Gnosticism Explained: The Reality of the Rulers (The Hypostasis of the Archons) and Gnosis Part 7: Creation of the Archons and the Different Heavens

 

The Reality of the Rulers (The Hypostasis of the Archons)

(If you want to skip the introduction and just read the text itself, the full text of the Reality of the Rulers is below.)

Introduction

The Reality of the Rulers is a Gnostic text whose title is also sometimes translated as the Nature of the Rulers or the Hypostasis of the Archons. “Hypostasis,” a word that occurs in the original Greek title of the text, is an ancient philosophical word that refers to the inner essence of something.[1] In order to make the title of the text easier to understand for modern readers, “hypostasis” is often translated as “nature” or, as here, “reality.”

In any of its variations, the title of this text is supposed to indicate that it provides its readers with knowledge about the true character of the “archons” or “rulers,” demonic beings who rule the world from the skies and try to keep the souls of humankind imprisoned in the world. It does this through story – specifically, a series of episodes that are elaborations of parts of the Gnostic creation myth that illustrate the personalities, motivations, and goals of these half-witted, lecherous, sadistic beings whom the Gnostics identified with other people’s gods.

The Reality of the Rulers assumes prior knowledge of the Gnostic creation story as told in, for example, the Secret Book of John, so it’s extremely helpful to have read that text or at least a summary of its creation narrative before reading the Reality of the Rulers.

The Reality of the Rulers was written and used by the group of Gnostics that modern scholars call the “classic Gnostics” or “Sethians.”[2] It was originally composed in Greek[3] sometime in the second or third century AD/CE.[4] It was probably written in either Alexandria, Egypt – an ancient cosmopolitan hub of learning where the anonymous author could have encountered and studied the various religious and philosophical traditions he or she drew from – or in Syria, since the text features a number of Syriac wordplays.[5] Today, only one copy of the text survives, a Coptic translation from the Nag Hammadi Library.[6] In the form in which it’s come down to us, the text seems somewhat disjointed and may be an amalgamation of pieces from two or more different sources.[7]

Scholarly opinion has been divided over whether the Reality of the Rulers was always a Christian text or originally a “Jewish Gnostic” text that was later “Christianized.”[8] In my view, at least, this matter was definitively settled by Elaine Pagels in her incisive paper “Exegesis and Exposition of the Genesis Creation Accounts in Selected Texts from Nag Hammadi,” in which she demonstrates that the Reality of the Rulers is steeped in the theology of the apostle Paul in such fundamental ways that the entire text is effectively an exegesis (interpretation) of writings attributed to Paul. In addition to stating at the outset that it aims to explain the meaning of the words ascribed to Paul in Ephesians 6:12 (“For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places”[9]), the Reality of the Rulers also draws heavily from Ephesians 3-5, 1 Corinthians 2, and especially 1 Corinthians 15. The text is therefore thoroughly Christian at its core.[10] (Besides, as I argue in The Origins of Gnosticism, there was never such a thing as “Jewish Gnosticism” in the first place.)

Thus, the “perfect man” or “true man” whose coming is foretold in the text by the angel Eleleth can be none other than Jesus, who had already long since lived and died by the time the Reality of the Rulers was written. (Such retrospective literary “prophecies” of Jesus are a common feature in Gnostic texts.)

The Nature of the Rulers (Hypostasis of the Archons) - Nag Hammadi Library Gnostic Scripture

Indeed, the Reality of the Rulers is closer to the Christian “mainstream” of its day than many other Gnostic scriptures are. The original meaning of the Gnostic creation myth, as exemplified by the Secret Book of John and many other classic Gnostic texts, was that the creation of the material world by the evil demiurge Yaldabaoth and the other rulers was a catastrophe that was contrary to the will of God. But the Reality of the Rulers holds that God was secretly guiding the activities of the rulers so that, without their knowing it, they were making possible the salvation of the sparks of divinity that had been lost when Yaldabaoth was born and cast out of Heaven (which the Gnostics called the “Pleroma” or “Fullness”). The world may appear to be a disaster, but despite all appearances, God still has ultimate control and he’s surreptitiously involved in the world at every turn.[11] This stands the original meaning of the Gnostic creation myth on its head in some ways and brings it closer to proto-orthodox Christianity.

Just as the Reality of the Rulers tries to have it both ways with regard to the worth of the material world, it also tries to have it both ways with regard to the identity of the god of the Hebrew scriptures. Most Christians of the second and third centuries believed that the creator god of Genesis was the same god from whom Jesus had come, but the Gnostics (and certain other types of early Christianity such as the Marcionites) believed that these were two different, and even opposed, entities. For the Gnostics, these were the demiurge and the true God. The Reality of the Rulers sometimes identifies the Jewish god with the demiurge, but at other times it identifies him with Sabaoth, a “good” ruler who repents and joins the side of the true God. Thus, Sabaoth is described using imagery drawn from depictions of the Jewish god in the first chapter of Ezekiel, one of the books of the Hebrew Bible.[12]

The following version of the Reality of the Rulers is my own rendering of the text based on the translations of Bentley Layton[13] and Marvin Meyer.[14] My aim has been to produce a version of the text that’s clearer and more readable than the available academic translations, while still being closely based on them to ensure accuracy. I hope you find it useful. For more on my methods and goals, see A Note on My Renderings of the Gnostic Texts.

