3, 6. 43. Weor, Buddha’s Necklace, ch. 3, 6. 44. Weor, Buddha’s Necklace, ch. 6, 15. 45. Weor, The Message of Aquarius, ch. 22, 95. 46. Weor, The Message of Aquarius, ch. 19, 83. 47. Weor, The Message of Aquarius, ch. 23, 101. 48. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Theosophical Glossary (Krotona, CA: Theosophical Publishing House, 1973), 105–​106. 49. Blavatsky, The Theosophical Glossary, 105–​106.

Notes  255 50. Weor, Buddha’s Necklace, ch. 3, 6. 51. Weor, The Message of Aquarius, Introduction, 5. We might note that for this book Weor added a new title, so that in addition to proclaiming himself “Kalki Avatar of the new age of Aquarius,” he designates himself also “Maitreya Buddha.” 52. Weor, The Mystery of the Golden Blossom, ch. 29, 84. 53. Weor, The Mystery of the Golden Blossom, ch. 29, 84. 54. Weor, The Message of Aquarius, ch. 23, 101. 55. Richard Smith, “The Revival of Ancient Gnosis,” in The Allure of Gnosticism: The Gnostic Experience in Jungian Psychology and Contemporary Culture ed. Robert Segal (Chicago: Open Court, 1995), 204–​224. 56. Weor, Buddha’s Necklace, ch. 10, 26. 57. Weor, Buddha’s Necklace, ch. 10, 28. 58. Smith, “The Revival of Ancient Gnosis,” 212. 59. Smith, “The Revival of Ancient Gnosis,” 214. 60. Smith, “The Revival of Ancient Gnosis,” 215, citing Hippolytus. 61. Samael Aun Weor, Pistis Sophia Develado (El Salvador, Nicaragua: n.p., 1983); for an example of Weor referring to ancient Gnosticism see in El matrimonio perfecto, Chapter 12: Dos rituales. 62. See, for a recent scholarly edition, Carl Schmidt, ed., Pistis Sophia (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978). 63. See G. R. S. Mead, Pistis Sophia: A Gnostic Gospel (London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1896). 64. Weor, Pistis Sophia, Obras Completas, 13. 65. Weor, Pistis Sophia, Obras Completas, 15. 66. Weor, Pistis Sophia, Prologue to the English edition, 3. 67. See PierLuigi Zoccatelli, “Sexual Magic and Gnosis in Columbia: Tracing the Influence of G. I. Gurdjieff on Samael Aun Weor,” in Occultism in a Global Perspective, ed. Henrik Bogdan and Gordan Djurdjevic (Durham: Acumen, 2013), 135–​136. 68. Carolina María Tamayo Jaramillo and Johann F. W. Hasler, “La Academia Gnóstica Samael Aun Weor de Medellín: Anotaciones de un estudio de caso aldredor de la religiosidad esotérica in la Columbia Contemporánea,” in Ciencia y religión, reflexiones en torno a una racionalidad incluyente, ed. Duque Martínez and Luz Marina (Cali: Programa editoriale Universidad del Valle, 2013), 319. 69. For books by Weor online, see “Glorian: Books and Teachings of Practical Spirituality,” www.glor​ian.org, formerly known as Thelema Press; see also “Books: Library of Gnostic Teachings V. M. Samael Aun Weor,” www.samael​aunw​eor.org; as well as, for instance, “Samael Aun Weor: Free Book Download,” www.samael​aunw​eor.ro. 70. A Gnostic School list for various US states can be found at https://​gnosis​amer​ica. com/​index.php/​gnos​tic-​scho​ols/​ for instance, and on the same site can be found links to translations of Weor’s works into English and French as well as Spanish. 71. Gnosis AGEACAC USA for example is listed (or lists itself) on Facebook as a “convent and monastery, a charity organization, and as an alternative & holistic health service.” See https://​www.faceb​ook.com/​gnosi​sus.

256 Notes 72. Carolina María Tamayo Jaramillo and Johann F. W. Hasler, “La Academia Gnóstica Samael Aun Weor de Medellín,” 320, quoting Gnostic Bishop Guillermo Pérez from an interview in 2011. 73. “V. M. Gargha Kuichines—​Sus Modificaciones” July 27, 2010, https://​gnos​tico​slib​res. blogs​pot.com/​2010/​07/​vm-​gar​gha-​kuichi​nes-​sus-​mod​ific​acio​nes.html 74. “Nuevo Movimiento Gnostico Internacional de Samael Aun Weor,” at Victima Sectas, https://​redap​oyo.victim​asec​tas.com/​ini​cio/​mov​imie​nto-​gnost​ico-​intern​acio​nal/​. 75. Anonymous, “The Truth About Belzebuub and the Gnostic Movement,” https://​bel​ zebu​uban​dthe​gnos​ticm​ovem​ent.com/​truth-​about-​fake-​cult-​cla​ims-​expo​sed/​ 76. Anonymous, “The Truth About Belzebuub and the Gnostic Movement,” https://​bel​ zebu​uban​dthe​gnos​ticm​ovem​ent.com/​truth-​about-​fake-​cult-​cla​ims-​expo​sed/​ 77. The four interlinked websites are: ageac.org; vopus.org; radiomaitreya.org; samael. org. 78. Khwen Khan Khu, The Answers Given By A Lama (AGEAC: April 2020), https://​ vopus.org/​en/​answ​ers-​given-​by-​a-​lama-​the/​. 79. Khu, The Answers Given By A Lama, 7–​8. 80. Khu, The Answers Given By A Lama, 8. 81. Khu, The Answers Given By A Lama, 9. 82. Khu, The Answers Given By A Lama, 16. 83. Khu, The Answers Given By A Lama, 19. 84. Khu, The Answers Given By A Lama, 19. 85. Khu, The Answers Given By A Lama, 20. 86. Khu, The Answers Given By A Lama, 20. 87. Khu, The Answers Given By A Lama, 22. 88. Khu, The Answers Given By A Lama, 27. 89. Khu, The Answers Given By A Lama, 41. 90. Khu, The Answers Given By A Lama, 30. 91. Khu, The Answers Given By A Lama, 32–​33. 92. Khu, The Answers Given By A Lama, 41. 93. Khu, The Answers Given By A Lama, 45. 94. Khu, The Answers Given By A Lama, 59, 59–​64. 95. Glorian: A Nonprofit Organization, “Who is Samael Aun Weor?” https://​glor​ian.org/​ uncate​gori​zed/​who-​is-​sam​ael-​aun-​weor.

Chapter 6 1. See Arthur Versluis, Wisdom’s Children: A Christian Esoteric Tradition (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999) 219–​259, 293–​308. 2. See Charles Musès, Illumination on Böhme: The Work of Dionysius Andreas Freher (New York: Kings Crown, 1951) 140–​141. 3. See Musès, Illumination, 134–​135, 139–​141. 4. See Versluis, Wisdom’s Children, 197–​206. 5. See Versluis, Wisdom’s Children, 288.

Notes  257 6. See Versluis, Wisdom’s Children, 291. 7. See Versluis, Wisdom’s Children, 290. 8. See Musès, Illumination, 151. 9. See Musès, Illumination, 151. 10. See Versluis, Wisdom’s Children, 293. 11. See Versluis, Wisdom’s Children, 294. 12. See Versluis, Wisdom’s Children, 295. 13. For a useful study of Steiner, see Geoffrey Ahern, Sun at Midnight: The Rudolf Steiner Movement and Gnosis in the West (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1984/​2009), for instance, “The Evolution of the Macrocosm,” 122–​140, 245. 14. See Henry Corbin, Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis (London: Kegan Paul, 1983), in particular, 37–​46, “The Periods and Cycles of Mythohistory,” and “Hierarchies and Cycles,” 84–​102. 15. “Dr Charles Musès—​In Memoriam 1919–​2000,” Kybernetes 31, nos. 7 and 8 (2002), https://​doi.org/​10.1108/​k.2002.06731​gaa.002 16. Charles Musès, ed., Esoteric Teachings of the Tibetan Tantra (Indian Hills, CO: Falcon’s Wing, 1961). 17. Charles Musès (Kyril Demys, pseud.), The Wings of Myrahi (Indian Hills, CO: Falcon’s Wing: 1960). 18. Aspects of the Theory of Artificial Intelligence, with W. S. McCulloch (New York: Plenum, 1966) as well as “Systemic Stability and Cybernetic Control: An Introduction to the Cybernetics of Higher Integrated Behavior,” in Cybernetics and Neural Processes (Rome: National Research Council, 1965), 149–​212 and “The First Nondistributive Algebras with relation to Optimization and Control Theory,” in Functional Analysis and Optimization (New York: Academic Press, 1966) 171–​212. 19. “Dr Charles Musès—​In Memoriam 1919–​2000,” Kybernetes, 31, nos. 7 and 8 (2002), https://​doi.org/​10.1108/​k.2002.06731​gaa.002. 20. Charles Musès, ed., Jacob Boehme Society Quarterly 3, no. 3 (1956): 6. 21. Musès, Jacob Boehme Society Quarterly, 6. 22. Musès, Jacob Boehme Society Quarterly, 6. 23. For an interview with Kenneth Pelletier about recollections of Arthur M. Young, https://​w ww.new​thin​king​allo​wed.org/​consci​ousn​ess-​pion​eer-​art​hur-​m-​young-​ with-​kenn​eth-​r-​pellet​ier/​. Here is a related interview with Musès: https://​www.new​ thin​king​allo​wed.org/​char​les-​muses-​time-​and-​dest​iny-​exce​rpt-​a-​think​ing-​allo​wed-​ dvd-​with-​dr-​jeff​rey-​mishl​ove/​ 24. See Charles Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems: Studies in the Interconnectedness of Time (Chronotopology) (Dordrecht: Kluwer-​Nijhoff, 1986): ix. 25. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, 1–​8. 26. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, 9–​19. 27. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, 18, 28. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, 17. 29. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, 19. 30. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, 19. 31. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, 19.

