Gaia vs. The Off-Planet Father

Responses in the text:

With some reservation, I will respond to the post of Mr Mercurius concerning Christian Gnosticism. To be blunt, I am not inclined to dialogue with anyone who cannot show in some elementary manner that they get what I am talking about in the first place. Otherwise, where is the balance of the exchange? Readers be warned that the post of Mr Mercurius is not a response to my first article on this site. He does not address or reflect on a single point in my argument about the life-destructive impact of off-planet religious paternalism (I am with you 100% on this aspect of your vision). Instead, he takes the article as the occasion to protest against my disregard for the so-called (not “so-called”. I speak of an authentic Mystery tradition, with authentic observance. There’s nothing “so-called” about it. How are you in a position to dismiss Rosicrucianism? Just because it’s not a valid Mystery tradition TO YOU doesn’t mean it’s not a valid Mystery Tradition for many others. If I told you that I participate in a Rosicrucian Mystery School, what gives you the right to dismiss it as “so-called”? I’m sure you would think it ignorant and destructive to dismiss the Pagan Mysteries without experiencing them first-hand, so why are you doing the same for the Christian Mysteries?) Christian Mysteries, and to scold me both on my lack of learning and my initiatory failings.

To set the record straight: The statement that “all the Mysteries were dedicated to the Magna Mater, the Great Mother,” is not my claim. It is lifted directly from the writings of the Church fathers who condemned the Pagan Mysteries as heresy and perversion. (To be clear, I am enthusiastically with you on your harsh indictment of the “church fathers.” This is an issue over which we should feed a kindred bond. Before I had my first encounter with the etheric Christ, I was wholly “pagan” (and still very much am…) who hated [archonic] Christianity with every bone in my body, for the very reasons you’ve stated quite brilliantly in your book. Having had a number of life-changing encounters with the “etheric Christ,” I am still just as “pagan” as before, but with an additional esoteric Christian influence. It’s not an “either/or” issue, but a “both/and” one.)

Hippolytus, I believe, made this true observation in the Refutation of all Heresies. He was of course referring to the Pagan Mysteries, which are non-Christian (NOT true. They are anti-archonic. They are only “non-christian” to the extent that you’re limiting your use of the word “Christian” to its tragically archonic imprisonment. Seeing as how this represents 99.99% of what presently can be called “Christianity,” I suppose I can see why you feel this way. However, that 0.01% is enough to create a need to more clearly distinguish between “Christianity” and “Archonic Christianity.” Rosicrucian Christianity transcends your conception of a division between Pagan and Christian. The Rosicrucians were BOTH Pagan and Christian—or rather, they transcending this illusory division all together. To them, there was no divide, because the Pagan Mysteries were the mysteries of the Holy Spirit, and the “Christian Mysteries” where the point at which the EARTHLY Mysteries of the Holy Spirit became harmoniously united with the Celestial mysteries. This link between the earth and the heavens was called “the Golden Chain,” and from this view, God is not “otherworldly” but radically embedded in the earth. Judeo-Christian’s paternalistic God is only “Otherworldly” in the EXOTERIC conception. Esoterically understood, God is immanent in nature, AND also a super celestial monad… one is an earthly reflection of the other… as above, so below. The Rosicrucian conception of God is not merely “earthly” per se, nor “extraterrestrial” per se.) and pre-Christian, predating redemptive religion by many thousands of years (Actually, the Egyptian Mysteries worked with a “redemptive” archetypal myth… Osiris played the role of the “redeemer,” and this predates Pagan gnosticism. Even in Shamanism, the idea of the “wounded-healer” borrows from the “dying God” mythos, so in a sense the “redeemer complex” is as old as shamanism itself. The mystery of the dying god certainly predates the Mystery of Golgotha. But the Mystery of Golgotha concretized the dying god myth, in such a way that an event that typically only occurred within the confines of the Egyptian Mystery schools was played out on the world stage. The Mystery of Golgotha marks the moment where the Pagan Mysteries (the mystery of the dismemberment of the body and resurrection of the spirit in the “organic light”) were demonstrated on the world stage. I draw from Steiner here, but this resonates deeply with my personal experience, so I am confident in saying it here. .