The Reality of the Rulers

Prologue

With regard to the reality of the rulers (archons), the apostle Paul said of these dark powers that “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers of this world and the multitude of demons.” The Father of truth inspired the great apostle to write those words. Since you asked about what these rulers really are, I have sent you this letter.

The Demiurge and His Children

Their master (the demiurge Yaldabaoth) is blind. Out of conceit and lack of gnosis he declared with power, “I am the only god; there is no other god but me.” By saying this, he sinned against the Fullness (Pleroma). When his words reached that incorruptible realm, a voice rang out from it that said, “You are wrong, Samael” – a name that means “Blind God.”

Samael’s thoughts, too, were blind. He expressed his power through blasphemy. Wisdom (Sophia) guided him down to chaos and the abyss, his mother, so that his power could be enacted there. And Wisdom established each of his children according to his or her particular traits, based on the model of the eternal realm above. For the visible realm was made after the model of the invisible realm.

Incorruptibility gazed down from the Fullness into the waters, and her image was reflected in the waters. The rulers became infatuated with it. But although they badly wanted to seize for themselves the image they had seen in the waters, they were too weak, for their minds could not grasp the ways of truly spiritual beings. For the rulers were from below, but Incorruptibility was from above.

And why had Incorruptibility gazed down into that place? She had done so by the will of the Father in order to unite everything with his light.

The Creation of Adam

The rulers, whose bodies are both male and female, and whose heads are those of beasts, began scheming. They said, “Come, let us create a human being out of earthly soil,” so that their new creation would be a completely earthly being. They molded the soil into a shape that in some ways resembled their own bodies, yet in other ways resembled the image of God that they had glimpsed in the waters.

They said, “Come, let us seize the image we saw in the waters by the body we have made for it.” Since they were powerless, they did not comprehend the power of God. Their master breathed into the body’s face, and it came alive. Yet it lay on the ground for several days, because they were powerless to give it the ability to stand up. They stood over it huffing and puffing like storm winds in the hope of catching the image they had seen in the waters. But they did not know the source of the power of that image.

All of this happened by the will of the Father of the Fullness.

The Spirit saw the human being lying on the ground and came down from the Fullness to take up residence within him, so that he became a living soul. And the Spirit named him “Adam,” because he had been found lying on the ground. A voice from Incorruptibility came down to support Adam.

The rulers brought to Adam all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the sky so that he could name each of them. They placed Adam in their garden for him to tend it. And they gave him an order: “Eat from every tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Do not even touch that one. For the day you eat from it will be the day of your death.” But they did not realize what they had done. By the will of the Father, they said this in a manner that made Adam want to eat from that tree, which would enable him to see the rulers differently than a solely fleshly being could see them.

The Creation of Eve

The rulers consulted with each other and said, “Come, let us make a deep sleep fall over Adam.” And he slept. Now this deep sleep was a lack of gnosis. They cut his side open and extracted from it a living woman, his spirit. Then they patched him up with flesh where she had been, and in place of a spirit he had only a mind.

The spiritual woman came to him and told him, “Arise, Adam.” When he opened his eyes and saw her, he said, “I am alive because of you, so I name you ‘Mother of the Living.’ You are my mother and my midwife, the woman through whom I was born.”

The rulers approached Adam and saw him talking to his partner. They became greatly agitated with lust for her, and they said, “Come, let us mate with her.” They ran after her as she laughed at them for their stupidity and blindness. When they caught her, she transformed into the tree of life, leaving behind only a shadow that looked like her physical form. The rulers befouled the shadow. By defiling the body they had molded in their own image, they condemned themselves.

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

Eve's SECRET DAUGHTER DISCOVERED in 2,000 Year Old Book

The female spirit went into a snake, and it became a teacher. It began to teach Adam and Eve by saying to them, “What did the rulers tell you? That you were to eat from every tree except the tree of knowledge of good and evil?”

Eve – the earthly Eve, for the spiritual Eve was now in the snake – replied, “Not only did they tell us to not eat from that tree, but to not even touch it. For, they said, the day we eat from it will be the day of our deaths.”

The snake, the teacher, said, “You will not die that way. They said that to you out of envy. Instead, your eyes will be opened and you will come to be like gods, recognizing good and evil.” And with that, the female spiritual teacher left the snake, and it became a merely earthly thing once more.

The fleshly woman plucked one of the fruits of the tree and ate it. She gave some to her husband, and both of those fleshly beings ate. They realized that they lacked gnosis and were gravely flawed. When they saw that they were denuded of spirit, they gathered fig leaves and tied them around their private parts.

The chief ruler came and cried, “Adam, where are you?” For he was unaware of what had happened.

Adam answered, “I heard your voice, and because I was naked I was afraid. So I hid.”

The chief ruler said, “Why were you hiding? You would only have done that if you had eaten from the single tree from which I told you not to eat. You have eaten from it!”

Adam said, “The woman you made for me gave me fruit from that tree, and I ate it.” The conceited ruler cursed the woman.

