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The Promise of a Lonely Planet Three: Stalking the Anthropos
The stranger it gets, the more sense it makes. And the more sense it makes, the more imagination it takes to stay on board with the Gnostic experience. That is the high challenge of the path of applied visionary science, the noetics of hyperception. (Bear with me, folks: hyperception is my proposed term for heightened faculties of awareness as demonstrated in the siddhis of Asian yogis and lamas, and the visionary prowess of shamans around the world. Not to mention the natural faculties of children and animals. Empathic communion with Gaia spontaneously incites hyperception, directed perception in "altered states.") Gnosis was high heresy, and it still is. It seems to escaped notice that heresy derives from the Greek hairesis, "choice." To be a heretic means to have choices, to opt for another way of believing, another kind of knowing, another channel of perceiving, another course of experience. Heresy is about having options, and sometimes those options are rather outrageous. With the episode of Sabaoth's conversion, we are introduced to a dealbreaker, perhaps the most outrageous notion in occult and Gnostical lore: the pre-existence of the human species in the cosmic order. In the Gaia Mythos, the preexistent, preterrestrial form of humanity is called Atu Kadmon. This is a play on Adam Kadmon, "earth creature, composed of letters or code," a term found in the Kabala. Atu denotes the product of divine emanation, Aeonic intent. (In Sanskrit, Ati means "supreme," as in Atiyoga or Dzogchen, the ninth and highest path of Buddhism.) The made-up word Kadmon signifies "encoded unit," comparable to our modern conception of the genome. Atu Kadmon is the encoded monad for the human species.
The "mortal emanation" is deposited as a mesh of nucleic acid
in the molecular cloud of the Orion Nebula. "In Cabbalistic tradition, the ten Sephiroth that structure the universe are the limbs of the primal man, Adam Kadmon. He is so vast that each of his hairs can be imagined as a stream of light linked to millions of worlds." (Adam Kadmon, typical Kabalistic image of the Anthropos, from a Jewish Encyclopedia. In Alexander Roob, Alchemy & Mysticism, p. 550.)
The Child of Light
William Blake, The Sun at its Eastern Gate
And the Chief Authority (protarchon) heard this and realized that the voice came from Sophia, his matrix. And yet he did not really know where it came from, for it was a revelation of the divine and perfect Couple (metropator, "Mother-Father"), the supreme Awareness that is the origin of the All, through which all things come into being, and so does Primal Humanity, for in the human form that Awareness is revealed, and lives. And the entire cosmos of the Chief Archon trembled, and the foundations of the Abyss shook. And in the watery space above the chaotic matter of the dema, the underside was illuminated by the appearance of this image (eikon). (II, 14, 20 - 30, with moderate paraphrase.) Hence, there are a number of options for translation: Human, Primal Human, True Human, Divine Humanity, Child, Divine Child, Child of Light. Years ago I proposed the Devanthropos, "radiant Humanity" for the pre-existent template. Coptic is extremely poor in metaphysical and poetic expression, and it lends itself very awkwardly to ideas and images that require elaborate syntax. Moreover, one in every five Coptic words in the codices is a loan from Greek. Translating the Coptic texts is like using a range of poetic hues to fill in the crude underpainting of the Greek originals. Problems occur because the Greek "originals," no better than garbled and incoherent notes in the first place, have been translated by scribes who did not understand them very well, if at all.