My book, Not in His Image, is about the Pagan Mysteries, not the so-called Christian Mysteries (Again, why “so-called”? It is not “so-called.” The only thing you have to justify “so-called” is that you, yourself, have not experienced the etheric Christ. A lack of experience does not justify dismissing something that many High Initiates, particularly in the past 500 years, have experienced. Though I am trying not to be so arrogant and pompous as my initial critique, this sort of thing makes me think once more that ultimately you are just plain ignorant about the full scope of the Mysteries. The Christian mysteries EXIST, and are powerfully healing and initiatory, whether you are aware of them or not. I do not say “the co-called” Pagan Mysteries, because the Pagan mysteries are sublimely real. Just so, the Christian Mysteries are sublimely real. BOTH ARE SUBLIMELY REAL, and both deserve respect by anybody committed to the path of being a mystical Revealer.) or Gnostic Christianity. If Mr Mercurius cares to dialogue further with me, he can at least show me (and readers of this site) that he has some basic understanding of what I try to say about indigenous shamanism in Europe, i.e., the visionary and ecstatic path of Pagan nature-worship (I have no issue with what you are saying about indigenous shamanism in Europe. I am in passionate agreement with you on this aspect of your work. I myself come from a “pagan shamanic” initiatory background… but this initiatory journey naturally led to the Rosicrucian Mysteries. I realized that it is impossible to embody the Light of Nature without contaminating it with the dark side of human nature (the “underworld,” the unconscious “shadow” of the psyche). I personally like to envision the shamanic World Tree—in which indigenous shamanism and the Pagan Mysteries concern themselves with the roots, the chthonic, the earthly, as well as the middle realm of nature. Pagan Initiation requires an underworld journey. As the Alchemists say, “Journey to the center of the Earth, and there you will find the One Thing (the “Light of Nature, the quintessence, the organic light, the Anima Mundi, Sophia).” These mysteries reach deep into the earth, and consist of what you beautifully describe as the pagan mysteries. The Christian Mysteries correspond more to the upper branches of the World tree… the “celestial” dimensions of the spirit world. Indigenous shamanism encapsulates the Lower World, the Middle World, and the Upper World. You speak of the Mysteries of the Lower World, and the Middle World of nature, but you do not seem to understand the Mysteries of the Upper World. In your book, you base much on the assumption that Christ was considered “otherworldly”… that is true only to the extent that the “church fathers” have perverted the meaning of his incarnation. In Rosicrucian Christianity, it is believed that by passing through the gates of death, the Christ being entered the sphere of Gaia, and can now be encountered in the etheric form as an entity here on Earth, alongside Sophia. The suppression of the Pagan Mysteries by Archonic Christianity has undoubtedly caused catastrophic (one my say, “apocalyptic”) damage to Gaia, and our spiritual relationship to her. But the etheric Christ is Gaia’s great ALLY, and links the divinity of the Lower world to the divinity of the Upper world. If you cannot distinguish between Archonic Christianity and Rosicrucian Christianity, you will continue seeing Christ as an antagonist of the Pagan Gnosticism. But ironically, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Christ and Sophia form as divine pair—one complements the other. The tragedy is in how the Christ has been imprisoned and Ahrimanically (archonically) misused. But please, try to distinguish Archonic Christianity from Rosicrucian Christianity. The Rosicrucian Mysteries are 100% compatible with your vision of the Pagan Mysteries… they just take the process one step further. I very much WOULD like to dialogue with you about these ideas… not to get into an intellectual battle, but to work with one another’s perspectives. I am not so full of myself to think that I am not getting stuck in a “clash of opposites” here and as a result am failing to see my own blind-spot. I am confident that an ongoing dialogue with you would really help me see what I am failing to see in my own thinking. I would hope that you would be open to see a greater extent of your own blind spot in dialogue with me. We all have blind-spots, so why not help each other see them? We are, after all, VERY MUCH on the same side, with the same hopes and dreams for humanity’s future, and for mother earth. Like you, I believe that [Archonic] Christianity has done unforgivable damage to Gaia, and like you, I think that Christianity is utterly possessed by the Archons, whose aim it is to enslave the human race. I COULDN’T BE MORE WITH YOU ON THIS POINT! I was deeply frustrated by your book’s petulant treatment of the Christ, and so I let my frustration speak too loudly. I would like, instead, to speak as two positions in search of a harmonious third position that is essentially a synthesis of our two warring positions. As far as I understand it, there has always been a single lineage for all this Mystery material: the Golden Chain. Both of us seem to be approaching different aspects of the same lineage. The Golden Chain begins with the Light of Nature, which is why I believe the Pagan Mysteries are the first stage of this macrocosmic Mystery tradition. Troubles arise when we give up on trying to see how it all fits together, and fall into fragmentary “schools.” There is really only one school here… it is the archetypal school of Initiation, which perpetuates the Golden Chain. Mystics throughout the ages, from Egypt to the present, have all contributed to this one single lineage. This constitutes what the Rosicrucians called the “College of the Invisibles.” This lineage is the “Great Work,” and you are fooling yourself if you claim that “Not In His Image” is not an attempt to contribute to the Great Work. It may not have been a conscious attempt, but nevertheless it represents an attempt to contribute to the faction-transcending tradition of the Golden Chain. If we do not see how we are all working on the same Great Work, and learn to work together with our ideas, even this generation’s “Gnostic revealers” will quibble each other into nullity.