But the woman said, “I ate because the snake lied to me.” The rulers turned to the snake and cursed it. They did not realize that they themselves had made the snake. The rulers’ curse lay upon the snake from that day until the day when the perfect man was to come.

The rulers then turned to Adam and his wife and banished them from the garden. They, too, lay under the rulers’ curse. The rulers plunged them into a life of toil and distraction, so that they would be consumed with earthly tasks and unable to concern themselves with the matters of the Holy Spirit.

The Children of Eve

After this, Eve bore a son by the rulers: Cain, who tilled the soil. Adam slept with his wife, and she conceived again and bore Abel, who looked after flocks of sheep. Cain made a sacrifice to God from the crops of his fields, but Abel made a sacrifice from his lambs. God welcomed Abel’s sacrifice, but he did not accept Cain’s. Cain, fleshly man that he was, went after his brother Abel.

And God asked Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”

Cain replied, “What am I, my brother’s keeper?”

God said to Cain, “Listen! The voice of your brother’s blood is crying out to me. You have sinned with your mouth, and your sin will come back upon you. You will be reduced to a life of moaning and quivering on the ground, and anyone who puts you out of your misery will have seven vengeances unleashed upon them.”

Adam slept with his partner Eve. She conceived again, and bore Seth. She said, “God has given me another son to make up for Abel.”

Eve became pregnant once more and bore Norea. Eve said, “He has given me a virgin to be a helper for many generations of humankind.” Norea is the virgin whom the rulers were unable to violate.

And humankind was fruitful and multiplied.

The Great Flood

The rulers consulted with each other and said, “Come, let our hands send forth a flood that will annihilate all flesh, both human and animal.”

But the ruler Sabaoth had misgivings about their plan. He went to Noah and said, “Build for yourself an ark from wood that does not rot. Take your children and the beasts and the birds – both small and large – inside the ark, set it on Mount Sir, and hide in it.”

Norea went to Noah and asked to board the ark. But Noah refused, so she blew on the ark, and it was consumed by fire. So Noah built a second ark.

The Rulers’ Attempt to Rape Norea

The rulers went to Norea to seduce her. Their master said to her, “Your mother Eve submitted to us.”

But Norea turned to face them and replied, “You are the accursed rulers of darkness. You did not mate with my mother, but with a female from among yourselves. I did not descend from you. I descended from the world above.”

The conceited ruler turned to her with a face like a black fire, and he snarled, “You must submit to us just like your mother Eve did, for I have been given [text missing].”

Norea turned away and cried out with the power of spirit to the holy God of the Fullness, “Save me from the clutches of these depraved rulers, and do it now!”

A great angel came down from the Fullness and said to her, “Why are you crying out to God? Why are you so brash toward the Holy Spirit?”

Norea asked, “Who are you?”

The depraved rulers had fled. The angel said, “I am Eleleth, Intelligence, the great angel who dwells with the Holy Spirit. I have been sent to talk to you and to save you from brutal hands. I will teach you about your root.”

I, Norea, cannot articulate how powerful that angel is. It looks like gold clothed in snow. My mouth becomes silent when I think of its power and the sight of its face.

The great angel Eleleth said to me, “I am Intelligence. I am one of the Four Luminaries who dwell with the Great Invisible Spirit. Do you think you are vulnerable to any of the rulers? None of them has any power against the root of truth, for in the end someone will arrive on its behalf, and he will vanquish the rulers. The rulers cannot violate you or the unshakeable race, for your home is where Incorruptibility and the Virgin Spirit dwell, a place that cannot be assailed by the rulers of chaos or their world.”

Eleleth’s Speech to Norea

I said, “Lord, tell me about the power of these rulers. Where did they come from? What is their nature? What are they made out of? Who created them and their power?”

The great angel Eleleth, who is Intelligence, replied, “Incorruptibility dwells in infinite eternal realms. Wisdom, who is called Faith (Pistis), wanted to have a child by herself, without the involvement of her partner, and she gave birth to something in the heavens.

“A veil lies between the world above and the world below. A solitary shadow was cast beneath that veil, and that shadow became matter. What Sophia had given birth to took shape in matter, like an aborted fetus. He took his form from the shadow, and became a conceited beast like a lion. And because he was a material thing, he was a hermaphrodite.

“When he opened his eyes, he saw such a great heap of matter that it stretched beyond the horizon. He was filled with conceit, and he proclaimed, ‘I am the only god; there is no other god but me.’

“By saying this, he sinned against the Fullness. A voice came from above the tyrant’s realm and said, ‘You are wrong, Samael’ – a name that means ‘Blind God.’

“The blind god said, ‘If anything other than me exists, show it to me!’

“So Wisdom stretched forth her hand and made light shine upon matter, even into that place of chaos. Then she withdrew her light, and darkness fell upon matter once again.

“Since the ruler was a hermaphrodite, he was able to create an immense realm by himself. He gave birth to seven children who were hermaphrodites like their father. And he said to them, ‘I am the God of all.’