What Sophia sees is not "Man" or a male anatomical form, but the Anthropos, the pre-existent mold of the human species. Unfortunately, the Coptic copyist of The Apocryphon of John carries over the Greek word andreos, "male," giving a masculine bias to the cosmic matrix of humanity. Elsewhere in The Apocryphon of John and the other cosmological treatises, anthropos is used to indicate generic humanity without sexual bias.The Coptic equivalent is rhome, "human." (Pronounced RO-may.) In On the Origin of the World the Anthropos template is called "Adam of Light" and "holy Adamas." (108: 20-25) This conception was absorbed into Kabala where it comes to be seen in Adam Kadmon, the "Primal Man" (pictured above). The daunting problem with the description of Primal Humanity is not that it is anthropomorphic, but that it is masculinized. And this problem is not unique to the Gnostic materials we have inherited. It pervades the Kabala and other occult systems that preserve (or claim to preserve) Mystery teachings, including the heretical notion of the pre-existence of humanity. The illustration above shows a typical version of Primal Humanity represented as a male figure embellished with cosmic iconography and occult symbols. In The Hero, I pointed out that "in cosmologies based on somatic values, woman's body was typically equated to nature, the earth itself, while man's body was equated to the cosmos entire." (p.12) There is a long-standing tradition involved here, of course—not to mention deep "archetypal" formative tendencies in the human psyche. Nevertheless, the moment for a huge psychic shift may be at hand... Imagery that represents the Anthropos template as a male figure, even as the mystically conceived Adam Kadmon, is totally unacceptable in the context of the Gaia Mythos. A couple of other points of clarification on the above passage. In the jargon of the Mystery Schools, the Aeon Sophia is said to be in the Ninth, a code term for the terrestrial realm. The Eighth indicates the visible starry zone surrounding the Earth, and the Seventh, the Heptad, is the planetary realm exclusive of the Earth, as already explained. Yaldabaoth, the Chief Archon or Protarchon, is the putative master of the Heptad. He is most definitely a male creator god, the prototype of Jehovah, and the Father God of Christianity, and Allah. Monotheism is the fixation of Yaldabaoth on his illusional ego, and this illusion infects all those who adopt him as the supreme being. The theology of the One God carries and enforces a heavy patriarchal agenda. The Gnostic image of the Metropator, the Cosmic Parents, succeeds in avoiding either a masculine or feminine bias for the Divine. This language vividly recalls the Yab-Yum of Tibetan Buddhism, and the Shiva-Shakti coupling of Hindu Tantra. The curious repetition "Man and the Son of Man" has baffled scholars. I propose that the redundant language indicates an occult perception that the Anthropos template ("Man") contains many strains ("Sons of Man"). More than one version of humanity proceeds from the monadic code. So an apt rendering would be, "Humanity and its strains, the offspring of the Primal Human." The strain of humanity to which we belong is one outgrowth of the "master" template—Let's watch the language, boys!—deposited in the Orion Nebula. The Devanthropos is a massive locus of singularity that engenders human strains in earthlike settings throughout the galaxy from whose central bulge that singularity emerged. This broadband emanation of organic life is unique to "our" galaxy, but our version of it is not unique within this galaxy. What are the options, then? How are we to imagine what Sophia sees in
Orion's Mist? Could it be a bisexual or androgyne form? Let's recall that Gnostic cosmology, including anthropogenesis, accounts for alien life-forms that emerge prior to humanity's appearance on Earth, and then intrude upon the biosphere. The Gaia Mythos is insuperable because it contains the sole description of alien life inherent to the human condition, and cosmologically situated. As M. C. Hammer said, speaking from the depths of his pantaloons, "You can't beat that." The Gnostic catechism clearly says, "The Archons are not entirely alien, for they are from the Fallen Sophia, the female divinity who produced them when she brought the human race down from the Source, the realm of the Pre-Existent One." When we realize who the Archons are, we can finally understand who we are. The secret of human potential, our Sophianic endowment, becomes self-evident when we realize what threatens it, and how. This is truly strange, and yet it makes perfect sense. We discover our humanity at the very moment when we are most at risk of losing it, and that moment is upon us. As long as we do not reach this realization, the revelation of our own identity as a pre-existent species, we will never see through the illusion of our isolation on this lonely planet, Earth. This is the great imaginative leap for humanity today. In reality, we are not isolated, for we are continually in touch, interactively, with a myriad of other-dimensional beings, "Star People" and spiritual allies, including other strains of humanity derived from the luminous Stain in Orion. Why, then, do we suffer the illusion of cosmic quarantine? Until we can see how we are related to that one alien species, our immediate cosmic kin, we shall not see how we relate to any others. Paradoxically, the Archons are the key to unlock our illusion of separation, yet