Interesting post, NLF., on many fronts. Its really impossible for me to comment on it all, because there was so much said here, but I would like to offer a few tidbits, with the last as commentary on the running debate with the hostile xtian, the poorly named Mr Raven.
I think I would like to begin with the Demiurge. This relates to the fact that Gnosticism is Egyptian, not Greek or Roman. I can substantiate this, it is not speculation.
The Demiurge is an experiential mystical fact. Demiurge is not, as is being claimed today, a belief, or worse, an empty intellectual pursuit.
Mystical facts are essential experiences that can take years, even a lifetime to understand.
Ancient Egypt understood quite well the mystical fact of the Demiurge, and the relationship between the Demiurge and all of creation, which was passed down to the Gnostics.
The question of the redemption of the Demiurge is a complex one that is answered more through perspective than any actual fact. There were some great seers who noted that this cosmos was not the first, that the previous disassembled due to its own inherent deficiency, and that this current cosmos also exists on borrowed time.
In terms of the different types of people, it is once more primarily a condition of spirit, that vast numbers participate in a borrowed spirit, which is returned then to source upon completion of the cycle of life. Thus, in a real sense, the most base, material person is a complete embodiment of the primal forces of this cosmos. Because of the nature of our cosmos, then this is both a beautiful and terrible thing.
Finally, in terms of what passes for Gnosticism amongst the current world leadership.
Any intellectual fabrication such that applying technology to the world and people is a type of Gnosticism derives from an essential lack of the experience of mystical fact.
Through the realization of mystical fact, one naturally moves to seek beyond arbitrary definition and supposition.
There is not now, never has been, nor ever will be a tech-Gnosis simply because the concept reveals an incomplete and rather stupid idea of Gnosis. A child can make engine sounds, and move an object across the floor and fully believe he is operating a piece of machinery that previously captured his fancy, but any adult understands its just play. Play is healthy in correct context, yet when one asserts that it simply must be first genuine experience, well a lot of truth has to be jettisoned on the way to that conclusion.
This is the level at which modern thought evaluates and defines Gnosis.
I feel that mankind is going to be in this collective dream until he finally is done with it, or it destroys him. There is so much that happens to us collectively, especially on the level of dreams, and so little cognizance of any of it, its all rather amazing.
Thanks Mike, this is a fascinating response. Regarding your comment on gnosis, it reminds me of a statement Hoeller made in his quite interesting The Fool’s Pilgrimage: Kabbalistic Meditations on the Tarot (which I may cover in a future post), where he wrote that praying for anything other than union with God is blasphemy (i.e. our globohomo rulers seeking unlimited power). He wrote:
"The purpose of meditation is to clear a pathway between the outer personality of the individual and the inner center of his being. This pathway becomes a Jacob’s ladder upon which the ascending angels of the outer man meet and join in joyous union with the descending angels of the indwelling God. Ignorance, fear, hostility, guilt, and discord are the barriers that obstruct the freedom fo the angelic host to meet at the summit of the soul. To learn the truth about our relationship to the godhead in our souls, and to shed the fetters that hold us captive, is to render us capable of traveling the pathway to Divinity at will. He who prays for anything but for union with God is a blasphemer!
The yogi whose exercises are directed toward an objective other than union with Brahman is but a false yogi. Similarly, all magic that does not aim at the invocation of Divinity into the magic circle of humanity is sorcery, and the same must be asserted about meditation. Health, wealth, love, happiness, and all the other treasures our personality desires are corrupted by the forces of the lower world. No prayer, yogic power, or magical privilege can alter the evanescence of earthly things. We must seek the kingdom that is not of this world, and, when we have discovered it, all things necessary and helpful to the welfare of our true selves will come to us in due course. He who meditates for “things” is both misguided and foolish, for he attempts to force the almighty Power to do the bidding of a puny, human ego, while at the same time assuming that he can escape the consequences of such an ill-advised act."
Yes, well if one's purpose is to know god, and the basis of mysticism IS that this is possible, then in a very real sense, that which leads to something else is at best distraction. The key lies in understanding which is which.
I also realize that anything I say won't be taken seriously, since I'm not attached to a university, don't have a series of popular books in print, nor do I support any current narrative, yet I have to say that I find it telling that people who have zero experience with actual, genuine Gnosis believe they can utilize it for their own goals, some of which include expanding one's reputation.
My response to this is that Universities to this day have Cathari bones in artifact drawers.
I am glad that SH was able to escape communism. Another person I hold in esteem, Franz Bardon could not, and paid the price for this by dying in prison.
I suppose I should conclude this with something personal, and so I will say that Gnosis in my experience is as much destructive to the individual as it is instructive. It is as much about deconstructing the person one has become as it is about providing genuine paranormal experience.
I appreciate that you treat this subject with respect, NLF. It is something very few can bring themselves to these days.
Thanks Mike. I agree with you; the steps I’ve taken along this path so far have been destructive to my ego, scary from letting go to follow my intuition (balanced against my intellect, feelings, and senses) while also liberating — it’s a mix, a significant leap of faith. It’s strange as it feels like I’m doing this not just alone in real life, but almost alone based on my internet relationships as well. So I appreciate your feedback as someone who sounds like you’re going through a similar process.
Thanks for the mention of Franz Bardon, he looks interesting and I’ll read one of his books. Re: universities and status, I wouldn’t be too bothered by it; the credentials are good for making money in a globohomo career but those serious about studying these topics cannot do so in such a politically stifling environment anymore…
Well, I never really intended to be a professor anyway.
Yes, I can state that I truly have and do embody my own iconoclastic Gnostic form of spirituality. I write from my experience, directly, and writing, as well as my visual art, which even fewer see, actually helps me to make better sense of what I live as reality.
The intersection with the numinous, when it arrives, teaches me way more than in any other form we believe knowledge takes. This then is my personal definition of Gnosis, and it is radically different from the plastic wrapped crap that is sold to the willing masses today.
Everything is paid for, nothing is free, any special skill and ability is merely there to enable deeper, more competent explorations that bring back more, because there is no end to Gnosis, none I have ever seen.