258 Notes 32. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, 21. 33. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, 28. 34. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, 55–​56. 35. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, 89. 36. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, 89 37. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, 99. 38. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, 105. 39. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, 126–​138. 40. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, 137. 41. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, 141. 42. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, 142. 43. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, 153. 44. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, 153. 45. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, 192. 46. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, MS, ch. 7, 243. 47. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, MS, ch. 7, 244–​245. 48. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, MS, ch. 7, 247. 49. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, MS, ch. 7, 257. 50. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, MS, ch. 7, 259. 51. Musès, Destiny and Control in Human Systems, MS, ch. 7, 259a. 52. Milan Zeleny, “Reviews,” in Human Systems Management 6 (1986): 186–​188. 53. Charles Musès and Arthur M. Young, Consciousness and Reality: The Human Pivot Point (New York: Outerbridge and Lazard, 1972), 16. 54. Musès, Consciousness and Reality, 110–​111. 55. Musès, Consciousness and Reality, 111. 56. Musès, Consciousness and Reality, 112. 57. Musès, Consciousness and Reality, 113. 58. Musès, Consciousness and Reality, 113–​116. 59. Musès, Consciousness and Reality, 126. 60. Interested readers could investigate the work of the mathematicians Jens Koeplinger and John Shuster concerning Musean hypernumbers. 61. Musès, Consciousness and Reality, 129–​131. 62. Musès (Demerest), Consciousness and Reality, 414–​415. 63. Musès (Demerest), Consciousness and Reality, 415. 64. Musès (Demerest), Consciousness and Reality, 418–​421. 65. See for instance the Foundation for the Protection of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT) annual lunar calendar at fpmt.org. 66. Musès (Demerest), Consciousness and Reality, 426. 67. Musès (Demerest), Consciousness and Reality, 441–​447. 68. Musès, Consciousness and Reality, 455. 69. Musès, Consciousness and Reality, 471. 70. Musès, Consciousness and Reality, 472. 71. Musès, Consciousness and Reality, 472. 72. C. A. Musès, Esoteric Teachings of the Tibetan Tantra, trans. Chang Chen Chi (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1982), viii.

Notes  259 73. Musès, Esoteric Teachings of the Tibetan Tantra, viii. 74. Musès, Esoteric Teachings of the Tibetan Tantra, ix. 75. Musès, Esoteric Teachings of the Tibetan Tantra, xiii. 76. Joseph Campbell and Charles Musès, eds. In All Her Names: Explorations of the Feminine in Divinity (New York: Harper, 1991). 77. Musès, In All Her Names, 131. 78. Musès, In All Her Names, 131. 79. Musès, In All Her Names, 132. 80. Musès, In All Her Names, 134 81. Musès, In All Her Names, 137. 82. Musès, In All Her Names, 138. 83. Musès, In All Her Names, 142. 84. Musès, In All Her Names, 141–​142. 85. Musès, In All Her Names, 151. 86. Musès, In All Her Names, 153. 87. In In All Her Names, Musès gives the following citation: Musaios, The Lion Path (Berkeley, CA: Golden Sceptre, 1989). 88. Versluis, Wisdom’s Children: A Christian Esoteric Tradition, 293–​308. See also John Pordage, Sophia (Minneapolis: Grailstone, 2017). 89. Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, The Stargate Conspiracy: Revealing the Truth Behind Extraterrestrial Contact, Military Intelligence, and the Mysteries of Ancient Egpyt (New York: Berkley Books, 1999), epub version, ch. 6, “The Secret Masters.” 90. Musaios, The Lion Path: You Can Take It With You—​A Manual of the Short Path to Regeneration for Our Times (Berkeley: Golden Sceptre, 1985), 15. 91. Musaios, The Lion Path, 15–​16. 92. Musaios, The Lion Path, 20. This is relatively similar to the perspective of Italian author Julius Evola (1898–​1974), who went so far as to argue (for instance) in Doctrine of Awakening, his book on Buddhism, that a kind of immortality was the goal of Buddhism. 93. Musaios, The Lion Path, 20. 94. Musaios, The Lion Path, 21. 95. Musaios, The Lion Path, 45–​58. 96. Musaios, The Lion Path, 61. 97. Musaios, The Lion Path, 62. 98. Musaios, The Lion Path, 68 99. Musaios, The Lion Path, 64–​65. 100. Musaios, The Lion Path, 78. 101. Musaios, The Lion Path, 83. 102. Musaios, The Lion Path, 87–​88. 103. Musaios, The Lion Path, 87. See 84–​88. 104. Musaios, The Lion Path, 89. 105. Musaios, The Lion Path, 90. 106. Musaios, The Lion Path, 91. 107. Musaios, The Lion Path, 92.

260 Notes 108. Musaios, The Lion Path, 93. 109. Musaios, The Lion Path, 93–​94. 110. Musaios, The Lion Path, 96. 111. Musaios, The Lion Path, 97. 112. Musaios, The Lion Path, 109. 113. Musaios, The Lion Path, 110. 114. Musaios, The Lion Path, 114. 115. Musaios, The Lion Path, 117. 116. Musaios, The Lion Path, 118. 117. Musaios, The Lion Path, 118. 118. Musaios, The Lion Path, 110–​111. 119. For Musès’s detailed discussion of the theory and practice of musical frequencies as “acoustic acupuncture,” see Grail Most Ancient: An Advanced Guide to the Lion Path (Sardis, BC: House of Horus, 1993), 44–​51. 120. Musaios, The Eternal Door: User’s Manual for the Lion Path (Sardis, BC: House of Horus, 1991), 3. 121. Musaios, The Eternal Door, 7–​8. 122. Musaios, The Eternal Door, 7, 123. Musaios, The Eternal Door, 10. 124. Musaios, The Eternal Door, 15. 125. Musaios, The Eternal Door, 16–​17. 126. Musaios, The Eternal Door, 18–​20. 127. Musaios, The Eternal Door, 21. 128. Musaios, The Eternal Door, 46. 129. Musaios, The Eternal Door, 46. 130. Musaios, The Eternal Door, 50. 131. Musaios, Grail Most Ancient: An Advanced Guide to the Lion Path (Sardis, BC: House of Horus, 1993), 1. 132. Musaios, Grail Most Ancient, 2. 133. Musaios, Grail Most Ancient, 3. 134. Musaios, Grail Most Ancient, 3. 135. Musaios, Grail Most Ancient, 5. 136. Musaios, Grail Most Ancient, 9. 137. Musaios, Grail Most Ancient, 9. 138. Musaios, Grail Most Ancient, 14–​15. 139. Musaios, Grail Most Ancient, 15–​16. 140. Musaios, Grail Most Ancient, 28. 141. Musaios, Grail Most Ancient, 32. See Musès, Illumination on Jacob Boehme, 130–​152, and Versluis, Wisdom’s Children, 288. 142. Musaios, Grail Most Ancient, 35. 143. Musaios, Grail Most Ancient, 36. See Jacob Boehme, Mysterium Magnum 14.6: “two sexes came forth out of one essence, viz. the fiery property in itself to a male, and the light’s or water’s property to a female, where then both tinctures severed.” 144. Musaios, Grail Most Ancient, 36. 145. Musaios, Grail Most Ancient, 79.

Notes  261 146. Musaios, Grail Most Ancient, 78. 147. On James Pierrepont Greaves, see Arthur Versluis, The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 105–​114; on Thomas Lake Harris, see 56–​62. Musaios, Grail Most Ancient, 67–​73. 148. Musaios, Grail Most Ancient, 84. 149. On Leade, see Versluis, Wisdom’s Children, 57–​78. 150. Musaios, The Shamanic Lion Path: How to Manifest What You Have Attained (Sardis, BC: House of Horus, 1999), 10. 151. Musaios, The Shamanic Lion Path, 20. 152. Musaios, The Shamanic Lion Path, 21. 153. Musaios, The Shamanic Lion Path, 21. 154. Musaios, The Shamanic Lion Path, 24. 155. Musaios, The Shamanic Lion Path, 44. 156. Musaios, The Shamanic Lion Path, 43–​44. 157. Musaios, The Shamanic Lion Path, 44. 158. Musaios, The Shamanic Lion Path, 48–​49. 159. Musaios, The Shamanic Lion Path, 50. 160. See for instance, Musaios, The Shamanic Lion Path, 53–​54. 161. Musaios, The Shamanic Lion Path, 54. 162. Musaios, The Shamanic Lion Path, 54. 163. Musaios, The Shamanic Lion Path, 65. 164. Musaios, The Shamanic Lion Path, 66. 165. Musaios, The Shamanic Lion Path, 66.

Chapter 7 1. Versluis, American Gurus, 109. 2. Versluis, American Gurus, 109–​158. 3. Stanislav Grof, “Foreword,” in Dark Night, Early Dawn: Steps to a Deep Ecology of Mind, ed. Christopher Bache (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), xiv. 4. Grof in Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, xiv. 5. Grof in Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, xv. 6. Christopher Bache, Arthur Versluis, and Morgan Shipley, “A Conversation with Christopher Bache,” JSR: Journal for the Study of Radicalism 13 (2019): 155–​178. 7. Christopher Bache, LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven (Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 2019). 8. Bache, “A Conversation,” i159. 9. Bache, “A Conversation,” 160. 10. Bache, “A Conversation,” 161. 11. Bache, “A Conversation,” 162. 12. Bache, “A Conversation,” 162. 13. Bache, “A Conversation,” 164.