they would imprison us in that illusion, because it serves their dementia. Called anomia, "aberration," in The Apocryphon of John and elsewhere, the dementia of the Archons is evident in our own minds, especially in religious ideas such as the belief that we, the human species, are supreme and unique, created "in God's image." The Sophia narrative is an imaginative picture of human origins based on the experience of Gnostic seers. The mythos teaches that humanity is a singularity projected from the Godhead, but not to reproduce or resemble its originators, for that would be a supreme act of narcissism on the part of the Gods. Rather, humanity is the open-ended evolution of an encoded monad with infinite potential to develop in novel ways. To do so, the species requires a special environment that reflects its deepest potential as well as itsdependence on exchange with other species. This is exactly what the miraculous biosphere, the Gaian life-matrix, does for us. We are the exceptional promise of this beauteous and symbiotic world, not because we are the male creator's god's most privileged offspring, but because we have the unique ability to disrupt the Earth's operative harmonies by our ignorance. Detect and correct that ignorance and we are on track with Gaia's purposes. We cannot continue in Gaia's way unless we enter Herstory and live in the description it provides. Our salvation in Gnostic terms is a narrative link to the living planet, not supernatural intervention from outside it—which is the Archontic ploy. We are not made in the image of God, but according to the imagination of the Gods. Yet the Archons would like us to believe otherwise. For about 3800 years they have been going all out to convince us otherwise. The Archontic Spell (or Ahrimanic Spell, as I used to call it when I was cruising with the Anthropops) relies on duping us with substitutes we dumbly take for real. Plastic for pearl. Artificial intelligence for genuine living knowledge. Cyberspace for gardenspace. Parking lots for glaciers. In an insidious secondary tactic, upon which they rely heavily, they make simulation do double duty as a blind as well as a substitute. Example: The monotheistic concept of God is an error, a mental glitch. It becomes exploited by the Archons, and exaggerates beyond correction. As it does so, the monotheistic paradigm takes on a totalitarian profile. When we come around to rejecting monotheism, we tend to reject the totalitarian aspect as well. Naturally, we become extremely leery of totalitarian models, "master narratives," etc. This wariness, although perfectly genuine and a sign of sanity, serves to blind us to the nature of the "mistress narrative" we can develop with Gaia-Sophia. Now here is perhaps where the penny drops—a penny the size of Stonehenge. It might be thought that everyone "gets" the Sophia Mythos "in their own way." To expect otherwise would verge on a totalitarian demand, repeating the error of monotheism. Well, yes and no. The Mythos is not totalitarian, but it takes an exceptional degree of acumen to see how it is not so. In reality, the Mythos is generic to our species, thus uniform in narrative terms. The lovely challenge with this species-specific story is not just to get it in your own way, but to get out of your own way and engage something that transcends you. This is why the Gaia Mythos must be transceived and shaped narratively, mythopoetically, through shamanic recall that requires egodeath. We all come to the Herstory in our own way, but we do not develop it in our own way. We develop it by going beyond ourselves. By entering Her Way. Thus, the Mythos has a quasi-totalitarian look because it is uniform
in terms of the revelation that sources it. It is not a carte blanche
for personal expression, it is a calling to transpersonal expression. Anthropos Angst The Anthropos template is central to Gnostic cosmology, and closely related to the enigmatic business of the Archons. Gnostic teachings are unique in providing extensive background on the birth of the Sun, the formation of the Earth, and its capture in the planetary system. This narrative places the Archons in a cosmic setting, along with humanity—the pre-existent, preterrestrial mold of humanity, that is. Atu Kadmon is our cosmic origin as a species. Like the Archons, we are, extraterrestrials—but in our own way. The difference is, we proceed from the Pleroma and we have been seeded into the living fabric of the planet, and the Archons have not. The assertion that we are to not made in God's image wounds the dignity of many people, but with the Anthropos template, Atu Kadmon, another option comes into play. Rather than being made to reflect a pre-existent god-image (male, sevenfold, Archontic), the human species may be conceived as a god-like project in the making, a divine experiment. Identification with God is an Archontic ploy. The process of "deification" was wrongly attributed to the Mysteries by Gnostic wannabes like Clement of Alexandria. Genuine Gnostics do not pretend to be Gods on earth, deities in human guise. They aspire to know as the Gods know, and what the Gods know, but not literally or even symbolically to become Gods. Cognitive ecstasy brings moments of mystical identity with the Godhead, of course, but it also insures and enhances the supreme discrimination between human and divine. Good psychonauts stay behind the medicine. The Fallen Goddess scenario, Herstory, has a unique value, perhaps even a unique survival value, for the human species. It does not merely state that we are not alone: it explains WHY we are not alone. Why we cannot afford to believe we are alone, or in any way supreme and unique. Gnostics constantly warned that the Archons envy us our humanity. To cope with the unbearable anguish of their envy, our alien cousins attempt to infect us with their mentality so that we become more like them and their anguish is lessened. By insinuating in our minds the belief that we are made in God's image, they draw us into a mental game we cannot win because its rules are false, arbitrary, alien to human experience. Needless to say, I paraphrase. The precise received text in mythological idiom reads like this:
Gnostic cosmology is amazing, if for nothing else but the imaginative subtlety of passages like this one. This is applied noetics, profound psychologial teaching framed in mythological terms. The Archons believe they can create humanity in their image, and they wish humanity to believe the same!! Lacking ennoia, the Archons cannot create, they can only imitate. Beholding the Anthropos template, they wrongly imagine they can create humanity to resemble themselves, and this remains their most cherished desire: to have us become like them. The only way they can achieve this aim is to trick us into a betrayal of our basic humanity. Gnostics taught that due to our exceptionally large margin for error, we are a species that can stray from its proper course of evolution, and thus betray its true potential. If this deviating tendency goes unchecked and uncorrected, we can indeed fulfill the wish of the Archons. The bitter truth of it is, we do the best part of their work for them. This can happen, not because the Archons command power over us, but because we surrender our inborn power to an alien mindset. The Archontic mentality is our own tendency to betray our divine birthright: it is the inhumane component in human potential. "Archons 'R Us" may be the most liberating message on the planet. Only Gnosis, the god-like knowledge of our origins, can save us from the self-abandonment we risk by ceding our minds to the "Authorities."
The teacher answered, "It is you who will rule over them." The Dialogue of the Savior, 49-50
But the crossing place is fearful... Only with a single one-pointed mind, can you pass over... The lamp of the body is the mind. As long as what is within your minds is harmonious, your bodies are luminous. As long as your hearts are dark, the luminosity you anticipate will escape you... Who does not stand in the darkness, will not be able to see the light. (The Dialogue of the Savior, fragmentary text, 2 - 34)
There are criminanals and arch-criminals. There are enemies and arch-enemies. There are types and arche-types. There are cons and there is — the arch-con, the supreme confidence trick. This trick substitutes for faith in the species, our confidence in our inner wisdom potential, the belief that we must be made human through a superhuman reflection, the Word made Flesh. The arch-con is human divinity. If this idea had not infected our species' imagination, the world would look nothing like it does today. Human divinity is the confidence trick that allows us to perpetrate a multitude of sins, which are nothing but uncorrected errors, patterns of behavior alien to our inborn capacities. From the belief in human divinity proceed all the great evils humankind is heir to. Like Christ, they all begin with c: conversion, conquest, colonialization, consumption. And most lately, cyberspace. Where the Archons have migrated. Finally, they have a secure niche on the planet. As I write these words I stand before their Altar, as you may be doing when you read them. But I do not worship there. Historically, the arch-con has emerged in three stages: first, in germinal form in Jewish apocalyptism, formulated in the hate-driven ideology of the Zaddikim; second, in salvationist Christianity, a fascist program in the sugar-pill coating of the Gospel fairy tales; and third, in the horrific viral mutation of Islam, the pest of submission. We are now closing a fourth phase that began when science took over the work of religion, around 1650. The fifth phase will be short but not , perhaps, sweet. We are facing terminal conditions, including climatic collapse and cybernetic disembodiment of the species. Gnostics in the classical word did not survive to face Islam, except perhaps in some underground movements. (Sufi = Suphia?) Radical Pagan Gnosis was anti-Jewish and anti-Christian in opposing the salvationist ideologies common to those two belief-systems. If Gnostics survived today, they would oppose Islam, another viral mutation of the same ideology, on the same grounds. Gnostics were not against love, tolerance, forgiveness, self-regulation, kindness, compassion, or any other genuine virtues attributed to Judaic and Christian morality, and latterly to Islam (what a disgusting sham!!). They were against the ideological framework of salvation with its three key components: the dominion of humanity on Earth, the incarnation of divinity in human form, and final retribution by the Father God. (More on this crucial point in the companion essay, How We Are Deviated.) Pistis Sophia, "confidence in the inborn wisdom," is a positive faith that builds creatively into Herstory and grows outward into a sane society of inspired members. But the will to create such a world has to be forged in the realization of what we're up against.