Shamanism and Gnosticism are like hand in glove. There is no academic authority, no political figure, no social convention that has any strength where the spirit journey goes.
And thus I advance my own personal definition of Gnosis and refute the cardboard constructions that proliferate from the control complex, because they do not know, it is so clear that they just don't know anything.
I have been explaining my children the difference between types of knowledge as stunts versus keys. A stunt is a thing whose only purpose is to impress other people - skateboard tricks, drawing perfect circles one handed, knife juggling. A key is knowledge that opens doors to new things to think about, new ways to understand. Mathematics, physics, computer science, color theory. Learning to meditate doesn't impress anyone else but it may open spiritual doors.
Postmodern philosophies following from Heidegger, down through Foucault and Derrida - arguably German-inspired philosophy since Schelling and Hegel - have always struck me as akin to learning stunts, the mastery of an abstruse vocabulary which doesn't let you do anything else. Icelandic is a notoriously difficult languageto learn, but you can at least talk to Icelanders and read their books. Learning the vocabulary of Derrida, on the other hand, equips one to write more of the same, possibly get an academic job, and impress the people who can do the same.
Very interesting post, I had no idea about the internal dialog ratio, kind of explains the aprox 30% who declined the death jabs. I didn't even realise there are people with no inner dialog, let alone that they outnumber me! I've read about people who think in images, as opposed to a dialog, but I find it difficult to conceptualize no real deep thinking process at all. No wonder there are so many reactionary people, why they seem to get triggered so easily.
Yrs ago I spent a couple of years researching Helena Blavatsky trying to understand the elites mindset, I found it torture to read her stuff, it was so difficult to read. I'm reading Rudolph Steiner atm trying to understand the roots of Biodynamic gardening. I find myself saying the same things as back then, like, stop with the esoteric word salad and get to the point (lol).
I've been gardening 25yrs, I have developed a deep kindship with nature (struggling to describe my thoughts here really without writing an essay with dozens of examples) moreso in the last ~13yrs since I got a microscope and really started to deep dive into soil biology.
I had previously written off Biodynamics as woo woo, then ~5yrs ago someone gave me a cabbage from a biodynamic garden, I got home late and emptied my stuff into the shed, completely forgot about the cabbage. A full 6 weeks later I went in the shed, that cabbage looked as fresh as the day it was given me, that got my attention.
Recently I've been researching the succeptibility of plants to pests, pathogens, diseases and their connection to nutrient deficiencies (TLDR all are effected by nutrients) I found plants have better nutrient uptake from foiliar feeds if they're applied at the full moon, and very poor uptake at the new moon (backed by sap analysis) maybe there is something to this esoteric biodynamic stuff, shame most of the info is paywalled, though the few Steiner advocates I have met seem to be exceptionally nice people with their own very humble, greatful, vocabulary. He does seem to have left a positive legacy.
Thanks for the interesting comment, ImpObs. I agree with you that many authors of esoteric works try to cover their ideas in complicated and obtuse language, which I really don't like. I havn't studied Steiner (at least not yet) but noted scientist Hans Eysenck attacked him as a great storyteller, propounding a lot of unprovable theories, while Eysenck was interested in hard data. Still, I'm interested in Steiner's theories surrounding education and biodynamics, and I very much believe in agriculture's connection to astrology (a concept widely derided in the materialist West). If you decide to write about it I would be interested in learning more.
I'm only at the beginning of my biodynamic journey, but I can give an example where his 'unprovable theories' now have solid scientific backing, even though most will not even see the connection back to Steiner.
One of Steiners most important biodynamic preperations is made by burrying a cow horn filled with manure from a lactating cow, leaving it in the ground in the most fertile area of the farm over winter, digging it up in Spring then putting the contents into a barrel and stirring it with a stick for an hour at dawn, so many stirrs clockwise, so many turns anti-colockwise, making sure to form a vortex in the center (see also Viktor Schaubergers "Living water" theories also written off a psudoscience back then, but now proven as "structured water" aka "EZwater", exclusion zone water) then flicking the mixture all around the farm (innoculating the farm with microbiology) all the while thanking Nature and giving the mix positive intentions.
Fast forward to the 1980's when a niche group of bidynamic gardeners and farmers started making actively aerated compost tea (AACT). Basically water innoculated with thermophillic compost, air injected to maintain an aerobic environment, various foods added to multiply the microbes, to enable broadscale organic farming without the need to apply thousands of tons of compost, AACT uses 2-4lbs of compost per acre making it both financially and practical viable alternative to applying thousands of tons. Various brewers are designed, some with cone tanks to mix the brews with a vortex (a la Steiner), a young Elaine Ingham does her doctorate on soil biology/microscopy and starts studying the benefits of AACT, formalising recipies, publishing research, getting poo poo'd by the conventional Ag crowd for "spraying pathogens on crops" after fixing her trials by mixing the pathogen free compost in the trial with a front loader used to move fresh manure without cleaning it first, probably putting adoption of this science back ~20yrs. She showed soils need a bacteria to fungal ratio aproaching 1:1 for the best crop yeilds, this starts the whole "No-Till" method. The movement grew slowly regardless of the naysayers, into what is now arguably one of the mainstays of Regenerative Agriculture to replace conventional Ag chemical inputs. Dr. Elaine Inghams "Soil Food Web School" is thriving, training thousands of consultants p.a.
Drs Johnson and his wife Dr Su design a no turn areated composting system, the "Johnson-Su Bioreactor" to produce compost of the correct quality and microbial diversity to easily make innouculant compost for AACT and compost extract (that negate the sometimes hit n miss AACT quality issues) they call their system of regenerative agriculture Biologically Enhanced Agricultural Management (BEAM) and give the design away for free, thousands of farmers adopt it (including me!) as it's much easier than the whole microscopy quality control route learning curve you need to produce quality AACT, it's just easier on my back, and less faff than a 36hr sampling ever hour AACT brew, I still use a microscope :)
Hundreds of companies jump on the microbial innoculant bandwaggon, making extracts, and a plethora of microbial innoculants, all with scientific research proving the benefits of pairing with natural biological systems for growing crops. In 2023 there were almost 2 million acres under Regenerative Agriculture management in the US, and growing rapidly worldwide. Dr James white from Rutgers publishes his groundbreaking research on Rhizophagy, showing how the microbes interact with the plants, finally proving the science. Plants actually farm specific microbes to collect specific nutrients, take them in at the root tips and dissolve their membranes to absorb the nutrients, let them reform their membranes and go out to collect more in return for specific carbohydrates given to them by the plant. Dr White proved for the first time plants don't only get nutrients dissolved water in ionic forms, most soil labs still only test for ionic nutrients providing a false test result costing farmers millions of dollars in chemical inputs.