262 Notes 14. Bache, “A Conversation,” 166. 15. Bache, “A Conversation,” 171. 16. Bache, “A Conversation,” 171. 17. Bache, “A Conversation,” 171. 18. See Christopher Bache, The Living Classroom: Teaching and Collective Consciousness (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008), 3–​5. 19. Bache, The Living Classroom, 7. 20. Bache, The Living Classroom, 21. 21. Bache, “A Conversation,” 170. 22. Bache, The Living Classroom, 89. 23. Christopher Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn: Steps to a Deep Ecology of Mind (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), 13–​15. 24. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 18. 25. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 19. 26. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 213. 27. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 217. 28. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 218. 29. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 220. 30. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 220. 31. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 247. 32. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 247. 33. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 248. 34. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 248. 35. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 249. 36. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 249. 37. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 269. 38. Bache, “A Conversation,” 177. 39. Bache, “A Conversation,” 177. 40. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 268. 41. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 269. 42. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 269–​270. 43. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 271. 44. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 273. 45. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 273. 46. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 274. 47. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 275. 48. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 275. 49. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 275. 50. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 276. 51. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 276. 52. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 277. 53. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 278. 54. Bache, Dark Night, Early Dawn, 278. 55. See, on perennialism as mentioned here, Arthur Versluis, Perennial Philosophy (Minneapolis: New Cultures Press, 2015).

Notes  263 56. See Christopher Partridge, High Culture: Drugs, Mysticism, and the Pursuit of Transcendence in the Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). 57. Partridge, High Culture, 319–​341. 58. See Terence McKenna and Dennis McKenna, The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching (New York: Seabury, 1975); Terence McKenna, Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality, UFOs, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, and the End of History (San Francisco: Harper, 1992); Terence McKenna, Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge—​A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution (New York: Bantam, 1992); Ralph Abraham, Terence McKenna, and Rupert Sheldrake, Trialogues at the Edge of the West: Chaos, Creativity, and the Resacralization of the World (Rochester, VT: Bear & Co., 1992); True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author’s Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil’s Paradise (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1993); Ralph Abraham, Terence McKenna, and Rupert Sheldrake, The Evolutionary Mind: Conversations on Science, Imagination & Spirit (Rhinebeck, NY: Monkfish, 1998). 59. Partridge, High Culture, 13. 60. Partridge, High Culture, 13. 61. Partridge, High Culture, 14, citing Wouter Hanegraaff, “Entheogenic Esotericism,” in Contemporary Esotericism, ed. Egil Asprem and Kennet Granholm (Sheffield: Equinox, 2013), 392–​409. 62. Erik Davis, “Gnostic Psychedelia,” in Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies 5, no. 1 (2020): 97–​120. 63. See Jim DeKorne, Psychedelic Shamanism: The Cultivation, Preparation, and Shamanic Use of Psychotropic Plants (Port Townsend, WA: Loompanics, 1994), 48; see also Jim DeKorne, “Attack of the Archons,” Gnosis [magazine] 23 (1992): 16–​23. 64. Jonathan Talat Phillips, The Electric Jesus: The Healing Journey of a Contemporary Gnostic (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic/​ Evolver, 2011), Graham Hancock, “Introduction,” epub, ~12–​17. 65. Phillips, The Electric Jesus, Hancock’s “Introduction,” epub, ~12–​17. 66. Phillips, The Electric Jesus, Hancock’s “Introduction,” epub, ~14–​17. 67. Phillips, The Electric Jesus, ch. 12, epub, ~164–​165. 68. Phillips, The Electric Jesus, “Epilogue,” epub, ~252 69. See for instance Hunter Wallace, Occidental Dissent, OccidentalDissent.com, who has frequently remarked on antipathy to Bush, Jr. as a significant factor in the emergence of the alternative right movement. 70. Phillips, The Electric Jesus, “Epilogue,” epub, ~250. 71. See Reality Sandwich, RealitySandwich.com, founded by Phillips, Pinchbeck, and two others, described jokingly in Phillips’s book as “three Jews and a Gnostic.” 72. See Daniel Pinchbeck, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (New York: Tarcher, 2007), 1–​2. 73. Pinchbeck, 2012, 12. 74. Pinchbeck, 2012, 15. 75. Pinchbeck, 2012, 28.

264 Notes 76. Pinchbeck, 2012, 116. 77. Pinchbeck, 2012, 367. 78. Pinchbeck, 2012, 367, 370. 79. Pinchbeck, 2012, 370. 80. Pinchbeck, 2012, 371–​372. 81. Daniel Pinchbeck and Ken Jordan, eds., Toward 2012: Perspectives on the Next Age (New York: Tarcher, 2008). 82. See Jennifer Palmer, “Radical Interdependence and Online Telepathy: How Twitter Helps Us Find One Another,” in Toward 2012, ed. Daniel Pinchbeck and Ken Jordan (New York: Tarcher, 2008), 305–​315; Ken Jordan, “Writing Source Code for Democracy,” 316–​338. 83. Jonathan Phillips, “Gnosis: The Not-​so-​secret History of Jesus,” in Toward 2012, 114–​130. 84. See Beatriz Caiuby Labate and Clancy Cavnar, eds., Plant Medicines, Healing, and Psychedelic Science: Cultural Perspectives (Cham: Springer, 2018). 85. Graham St. John, “Gnosis Potency: DMT Breakthroughs and Paragnosis,” in Labate and Cavnar, eds., Plant Medicines, Healing, and Psychedelic Science, 207–​208. 86. St. John, “Gnosis Potency,” 208. 87. It is worth noting that the term “esotericism” adds nothing to our understanding of psychedelic exploration, only confusion. Is a psychedelic explorer an “esoterist” or an “esoter(ic)ist”? If the latter, what does the (ic) signify with regard to a practitioner? 88. Keith Dowman, Everything is Light: The Circle of Total Illumination (n.p.: DzogchenNow!, 2017), 30–​31. 89. Dowman, Everything is Light, 31. 90. Charles Hayes, “A Conversation with Terence McKenna,” in Charles Hayes, Tripping: An Anthology of True-​Life Psychedelic Adventures (New York: Penguin, 2000), Part 3, epub 1116. 91. “A Conversation with Terence McKenna,” in Hayes, Tripping, epub 1116–​1117. 92. “A Conversation with Terence McKenna,” in Hayes, Tripping, epub 1144. 93. “A Conversation with Terence McKenna,” in Hayes, Tripping, epub 1117.

Chapter 8 1. At least one website (encyclopedia.com) has Lash born in 1945. It also lists him as having or claiming a BA from Texas A&M University and a PhD from the University of New Mexico. 2. John Lamb Lash, Not In His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2006), ch. 24, epub 669. 3. Lash, Not in His Image, “Introduction,” epub 37. 4. Lash, Not in His Image, “Introduction,” epub 37. 5. Lash, Not in His Image, ch. 24, epub 668. 6. Lash, Not in His Image, ch. 2, epub 80. 7. Lash, Not in His Image, ch. 12, epub 390–​391.

Notes  265 8. See for instance, Helena Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy (Pasadena, CA: Theosophical University Press, 1999), II.507–​ 508, where she discusses the “tribal god” of the Jews and confessional Christians. 9. Lash, Not in His Image, ch. 12, epub 383–​384. 10. Lash, Not in His Image, ch. 12, epub 384. 11. Lash, Not in His Image, ch. 7, epub 254–​255. 12. Lash, Not in His Image, ch. 7, epub 263–​264. 13. Lash, Not in His Image, ch. 7. 14. Lash, Not in His Image, ch. 21, epub 574–​575. 15. Lash, Not in His Image, ch. 26, epub 723–​724. 16. Lash, Not in His Image, ch. 26, epub 724. 17. John Lamb Lash, “The Terma and the Terton,” https://​nem​eta.org/​cou​rse/​17-​terma-​ ter​ton/​. 18. See The Third Wave Podcast, “John Lamb Lash: Telestic Shamanism, Gnosis, Cognitive Ecstasy, and Entheogens” (Episode 150, 2022), https://​theth​irdw​ave.co/​podc​ast/​epis​ ode-​150-​john-​lamb-​lash/​. 19. John Lamb Lash, “The Terma and the Terton.” 20. John Lamb Lash, “The Terma and the Terton.” 21. See for an example of his Youtube presence, John Lamb Lash with Lisa M. Harrison, “The Sophianic Myth Rendered by a Living Gnostic,” January 10, 2016, https://​www. yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​eskI​aF9m​nLM. 22. See John Lash, Kalika War Party: Eliminating Social Evil, kalikawarparty.org. 23. See John Lash, Kalika War Party: Eliminating Social Evil, kalikawarparty.org, home page. 24. See John Lash, http://​www.kal​ikaw​arpa​rty.org/​manife​sto/​. 25. See John Lash, http://​www.kal​ikaw​arpa​rty.org/​str​ike/​; for a Youtube video of how to do a magical killing spell in the ancient Greco-​Roman tradition, see “The Kalika Killing Strike,” https://​www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​PTou​hUSb​Cik. 26. See John Lash, “The Kalika Killing Strike,” January 31, 2015, https://​www.yout​ube. com/​watch?v=​PTou​hUSb​Cik. 27. See John Lash, Kalika War Party, visited January 30, 2022, http://​www.kal​ikaw​arpa​ rty.org/​manife​sto/​ 28. See John Lash, Kalika War Party, January 30, 2022, http://​www.kal​ikaw​arpa​rty.org/​ manife​sto/​ 29. See John Lash, Kalika War Party, January 30, 2022, http://​www.kal​ikaw​arpa​rty.org/​ manife​sto/​ 30. See John Lash, Kalika War Party: Reemergence of the Warrior Class, December 26, 2014, https://​www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​jPAV​US1N​3Fc 31. See Andy Lewis, Targeted Individuals, https://​www.targe​ted-​indi​vidu​als.com/​; for an even wilder “conspiracy theory” site, see for instance Pat Rydz, The Vatic Project, https://​vatic​proj​ect.blogs​pot.com/​p/​vatic-​mas​ter.html, which was continued by M. C. Bruecke. 32. See Andy Lewis, Targeted Individuals. 33. As we saw with Peter Lamborn Wilson’s “Temporary Autonomous Zones,” which I discussed in American Gurus: Wilson’s idea, discussed in an eponymous book,