Clearly, setting up the Archon/ET theory is not a fast and easy assignment. This is not a sound-byte exercise. To understand Archontic intrusion requires a complex and extensive background, a cosmological education up to the graduate level. Yet this background—the encompassing tale of the singularity in the galactic core, the paired channeling of the Anthropos by Christos and Sophia, the unilateral desire of the Fallen Sophia, the unforeseen impact in the dema, the Earth's origin independent of the solar system, the alignment of Sun and Earth, the persistence of Sophia's original Dreaming of a three-body system, the seeding of the Anthropos on Earth—comprises that part of our own story we vitally need to learn before we can understand the role of the Archons in the full story. It's a big order, I admit, but it may be the decisive insight we need today, the crucial dose of "planet medicine" that can restore human imagination to its divine potential. In any case, we cannot possibly decode the ET/UFO phenomena without first knowing who we are, cosmically speaking, and then seeing ourselves in relation to our cosmic cousins, the Archons produced by Sophia before humanity emerged on the Earth, but not before the Anthropos was seeded in Orion. As for the occult and esoteric systems that purport to teach "Divine Humanity"—frankly, I'm not sure they can be trusted to deliver the Child. You can learn a lot from these models and systems, but you learn almost nothing about Gaia. I have spent my life from the age of four in pursuit of esoterics. . Talk about getting lost in a shaggy dog story. Or it is a shaggy god story? The question that now looms largest for me after all my questing is: How to describe the pre-existence of humanity so that we can live into that description and counter the con of divine humanity? I don't have the answer here, but at least the language of the question is precise enough, for now. Why is the Gnostic narrative of pre-existence so crucial for the shift ahead? Because the story shows how Sophia Herself invokes the Devanthropos to put the Lord Archon in his place. And we must do the same. In this full cosmic perspective, it becomes evident that the Archon/ETs are truly extraterrestrials, but confined to the planetary system in which the Earth is captured. (Jacques Vallee, whom I regard as the most sophisticated analyst of the ET/UFO enigma, holds the view that the pesky aliens come from within our local system.) They are a specific predatory species with special designs on humanity, not to be confused with other non-human entities, such as "Star People" and allies from other dimensions, supernatural guardians, the Dead, and other human strains of the Anthropos who live i planetary settings somewhat like ours—all of whom are benevolent or neutral. This picture is truly vast, but the Gnostic view is precise in the way it specifies the predatory nature of the Archons. Related to humanity through the peculiar fate of the Aeon Sophia, the
Archons are also involved in Sophia's "correction," her realignment
with the cosmic center (Pleroma), a subject on which I have written extensively
throughout this site.We first have to define our role in the correction
of the Aeon Sophia: this is nothing less than defining the purpose of
humanity in Gaia's evolution. If we are engaged in a project, and someone
is helping or impeding us, we cannot know how they are doing so unless
we first understand what we ourselves are doing. This is just common
sense. Teaching the Mythos Upon long reflection, I have come to accept that the cosmological perspective on the Archons can only be taught to those who genuinely aspire to know about it, or even crave to know about it; and I strongly feel that this aspiration to know must be grounded in a conscious sense of co-evolution with Gaia. (Of course, there is a huge sci-fi appeal in the Gnostic Archon scenario. It could happen that the story spreads merely as a story, and that would be fine.) How the recovered Gnostic cosmology might spread, and to whom, is a continual concern of mine, so it might be appropriiate to close with some personal reflections on this issue. It is an enormous privilege and an equally enormous responsibility to put out the Gaia Mythos and