I could also go on about his stinging nettle preperation, suffice to say you can make a free fertilser for zero cost, comparable to Kelp extract, from Nettles. As an aside I read some research on Nettle where they tested the soil which had zero Boron content on the mass spectrometer, they tested the Nettles growing in that soil and found they contained Boron, Science has yet to explain how the Nettle plant managed to make Boron in Boron free soil, ain't Nature brilliant!
I can't remember his eduction theories, I saw a documentry on the Waldorf schools 40 or 50 yrs ago, the only thing that stuck in my mind was about the stipulations for painting the walls, a specific method that mixed water colours (name of it escapes me) so the colours mixed cloud like in appearence, cool colours to the North warmer colours to the South of the building (or the other way around), I spoke about this to a teacher at a special needs school at a wedding yrs ago, she told me they had followed the Waldorf design and all the teachers noted a marked improvement in the kids behaviour.
I've never heard of Hans Eysenck, but he sounds like he has an ego issue ;)
Regarding plants creating minerals “out of thin air”, there are studies that show this! A scientist analyzed the mineral content in a soil sample, grew plants in it, then analyzed the mineral content in the plants. The plants had more minerals than the soil, a seeming impossibility.
That 70% (or roughly 2/3) figure keeps showing up. Milgram experiment. Plandemic jab compliance, probably some other places I'm not thinking of at the moment.
Anecdotally, I know one man who had a stroke three days after getting his COVID booster (he was in his 80s and in good health; a close family friend) - it killed him but he lingered for awhile... I know a woman who developed reoccurring tinnitus right after getting her shot and another man who developed Guillain–Barré syndrome right after getting his. I also know quite a few people who came down with cancer within a year of getting their shots (for whatever that's worth). And this is all just anecdotal -- the actual (hidden, suppressed) data on side effects must be terrible, imo...
I know two indirectly, and excess death rates have been running ~30% higher since the rollout.
One of my clients had 2 of his adult children in their 40's killed by the jabs, his other son explained why he was filling in for his father and told the story in great detail. His sister lived on Anglesey, passed out after the first shot, took 40 mins to get her to hospital at Bangor, they checked her over and discharged her saying it was just a bad reaction. When she got the booster she went into convulsions in the vaxination center and passed out, no ambulance available so her husband got her in the car with a nurse and headed to Bangor hospital, she died on the way, the nurse tried to resusitate her while her husband sped to the hospital, declared DOA. She left 3 children. Horrendous.
My clients son was in hospital on a ventilator after the first jab when his other son was here filling in for his father, he was previously healthy, a keen Rugby player in his 40's, collapsed an hour after the first jab, he never came out of the coma. Neither had any symptoms, they put Covid on both death certs.
This was the twist of fate that helped me convince my wife not to get the jab.
If you'd like to understand the $2 Trillion+ financial scam the elite pulled off go watch John Titus explain it to you on his YT channel "Best Evidence".
I appreciate the direction you are heading. In my own substack I am not trying to influence mass consciousness, but rather the expansion of individual consciousness, which is the basis of the study of magic in the Western tradition. Much to ponder in this post.
Fascinating read and, based on your earlier post on Gnosticism, not at all where I thought it would go.
My life forces me to deal with my darkness. For a time I walked the razors edge of self-destruction and reclamation.
I believe that we can’t fully understand God the creator and that He presents Himself as needed to different cultures and individuals as does his opposite.
As a young man contradictions fascinated me and seemed to often denote significant relevant missing information. Self-talk is hard. It requires taking responsibility for your thoughts and empowers you for good and for ill. It almost destroyed me but my Faith reclaimed me.
I was recently baptized yet don’t find this post to be inconsistent with my experience of Christian faith. Making your point I suppose, it really is about individuation; each on a path to realizing God’s kingdom on earth. The idea that the Godhead needs to be brought back to life through individuals walking the path together seems correct I.e., embracing the process of existence and mutually helpful growth.
I’ve often felt there is a connection among all life, particularly humans, perhaps it’s at a quantum level. Trying to say that when enough individuals truly internalize, sufficiently understand, and I guess actualize what God means us to become then his kingdom will be realized.
This was very interesting. I’ve been encountering increasing amounts of Gnostic theory lately. In order to keep my head on straight, I remember that metaphysical concepts do not literally translate to the material; that True God is Love; and that anything that inflates the ego, destroys compassion, or interferes with service to others is Not Truth (ie the truth will always be humbling and helpful).
Have you read Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism? Or Alan Watts’ Christian Mythology?
Thanks Flavel. I have not read either of those but Watts' Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion has been on my list to read. I have read Hoeller's The Fool’s Pilgrimage: Kabbalistic Meditations on the Tarot which I liked. Both of those books you name look interesting and I will add them to the queue, thank you.
The final quote about actualizing wholeness through rescuing the Divine Feminine might be stated another way: love will save the world. That's the final line in Randy's latest piece: https://eggreport.substack.com/p/infinite-jest-review-part-1-pages which is not about Gnosticism but it's kinda tangentially related (he's playing on Dostoevsky's quote "beauty will save the world" but I probably don't need to tell you) or at least related to the idea of personally redeeming God. Thanks for your work, it's insightful and clear.
Demi or else (dam) in the Iranian "breath" and we know urge... so demi urge meaning urge to breathe. It's primal, nothing gets done with out it. Not even consciousness. You can send a man to the moon, better send fresh air or it's lights out, in less than 30 seconds. Any longer than 4 mins and damage is next to irreparable.
The lungs sucking in air, allows the urinary tract to help digestion process... in men the urethra is also part of the reproductive organs, so it's a creator-gut for men.