266 Notes may have seemed very obscure and not broadly influential, until in 2020 we were reading in mainstream media about the “Capital Hill Autonomous Zone” being set up in Seattle. See for instance Danielle Silva and Matteo Moschella, “Protestors Set Up ‘Autonomous Zone’ After Police Vacate Precinct,” June 11, 2020, https://​www.nbcn​ ews.com/​news/​us-​news/​seat​tle-​pro​test​ers-​set-​aut​onom​ous-​zone-​after-​pol​ice-​evacu​ ate-​preci​nct-​n1230​151. 34. See Matthew Dillon, “The Afterlives of the Archons: Gnostic Literalism and Embodied Paranoia in 21st C.E. Conspiracy Theory,” in DeConick and Kripal, eds., Gnostic Afterlives in American Religion and Culture, 280–​305. 35. See David Icke, Tales from the Time Loop: The Most Comprehensive Exposé of the Global Conspiracy Ever Written (Wildwood, MO: Bridge of Love, 2003), 251. 36. David Icke, Everything You Need to Know But Have Never Been Told (Derby: David Icke Books, 2017), 153. 37. David Icke, Everything You Need to Know But Have Never Been Told, 308. 38. David Icke, Tales from the Time Loop, ch. 9. 39. David Icke, Everything You Need to Know But Have Never Been Told, 147. 40. David Icke, Everything You Need to Know But Have Never Been Told, 147–​148. 41. John Lamb Lash, “Who Wrote the Reptilian Agenda?” originally found on https://​ www.meta​hist​ory.org/​gnosti​que/​arch​onfi​les/​Rept​ilia​nAge​nda.php, March 2005, currently (2022) replicated on multiple non-​affiliated sites. 42. John Lamb Lash, “Who Wrote the Reptilian Agenda?” originally found on https://​ www.meta​hist​ory.org/​gnosti​que/​arch​onfi​les/​Rept​ilia​nAge​nda.php, March 2005, currently (2022) replicated on multiple non-​affiliated sites. 43. See John Lamb Lash, “How Does David Icke View My Work?” https://​indiem​edia​ east​coas​tcan​ada.blogs​pot.com/​2021/​08/​how-​does-​david-​icke-​view-​my-​work-​john. html, linked to https://​youtu.be/​y2Dr​pd7R​J9Q. 44. John Lamb Lash, “How Does David Icke View My Work?” https://​indiem​edia​east​coas​ tcan​ada.blogs​pot.com/​2021/​08/​how-​does-​david-​icke-​view-​my-​work-​john.html. 45. Greg Braden, Graham Hancock, and David Icke, The 5th Kind TV “Alien Origins of Gnosticism: The Dead Sea Scrolls & the Nag Hammadi Text,” June 2, 2020 https://​ 5thk​ind.tv/​alien-​orig​ins-​of-​gno​stic​ism-​the-​dead-​sea-​scro​lls-​the-​nag-​hamm​adi-​ text-​docu​ment​ary/​. 46. Gary Lite, “The Lost Forbidden Teachings of Jesus,” August 28, 2018, https://​369n​ews. net/​2018/​08/​28/​the-​lost-​forbid​den-​teachi​ngs-​of-​jesus/​. 47. Nigel Kerner, The Song of the Greys (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1999); see also Nigel Kerner, Grey Aliens and the Harvesting of Souls (Rochester, VT: Bear & Co., 2010), ch. 9: “Records displaying knowledge of extraterrestrial phenomena can be found throughout the world’s various civilizations. For example, it seems that the scenario I have described in the previous chapters is one of the central themes of Gnostic early Christian thought. The terms used in these texts to describe the cloned alien beings are the ‘Authorities,’ or the ‘Archons.’ In a particular text in the Nag Hammadi Library of ancient Christian thought entitled ‘The Hypostasis of the Archons,’ there is a detailed description of both their origin and their nature.” 48. Icke, Everything You Need to Know, 309–​310.

Notes  267 49. Icke, Everything You Need to Know, 310. 50. Icke, Everything You Need to Know, 310. 51. Icke’s version of Tompkins’s book is aimed at confirmation of Icke’s own theories, and indeed, the reptilians and other aliens are discussed in the book. But the primary point of his book seems to be that aliens (via sexual blackmail and impersonation as well as telepathic abilities) were able to prevent US corporations like Douglas from continuing German research into galactic and intergalactic space propulsion and travel technologies. Tompkins raises some very interesting questions about the cancellation or layoffs of space program engineers in US corporations in around 1970, and the lack of a continued program for space exploration and colonization. He suggests this derives from aliens not wanting humanity to engage in space travel. 52. David Icke, The Answer (Derby: Ickonic Publishing, 2020), ch. 1, epub 87. 53. David Icke, Perceptions of a Renegade Mind (Derby: Ickonic Publishing, 2021), ch. 11, epub 709–​710. 54. David Icke, Perceptions of a Renegade Mind, ch. 11, epub 709–​710. 55. David Icke, Perceptions of a Renegade Mind, ch. 11, epub 711. 56. David Icke, Perceptions of a Renegade Mind, ch. 11, epub 712. 57. David Icke, Perceptions of a Renegade Mind, ch. 11, epub 705–​706. 58. David Icke, Perceptions of a Renegade Mind, ch. 11, epub 707. See also https://​gno​stic​ warr​ior.com/​per​son-​who-​ent​ers-​the-​spirit​ual-​world.html, citing Rudolf Steiner, Die Erkenntnis der Seele und des Geistes (Dornach: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1985), Berlin, December 12, 1907, 145. 59. David Icke, Perceptions of a Renegade Mind, ch. 11, epub 707–​708. 60. David Icke, Perceptions of a Renegade Mind, ch. 1, epub 67. 61. David Icke, The Answer, ch. 10, epub 962–​965. 62. David Icke, The Answer, ch. 10, epub 963. 63. David Icke, The Answer, ch. 11, epub 1061. 64. David Icke, The Answer, ch. 11, epub 1062–​1063. 65. David Icke, The Answer, ch. 11, epub 1069. 66. David Icke, The Answer, ch. 11, epub 1097 67. David Icke, The Answer, ch. 11, epub 1113. 68. u/​sunsofgod, December 19, 2021, https://​www.red​dit.com/​r/​Escap​ingP​riso​nPla​net/​ comme​nts/​rk7​7l7/​i_​regret​_​goi​ng_​d​own_​the_​rabb​it_​h​ole/​. 69. AdamArcadian, December 18, 2021, https://​www.red​dit.com/​r/​Escap​ingP​riso​nPla​ net/​comme​nts/​rjf​4yu/​pro​babl​y_​a_​stup​id_​q​uest​ion/​. 70. XIXMelcholas, October 27, 2021, https://​www.red​dit.com/​r/​cons​pira​cyNO​POL/​ comme​nts/​qgo​64k/​you_​are_​in_​an_​illusory​_​rea​lity​_​of_​igno​ranc​e_​st​uck/​. 71. XIXMelcholas, October 27, 2021, https://​www.red​dit.com/​r/​cons​pira​cyNO​POL/​ comme​nts/​qgo​64k/​you_​are_​in_​an_​illusory​_​rea​lity​_​of_​igno​ranc​e_​st​uck/​. 72. See for instance u/​DrTrann, December 16, 2021, https://​www.red​dit.com/​r/​cons​pira​ cyNO​POL/​comme​nts/​rhz​cir/​why_​was_​college_​push​ed_​s​o_​ha​rd_​d​own_​the_​thro​ ats/​, in which users discuss topics such as how college is a scam, and how trade school is a better alternative.