Then, if he so wishes, he can proceed to critique or refute my views. Let’s keep this going. I think it’s important that we somehow find a way to mend this bellicose split. After all, we have the same goal, and the spirituality we stand for has always been persecuted by the Archonic forces.

Mr Mercurius may be outraged, as others have been, at my stunning disregard for Christian mysticism, of the self-defining Gnostic variety, or whatever (not “or whatever,” “Rosicrucian Christianity” would be the proper term. I would not be disrespectful about the Pagan Mysteries by using a dismissive tone, so I ask that you accord me that same respect). I have not written about this matter specifically or at length, so far, and I welcome this opportunity to broach my views here – although briefly and inadequately. For his part, Mr Mercurius offers a pretty good synopsis of the Christian Rosicrucian concept of Christos and Sophia, derived from the Valentinian school, so that readers can compare it to my Gaia-oriented makeover of Sethian Gnosticism which is radically non-Christian and anti-Christian in the sense that it rejects the male redeemer myth and the divine messiah/victim who is the dominant idol of the Piscean Age.

I feel a bit silly repeating myself so obnoxiously on this point, but I must say that your “non-Christian” and “anti-Christian” gnosticism becomes nullified when you encounter, through initiation, the reality of the etheric Christ. This is not some “fantasy,” and the circumstances in which the etheric Christ are encountered are not some new-age grandiosity-fest. I assure you, the etheric Christ is most consistently encountered within a most solemn and rigorous Mystery Ceremony. If you have, yourself, participated in such a ceremony, you would know that it is not to be dismissed, but that it is, in fact, as authentic a Mystery Tradition as the Pagan Mysteries about which you write. Just as the “organic light” is a mystical reality, so too is the “Light of Christ.” This is not an issue of faith. It is an issue of direct experience. Perhaps the Sethian Gnostics call the “Light of Christ” something else, but the fact remains that Christ is a MYSTICAL REALITY that one can directly encounter in the Rosicrucian Mysteries. Why would you deny that? On what basis are you denying? The absence of personal experience? The implication of your position here is: “I have not experienced anything like the etheric Christ, so I believe that the whole myth of Christ is a big destructive sham.” That position is much weaker than my own, which is, “I have experienced both the Light of Nature you write about AND the etheric Christ, within the context of an authentic Mystery School, and I assure you that the etheric Christ is just as real as the Light of Nature.” Forgive the pomposity… it is so difficult to speak earnestly about Mystery matters without sounding like a jackass. I do not deny that the Gnostic Mystery Schools work with the Sophianic light of Nature. This is true. Why then, would you deny that the Rosicrucian Mystery Schools work with the Light of Christ. This is ALSO true. If the Sethians “rejected” the Christ, there are two explanations: 1) They failed to encounter the etheric Christ in their initiatory work 2) They encountered it, but called it something else. The notion that Christ is a sham is simply not tenable to those initiates who have personally encountered this divine being. And are you about to start telling Initiates that their most profound spiritual experiences are invalid, spurious? Is that what you are implying? Rather than acknowledging the possibility that I might have experienced something that you have yet to experience, it seems much more likely that you will accuse me of being a charlatan. So in an ironic sort of way, the witch-hunt continues. The persecuted pagan is persecuting the esoteric Christian. Is this not a repetition/reversal of the victim-perpetrator bond?