PS: if you had called hylics "capable dumb dumbs" would it matter? Would they be here reading this article? Just kidding. : ) --- great article, thanks.
May favorite writers, though they may be famous for their shrewd commentary on globohomo, are at their best when they go full-on mystical. This is a keeper, so much to consider. Thanks for writing.
Thanks Big Mike, I appreciate your feedback. It’s a different (and somewhat scarier) style of writing because I’m sharing my discoveries on my esoteric journey as I experience them, and there are many people further along their journeys and processes than I am; versus the stuff on globohomo feels pretty well established in my mind and I’m just sharing the same points in different ways…
I attended a couple of Hoeller’s ‘events’ a long time ago here in LA, must’ve been 20+ years ago. They were like old-school salon type that he presided over. First time I went there he talked a lot about Eliade and Jung, had a pretty good grasp of the subject, no doubt. I remember he was complaining about how those guys (Eliade/Jung) got tainted by their brushes with Fascism but no scholar ever gets tainted by being full-blown Marxists/Communists. That’s clearly even more true today than 20 yrs ago. But then I went back a couple weeks later and this dude (Hoeller) comes out looking like the Pope of Hollywood Hills, pointy hat and purple robe, the works… I couldn’t stop laughing. I don’t get why some of these guys have a need to establish their own “orders” or whatever, it’s so pompous and stupid. From Blavatsky to Dr. P.B.R. to Crowley to Hoeller etc… bunch of frauds (except PBR to a certain extent but that’s a whole ‘nother story). I get the ‘intention’ but as the saying goes ‘the road to Hell…’ Again, I’ve read much of Hoeller, he’s a good scholar and I appreciate him on that level. As an aside, he’s foundationally a Jung/Eliade/Campbell guy and Jordan Peterson also belongs to the Jung/Eliade school of thought (as you can see in Maps Of Meaning, his foundational book) and yet they’ve taken very different paths. It would be interesting if someone would explore that.
That’s fascinating, thank you for sharing! Yes, Hoeller wears two hats: he’s a lecturer and author of gnosticism and other academic topics, while he also leads his gnostic church (which is styled fairly closely to Catholic liturgy from my understanding). I don’t fault him much for the latter, although the image of the purple Pope of Hollywood Hills is a funny one; the esoteric/mystical elements of Christianity are not really welcome in Catholicism, although they are in Eastern Orthodoxy, and true gnosticism was last tried with the Cathars which ended in their extinction by fire. So for those with a mystical bent who still want the guardrails of exoteric religion, what is one to do?
Re: Peterson, that’s an interesting insight, thank you for sharing. I’ve been so turned off by his public mental breakdowns (his public crying, his getting the death jab despite being a so-called “expert” on resisting mob behavior then saying he won’t get the booster, his daughter turning into a slut who slept with Andrew Tate, his Tweets that Brett Kavanaugh should step down from the Supreme Court, his cravenness working for Ben Shapiro, etc.) that I havn’t felt any desire to cover his work. Hoeller, by comparison, kept his center open throughout the worst of COVID (to my understanding, anyway).
What do you enjoy about PBR, and is there a particular work you recommend?
Re. Hoeller, I guess one can try to reframe Catholicism or try to be a schismatic… if one knows what they’re doing and are doing it from no less than Divine inspiration (which comes with signs and wonders). That’s not the case here, as is evident by H’s ignorance when it comes to alchemy, for instance (same as Jung, btw) so you can’t have the blind leading the blind. Tomberg, the not-so-anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot, was on a much higher level yet he was humble enough to just write a book about it. Same with Fulcanelli.
Re. Peterson, yea, I’m put off by all those things you mention but I still think Maps Of Meaning is a great book. I’m still waiting for him to pull a Candace Owens one of these days. That’s how we’ll know the tides are turning. Lol
Re. PBR, this guy is one of the most interesting “characters” to ever walk the earth (not just in spiritualist circles). Just too much to mention here. A good book by him would be Eulis! (the exclamation’s in the title lol) but a fantastic book ‘on’ him (which also includes some texts by PBR) is the bio by John Patrick Deveney (incidentally a student of Eliade, to whom the book is dedicated). This is one of the best biographies I’ve ever read and it depicts a WILD world that’s been brushed under the rug somehow. There’s many tangents you can go off of from there, like John Murray Spear… again, wild stuff that most ppl have not even heard of.
Very well done! . This post resonates with me on several levels. Oddly I think I have transitioned from anarchist to anarch, but I will have to contemplate it more. Not big on labels either. There are several writings and formal ideas you mentioned I was unfamiliar with. Some parallels in my essay about marriage is kind of striking. I think there is indeed something we need to build towards internally, but I am a mere neophyte.
Thanks Hugh. I agree with you generally re: labels; it can result in rigidifying thought patterns and simplifying the complexity of life if one isn’t careful. I’m learning as I go, too…
“What is permissible for Jupiter is not permissible for the ox.”
This reminds me of our discussion a while back of how a "just God" could allow "unjust" things to happen. A baker dying in an oven was a cited case. As you can already see, the flaw in such assessments is judging God in our frame, rather than in God's frame, and assuming we possess the same ability to judge right and wrong, just and unjust, that God possesses. Of course if one cannot recognize that God might have a different moral perception than oneself, then there is little need for God. Self is already it.
Yes, I agree with you, Martin. Whatever infinite God's frame or plan is cannot be properly understood by us mortal, fallible, imperfect, finite creatures. But still, the alternative to making judgment is to turn one's brain off and rely on blind faith. I would rather try to understand what I can, make judgment where I must, while still holding out a mental and emotional space for being wrong and updating my beliefs.
Interesting post, NLF., on many fronts. Its really impossible for me to comment on it all, because there was so much said here, but I would like to offer a few tidbits, with the last as commentary on the running debate with the hostile xtian, the poorly named Mr Raven.
I think I would like to begin with the Demiurge. This relates to the fact that Gnosticism is Egyptian, not Greek or Roman. I can substantiate this, it is not speculation.
The Demiurge is an experiential mystical fact. Demiurge is not, as is being claimed today, a belief, or worse, an empty intellectual pursuit.