268 Notes 73. See for instance the discussion thread started by u/​DeletetheMatrix, December 17, 2021, https://​www.red​dit.com/​r/​Rei​ncar​nati​onTr​uth/​comme​nts/​rih​2ot/​raise_​your_​ vibration_​to_​a​scen​d_​ou​t_​of​_​the​_​mat​rix/​ It includes specific accusations of schizophrenia, as well as extended discussions of Dark City and The Matrix. 74. See u/​DeletetheMatrix, December 17, 2021, https://​www.red​dit.com/​r/​Rei​ncar​nati​ onTr​uth/​comme​nts/​rih​2ot/​raise_​your_​vibration_​to_​a​scen​d_​ou​t_​of​_​the​_​mat​rix/​ 75. See for instance, truthcontrol.com/​ val-​ valerian or www.unsla​ved.com, one of Michael Tsarion’s sites. Both authors have copious videos online. 76. See Carol A. Reimer, Sophia and the Archons (n.p. CreateSpace: 2013) Trial of the Archons (n.p. CreateSpace: 2013); Psychopaths (n.p. CreateSpace: 2014), Reptiles and Paedophiles (n.p. CreateSpace: 2015); Sophia and Yaldabaoth (CreateSpace: 2016). 77. Charlotte Ward and Prof. David Voas, “The Emergence of ‘Conspirituality,’” Journal of Contemporary Religion 26, no. 1 (2011): 103–​121. 78. Egil Asprem and Asbjørn Dyrendal, “Conspirituality Reconsidered: How Surprising and How New is the Confluence of Spirituality and Conspiracy Theory?,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 30, no. 3 (2015): 367–​382. 79. Asprem and Dyrendal, “Conspirituality Reconsidered,” 373. 80. David Icke, Perceptions of a Renegade Mind, ch. 12, epub 801–​808. 81. See, for instance, Dignam, Pierce Alexander and Deana A. Rohlinger, “Misogynistic Men Online: How the Red Pill helped Elect Trump,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 44, no. 3 (2019): 589–​612; Alexis Chapelan, “ ‘Swallowing the Red Pill’: the Coronavirus Pandemic and the Political Imaginary of Stigmatized Knowledge in the Discourse of the Far-​right,” Journal of Transatlantic Studies 19, no. 3 (2021): 282–​312; Annie Kelly, “The Alt-​Right: Reactionary Rehabilitation for White Masculinity,” Soundings 66, no. 66 (2017): 68–​78; Shawn P. Van Valkenburgh, “Digesting the Red Pill: Masculinity and Neoliberalism in the Manosphere,” Men and Masculinities 24, no. 1 (2021): 84–​103. 82. Gab internal search on December 23, 2021. 83. From “Red Pilled Nation,” RedPilledNation.com and “Red Pill Times,” on redpilltimes. com, both on Gab. Last quotation from David Ng, “ ‘Matrix Resurrections’ Writer Says Movie Will Reclaim ‘Red Pill’ From Political Right,” December 21, 2021, Breitbart News, https://​www.breitb​art.com/​entert​ainm​ent/​2021/​12/​21/​mat​rix-​resurr​ecti​ons-​ wri​ter-​says-​movie-​will-​recl​aim-​red-​pill-​from-​politi​cal-​right/​. 84. Rod Dreher, “Our Gnostic World,” The American Conservative, February 16, 2021, https://​www.thea​meri​canc​onse​rvat​ive.com/​dre​her/​our-​gnos​tic-​world/​, citing Benjamin Wiker, “The New Gnosticism,” May 2, 2011, The Catholic World Report, https://​www.cath​olic​worl​drep​ort.com/​2011/​05/​02/​the-​new-​gno​stic​ism/​, which discusses how “an ancient hatred of the material world takes many forms,” and Edward Feser, “The Gnostic Heresy’s Political Success,” The Catholic World Report, January 1, 2021, https://​www.cath​olic​worl​drep​ort.com/​2021/​01/​31/​the-​gnos​tic-​here​ sys-​politi​cal-​suc​cess​ors/​, which improbably claims that “what Eric Voegelin saw in various gnostic ideologies is manifestly present in Critical Race Theory and the rest of the ‘woke’ insanity now spreading like a cancer through the body politic.”

Notes  269 85. Edward Feser, “The Gnostic Heresy’s Political Success,” The Catholic World Report, January 1, 2021, https://​www.cath​olic​worl​drep​ort.com/​2021/​01/​31/​the-​gnos​tic-​ here​sys-​politi​cal-​suc​cess​ors/​. 86. Edward Feser, “The Gnostic Heresy’s Political Success,” The Catholic World Report, January 1, 2021, https://​www.cath​olic​worl​drep​ort.com/​2021/​01/​31/​the-​gnos​tic-​ here​sys-​politi​cal-​suc​cess​ors/​. 87. See also Spencer J. Quinn, “Transgenderism as Gnostic Heresy,” August 31, 2022, https://​coun​ter-​curre​nts.com/​2022/​08/​tra​nsge​nder​ism-​as-​gnos​tic-​her​esy/​. Quinn advances wholly unsubstantiated claims about “Gnostics” in history and then leaps to blaming them for Marxism, communism, and “transgenderism.” The article, uncharacteristic for Counter-​Currents, prompts one to reflect again on the potential resurgence of heretic-​hunting tendencies on the right as discussed in The New Inquisitions. 88. See, for an application of Voegelinism, Barry Cooper, New Political Religions (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004). 89. See Stephen McKnight, “Gnosticism and Modernity: Voegelin’s Reconsiderations in 1971,” 2001 APSA Panel Paper, available online as a pdf file from http://​www.pro. harv​ard.edu/​pap​ers/​091/​091​007/​McK​nigh​tSt.pdf. I took the liberty of correcting some grammatical errors in the transcription, but the meaning is unaltered. See also Stefan Rossbach, “ ‘Gnosis’ in Eric Voegelin’s Philosophy,” at http://​www.pro.harv​ ard.edu/​pap​ers/​091/​091​007/​Ros​sbac​hSt.pdf. 90. McKnight, “Gnosticism and Modernity,” 202. 91. See for instance the Counter-​Currents Publishing website edited by Greg Johnson, www.coun​ter-​curre​nts.com. See also www.theocc​iden​talo​bser​ver.net. Or see the American Renaissance site, www.amren.com, edited by Jared Taylor. 92. See for instance, for links to Clinton’s speech, and for its disruption, https://​www. daily​dot.com/​uncl​ick/​anon-​4chan-​pepe-​hill​ary-​clin​ton-​spe​ech/​. 93. See Adi Robertson, “Hillary Clinton Exposing Pepe the Frog Is the Death of Explainers,” September 15, 2016, The Verge, https://​www.theve​rge.com/​2016/​9/​15/​ 12926​976/​hill​ary-​clin​ton-​trump-​pepe-​the-​frog-​alt-​right-​explai​ner 94. See “Join the Parallel Economy,” November 29, 2021, Gab News, or “Shop in the Parallel Economy,” November 26, 2021, Gab News, posted on Gab.com by Andrew Torba and also emailed as newsletter. 95. “Shop in the Parallel Economy,” November 26, 2021, Gab News, posted on Gab.com by Andrew Torba and also emailed as newsletter. 96. See “Pleroma” entry, May 10, 2022, https://​wiki​tia.com/​wiki/​Plero​ma_​(softw​are). See also “Pleroma 2.0,” March 9, 2020, https://​news.ycom​bina​tor.com/​item?id=​ 22519​209. 97. Greg Johnson, The White Nationalist Manifesto (San Francisco: Counter-​Currents, 2018), 3. 98. Johnson, The White Nationalist Manifesto, 48, 56. 99. Johnson, The White Nationalist Manifesto, 54. 100. Johnson, The White Nationalist Manifesto, 56.

270 Notes 101. Greg Johnson, “Amazon.com Bans The White Nationalist Manifesto,” February 25, 2019, https://​coun​ter-​curre​nts.com/​2019/​02/​ama​zon-​com-​bans-​the-​white-​nati​onal​ist-​ manife​sto/​. 102. John Q. Publius, The God That Failed: Liberalism and the Destruction of the West (London: Black House, 2020), 308–​310. See on conservatism for instance Paul Gottfried, ed., The Vanishing Tradition: Perspectives on American Conservatism (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2020). 103. See, on National Socialist establishment of parks and greenspace, Anna Bramwell, Ecology in the Twentieth Century: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); see also Anna Bramwell, Blood and Soil: Richard Walther Darré and Hitler’s ‘Green Party’ (Abbotsbrook: Kensal Press, 1985). For a critique, see Piers Stephens, “Blood, Not Soil: Anna Bramwell and the Myth of “Hitler’s Green Party.” Organization & Environment 14, no. 2 (2001): 173–​187. 104. Greg Johnson, The White Nationalist Manifesto, 128. 105. Greg Johnson, The White Nationalist Manifesto, 128–​129. 106. Greg Johnson, The White Nationalist Manifesto, 130–​131. 107. Greg Johnson, The White Nationalist Manifesto, 131. 108. Greg Johnson, The White Nationalist Manifesto, 133. 109. See Bronze Age Pervert, Bronze Age Mindset: An Exhortation (n.p., n.p., 2018). 110. Bronze Age Pervert, Bronze Age Mindset, 96–​97. 111. Bronze Age Pervert, Bronze Age Mindset, 97. 112. Bronze Age Pervert, Bronze Age Mindset, 97. 113. Bronze Age Pervert, Bronze Age Mindset, 183.

Chapter 9 1. Andrew M. Lobeczewski and Laura Knight-​Jadczyk, ed., Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes, trans. Alexandra Chciuk-​ Celt (n.p.: Red Pill Press, 2006), 183. 2. Lobeczewski, Political Ponerology, 194. 3. Lobeczewski, Political Ponerology, 194. 4. Andrew Torba, Gab post, Gab.com, January 15, 2022, ~12:30 a.m. All quotations are from archived screenshots; post times, when available, are approximate. 5. Andrew Torba, Gab post, Gab.com, January 15, 2022, ~12:30 a.m. 6. Andrew Torba, Gab post, Gab.com, January 16, 2022, ~1 p.m. 7. 2 And A 10, Gab comment, Gab.com, January 16, 2022, ~1 p.m. 8. Xenophon, Gab comment, Gab.com, January 16, 2022, ~2 p.m. 9. See for instance, Adam Gazzaley and Larry D. Rosen, The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-​Tech World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016). See also Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (New York: W.W. Norton, 2020). 10. Gnosis, “Gnosis,” March 17, 2021, gab.com; XOSosa, “Disclosure on (Christian) Gnosticism” February 27, 2021, gab.com.