The options are clear: either humanity is in need of being saved by an embodied male messiah, or it isn’t. What to you think?

That is the simplicity that Archonic Christianity would have the world believe, and this is disastrously misleading. A more nuanced understanding of the role played by Christ in the mysteries is thus: Humanity, in order to reach the highest levels of initiation, are in need of a celestial component to work harmoniously with the earthly component (Light of Nature). Through pagan initiation, one undergoes a bodily dismemberment and spiritual resurrection in the “organic light,” the “quintessence,” the “One Thing,” I personally understand the organic light to be “god’s reflection in matter. The divine creative spark operating within matter—invisible to the un-initiated.” Initiates work with this organic light, but the problem arises of the dark side of human nature that inevitably arises whenever we attempt to embody/incarnate the Light of Nature in our psyche/soul. If we look at hermetic alchemy, we find that the sulphurous dragon is always present, and is, in fact, the “prima materia” of the Work. Christ is the spirit that washes the black dragon, and turns it into the “divine child.” This consummates the Nigredo and commences the Albedo.

The Nigreo: We have a tendency to remain unconscious of our own shadows, and project them onto the other. Archonic Christianity did that with the Pagans, and you have done that with Christianity. I have done that with you, and you have done that with me. When I get emotionally fired up and write an inflated, disrespectful critique of your work, I am certainly addressing the content of your writing, but at a more subtle level I am reacting against an aspect of my own psyche that I unconsciously recognize in myself and seek to disavow, and so I cast it onto you and demonize it. I see you as an overly assertive gnostic visionary who makes bold claims that counter well-entrenched assumptions… I see that you have a large blind-spot in your work, and that makes me afraid of my own blind-spot, and so I react to your work with the sort of intensity and righteousness that betrays the fact that, in addition to speaking to you, I am also, and perhaps first and foremost, speaking to myself. This phenomenon of projecting the shadow is completely ubiquitous in human behavior, and I see a great deal of it in your book, and even in your response to my critique. This is just one example of how, even when we know how to work with the organic light, the dark side of (human nature—the shadow of the psyche-- inevitably enters into the equation.