related Gnostic teachings on this site. I am immensely grateful to the Marion Institute for supporting this project, but support is not reception. This work is not intended merely for those who sponsor it (I am sure they would agree). It is intended for the generations to come, but it must be transmitted by the generation of today, by an elect, self-selecting portion of it. In Hindu mythology related to the World Ages, those who prepare the future in the present are called Shishta, the "seed group." This word derives from the common Sanskrit word shisha, "disciple, student." Shishta means something like "the student body." Or "learning party," to borrow an apt term. The main mark of the Shishta is egality in knowledge. Everyone carries their share and all who learn, also teach. I would say this is the primary requirement for transmission of the Gaia Mythos and the Archon scenario: those who learn it, teach it. At least that is what I would propose as the primary mark of the Shishta. The leading aspiration, if you will. For those who are consecrated to Gaia, the Mythos is not just any story, not just an outrageous sci-fi plot embellished with theological filigree. It is Herstory. To keep the story straight is not easy, and may well demand a lifetime of imaginative discipline. If you can afford it. Egodeath in more than a single dose. If you can dare it. Techniques of cognitive ecstasy, including divination, dance and trance, are the best tools for spreading the Mythos in its ever-expanding narrative form. At the same time, there is a moral balance to observe. Everything we learn about Anthropos and Archons must be balanced between our shared self-knowledge as a species and our solitary individual moments of communion with Gaia. Moments of sacred and sublime intimacy. Of rapture coemergent. Observing Gaia, we see a myriad of wonderful creatures who completely fulfill their potential in being what they are, doing what they do. Sunflowers and flatworms, whales and weevils, you name it. They are so perfectly realized that there is nothing left over for them to attain. They have no promise to fulfill because they are so fully realized, just the way they are. We know this intuitively, and feel it deeply in a language older than words. (Thanks, Derrick.) So it is that when the salmon swim off course, when whales get beached, when geese migrating south end up in Swansea, we lurch, we are deeply panged to see our animal kin so disoriented, so dislodged from their beauteous fate fulfilled. And we are affected most poignantly, I reckon, because when they go off course it reminds us of ourselves, a perplexed species stranded on a lonely planet... We of the human species appear to be situated in the Gaian habitat in a different way than our animal kin. We are more potential than actual. We carry a promise to be fulfilled. We are that promise. If we fall short of it, we do not threaten Gaia in any ultimate sense, I believe, but we diminish the magnitude of our participation in Her purposes. And in that way we can demean the Mystery. The promise we carry is exceptional, not because of our presumed privileged status, and not because we are divinity in human guise — no one human ever was, or ever needs to be — but because of our demeaning tendencies. This is the lesson to be learned from our unwitting complicity with our alien cousins. Yet we know ecstasy. And in ecstasy we know ourselves, and how to go beyond ourselves. There is our promise, perpetually fulfilled.
jll DEC 2004 Andalucia
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Material by John Lash and Lydia Dzumardjin: Copyright 2002 - 2017 by John Lash. |
The
Gnostic myth of the creation of humankind (anthropogenesis)
describes how this monad was emanated from the Pleroma in a rite performed
by the Aeons, the Gods. (Technically, this is not a "creation myth" comparable
to Genesis in the Bible, but an imaginative description of cosmic
emanation.) Through a complex process of collaboration, a singularity
emerges from the Originator, the Uncreated Source, and then is meticulously
channelled into a standing wave that is projected through a circular
lattice to produce a fractal deposit in the outer limbs of the galaxy.
(The Gaia Mythos, Episodes 4 through 7.)