Notes  271 11. A collection of memes related to this book can be found at https://​art​hurv​ersl​uis. com/​ameri​can-​gno​sis-​politi​cal-​relig​ion-​and-​transc​ende​nce/​. 12. Sylvia Salow, “18 Plain Signs That You’re A Lightworker,” March 12, 2019, https://​ med​ium.com/​@Sylv​iaSa​low/​18-​plain-​signs-​thatyo​ure-​a-​ligh​twor​ker-​and-​what-​it-​ means-​1fc6d​e62b​5a6. 13. Sylvia Salow, “18 Plain Signs That You’re A Lightworker,” March 12, 2019, https://​ med​ium.com/​@Sylv​iaSa​low/​18-​plain-​signs-​thatyo​ure-​a-​ligh​twor​ker-​and-​what-​it-​ means-​1fc6d​e62b​5a6. 14. “Starseeds, lightworkers, empaths, 144,000, Galactic Federation, New Earth, 5D, and extraterrestrials Group,” February 9, 2022, gab.com. 15. Jennifer Warren, “Light Path Activation,” “Lightworkers Group” January 15, 2021, gab.com. 16. Jennifer Warren, “Light Path Activation,” “Lightworkers Group” January 15, 2021, gab.com. 17. Andrew Torba and Andrew Isker, Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide for Taking Dominion and Discipling Nations (n.p.: n.p., 2022). 18. Josh Neal, American Extremist: The Psychology of Political Extremism (Perth: Imperium Press, 2020), Introduction, note 1. 19. See Colleen Flaherty, “Psychology Adjunct Is A White Nationalist,” November 15, 2019, https://​www.ins​ideh​ighe​red.com/​qui​ckta​kes/​2019/​11/​15/​psy​chol​ogy-​adju​nct-​ white-​nati​onal​ist. See also for the initial outing, Jake Offenhartz, “NYC Psychology Professor Secretly Moonlights As White Nationalist Co-​Host of Richard Spencer’s Podcast,” November 8, 2019, https://​gotham​ist.com/​news/​nyc-​psy​chol​ogy-​profes​ sor-​secre​tly-​moo​nlig​hts-​white-​nati​onal​ist-​co-​host-​rich​ard-​spenc​ers-​podc​ast. 20. Neal, “November 5, 2019,” American Extremist, epub 29. 21. Neal, “November 5, 2019,” American Extremist, epub 30. 22. Neal, “November 5, 2019,” American Extremist, epub 32. 23. Neal, “January 4, 2018,” American Extremist, epub 19. 24. Neal, “January 4, 2018,” American Extremist, epub 20. 25. Neal, “Why Deplatforming Doesn’t Work,” American Extremist, epub 409. 26. Neal, “How A Society Becomes Extreme,” American Extremist, epub 177. 27. Neal, “How A Society Becomes Extreme,” American Extremist, epub 178–​179. 28. Neal, “How A Society Becomes Extreme,” American Extremist, epub 179. 29. Neal, “How A Society Becomes Extreme,” American Extremist, epub 179. 30. Neal, “How A Society Becomes Extreme,” American Extremist, epub 180. 31. Neal, “How A Society Becomes Extreme,” American Extremist, epub 180. 32. See Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind [1953] (New York: Vintage, 1990). 33. Neal, “Politics Without Action,” American Extremist, epub 373–​374. 34. Neal, “Politics Without Action,” American Extremist, epub 375. 35. Neal, “Politics Without Action,” American Extremist, epub 377. 36. Neal, “The Digital Crowd,” American Extremist, epub 382. 37. Neal, “How Do We Combat Extremism?” American Extremist, epub 430. 38. See for instance BBC Trending, “The Anti-​Vax Movement Targeting Children,” April 13, 2021, https://​www.bbc.com/​news/​blogs-​trend​ing-​56675​874. The article, like its title, conveys alarm and disapproval of the topic.

272 Notes 39. BBC Trending, “The Anti-​Vax Movement Targeting Children.” 40. “Telegram Sperrt 64 Kanäle” February 11, 2022, Süddeutsche Zeitung, https://​www. suedd​euts​che.de/​poli​tik/​teleg​ram-​kana​ele-​sperr​ung-​1.5527​255. 41. Andrew Torba, February 13, 2022, Gab.com post, ~12 a.m. 42. Jeff Sekerak, February 2, 2022, Gab.com post, ~5 p.m. 43. Yardeniya Ariela, September 30, 2021, “Starseeds, Lightworkers, Empaths” group, Gab.com post. 44. Michael (@Hermes313), January 18 2022, Gab.com post, ~4:32 p.m. 45. @origin8, October 6, 2021, Gab.com post, ~2.30 p.m. 46. Hasbatman, January 2, 2022, Gab.com post, ~8:41 a.m. 47. My Balcony Garden News, August 11, 2021, Gab.com post, accessed ~9:50 p.m. 48. Sol Luckman, “The Fallen Goddess,” June 29, 2021, Gab.com post. 49. Trumpgrl PureBlood, “The Great Awakening,” August 13, 2019, Gab.com post, time unknown. 50. Trumpgrl PureBlood, November 17, 2021, Gab.com post, time unknown. 51. Trumpgrl PureBlood, November 17, 2021, Gab.com post, time unknown. 52. Queenieofthesouth, January 9, 2022, Gab.com post, ~10 a.m. 53. Furio Pureblood, Gab.com homepage, accessed January 7, 2022, ~1:14 p.m. 54. Diecast Fire, July 2 2022, Gab.com post to “Starseeds, Lightworkers, Empaths” group, time unknown. 55. Christ First, July 13, 2022, Gab.com post to “Gospilled” group, 6:56 a.m. 56. Brother André Marie Villarubia and Dr. Wolfgang Smith, “Scientism as Neo-​ Gnosticism,” February 25, 2021, accessed via Gab.com link on January 4, 2022, 2:45 p.m. 57. See Peter Jones, The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back: An Old Heresy for the New Age (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1992), back cover, 43–​79. 58. See Arthur Versluis, The New Inquisitions: Heretic-​Hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 59. See Matt Schimkowitz, “Matrix: Resurrections Co-​Writers Aleksandar Hemon and David Mitchell on Reclaiming the Red Pill,” December 21, 2021, https://​www.avc​lub. com/​mat​rix-​resurr​ecti​ons-​co-​writ​ers-​ale​ksan​dar-​hemon-​and-​da-​184​8234​303. See also “Matrix Writers Seek to Reclaim Red Pill From Right-​Wingers,” December 22, 2021, https://​www.rt.com/​pop-​cult​ure/​543​970-​mat​rix-​writ​ers-​politi​cal-​messa​ges/​. 60. Terry Nicholas, Gab.com post, January 3, 2022, ~9:44 a.m. 61. The Daily Lama, The Meme-​ing of Zen (7e55e Designs: 2019). 62. The Daily Lama, Gab post, February 26, 2022, ~3:09 a.m. 63. The Daily Lama, Gab post, February 26, 2022, ~12 a.m. 64. The Daily Lama, Gab post, February 25, 2022, ~10 p.m. 65. The Daily Lama, Gab post, February 18, 2022, time unknown. 66. The Daily Lama, Gab post, February 14, 2022, time unknown. 67. The Daily Lama, Gab post, February 17, 2022, time unknown. 68. Robert Thurman, Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness (New York: Penguin, 1999). 69. Brad Warner, “Collective Karma and Conservative Buddhists,” October 25, 2021, http://​hard​core​zen.info/​col​lect​ive-​karma-​and-​conse​rvat​ive-​buddhi​sts/​7810.

Notes  273 70. Warner, “Collective Karma and Conservative Buddhists.” 71. Warner, “Collective Karma and Conservative Buddhists.” 72. Ken Wilber, Trump and a Post-​Truth World (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2017), “The Likely Future,” epub 281. 73. Ken Wilber, Trump and a Post-​Truth World, “The Likely Future,” epub 279. 74. Wilber, Trump and a Post-​Truth World, epub 290. 75. Wilber, Trump and a Post-​Truth World, epub 292–​293.

Chapter 10 1. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). 2. Gianni Vattimo, The End of Modernity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 100. 3. Vattimo, The End of Modernity, 164. 4. Vattimo, The End of Modernity, 165, 168–​169. 5. Vattimo, The End of Modernity, 169. 6. Vattimo, The End of Modernity, 169. 7. Vattimo, The End of Modernity, 19. 8. Vattimo, The End of Modernity, 26–​29. 9. Vattimo, The End of Modernity, 29. 10. Versluis, Platonic Mysticism, 62–​64. 11. Quoted in Versluis, Platonic Mysticism, 62. 12. John Lukacs, At the End of an Age (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 45–​84. 13. Lukacs, At the End of an Age, 1–​41, 42. 14. Lukacs, At the End of an Age, 156. 15. Lukacs, At the End of an Age, 162, 164–​166, 176–​177. 16. Lukacs, At the End of an Age, 184–​185. 17. Lukacs, At the End of an Age, 184–​185. 18. Lukacs, At the End of an Age, 204. 19. Lukacs, At the End of an Age, 223. 20. Romano Guardini, The End of the Modern World (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 1998), 55. 21. Guardini, The End of the Modern World, 91. 22. Guardini, The End of the Modern World, 92. 23. Guardini, The End of the Modern World, 106. 24. Guardini, The End of the Modern World, 118. 25. Guardini, The End of the Modern World, 119. 26. Guardini, The End of the Modern World, 162. 27. Guardini, The End of the Modern World, 162. 28. Guardini, The End of the Modern World, 163. 29. Guardini, The End of the Modern World, 199. 30. Guardini, The End of the Modern World, 201.