It is fine to behold the Light of Nature in nature, and to be taught by it. I think a source of our misundertanding of one another is a difference in how we interact with the Light of Nature. You seem to be advocating being taught by Gaia, as in, attuning your consciousness to the living earth. I am speaking more in terms of the individual soul… I speak of encountering the Light of Nature within one’s soul, to uncover the “divine spark of creation’ at the root of your being, and to cultivate that and embody it throughout our life using initiation science. In my experience, the Light of Nature is not merely an external light found all through the earth (the soul of Gaia), but ALSO within the individual, since the individual is of the earth also. I am not sure how you go about apprenticing yourself to the Light of Nature, but for my part, I work with the Light of Nature the way a shaman works with his tutelary spirit… and I have a symbiotic relationship with this tutelary spirit. It influences and guides me, and acts as a medium for shamanistic healing work. It is, in other words, the living intelligence of my etheric body. It is sentient, and yet it is also bound to my being and is influenced by my ego’s unique nature. The Light of Nature manifests differently in each individual, though it is always composed of the same perfect gold/white, water/fire etheric light. As the divine creative spark on earth, the Light of Nature drives all creation and flourishing of life. Just as it is the force behind a blooming flower or a growing tree, it is also behind the development of the personality/psyche of an individual. In the latter case, the Light cannot always be pure… it must enter into matter so that the individual can concretize a new increment of consciousness. If the Light of Nature did not, at certain points, coagulate, no new soul-growth would be possible. But in the process of this coagulation, the Light of Nature is once again contained within matter, and must be once again sublimated and cleansed. This is where I find the Rosicrucian Mysteries most healing and regenerative. After a bout of embodiment, the pure light has descended into my psyche, resulting in a breakthrough of consciousness… but I must once again volatilize my psyche, and recover the Light in its virginal form. An encounter with the etheric Christ causes this to happen immediately and powerfully. Awakening the Light of Nature within the soul always awakens everything else that stirs there, including the dragon, the Dionysian instinctual element. The Light of Nature awakens the individual to all the Pagan archetypes within the collective unconscious, from Pan to Persephone to Demeter to Hermes. . Most of these spirits have a dark aspects to them… an aspect that is radically tied up in natural human instincts like aggression and lust, the power drives, the underworld. Christ transforms the chthonic aspects of these spirits into the virginal aspects. With an influx of the Light of Christ, Dionysus becomes Apollo, and Persephone becomes Demeter, and Hermes Psychopompos becomes Hermes Trismegistus. This applies to the individual psyche, and the collective unconscious. I am not sure how this applies to Gaia. Like I said, I work with the Light of Nature as it exists in my psyche, to the extent that I am a “child of Gaia.” Perhaps this has seriously limited my understanding of Pagan Gnosticism. In this case, I hope that this dialog can enrich my understanding of those matters outside my personal experience. I would appreciate it if you would accord me enough respect to work with these ideas instead of trying to cut them down. If you cannot participate in a bout of dialogical theorizing that takes the Christ for granted, then I ask that you stretch your imagination and entertain a big “what if…” scenario.

So perhaps I should revise my position to: working with the Light of Nature within one’s PSYCHE per se, and embodying it’s creative power through the development of one’s soul, inevitably creates situations in which one is undesirably “contaminated,” and would benefit greatly from infusing one’s etheric body with the Light of Christ’s redemptive grace, which absorbs and transforms the dark side of the psyche—the ego’s tendency to become tyrannical, the tendency to disavow one’s own shortcomings and cast them onto the other, the repressed violence and aggression and perversion that exists deep in the roots of our psyche, the “devil” within us. It is spiritually naïve to deny that everybody, every single individual, has his or her own personal devil deep within. Somewhere deep in your psyche is a dark version of you, and if you are not conscious of this aspect of your soul, it will influence you in ways that you do not realize. Initiation teaches us to become aware of this dark presence, and transmute it into wisdom. This is why, in Rosicrucianism, Lucifer is pictured first as a dark tempter and serpent who leads into the underworld, but is then transmuted, through an influx of the Light of Christ, into the Holy Spirit, the ultimate Revealer. Christ plays a central role in this transmutation. Christ is the mystical alchemist’s most important ingredient to the Great Work. Christ renews the organic light, and keeps it pure so that the individual can embody it again and again, bringing the initiate to increasingly greater spiritual wisdom.. It is impossible to embody the organic light in the world without getting it “dirty” with earthliness and the aspects of our psyche that remain unconscious and unexplored and primitive and instinctual. “Saved” is perhaps too strong a word. I prefer “purified” or “redeemed.” Everybody has a dimension of their soul that is undesirable. Just because we don’t consciously express it or experience it doesn’t mean it’s not there, affecting our etheric bodies. I see plenty of shadow, a big blind-spot, in your own work, and it is through this blind-spot that your unconscious is expressing something about you that you yourself are not fully conscious of. Unless you become conscious of this blind-spot, you are liable to be possessed by archonic forces without even realizing it. As Steiner says, “Ahriman possesses us in the parts of our body that are dead.” If you are unconscious of your shadow, you are more easily ultilized by the Archonic forces.