“Life (Zoe), the daughter of Wisdom, exclaimed to him, ‘You are wrong, Fool (Sakla)’ – who is also called Yaldabaoth. She breathed into his face, and her breath became an angel of fire. The angel bound Yaldabaoth and threw him down into Tartarus, the lowest part of the abyss.

“When Yaldabaoth’s son Sabaoth saw just how powerful that angel was, he repented. He came to loathe his father and matter, his mother, and he disowned them. He sang hymns of worship up to Wisdom and her daughter Life. Wisdom and Life carried him up to the seventh heaven, just below the veil between the world above and the world below, and established him there. Since he is above the forces of chaos, he is called ‘Sabaoth, lord of the forces.’

“After this had come to pass, Sabaoth made for himself a great four-sided chariot of cherubim and countless angels to assist him and regale him with music. Wisdom put her daughter Life at his right hand to teach him about the things of the eighth heaven, and the angel of fury at his left hand. Ever since, Sabaoth’s right has been called “life,” while his left has become a symbol of the oppression of the tyrant’s realm.

“When Yaldabaoth looked up and saw Sabaoth seated in glory high above him, he was jealous of him. Thus jealousy was born. Jealousy was a hermaphrodite like its father, and it gave birth to death. Death spawned children of its own and put each of them in charge of a region of the heavens until all the heavens teemed with their multitudes.

“But all of this came to pass by the will of the Father of the Fullness, after the model of the world above, for chaos was unknowingly planting the seeds of its own undoing.

“Now I have taught you about the reality of the rulers, of matter, of their father, and of their world.”

The Children of Norea

I, Norea, wondered, “Lord, am I a thing of matter like they are?”

Eleleth answered, “You and your children are from the original Father. Their souls come from above, from pristine light. Because of the spirit of truth within them, the rulers cannot come near them. All who know the ways of truth are deathless as others die all around them.

“But your descendants will remain hidden for now. After three ages, they will reveal who they truly are and liberate others from the chains of the rulers’ errors.”

I asked, “Lord, how long will it be until that happens?”

He replied, “It will not happen until the true man from above comes in an earthly body and reveals the spirit of truth that the Father has placed within them.

“Then that true man will teach them everything, and will anoint them with eternity’s oil, which was given to him by the unbowed race.

“Then their thoughts will be freed from blindness. They will trample death, which the rulers imposed upon them, under their feet. And they will ascend to the place of infinite light where they belong.

“Then the rulers will surrender their domain. Their angels will wail over their downfall, and their demons will grieve over their death.

“Then all the children of light will truly know their root, the Father of the Fullness, and the Holy Spirit. With one voice, they will say, ‘The truth of the Father is just. The Son is the true ruler.’ And all will exclaim through eternal ages, ‘Holy, holy, holy! Amen.’”

References:

[1] Lewis, Nicola Denzey. 2013. Introduction to “Gnosticism:” Ancient Voices, Christian Worlds. Oxford University Press. p. 134-135.

[2] Meyer, Marvin (trans.). 2008. “The Nature of the Rulers.” In The Nag Hammadi Library. Edited by Marvin Meyer. p. 187.

[3] Lewis, Nicola Denzey. 2013. Introduction to “Gnosticism:” Ancient Voices, Christian Worlds. Oxford University Press. p. 132-133.

[4] Meyer, Marvin (trans.). 2008. “The Nature of the Rulers.” In The Nag Hammadi Library. Edited by Marvin Meyer. p. 190.

[5] Lewis, Nicola Denzey. 2013. Introduction to “Gnosticism:” Ancient Voices, Christian Worlds. Oxford University Press. p. 132-133.

Gnostic Catechism: Encounters with Aliens in a Mystery School Text by John Lash 2005 and Red Ice Creations The Gnostic Theory of Alien Intrusion

 

by John Lash

2005

from MetaHistory Website

Spanish version

Here and there the Coptic Gnostic materials contain passages that describe encounters with the ET-like beings, sometimes with explicit advice about how to handle these entities.

• What beliefs are implied in such testimony?

• And what are we to believe about such testimony?

I will attempt to address both these questions in this brief topical essay.

 

Occult Instruction:

Nag Hammadi Scrolls Tell a Story of these Strange Beings Known as ARCHONS… Do They Really Exist?

For a first-hand look at the testimony, let's consider a passage from The First Apocalypse of James (NHC V, 3), a revelation dialogue in which an unnamed teacher (the "Lord" or "Master") confers secret knowledge upon a Gnostic named James:

The Master said:

James, behold, I shall reveal to you the path of your redemption. Whenever you are seized and you undergo death-pangs (mortal fear), a multitude of Archons may turn on you, thinking they can capture you. And in particular, three of them will seize you, those who pose as toll collectors.

 

Not only do they demand toll, but they take away souls by theft.

• Now, when you come under their power, one of them who is the overseer will say to you: "Who are you, and where are you from?"

• You are then to say to him, "I am a child of humanity and I am from the Source."

• He will then say to you, "What sort of child are you, and to what Source do you belong?"

• You are to say to him, "I am from the pre-existent Source, and I am the offspring of the Source."

• Then he will say to you, "Why were you sent out from the Source?"

• Then you are to say to him, "I came from the Pre-existent One so that I might behold those of my kind and those who are alien."