Mystical facts are essential experiences that can take years, even a lifetime to understand.
Ancient Egypt understood quite well the mystical fact of the Demiurge, and the relationship between the Demiurge and all of creation, which was passed down to the Gnostics.
The question of the redemption of the Demiurge is a complex one that is answered more through perspective than any actual fact. There were some great seers who noted that this cosmos was not the first, that the previous disassembled due to its own inherent deficiency, and that this current cosmos also exists on borrowed time.
In terms of the different types of people, it is once more primarily a condition of spirit, that vast numbers participate in a borrowed spirit, which is returned then to source upon completion of the cycle of life. Thus, in a real sense, the most base, material person is a complete embodiment of the primal forces of this cosmos. Because of the nature of our cosmos, then this is both a beautiful and terrible thing.
Finally, in terms of what passes for Gnosticism amongst the current world leadership.
Any intellectual fabrication such that applying technology to the world and people is a type of Gnosticism derives from an essential lack of the experience of mystical fact.
Through the realization of mystical fact, one naturally moves to seek beyond arbitrary definition and supposition.
There is not now, never has been, nor ever will be a tech-Gnosis simply because the concept reveals an incomplete and rather stupid idea of Gnosis. A child can make engine sounds, and move an object across the floor and fully believe he is operating a piece of machinery that previously captured his fancy, but any adult understands its just play. Play is healthy in correct context, yet when one asserts that it simply must be first genuine experience, well a lot of truth has to be jettisoned on the way to that conclusion.
This is the level at which modern thought evaluates and defines Gnosis.
I feel that mankind is going to be in this collective dream until he finally is done with it, or it destroys him. There is so much that happens to us collectively, especially on the level of dreams, and so little cognizance of any of it, its all rather amazing.
Thanx, NLF, for another worthy post.
Thanks Mike, this is a fascinating response. Regarding your comment on gnosis, it reminds me of a statement Hoeller made in his quite interesting The Fool’s Pilgrimage: Kabbalistic Meditations on the Tarot (which I may cover in a future post), where he wrote that praying for anything other than union with God is blasphemy (i.e. our globohomo rulers seeking unlimited power). He wrote:
"The purpose of meditation is to clear a pathway between the outer personality of the individual and the inner center of his being. This pathway becomes a Jacob’s ladder upon which the ascending angels of the outer man meet and join in joyous union with the descending angels of the indwelling God. Ignorance, fear, hostility, guilt, and discord are the barriers that obstruct the freedom fo the angelic host to meet at the summit of the soul. To learn the truth about our relationship to the godhead in our souls, and to shed the fetters that hold us captive, is to render us capable of traveling the pathway to Divinity at will. He who prays for anything but for union with God is a blasphemer!
The yogi whose exercises are directed toward an objective other than union with Brahman is but a false yogi. Similarly, all magic that does not aim at the invocation of Divinity into the magic circle of humanity is sorcery, and the same must be asserted about meditation. Health, wealth, love, happiness, and all the other treasures our personality desires are corrupted by the forces of the lower world. No prayer, yogic power, or magical privilege can alter the evanescence of earthly things. We must seek the kingdom that is not of this world, and, when we have discovered it, all things necessary and helpful to the welfare of our true selves will come to us in due course. He who meditates for “things” is both misguided and foolish, for he attempts to force the almighty Power to do the bidding of a puny, human ego, while at the same time assuming that he can escape the consequences of such an ill-advised act."
Yes, well if one's purpose is to know god, and the basis of mysticism IS that this is possible, then in a very real sense, that which leads to something else is at best distraction. The key lies in understanding which is which.
I also realize that anything I say won't be taken seriously, since I'm not attached to a university, don't have a series of popular books in print, nor do I support any current narrative, yet I have to say that I find it telling that people who have zero experience with actual, genuine Gnosis believe they can utilize it for their own goals, some of which include expanding one's reputation.
My response to this is that Universities to this day have Cathari bones in artifact drawers.
I am glad that SH was able to escape communism. Another person I hold in esteem, Franz Bardon could not, and paid the price for this by dying in prison.
I suppose I should conclude this with something personal, and so I will say that Gnosis in my experience is as much destructive to the individual as it is instructive. It is as much about deconstructing the person one has become as it is about providing genuine paranormal experience.
I appreciate that you treat this subject with respect, NLF. It is something very few can bring themselves to these days.
Thanks Mike. I agree with you; the steps I’ve taken along this path so far have been destructive to my ego, scary from letting go to follow my intuition (balanced against my intellect, feelings, and senses) while also liberating — it’s a mix, a significant leap of faith. It’s strange as it feels like I’m doing this not just alone in real life, but almost alone based on my internet relationships as well. So I appreciate your feedback as someone who sounds like you’re going through a similar process.
Thanks for the mention of Franz Bardon, he looks interesting and I’ll read one of his books. Re: universities and status, I wouldn’t be too bothered by it; the credentials are good for making money in a globohomo career but those serious about studying these topics cannot do so in such a politically stifling environment anymore…
Well, I never really intended to be a professor anyway.
Yes, I can state that I truly have and do embody my own iconoclastic Gnostic form of spirituality. I write from my experience, directly, and writing, as well as my visual art, which even fewer see, actually helps me to make better sense of what I live as reality.
The intersection with the numinous, when it arrives, teaches me way more than in any other form we believe knowledge takes. This then is my personal definition of Gnosis, and it is radically different from the plastic wrapped crap that is sold to the willing masses today.
Everything is paid for, nothing is free, any special skill and ability is merely there to enable deeper, more competent explorations that bring back more, because there is no end to Gnosis, none I have ever seen.
Shamanism and Gnosticism are like hand in glove. There is no academic authority, no political figure, no social convention that has any strength where the spirit journey goes.
And thus I advance my own personal definition of Gnosis and refute the cardboard constructions that proliferate from the control complex, because they do not know, it is so clear that they just don't know anything.