When you fully confront the “dark matter” (as Daniel Pinchbeck puts it) in your psyche, you then discover a need for a spiritual “redemptive” principle. It seems to me that you are still in a state of denying your own shadow, and projecting it onto the Other, experiencing your unconscious as though it were coming from some outside source. Once you integrate this shadow content, you realize the role that “the Redeemer” plays in the alchemy of Initiation.

I do disregard Christian Gnosticism, but rather in the way a recovering alcoholic of 25 years disregards Johnny Walker. I do not consider it a viable path of spirituality (This is due to a large misconception on your part. Properly pursued, it is a most profoundly spiritual path. Again, if you deny this, you are basically implying that my positive spiritual experiences are less valid than your negative (lack of) experience of the etheric Christ.), and I have strong reasons for this objection, based on having followed the path of Christian Gnosticism, both in the visionary and practical sense, for a good part of my life. (This is interesting. I’m not sure how exactly, you pursued this path, but it doesn’t sound like you tapped into it in a particularly helpful way.) I do not disregard it lightly, (Yes, you do, at least in your tone) but I do so ruthlessly, and without compromise, as one who has been through it, and outgrown it. (There is a glaring lack of wisdom here, both in your reactionary attitude, and in your assumptions, and this is really where you and I stop being kindred pagans, and start bickering with each other. You have NOT been through it… Or at least, you have not been through what I have been through. You have missed it. You have NOT outgrown it. On the contrary, you have NOT YET grown into it.) To insiders, the esoteric belief-system that Mr Mercurius so helpfully outlines – i.e., the dual redemption by Christos and Sophia – will be recognizable as a Steinerite dogma (true… this is Steiner, but more broadly, this is Rosicrucian… and Rosicrucian teachings go back centuries, and have a profound history. This is no more “dogma” than anything you, yourself say about the Pagan Gnostic Mysteries. Again, you fail to see your own shadow of dogma, and instead point an accusing finger at others when you, yourself, are inextricably implicated in the accusation. Furthermore, this is not so much “Steinerite dogma” as the conclusions I’ve reached from my personal spiritual experiences. Steiner and Jung have been my two most influential spiritual teachers, but everything I say is based entirely on personal experience, informed by their systems of thought, and often using their terminology) that asserts the necessity of the male redeemer figure imagined as a human-divine hybrid (Many readers may not be aware that the term “Mystery of Golgotha” originated with Rudolf Steiner (1875 – 1925), the Austrian occultist who founded Anthroposophy after splitting from the Theosophical movement of H. P. Blavatsky. I was involved with Steiner’s work for many years and had a massive library of his books and lectures, including material available exclusively to members of the Anthroposophical Society. Although I was never a card-carrying member, I gave seminars for Society members in L.A., Santa Fe, and at Emerson College in England.