• And he will say to you, "What are these alien beings?"

• You are to say to him: "They are not entirely alien, for they are from the Fallen Sophia (Achamoth), the female divinity who produced them when she brought the human race down from the Source, the realm of the Pre-Existent One. So they are not entirely alien, but they are our kin. They are indeed so because she who is their matrix, Sophia Achamoth, is from the Source. At the same time they are alien because Sophia did not combine with her like in the Source (her divine male counterpart), when she produced them."

• When he also says to you, "Where will you go now?"

• You are to say to him, "To the place when I came, the Source, there shall I return." And if you respond in this manner, you will escape their attacks.

(NHC V, 3. 33 - 34: 1- 25. Translation from NHLE 1990, pp. 265-6 and Kurt Rudolf, Gnosis, p. 174-5.)

Considerable information is packed into this exchange.

 

The resemblance to contemporary reports of close encounters is undeniable: the Archons induce a state of mortal panic, they often appear in threes, and they perform abductions ("take away souls by theft"). These details present a striking match to contemporary ET/UFO lore.

 

But in an equally striking departure from the current literature, the Gnostic teacher gives explicit instructions on how to face the alien entities.

 

The vast amount of testimony on the ET/UFO phenomenon available today presents almost nothing on defense against alien intrusion. Contactees and abductees are passively witnessed, overwhelmed, and overpowered by the aliens. But Gnostic writings not only describe such encounters, but they also prescribe defensive action.

 

The Master offers cogent counsel for keeping the Archons in their place.

Gnosis is a remembering of our origins. The student is instructed to remember the cosmic birthright of humankind and to affirm its direct link to the Pleroma, the Source. Specifically, the student is taught to recall and repeat the key episode in Gnostic mythology, the fall of the Aeon Sophia, and thus effectuate a defense against the Archons.

 

By recounting the myth of their origins, the student demonstrates initiated knowledge of the origin and identity of the entities s/he is facing. Intentional recall of cosmic matters disempowers the Archons. This, at least, is a clear inference from the above passage.

 

The tactic of remembrance accords closely with indigenous wisdom - consider, for instance, the saying of the Na-Khi, a Tibetan people of southeastern China:

"One must relate the origin of the medicine, otherwise it cannot work its magic."

Shamans heal, not only by their knowledge of the properties of plants but also by their recounting the story of the plant.

 

Likewise, Gnostics defeated the Archons with the "medicine" (occult power) of mythological recall.

The Coptic materials become increasingly relevant as we realize they do not merely present pedantic or recondite commentaries on a dead religion, but vital insights on the timeless spiritual dilemmas of humanity, insights as valid today as they were 2000 years ago.

 

Describing the find at Nag Hammadi, Tobias Churton writes,

"Had Mohammed Ali not broken open the jar, we would not be able to hear these things. In the truest sense of the word, these things are dynamite. One might have imagined headlines throughout the world..."

The Gnostics, p. 12

But there were no such headlines, even in the tabloids.

 

It took many years before the codexes were translated and still, even today, no scholar will allow that these rare Coptic codices contain reliable accounts of encounters with ET-like entities.

 

Ideological Virus

In another passage of The First Apocalypse of James, the Master refers to those people "who exist as the type of the Archons" (30: 20).

 

Gnostics were not only alert to the intrusion of the Archons, but they were also acutely aware of the possibility of humans becoming totally "Archontized."

 

This threat appears to have emerged in a particularly alarming way in that era to which Philip K. Dick often refers:

the first century of the Common Era, when the incarnation of Christ is said to have occurred, according to Christian belief.

Both the time and the place where Archontic molding of the human character is set in strongly are specified in the Nag Hammadi texts. In his Gnostic view of the human condition, Dick assumed that the spiritual life of humanity was arrested at that moment.

 

It is as if the behavior of those "who exist as the type of Archons" locked into place in that era, and came to dominate all subsequent centuries - until the moment in 1945 when the Nag Hammadi texts were discovered.

In a close parallel to Philip K. Dick's vision of "the Empire," Wilhelm Reich saw the rise of a similar syndrome which he characterized as "the mechanico-mystical" complex (see The Mass Psychology of Fascism.) Its signature is "authoritarian ideology," the mindset of fascism and patriarchal domination.

 

Significantly, archon was the common term for "governer," or "authority" in Roman times.

 

In some translations of the Coptic materials, archon (plural, archontoi) is rendered as "the authorities." Reich's analysis of what I propose to call the mystico-fascist complex focuses on National Socialism, the Nazi movement, which he experienced first-hand, but The Mass Psychology of Fascism contains ample references to Catholicism and the Holy Roman Empire, the millennial ancestor of the mystico-fascist program.

For more comments on this subject viewed in a contemporary vein, see Armageddon Politics.

In allusion to the fascist ideology of the "authorities", Philip K. Dick wrote:

"The Empire is the institution, the codification, of derangement; it is insane and imposes its insanity on us by violence, since its nature is a violent one."

Valis, p. 235, citing entry 41 from "The Exegesis."

This is purely a Gnostic insight, compatible with passages in the NHC and deeply resonant with Reich's views on the massenpsychosen of Roman Christianity.