I have been explaining my children the difference between types of knowledge as stunts versus keys. A stunt is a thing whose only purpose is to impress other people - skateboard tricks, drawing perfect circles one handed, knife juggling. A key is knowledge that opens doors to new things to think about, new ways to understand. Mathematics, physics, computer science, color theory. Learning to meditate doesn't impress anyone else but it may open spiritual doors.
Postmodern philosophies following from Heidegger, down through Foucault and Derrida - arguably German-inspired philosophy since Schelling and Hegel - have always struck me as akin to learning stunts, the mastery of an abstruse vocabulary which doesn't let you do anything else. Icelandic is a notoriously difficult languageto learn, but you can at least talk to Icelanders and read their books. Learning the vocabulary of Derrida, on the other hand, equips one to write more of the same, possibly get an academic job, and impress the people who can do the same.
It teaches you what the elite think
If you want keys, read analytic philosophy.
Very interesting post, I had no idea about the internal dialog ratio, kind of explains the aprox 30% who declined the death jabs. I didn't even realise there are people with no inner dialog, let alone that they outnumber me! I've read about people who think in images, as opposed to a dialog, but I find it difficult to conceptualize no real deep thinking process at all. No wonder there are so many reactionary people, why they seem to get triggered so easily.
Yrs ago I spent a couple of years researching Helena Blavatsky trying to understand the elites mindset, I found it torture to read her stuff, it was so difficult to read. I'm reading Rudolph Steiner atm trying to understand the roots of Biodynamic gardening. I find myself saying the same things as back then, like, stop with the esoteric word salad and get to the point (lol).
I've been gardening 25yrs, I have developed a deep kindship with nature (struggling to describe my thoughts here really without writing an essay with dozens of examples) moreso in the last ~13yrs since I got a microscope and really started to deep dive into soil biology.
I had previously written off Biodynamics as woo woo, then ~5yrs ago someone gave me a cabbage from a biodynamic garden, I got home late and emptied my stuff into the shed, completely forgot about the cabbage. A full 6 weeks later I went in the shed, that cabbage looked as fresh as the day it was given me, that got my attention.
Recently I've been researching the succeptibility of plants to pests, pathogens, diseases and their connection to nutrient deficiencies (TLDR all are effected by nutrients) I found plants have better nutrient uptake from foiliar feeds if they're applied at the full moon, and very poor uptake at the new moon (backed by sap analysis) maybe there is something to this esoteric biodynamic stuff, shame most of the info is paywalled, though the few Steiner advocates I have met seem to be exceptionally nice people with their own very humble, greatful, vocabulary. He does seem to have left a positive legacy.
Thanks for the interesting comment, ImpObs. I agree with you that many authors of esoteric works try to cover their ideas in complicated and obtuse language, which I really don't like. I havn't studied Steiner (at least not yet) but noted scientist Hans Eysenck attacked him as a great storyteller, propounding a lot of unprovable theories, while Eysenck was interested in hard data. Still, I'm interested in Steiner's theories surrounding education and biodynamics, and I very much believe in agriculture's connection to astrology (a concept widely derided in the materialist West). If you decide to write about it I would be interested in learning more.
I'm only at the beginning of my biodynamic journey, but I can give an example where his 'unprovable theories' now have solid scientific backing, even though most will not even see the connection back to Steiner.
One of Steiners most important biodynamic preperations is made by burrying a cow horn filled with manure from a lactating cow, leaving it in the ground in the most fertile area of the farm over winter, digging it up in Spring then putting the contents into a barrel and stirring it with a stick for an hour at dawn, so many stirrs clockwise, so many turns anti-colockwise, making sure to form a vortex in the center (see also Viktor Schaubergers "Living water" theories also written off a psudoscience back then, but now proven as "structured water" aka "EZwater", exclusion zone water) then flicking the mixture all around the farm (innoculating the farm with microbiology) all the while thanking Nature and giving the mix positive intentions.
Fast forward to the 1980's when a niche group of bidynamic gardeners and farmers started making actively aerated compost tea (AACT). Basically water innoculated with thermophillic compost, air injected to maintain an aerobic environment, various foods added to multiply the microbes, to enable broadscale organic farming without the need to apply thousands of tons of compost, AACT uses 2-4lbs of compost per acre making it both financially and practical viable alternative to applying thousands of tons. Various brewers are designed, some with cone tanks to mix the brews with a vortex (a la Steiner), a young Elaine Ingham does her doctorate on soil biology/microscopy and starts studying the benefits of AACT, formalising recipies, publishing research, getting poo poo'd by the conventional Ag crowd for "spraying pathogens on crops" after fixing her trials by mixing the pathogen free compost in the trial with a front loader used to move fresh manure without cleaning it first, probably putting adoption of this science back ~20yrs. She showed soils need a bacteria to fungal ratio aproaching 1:1 for the best crop yeilds, this starts the whole "No-Till" method. The movement grew slowly regardless of the naysayers, into what is now arguably one of the mainstays of Regenerative Agriculture to replace conventional Ag chemical inputs. Dr. Elaine Inghams "Soil Food Web School" is thriving, training thousands of consultants p.a.
Drs Johnson and his wife Dr Su design a no turn areated composting system, the "Johnson-Su Bioreactor" to produce compost of the correct quality and microbial diversity to easily make innouculant compost for AACT and compost extract (that negate the sometimes hit n miss AACT quality issues) they call their system of regenerative agriculture Biologically Enhanced Agricultural Management (BEAM) and give the design away for free, thousands of farmers adopt it (including me!) as it's much easier than the whole microscopy quality control route learning curve you need to produce quality AACT, it's just easier on my back, and less faff than a 36hr sampling ever hour AACT brew, I still use a microscope :)
Hundreds of companies jump on the microbial innoculant bandwaggon, making extracts, and a plethora of microbial innoculants, all with scientific research proving the benefits of pairing with natural biological systems for growing crops. In 2023 there were almost 2 million acres under Regenerative Agriculture management in the US, and growing rapidly worldwide. Dr James white from Rutgers publishes his groundbreaking research on Rhizophagy, showing how the microbes interact with the plants, finally proving the science. Plants actually farm specific microbes to collect specific nutrients, take them in at the root tips and dissolve their membranes to absorb the nutrients, let them reform their membranes and go out to collect more in return for specific carbohydrates given to them by the plant. Dr White proved for the first time plants don't only get nutrients dissolved water in ionic forms, most soil labs still only test for ionic nutrients providing a false test result costing farmers millions of dollars in chemical inputs.