I say “Steinerite dogma” because the assertions made can neither be questioned nor tested, and are considered sovereign truth by members and followers. (They CAN be tested. Rosicrucian ceremonies can lead one to a direct encounter with the etheric Christ. We don’t need to keep bickering about this… come with me to a ceremony and you can see for yourself. I keep repeating this point. This is no more dogma than anything you have written.) I would ask Mr Mercurius, on what authority does he base the claim that the Mystery of Golgotha did anything for humanity, or ever happened at all? His own experience? (Yes, based on my personal intiatory experiences… and the concrete impact these experiences have made in my life. I am not one to assert things I have not directly experienced myself) Or Steiner’s testimony? (This too. Validated by Steiner, and many other mystics, yes.) Rudolf Steiner, the latest proponent of the Rosicrucian fantasy (There you go again, being dismissive without understanding precisely what you are dismissing. If you had ever participated in the Rosicrucian Mysteries, you would not call them a “fantasy,” even if you, yourself, never went back. After a Rosicrucian ceremony, you may not have necessarily encountered the “etheric Christ,” but you certainly would have respect for this Mystery tradition, and you would see that it is a very benevolent spiritual tradition, at the very least on par with the Pagan Mysteries, and not to be so demonized) of astral-etheric intervention, was a good Catholic boy who (what??? This makes me think that you have no idea what Steiner wrote. It seems like the flippant insult of an ignorant adolescent. Steiner was anything but a “good catholic boy”—his theories were the most radical opposition to Catholicism I have ever encountered. If cannot see that Steiner’s body of teachings was Catholicism’s worst nightmare, then you have not grasped Steiner’s hidden messages), after all is said and done, ended up propounding exactly what he had been told to believe: that the miraculous resurrection of a male redemptive figure changed the fate of humanity. That is a belief, and nothing but. (This shows a tremendous lack of understanding of Steiner. You say that you have read Steiner and lectured to the Anthroposophical society, and yet you show a very clear lack of insight into his teachings. You are, on this point, utterly full of shit.) maintain that it is not a genuine spiritual proposition, but a political ploy disguised in religious jargon (WHAT IN BLAZES ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT??? A political ploy by whom? Steiner’s work is anti-Archon to the core. The more deeply you penetrate the esoteric dimensions of his teachings, clearer this becomes. You can’t get more anti-Archon than Steiner, who taught who to liberate oneself from the archonic enslavement. Your theory here shows a deep, deep misintepretation of Steiner’s teachings on the Christ, and of Anthroposophy in general. Either you haven’t read Steiner’s key works, you don’t understand Steiner, or your own reactionary take on Christianity is causing you to severely distort Steiner’s teachings to suit your reactionary agenda).

In Not in His Image, I propose that Christianity never offered a salubrious teaching for humanity (speak for yourself. And this may well be true for 99.9% of “Christianity,” but as I said, that 0.01% is profoundly crucial. The Rosicrucians were a benevolent, healing, sagacious force in the world, and still are. And the Rosicrucian school in which I participate is full of the most authentic shamanic healers I’ve ever encountered… Master Shamans at the highest levels. Rosicrucians were the great shamanic healers throughout Eupope in the 17th and 18th century, and today, Rosicrucianism has resurfaced in the Amazon… from the heart of the jungle herself, well within the embrace of Mother Gaia, and there you will find some of the most powerful shamanic healers in the world, who consider Christ the ultimate astral being (as far as humanity is concerned).

I agree with you that Archonic Christianity is damaging, and works against healing. It perpetuates what you call the “victim-perpetrator bond,” and leads to spiritual enslavement to an archonic force. Just watch the recent documentary “Jesus Camp” to see this in action. But authentic (mystical) Christianity is PROFOUNDLY healing, and I have seen this for myself ) and cannot be excused as an esoteric teaching that somehow got distorted or hijacked (WHY NOT? That is EXACTLY what happened: Never has there been a more anti-Archonic force than the Christ, and so the Archons moved swiftly and with all their power to enslave the Christ impulse and trap it in literalism and nullifying imitation), for it was a corrupt message from the outset (What are you basing this monumental claim on? how can you say this? I mean, I can tell you that the etheric Christ is a Mystical reality, but unless you’ve experienced this yourself, there’s nothing I can say to sway you from such an intensely reactionary statement. If I tell you that I have experienced, along with many others in the Rosicrucian mystery schools, the etheric Christ, and you continue to believe what you believe, that means that you think that I am just making it up, fooling myself, or worse, trying to deceive. Well, there’s not much I can do with that, other than to retaliate by lowering myself to that level by disavowing your personal experience by claiming that it’s delusional. I can’t do that, because it is completely beyond me to disavow another person’s mystical experience, and also because I believe that you are speaking a mystical truth about the “organic light,” because I’ve experienced the same truth within my self. So I’ve spoken from my personal experience, which is the most I can do, so I just basically have to stand back and let you either disavow my most profound mystical experiences based solely on a “lack” of the same experience, or else remain psychologically closed to my ideas because they are so profoundly threatening to one of your most fundamental assumptions in “Not in His Image”. But one thing seems clear: your vision is reactionary, and causes you to be close-minded with somebody whose personal experiences undermine your delimiting theories (“Here I draw the line”). Moreover, your reactionary attitude perpetuates a disastrous conflict between Christianity and Paganism, and is not progressive as it should be, but a sort of hawkish pagan conservatism that starts to resemble fundamentalism from the position of the “tyranny of the minority”. Much more progressive and healing and inspiring would be a vision that rescues Christianity from its Archonic imprisonment, and relates it meaningfully to the Pagan Mysteries). I base this view on over 40 years of study, critical analysis, and mystical experience. I wonder how long Mr Mercurius has been espousing the Steinerite line (ever since I my first encounter with the etheric Christ… and it’s not a “steinerite line” if it has been realized in my personal initiation. It comes from my own line, thank you).