274 Notes 31. Guardini, The End of the Modern World, 202. 32. Guardini, The End of the Modern World, 202–​203. 33. Romano Guardini, Letters from Lake Como: Explorations in Technology and the Human Race (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994) 62. 34. Guardini, Letters from Lake Como, 62. 35. Guardini, Letters from Lake Como, 84. 36. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Revolution and Counter-​Revolution (York, PA: American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 1993). 37. René Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World (London: Luzac, 1975), xi. 38. Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World, xii. 39. Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World, 109. 40. Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World, 119. 41. René Guénon, The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, trans. Lord Northbourne (New York: Penguin, 1972). 42. Guénon, The Reign of Quantity, 334–​335. 43. Guénon, The Reign of Quantity, 336. 44. See Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West (New York: Knopf, 1926/​1928), for instance, Vol 1.378, in “Soul, Image, and Life Feeling,” but mentioned repeatedly. 45. Andrew Torba, Gab.com post, January 19, 2022, ~6:40 pm 46. See Arthur Versluis and Morgan Shipley, “Stephen Gaskin Interview,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism 4, no. 1 (Spring, 2010): 141–​158; see also Morgan Shipley, Psychedelic Mysticism: Transforming Consciousness, Religious Experiences, and Voluntary Peasants in Postwar America (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2015). 47. Arthur Versluis, “Secession and American Federalism,” Modern Age 49, no. 3 (Summer 2007): 304–​315. See also “The Revolutionary Conservatism of Jefferson & Small Republics,” https://​the​imag​inat​ivec​onse​rvat​ive.org/​2017/​10/​revolu​tion​ary-​ conse​rvat​ism-​jeffer​son-​small-​republ​ics-​art​hur-​j-​versl​uis.html. 48. See Arthur Versluis, “Interview with Kirkpatrick Sale,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism, 2, no. 2 (2009): 133–​145. See also Kirkpatrick Sale, Collapse of 2020 (Outskirts, 2020); No More Mushrooms: Thoughts on Life without Government (New York: Autonomedia, 2021); as well as his earlier books such as Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution (Boston: Addison Wesley 1995) or Human Scale (New York: Coward McCann, 1980). He published an occasional personal secessionist newsletter via email. 49. Harold Covington’s series of Northwest independence novels are: A Distant Thunder, A Mighty Fortress, The Hill Of The Ravens, The Brigade, and Freedom’s Sons. 50. See for a good overview Hans Maier, “Political Religion: a Concept and its Limitations,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 8, no. 1 (2007): 5–​16. 51. Shane, comment on Andrew Torba post, January 16, 2022, ~2:58 p.m. 52. The Daily Lama, post on Gab.com, March 4, 2022, ~ 6 a.m. 53. For some representative works, see E. Michael Jones, Barren Metal: A History of Capitalism as the Conflict between Labor and Usury (South Bend, IN: Fidelity Press, 2014); Jewish Revolutionary Spirit (3 vols.) (South Bend, IN: Fidelity Press, 2008). See also his Culture Wars website online videos (www.cult​urew​ars.com).

Notes  275 54. Dixie Doodle, Gab.com, February 27, 2022, ~5:49 p.m. 55. Texe Marrs, Mike King, The Bad War July 19, 2015, https://​youtu.be/​PwT​9K2-​9kpY 56. Furio Pureblood, post on Gab.com, January 7, 2022, ~ 11:20 a.m. 57. Stephen McNallen, profile on Gab.com, March 6, 2022, 11:40 a.m. 58. Paganism group profile/​timeline on Gab.com, March 7, 2022, 11:43 a.m. 59. Craig Wrather, post on Gab.com, March 6, 2022, time unknown. 60. Groups include “Starseeds, Lightworkers, Empaths,” “Lightworkers,” “Lightworkers in Unity,” “Lightworker Superheroes,” “Patriot Lightworkers,” and others. Not all groups are visible. 61. SpaceWater Mew2, post on Gab.com, in “Starseeds, Lightworkers, Empaths” timeline, February 20, 2022, time unknown. 62. Although mainstream news and social media effectively censored coverage of the Hunter Biden and Biden family scandals, not least regarding income from Ukraine and China, knowledge of this was much more widespread on Gab. 63. See, for instance, The Occidental Observer, theoccidentalobserver.net. With regard to anti-​Jewish comments on Gab, here is a characteristic exchange: CitizenMom writes “Dude, what’s up with your hatred of the Jewish people.” New England White Network replies, “Biden is literally surrounded and controlled by Jews. His administration is overwhelmingly Jewish. If you understood Jewish power, you wouldn’t post a comment like that.” New England White Network, post on Gab.com, March 7, 2022, ~11:15 a.m.

Chapter 11 1. Stephan Hoeller, Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 2002), 2. 2. Hoeller, Gnosticism, 223. 3. Hoeller, Gnosticism, 224. 4. Hoeller, Gnosticism, 223. 5. Hoeller, Gnosticism, 223. 6. Hoeller, Gnosticism, 223. 7. Stephan A. Hoeller, Freedom: Alchemy for a Voluntary Society (Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 1992), dedication and epigraph pages. 8. Hoeller, Freedom, xv. 9. Hoeller, Freedom, 168–​169. 10. Hoeller, Freedom, 176. 11. Hoeller, Freedom, 42. 12. Hoeller, Freedom, 42. 13. Hoeller, Freedom, 217. 14. Stephan A. Hoeller, A Gnostic Catechism (Los Angeles: Ecclesia Gnostica, 2020), 20–​21. 15. Hoeller, A Gnostic Catechism, 27. 16. Hoeller, A Gnostic Catechism, 73.

276 Notes 17. Hoeller, A Gnostic Catechism, 73–​74. 18. See Versluis, American Gurus, in particular 84–​87 on Merrell-​Wolff, and 227–​237 on what I there term “immediatism,” primarily Neo-​Advaita. 19. Versluis, American Gurus, 86–​ 87; see Franklin Merrell-​ Wolff, Experience and Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 285–​286. 20. Merrell-​Wolff, Experience and Philosophy, 199. 21. Merrell-​Wolff, Experience and Philosophy, 204. 22. Merrell-​Wolff, Experience and Philosophy, 206. 23. Joel Morwood, Naked Through the Gate: A Spiritual Autobiography (Eugene, OR: Center for Sacred Sciences, 1985), prologue. 24. Morwood, Naked Through the Gate, prologue. 25. Morwood, Naked Through the Gate, prologue. 26. Morwood, Naked Through the Gate, ch. 1, epub 18. 27. Morwood, Naked Through the Gate, ch. 2, epub 31. 28. Morwood, Naked Through the Gate, ch. 10, epub 151. 29. Morwood, Naked Through the Gate, ch. 11, epub 181. 30. Morwood, Naked Through the Gate, ch. 12, epub 202. 31. Morwood, Naked Through the Gate, ch. 12, epub 207. 32. Morwood, Naked Through the Gate, ch. 12, epub 209. 33. Morwood, Naked Through the Gate, Epilogue, epub 221–​223. The term “navayana” is also applied to Bhimrao Ramji Abedkar’s “neo-​Buddhist” Ambedkarite reformism as part of the Dalit movement, but it here refers to a Westernized Buddhism, which could be termed Buddhistish. 34. Morwood, Naked Through the Gate, Epilogue, epub 222. 35. Andrea Pucci, “Breaking Through . . . A Journey to Awakening,” March 4, 1998, https://​cent​erfo​rsac​reds​cien​ces.org/​index.php/​publi​cati​ons/​break​ing-​thro​ugh-​a-​ jour​ney-​to-​awaken​ing.htm. 36. Pucci, “Breaking Through.” 37. Pucci, “Breaking Through.” 38. B. Alan Wallace, Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 107–​108. 39. Joel Morwood, The Way to Selflessness: A Practice Guide to Enlightenment Based on the Teachings of the World’s Great Mystics (Eugene, OR: Center for Sacred Sciences, 2019), ch. 16, epub 305. 40. Morwood, The Way to Selflessness, epub 4. 41. Morwood, The Way to Selflessness, ch. 26, epub 503–​504. 42. See for instance Patrul Rinpoche, “Self-​Liberating Meditation: A Profound Method for Attaining Enlightenment According to the Ultimate Great Perfection,” https://​ www.lotsa​waho​use.org/​tibe​tan-​mast​ers/​pat​rul-​rinpo​che/​self-​lib​erat​ing-​med​itat​ion. Morwood includes the following title in his notes: John Myrdhin Reynolds, trans., Self-​Liberation Through Seeing With Naked Awareness (Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press, 1989). 43. Morwood, The Way to Selflessness, ch. 31, epub 599.