I could also go on about his stinging nettle preperation, suffice to say you can make a free fertilser for zero cost, comparable to Kelp extract, from Nettles. As an aside I read some research on Nettle where they tested the soil which had zero Boron content on the mass spectrometer, they tested the Nettles growing in that soil and found they contained Boron, Science has yet to explain how the Nettle plant managed to make Boron in Boron free soil, ain't Nature brilliant!
I can't remember his eduction theories, I saw a documentry on the Waldorf schools 40 or 50 yrs ago, the only thing that stuck in my mind was about the stipulations for painting the walls, a specific method that mixed water colours (name of it escapes me) so the colours mixed cloud like in appearence, cool colours to the North warmer colours to the South of the building (or the other way around), I spoke about this to a teacher at a special needs school at a wedding yrs ago, she told me they had followed the Waldorf design and all the teachers noted a marked improvement in the kids behaviour.
I've never heard of Hans Eysenck, but he sounds like he has an ego issue ;)
This is fascinating, thanks for sharing it.
Regarding plants creating minerals “out of thin air”, there are studies that show this! A scientist analyzed the mineral content in a soil sample, grew plants in it, then analyzed the mineral content in the plants. The plants had more minerals than the soil, a seeming impossibility.
That 70% (or roughly 2/3) figure keeps showing up. Milgram experiment. Plandemic jab compliance, probably some other places I'm not thinking of at the moment.
Death jabs lol, I don’t know anyone who got vaccinated who died.
Covid happened, why it happened is always questionable.. like the elite want economies to stop, don’t buy it.
Anecdotally, I know one man who had a stroke three days after getting his COVID booster (he was in his 80s and in good health; a close family friend) - it killed him but he lingered for awhile... I know a woman who developed reoccurring tinnitus right after getting her shot and another man who developed Guillain–Barré syndrome right after getting his. I also know quite a few people who came down with cancer within a year of getting their shots (for whatever that's worth). And this is all just anecdotal -- the actual (hidden, suppressed) data on side effects must be terrible, imo...
I know two indirectly, and excess death rates have been running ~30% higher since the rollout.
One of my clients had 2 of his adult children in their 40's killed by the jabs, his other son explained why he was filling in for his father and told the story in great detail. His sister lived on Anglesey, passed out after the first shot, took 40 mins to get her to hospital at Bangor, they checked her over and discharged her saying it was just a bad reaction. When she got the booster she went into convulsions in the vaxination center and passed out, no ambulance available so her husband got her in the car with a nurse and headed to Bangor hospital, she died on the way, the nurse tried to resusitate her while her husband sped to the hospital, declared DOA. She left 3 children. Horrendous.
My clients son was in hospital on a ventilator after the first jab when his other son was here filling in for his father, he was previously healthy, a keen Rugby player in his 40's, collapsed an hour after the first jab, he never came out of the coma. Neither had any symptoms, they put Covid on both death certs.
This was the twist of fate that helped me convince my wife not to get the jab.
If you'd like to understand the $2 Trillion+ financial scam the elite pulled off go watch John Titus explain it to you on his YT channel "Best Evidence".
I appreciate the direction you are heading. In my own substack I am not trying to influence mass consciousness, but rather the expansion of individual consciousness, which is the basis of the study of magic in the Western tradition. Much to ponder in this post.
Thanks William, I like your direction and approach as well.
Fascinating read and, based on your earlier post on Gnosticism, not at all where I thought it would go.
My life forces me to deal with my darkness. For a time I walked the razors edge of self-destruction and reclamation.
I believe that we can’t fully understand God the creator and that He presents Himself as needed to different cultures and individuals as does his opposite.
As a young man contradictions fascinated me and seemed to often denote significant relevant missing information. Self-talk is hard. It requires taking responsibility for your thoughts and empowers you for good and for ill. It almost destroyed me but my Faith reclaimed me.
I was recently baptized yet don’t find this post to be inconsistent with my experience of Christian faith. Making your point I suppose, it really is about individuation; each on a path to realizing God’s kingdom on earth. The idea that the Godhead needs to be brought back to life through individuals walking the path together seems correct I.e., embracing the process of existence and mutually helpful growth.
I’ve often felt there is a connection among all life, particularly humans, perhaps it’s at a quantum level. Trying to say that when enough individuals truly internalize, sufficiently understand, and I guess actualize what God means us to become then his kingdom will be realized.
Thank you, fellow seeker.
It will not be realized on this earth — agree on most of the rest.
This was very interesting. I’ve been encountering increasing amounts of Gnostic theory lately. In order to keep my head on straight, I remember that metaphysical concepts do not literally translate to the material; that True God is Love; and that anything that inflates the ego, destroys compassion, or interferes with service to others is Not Truth (ie the truth will always be humbling and helpful).
Have you read Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism? Or Alan Watts’ Christian Mythology?
Thanks for your writing. 🩵
Thanks Flavel. I have not read either of those but Watts' Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion has been on my list to read. I have read Hoeller's The Fool’s Pilgrimage: Kabbalistic Meditations on the Tarot which I liked. Both of those books you name look interesting and I will add them to the queue, thank you.
Interesting, thanks.
"The letter of the law kills but the spirit brings life."
Brought to full relief right here in the comment section.
It kills those who are equipped to go above. It saves or can save the many who are not.
The final quote about actualizing wholeness through rescuing the Divine Feminine might be stated another way: love will save the world. That's the final line in Randy's latest piece: https://eggreport.substack.com/p/infinite-jest-review-part-1-pages which is not about Gnosticism but it's kinda tangentially related (he's playing on Dostoevsky's quote "beauty will save the world" but I probably don't need to tell you) or at least related to the idea of personally redeeming God. Thanks for your work, it's insightful and clear.
Wonderful read!
Demi or else (dam) in the Iranian "breath" and we know urge... so demi urge meaning urge to breathe. It's primal, nothing gets done with out it. Not even consciousness. You can send a man to the moon, better send fresh air or it's lights out, in less than 30 seconds. Any longer than 4 mins and damage is next to irreparable.