 

It might be argued that the Nazis were not Christians, but in fact, Hitler imagined himself as a Grail Knight, modeled after Wagner's Parsifal, and the savior complex of Judaeo-Christian belief is wholly transposed into Nazi racial ideology - hence the "Aryan Christ" identified, and, to some degree, embraced by C. G. Jung.

 

The Holy Reich, published in 2004 by Richard Steigman-Gall, professor of history at Kent State University in the USA, argues that Hitler was sincere in calling himself a Christian, and reveals to what extent Christian ideology was embraced by the Nazi party and contributed to the advancement of their cause.

Wilhelm Reich warned that since the breakdown of the pre-Christian ethos of earth-oriented Paganism,

"the biological core of humanity has been without social representation."

(Ibid., p. xii)

This is a staggering observation, to say the least.

The "authorities" exhibit the behavior of spiritual zombies, people who exemplify a baffling mix of mystical and militaristic fixations.

 

(What I have called behavioral cloning - see below insert - is widely evident in both militaristic and mystical behavior, such as we see today in neocon religious realpolitik, although it is also embodied in the mass conformity of global consumerism and the rites of technophilia.)

 

 

Behavioral Cloning  from MetaHistory Website   Proposed term for the hive behavior of a society driven by unquestioned beliefs or by technological prosthetics. Both beliefs (especially religious beliefs) and prosthetics (that is, tools that replace human faculties and functions) depend on their efficacy on a prior condition: disembodiment of the human subject, or the strong tendency toward disembodiment. In the long-term overview developed on this site, behavioral cloning is seen as developing historically in three phases: Initial Phase: introduction of religious ideology of salvation, including the idea of the Incarnation. Approximately 1800 BCE - 400 AD. 1800 is the date generally assigned to the era of the Biblical Patriarch Abraham.   Middle Phase: repression of body knowledge in favor of abstraction. Approximately 400 BCE - 1200 AD (the Dark Ages), overlapping and extending the Initial Phase. 400 BCE marks the death of Socrates and the rise of Platonic abstraction.   Terminal Phase: replacement of human faculties, and eventually the human organism itself, by artificial entities. Approximately 900 CE to the present, overlapping the Middle Phase, with a surge at 1600 (the Enlightenment). The date 900 CE represents the introduction of the zero into Western science. There is an overall continuity here in which religion (Judeo-Christian ideology) and Platonic philosophy (the abstracting tendency) combine to turn the species away from Sacred Nature; and then, when the quest for knowledge of the natural world is revived in the Enlightenment (1600), the disembodiment has already advanced so far that the formulations of science can only continue the deviation, and extrapolate it beyond correction.   This trend culminates today in the fantasy of running the world on artificial intelligence and replacing humans with robots or cyborgs. This entire trajectory of development would not have been possible if the quest for transcendence from the blocking of the ego-self had not been diverted into a quest of the ego-self to transcend nature.   (By "blocking of the ego-self," I mean the psychological necessity of the social ego to turn off its connection with nature so that it can develop a field of human-based, culture-oriented relations. Genuine transcendence, such as was offered in the Mystery School initiations, involved temporary dissolving of the ego-blocks and melting of self-consciousness so that nature is once again encountered as the numinous source of life.) In his landmark essay, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," IT (informational technology) pioneer Bill Joy wrote: Once an intelligent robot exists, it is only a small step to a robot species - to an intelligent robot that can make evolved copies of itself... But if we are downloaded into our technology, what are the chances that we will thereafter be ourselves or even human?   It seems to me far likely that a robotic existence will not be like a human one in any sense we understand, that the robots would in no sense be our children, that on this path our humanity may well be lost. (In Taking the Red Pill, ed. by Glen Yeffeth, p. 250ff.) In the terminal phase of behavioral cloning, a powerful fantasy comes into play -  but it is just a fantasy.   This is the widely hyped claim that AI (artificial intelligence), will replace human intelligence, and humans in the future will become cyborgs. The tool for achieving this goal is IT, informational technology. The presumed outcome of this transmogrification will be AL (artificial life.)   This entire proposed development shows how the Dreaming of the Archons intrudes upon the human mind and displaces our species from its proper relation to Gaia's Dreaming. In reality, the Alien Dreaming is a discarnate fantasy that cannot be realized by humankind because we are an embodied species embedded in a natural habitat, and our self-awareness depends on direct mirroring in nature. However, due to the disease of narcissism (obsession with the socially mirrored ego-self), we are prone to take the Alien Dreaming for a real prospect. IT is the tool we are using to write ourselves out of Gaia's agenda. By themselves, the Archons can do nothing but insinuate. They rely heavily on our tendency to give over our power by a wrong use of imagination.   Let's recall the alchemical teaching quoted in Sources of the Gaia Mythos: "Let thy imagination be guided wholly by nature... And observe according to nature, through whom the substances regenerate themselves in the bowels of the earth. And imagine this with true and not with fantastic imagination." Our problem - without question, the single most threatening spiritual problem of our species - is that we do not adequately or consistently distinguish the true from the fantastic imagination. How we lost the "Old Gnosis" (illumined body-knowing of Sacred Nature), and how Judeo-Christian monotheism gradually undermined the imaginative faculties we need to co-evolve with Gaia, are lucidly explained by Theodore Roszak in Where the Wasteland Ends. One of the most reliable tactics of the Archons is Simulation (Hal in Coptic).   