Notes  277 44. Morwood, The Way to Selflessness, ch. 35, epub 690. 45. Morwood, The Way to Selflessness, ch. 35, epub 675. 46. See Keith Dowman, “About Keith Dowman,” March 28, 2022, http://​keit​hdow​man. net/​foo​ter-​pages/​about-​keith-​dow​man.html. 47. See Keith Dowman, “About Keith Dowman,” March 28, 2022, http://​keit​hdow​man. net/​foo​ter-​pages/​about-​keith-​dow​man.html. 48. Keith Dowman, Spaciousness: The Radical Dzogchen of the Vajra-​ Heart (n.p.: Dzogchen Now!, 2014), 17. 49. Dowman, Spaciousness, 19–​20. 50. Dowman, Spaciousness, 22. 51. Dowman, Spaciousness, 25. 52. Dowman, Spaciousness, 21. 53. Dowman, Spaciousness, 21. 54. See Keith Dowman, “About Keith Dowman,” March 28, 2022, http://​keit​hdow​man. net/​foo​ter-​pages/​about-​keith-​dow​man.html. 55. Keith Dowman, Radical Dzogchen, March 28, 2022, https://​radi​cald​zogc​hen.com/​ about-​radi​cal-​dzogc​hen/​. 56. Keith Dowman, Radical Dzogchen, March 28, 2022, https://​radi​cald​zogc​hen.com/​ about-​radi​cal-​dzogc​hen/​. 57. Sam Harris, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014), ch. 4, epub 198. 58. Harris, Waking Up, ch. 4, epub 199. 59. In a widely publicized 2022 podcast interview, Harris controversially asserted indifference to suppression of the Hunter Biden scandal by mainstream media, and went on to say that Hunter Biden “literally could have had corpses of children in his basement,” and his father very well could have been getting kickbacks from Ukraine and China, but “I would not have cared,” so long as President Trump was defeated. See Miranda Devine, “The Left’s Mask Slips On Brazen Trump Bias,” The New York Post, August 21, 2022, https://​nyp​ost.com/​2022/​08/​21/​the-​lefts-​mask-​slips-​on-​bra​zen-​ trump-​bias/​. 60. See for more details the Nine Yanas multiyear training offered by Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche at samyeinstitute.org. 61. See B. Alan Wallace, Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic: A Manifesto for the Mind Sciences (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), ch. 9, “From Agnosticism to Gnosticism.” 62. Wallace, Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic, ch. 11, epub 368. 63. Wallace, Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic, Prologue, epub 13. 64. Wallace, Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic, Prologue, epub 13. 65. Wallace, Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic, Prologue, epub 17. 66. An example would be Jason Miller, author of a number of books on sorcery. Some of those, for instance, Sex, Sorcery, and Spirit: The Secrets of Erotic Magic (Pompton Plains, NJ: New Page, 2015) incorporate esoteric Tibetan Buddhist practices into an eclectic contemporary context.

278 Notes

Chapter 12 1. Nicholas Goodrick-​Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 300. 2. Goodrick-​Clarke, Black Sun, 300. 3. See, for examples of Musès speaking extemporaneously, https://​www.yout​ube.com/​ watch?v=​mSPD​GlyZ​4nA, https://​www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​tqRE​r9bT​gGM, and https://​www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​3N-​4suw6​ACM. I have accumulated a large additional library of source material that includes audio and video footage, not all of which is available online. 4. Hence for instance on July 4, 2022, one finds announcements of a “Sirius Gateway” opening July 3–​7, allowing “Sirius to send frequency beams and cosmic rays to earth,” producing “activation of Sirian starseeds memory, DNA, and abilities/​gifts.” Regarding this cyclical “gateway of energy” bringing “spiritual advancements,” see Dawn Treader post on gab.com, “Esoteric Knowledge” group, July 3, 2022, time unknown. 5. See for instance Allen Badiner and Alex Grey, eds., Zig Zag Zen (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2002). 6. PoisonDartPepe, Gab profile page, March 15, 2022, 11:00 a.m. 7. PoisonDartPepe, Gab.com post, March 15, 2022, ~8:15 a.m. 8. John Michael Greer, The King in Orange: The Magical and Occult Roots of Political Power (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2021), 90. 9. Greer, The King in Orange, 90. 10. Greer, The King in Orange, 91. 11. Greer, The King in Orange, 94. 12. Greer, The King in Orange, 94. 13. Greer, The King in Orange, 101–​107. 14. See for example John Michael Greer, Dark Age America: Climate Change, Cultural Collapse, and the Hard Future Ahead (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society, 2016), Retrotopia (Danville, IL: Founders House, 2016), and The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society, 2008). 15. Greer, King in Orange, 151. 16. Greer, King in Orange, 150. 17. Greer, King in Orange, 160. 18. Greer, King in Orange, 160. 19. Greer, King in Orange, 160. 20. Greer, King in Orange, 167. 21. Greer, King in Orange, 167. 22. Greer, King in Orange, 160. 23. For instance, in his diary, John F. Kennedy wrote that Hitler “will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived. He had in him the stuff of which legends are made . . . he had a mystery about him in the way he lived and in the manner of his death that will live and grow after him.” “JFK Diary Calls Hitler ‘Stuff of Legends’,” BBC News, March 23, 2017, https://​www.bbc. com/​news/​world-​us-​can​ada-​39371​715.

Notes  279 24. XOSosa, post in “Disclosure on (Christian) Gnosticism,” 27 February 2022, gab.com. 25. XOSosa, post in “Disclosure on (Christian) Gnosticism,” 27 February 2022, gab.com. 26. Mostly memes, @RonJoeW46, post on 26 January 2022, Gab.com. 27. Berdyaev, The Beginning and the End, 221. 28. Berdyaev, The Beginning and the End, 222–​223. 29. Berdyaev, The Beginning and the End, 224. 30. Nicholas Berdyaev, The Beginning and the End (New York: Harper, 1957), 217. 31. Wilhelm Röpke, The Moral Foundations of Civil Society (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1996), 113.

Index For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Alien, 53 American Transcendentalism, 25–​26 antignosis, 18–​19 Apuleius, The Golden Ass, 58 archontic neo-​gnosticism, 140–​74 Assassin’s Creed, 50–​51 Bache, Christopher, 124–​32, 236 Berdyaev, Nicholas, 241 Black Sun symbol, 70–​71 Bloom, Harold, 16–​17, 46 Boehme, Jacob, 96–​99 Burroughs, William S., 42–​44 Christian nationalism, 208 “conspirituality,” 161 Conze, Edward, 15–​16 Corrêa de Oliveira, Plinio, 203 cosmological gnosis, 1, 18, 20 Couliano, Ioan, 13–​14, 51 The Daily Lama, 193–​94 Dark City, 55–​58 Davis, Erik, 22–​23, 133 DeConick, April, 14, 17 Devi, Savitri, 73 Dick, Philip K., 32, 35–​37 Dissident right views, 209–​10 Dowman, Keith, 138, 224–​25 “Dugpas,” 84 Ecclesia Gnostica, 14, 212–​17 Eckhart, Meister, 18–​19 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 16–​17 Esoteric Hitlerism, 63–​74, 239 esotericism, 10, 161–​62, 264n.87 Eyes Wide Shut, 59–​61

Filoramo, Giovanni, 12–​13 Freher, Dionysius Andreas, 96–​99 Gab (social network), 168–​70, 177–​ 79, 189–​91 Gibson, William, 37–​39 gnosis, 10–​24 and Dzogchen, 20–​21 and Chaos magic, 21–​22 Goodrick-​Clarke, Nicholas, 71, 74, 232 Greer, John Michael, 237–​39 Guardini, Romano, 202–​3 Guénon, René, 203–​5 Harris, Sam, 225–​26 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 26–​28 Hoeller, Stephen, 212–​17 Hubbard, L. Ron, 34–​35 Icke, David, 148–​59 Idel, Moshe, 17 Jeffers, Robinson, 32–​34 Johnson, Greg, 170–​73 Jonas, Hans, 11–​12 Lash, John Lamb, 140–​48, 235 Kalika War Party and, 145–​48 lightworkers, 180–​82, 209 Ligotti, Thomas, 45–​46, 231 Lindsay, David, 31 Lobaczewski, Andrew M., 175–​77, 179 Lord of Illusions, 59 Lovecraft, H.P., 44–​45, 231 Lowry, Malcolm, 39–​40 Lukacs, John, 200–​2

282 Index The Matrix, 51–​52, 164 McCarthy, Cormac, 46–​47, 231–​32 McKenna, Terence, 138–​39 Melville, Herman, 26–​30 memes, 179, 239–​40 Merrell-​Wolff, Franklin, 217–​19 metaphysical gnosis, 1, 18, 20–​21 Milosz, Czeslaw, 19 Morwood, Joel, 218–​24 Musès, Charles, 96–​123, 233–​35 Christian theosophy and, 96–​99 Egypt and, 99 hypernumbers and, 106 The Lion Path, 111–​23 Neal, Josh, 182–​88 neo-​gnosticism (term), 11 neo-​gnosticism (ten elements of), 11–​12 Paganism, 208–​9 “paragnosis,” 138 Partridge, Christopher, 132–​33 Phillips, Jonathan Talat, 133–​35 Pinchbeck, Daniel, 134–​37 Pistis Sophia, 87–​89 Poe, Edgar Allan, 26–​27 political religion, 6–​8 Pritchard, Mark, 91–​92 Publius, John Q., 171–​73 Pynchon, Thomas, 19–​20, 40–​41 Querdenken movement, 188–​89 Reddit postings, 159–​61 “Red pill,” 164, 177, 192 Reimer, Carol A., 161 Röpke, Wilhelm, 241 Rorty, Richard, 4

Roszak, Theodore, 16 Scientology, 34–​35 secessionism, 206–​7 Serrano, Miguel, 63–​74 Spengler, Oswald, 205 Stigmata, 50–​51 Theosophical Society, 84 They Live, 1, 2, 53–​56 Tibetan Buddhism, 92–​95 Tolkien, J.R.R., 51 Torba, Andrew, 168–​70, 177–​78, 206 Trump, Donald, 3 Twin Peaks, 60–​61 Urban, Hugh, 34–​35 Vattimo, Gianni, 198–​200 Versluis, Arthur American Gurus, 96, 124, 217 American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions, 96, 224 The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance, 25–​26, 96 Magic and Mysticism, 1, 17, 72–​73, 217 The New Inquisitions, 19, 96 Platonic Mysticism, 1, 4 Wisdom’s Children, 96 Voegelin, Eric, 164–​67 Wallace, B. Alan, 227–​28 Warner, Brad, 194 Weor, Samael Aun, 75–​95 Wilber, Ken, 23, 195–​96 Wolfson, Elliot, 17 Young, Arthur M., 100