The lungs sucking in air, allows the urinary tract to help digestion process... in men the urethra is also part of the reproductive organs, so it's a creator-gut for men.
PS: if you had called hylics "capable dumb dumbs" would it matter? Would they be here reading this article? Just kidding. : ) --- great article, thanks.
I’m a life long student of A Course In Miracles. There is a lot in what is written here that makes sense to me. It is also useful.
May favorite writers, though they may be famous for their shrewd commentary on globohomo, are at their best when they go full-on mystical. This is a keeper, so much to consider. Thanks for writing.
Thanks Big Mike, I appreciate your feedback. It’s a different (and somewhat scarier) style of writing because I’m sharing my discoveries on my esoteric journey as I experience them, and there are many people further along their journeys and processes than I am; versus the stuff on globohomo feels pretty well established in my mind and I’m just sharing the same points in different ways…
I attended a couple of Hoeller’s ‘events’ a long time ago here in LA, must’ve been 20+ years ago. They were like old-school salon type that he presided over. First time I went there he talked a lot about Eliade and Jung, had a pretty good grasp of the subject, no doubt. I remember he was complaining about how those guys (Eliade/Jung) got tainted by their brushes with Fascism but no scholar ever gets tainted by being full-blown Marxists/Communists. That’s clearly even more true today than 20 yrs ago. But then I went back a couple weeks later and this dude (Hoeller) comes out looking like the Pope of Hollywood Hills, pointy hat and purple robe, the works… I couldn’t stop laughing. I don’t get why some of these guys have a need to establish their own “orders” or whatever, it’s so pompous and stupid. From Blavatsky to Dr. P.B.R. to Crowley to Hoeller etc… bunch of frauds (except PBR to a certain extent but that’s a whole ‘nother story). I get the ‘intention’ but as the saying goes ‘the road to Hell…’ Again, I’ve read much of Hoeller, he’s a good scholar and I appreciate him on that level. As an aside, he’s foundationally a Jung/Eliade/Campbell guy and Jordan Peterson also belongs to the Jung/Eliade school of thought (as you can see in Maps Of Meaning, his foundational book) and yet they’ve taken very different paths. It would be interesting if someone would explore that.
That’s fascinating, thank you for sharing! Yes, Hoeller wears two hats: he’s a lecturer and author of gnosticism and other academic topics, while he also leads his gnostic church (which is styled fairly closely to Catholic liturgy from my understanding). I don’t fault him much for the latter, although the image of the purple Pope of Hollywood Hills is a funny one; the esoteric/mystical elements of Christianity are not really welcome in Catholicism, although they are in Eastern Orthodoxy, and true gnosticism was last tried with the Cathars which ended in their extinction by fire. So for those with a mystical bent who still want the guardrails of exoteric religion, what is one to do?
Re: Peterson, that’s an interesting insight, thank you for sharing. I’ve been so turned off by his public mental breakdowns (his public crying, his getting the death jab despite being a so-called “expert” on resisting mob behavior then saying he won’t get the booster, his daughter turning into a slut who slept with Andrew Tate, his Tweets that Brett Kavanaugh should step down from the Supreme Court, his cravenness working for Ben Shapiro, etc.) that I havn’t felt any desire to cover his work. Hoeller, by comparison, kept his center open throughout the worst of COVID (to my understanding, anyway).
What do you enjoy about PBR, and is there a particular work you recommend?
Re. Hoeller, I guess one can try to reframe Catholicism or try to be a schismatic… if one knows what they’re doing and are doing it from no less than Divine inspiration (which comes with signs and wonders). That’s not the case here, as is evident by H’s ignorance when it comes to alchemy, for instance (same as Jung, btw) so you can’t have the blind leading the blind. Tomberg, the not-so-anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot, was on a much higher level yet he was humble enough to just write a book about it. Same with Fulcanelli.
Re. Peterson, yea, I’m put off by all those things you mention but I still think Maps Of Meaning is a great book. I’m still waiting for him to pull a Candace Owens one of these days. That’s how we’ll know the tides are turning. Lol
Re. PBR, this guy is one of the most interesting “characters” to ever walk the earth (not just in spiritualist circles). Just too much to mention here. A good book by him would be Eulis! (the exclamation’s in the title lol) but a fantastic book ‘on’ him (which also includes some texts by PBR) is the bio by John Patrick Deveney (incidentally a student of Eliade, to whom the book is dedicated). This is one of the best biographies I’ve ever read and it depicts a WILD world that’s been brushed under the rug somehow. There’s many tangents you can go off of from there, like John Murray Spear… again, wild stuff that most ppl have not even heard of.
Very well done! . This post resonates with me on several levels. Oddly I think I have transitioned from anarchist to anarch, but I will have to contemplate it more. Not big on labels either. There are several writings and formal ideas you mentioned I was unfamiliar with. Some parallels in my essay about marriage is kind of striking. I think there is indeed something we need to build towards internally, but I am a mere neophyte.
Thanks Hugh. I agree with you generally re: labels; it can result in rigidifying thought patterns and simplifying the complexity of life if one isn’t careful. I’m learning as I go, too…
I strongly recommend you study this or at least be aware of it:
https://montanarcc.substack.com/p/the-book-on-the-living-god-by-bo
“What is permissible for Jupiter is not permissible for the ox.”
This reminds me of our discussion a while back of how a "just God" could allow "unjust" things to happen. A baker dying in an oven was a cited case. As you can already see, the flaw in such assessments is judging God in our frame, rather than in God's frame, and assuming we possess the same ability to judge right and wrong, just and unjust, that God possesses. Of course if one cannot recognize that God might have a different moral perception than oneself, then there is little need for God. Self is already it.
Yes, I agree with you, Martin. Whatever infinite God's frame or plan is cannot be properly understood by us mortal, fallible, imperfect, finite creatures. But still, the alternative to making judgment is to turn one's brain off and rely on blind faith. I would rather try to understand what I can, make judgment where I must, while still holding out a mental and emotional space for being wrong and updating my beliefs.