We might assume, then, that they are capable of simulating life to the point where their simulation cannot be distinguished from the real thing. Not so. The Archons cannot make pearls from plastic, but we can become so dull in sense perception that we cannot distinguish plastic from pearls.   Gnostic seers ascertained that Archontic simulation is largely a faking process, like the special effects of the Wizard of Oz.   Our alien cousins cannot actually simulate the human organism, but if they can convince us that they can do so, we risk making the simulation look real because we grant it a reality in our own imaginations. Gnostics taught that the Archons can do nothing without our complicity - and, in fact, we are the ones who do most of the work for them!   The power of human imagination is immense (Gnostics called this faculty the luminous epinoia), and the Archons rely on stealing its inventive fire to pass off their simulations as real. Consistent with this tactic, the Alien Dreaming seduces us into believing that all kinds of ridiculous things are possible, or even have been achieved already. The fear factor plays beautifully into our inflated expectations. For instance, we live in breathless anticipation that a human being will be physically cloned, perhaps with a little help from our alien cousins on the biotechnological points.   Fearing this will occur, or eagerly waiting for it to occur, we do not see what is actually occurring, what is actually happening to us. It is as if we lived in a building under the constant threat of an earthquake while acid is silently eating away the foundations. This tactic of distraction, or misdirection, is extremely effective. Consequently, the world today is constantly jolted with the immanence of human cloning, while behavioral cloning proceeds unnoticed. Common forms of behavioral cloning are: rote learning of religious scriptures (often accompanied by shaking the head, seen with devout Jews at the Wailing Wall, or the entire body, seen in Muslim schools where children are forcefully indoctrinated) conformity to empty religious formulas and vicarious rites (in the Catholic mass, for instance) usage of mobile telephones (involving the same set of gestures around the world: eyes fixed on keyboard to text messages, phone-set to ear while walking, eating, driving, etc) flag-waving and slogan-chanting at political rallies the spiked fingers gesture of heaving masses at rock concerts (Who remembers that at the original Woodstock gathering, Frank Zappa told the immense crowd of hippies, "You are all wearing uniforms"?) mass gymnastic spectacles in Korea and China dance crazes and mindless imitation of dance moves modeled by pop idols and mimicked by "Star Academy" candidates accumulation of designer labels and chic logos self-cloning via video-game "avatars".... Furious and unabated, these and other forms of behavioral cloning proceed without the blink of an eye.   Indeed, they are encouraged and enforced at every turn, especially where financial gain is at stake. Their effect is to reinforce the zombie mentality that allows them to occur in the first place.   The dynamic of behavioral cloning is a classic case of "positive feedback" - an unfortunate designation, however. In the language of complexity theory (formerly, chaos theory) positive feedback is a self-enforcing loop that eventually spins out of control and self-destructs.   On an icy road, when a car begins to slide out of control, the smart driver will steer slightly and steadily in the direction the car's rear end is shifting, thus correcting the spin. This exemplifies "negative feedback," but I propose it would be better called corrective feedback. Many of the natural processes on earth, such as the formation of the polar icecaps and the carbon cycle, demonstrate corrective feedback. If the driver on an icy road panics and makes the seemingly logical move to steer out of the slide (i.e., away from it), the car goes into an uncontrollable spin. This is positive feedback, but I would prefer to call it dystrophic feedback. Dystrophy (from dys-, "abnormal, impaired," + tropos, "turn.") is a physical disorder of the limbs characterized by the wasting of organs and tissues, as in muscular dystrophy. Dystrophy - literally, "a turn for the worse" - is more radical than entropy, which is merely the passive running down of a system.   Dystrophic feedback leads to the violent disintegration of an organism or machine. In short, it is the path of catastrophic breakdown. Behavioral cloning is extremely deceptive because the high degree of conformity it demands gives the impression of order and stability. Yet a society driven by behavioral cloning will, sooner or later, enter the path of catastrophic breakdown. Behavioral cloning is the norm in societies where the ruling powers are blindly driven to pathological extremes, such as the Sun sacrifice madness of the Aztecs.   As noted above, behavioral cloning is driven from within by belief and lured or entrained from without by technology and trickery (i.e., "magic," as in the case of Aztec magical ceremonies to feed blood to the dying sun).   When beliefs and technology combine, the formula is LETHAL. Gnostics taught that the Archons do not autonomously cause us to deviate from our proper course of evolution, but they exploit our tendency to let our errors extrapolate beyond the scale of correction -  i.e., to verge on dystrophic feedback. To my knowledge, no other ancient teaching carries such a clear predictive view of the risk of evolutional deviance inherent to human social behavior.   The Gnostics may have been silenced 1600 years ago, but they can still speak vividly to us today. The dynamics of behavioral cloning can also be understood by way of two seminal ideas proposed by cultural anthropologist Rene Girard: mimetic desire the mechanism of unanimity

 

 

According to Reich, these fixations focused on the master fixation on a transcendent God beyond the Earth, arise from the repression and displacement of somatic sensations, especially sexual-genital feelings.

 

Philip K. Dick agreed with Reich in observing that the mystico-fascist ideology grows like armor around people who adopt these fixations, either through indoctrination or intimidation ("conversion").

 

The mystico-fascist ideology operates like a virus,

"imposing its form on its enemies. Thereby it becomes it enemies."

Valis, p. 235

The ideology of the authorities can infect even those who resist it. Hence it turns humanity against itself.

But it would appear that some Gnostics were immune to infection - not by accident, but due to their deliberate practice of orgiastic sexual techniques to produce immunity, and due, in equal measure, to their explicit teachings on the Archons and how to resist them, as seen in the above passage from The First Apocalypse of James.

 

Gnostic observers on the ground when Christianity arose saw salvationist ideology exactly the way Philip K. Dick did: as a virus. An ideological virus, to be precise.

 

Pagan intellectuals of the day even used that very term for the fanaticism of the converts. Gnostics saw the tyranny of belief, of metaphysical fantasies that underwrite militaristic agendas, in the rise of early Christianity.

 

We can only imagine what they would see today in the political religiosity of the American right.

 

Defending Humanity:

The Nature of the Rulers (Hypostasis of the Archons) - Nag Hammadi Library Gnostic Scripture

What are we to make, then, of Gnostic beliefs about the Archons?

 

It might be said that Gnostics believed that only by confronting what is insane and inhumane in ourselves, can we truly define what is human. In essence, to define humanity is to defend it against distortion.

 

Gnostics asserted that the capacity for distortion of humanitas, or dehumanization, is inherent in our minds, but this capacity alone is not potentially deviant.

 

Since we are endowed with nous, a dose of divine intelligence, we are able to detect and correct distorted thinking. We can master what Tibetan Buddhists call krol'pa, "thoughts that lead astray," mental fixations that turn us away from Humanitas, our true identity.

However, Gnostics also warned of an alien spin that can add a truly deviant element to our thinking.

 

The effect of the Archons is not to make us err, but to make us, largely through dullness and distraction, disregard our errors, so that they extrapolate beyond the scale of correction.

The Archons cast a 'trance" over Adam... They put him into a sleepy state, but it was his perception they dulled... They make our hearts heavy that we may not pay attention and may not see. So we lose the reflection of the Divine Light within us.. . [Thus the Archons acted on humanity] with a view to deceive.

When the life-spirit increases and the illuminating power of the body strengthens the soul, no one can lead you astray into the lessening of your humanity. But those on whom the counterfeit spirit preys are alienated from humanity and deviated... The despicable spirit gains strength by leading us astray.

 

The Archons burden the soul, attracting us to works of evil, and pull us down into oblivion, making us forget who we are.
The Apocryphon of John, II, 22: 14-10, through 27-20

The catechism on alien encounters in The First Apocalypse of James is not exceptional.

 

A great deal of Gnostic teaching was dedicated to the theory of error I have just summarized. In a practical sense, Gnostic teachers in the Mystery Schools instructed the neophytes in how to face the Archons both as alien intruders, comparable to the Greys and Reptilians of contemporary lore, and as tendencies in their minds.

 

The detection of Archontic intrusion in both these modes of experience seems to be unique to the finely nuanced noetic science of the Mysteries.

In the Gnostic view, human beings "who exist as the type of the Archons" are those who blindly follow religious ideologies of an insane and inhumane nature, for it is primarily through religious beliefs that the Archons intrude upon us.

 

Behavior driven by such beliefs produces pathological personality fixations, resulting in the spiritual zombie.

 

All scholars agree that some Gnostics condemned equally the Jewish origins of the Christian salvationist program, and the Pauline-Johannine program itself. Doing so, they did not spread a hate message against anyone. Rather, they attempted to expose what they perceived to be the hateful and deceiving message disguised in the Judeo-Christian ideology of salvation.

 

At the source of this message, they detected the subliminal intrusion of the Archons into the human mind. Hence the thrust and preponderance (more than half of all surviving material, by my estimate) of politically and theologically incorrect passages in the Coptic materials.

Whether or not Gnostics were delusional about the Archons is a private judgment call.

 

But a fair and open-minded reading of the Coptic texts will not yield much evidence for derangement on their part. The seers who exposed derangement were not deranged. They were sober and methodical in describing what they knew, and extremely conscientious in prescribing action to face the perceived threat.

 

They believed that they really had identified that most baffling of all enigmas: the root cause of inhumanity in human nature.

What are we to believe about all this today?

 

There is an issue of credibility here, of course - that is to say, we may consider the source of Gnostic teachings apart from their content. But Gnosis is by definition a matter of knowing and not of believing. It is about enlightenment, not faith.

 

To give Gnostics credit for actually knowing what they claimed to know is only the first step. Beyond that, we must confirm what they knew by our own resources, our own faculties.

 

This is the perennial challenge of Gnosis, the living, ever-renewing cognition of the human spirit.

Knowledge of that which is alive can alone banish terror.
Wilhelm Reich

The Function of the Orgasm