Of course, I could be wrong. (Are you genuinely willing to explore this possibility???) The time I put into getting through the redemption myth that is bringing humanity down could have been misspent, and many years of work do not guarantee a veracious result. It might appear that I am disingenuous, if not ungenerous. (No… it appears that you are deeply reactionary, and that there is a great deal of psychological issues that are informing your spiritual vision. You are overcompensating for the evils enacted by Archons-cum-Christianity against the Pagans, and understandably so… but it seems to me that you are stuck in this dichotomy, and this dichotomy is only going to perpetuate the Christian-Pagan conflict… exemplified by this tit-for-tat between us… and I don’t even identify as Christian-not-Pagan, nor Pagan-not-Christian. Mr Mercurius offers an olive branch, an opportunity to reconcile. If I had done my homework, he says, “both in terms of his academic research of Mystery schools, and in terms of his personal initiation,” then I “would understand what the High Initiates have always known: that Christ the Redeemer, just like the Organic Light of Sophia, is a mystical reality, and the “Great Work” requires the direct revelation of both Aeons in order to constitute the Golden Chain of Hermes Trismegistus—the chain that links Heaven and Earth.” The implication here is clear: Mr Mercurius is a High Inititate, or spokesperson for such, who knows things that I have not fathomed.

OK, so that was arrogant and inflated and, quite frankly, just plain pompous and obnoxious of me. I have a tendency to get carried way with this stuff, and as a result I come off as a self-righteous jackass. So I apologize for being so pompous. But there is a germ of truth in what I said. I have encountered the “organic light” that you write about, and agree with just about everything you say about it. But I have also encountered something that you seem not to have encountered yourself—that you, in fact, vehemently deny.

I also understand that, from a psychological perspective, you would be deeply threatened by my perspective, because it subverts a great deal of what you’ve spent so much time developing. Unfortunately, the human psychology here is undoubtedly going to subvert, or work to subvert, the possibility of us reaching a common ground. If you accept what I’m saying, that is tantamount to admitting that “Not in His Image” is fundamentally short-sighted, or worse, misconceived on one key issue of your core vision. The ego is a devilish holdfast in such cases, and I anticipate that you will be too attached to your own vision to seriously consider something that you might have overlooked. I should point out, though, that one of the reasons the Church Fathers have caused so much damage is their desperate clinging to their own take on spiritual matters, and their “us against them” dichotomous thinking. They are unwilling to even entertain the idea that everything they’ve based their entire career on is specious. This desperate clinging creates a sort of attitude that is impenetrable to ongoing development, the “holdfast’ who would rather cling to his sinking ship than admit he didn’t do a good enough job building the ship in the first place. Are you so attached to your vision that you cannot entertain the idea that, just because you have not encountered the etheric Christ in your life does not mean that the etheric Christ does not exist in the spirit world. A great many shamans and mystics have encountered this spirit, so what is your basis for disavowing their experience? The problem here is that if you entertain the possibility that the etheric Christ exists, that would force you to reconsider everything you’ve spent so much time researching and writing. You have worked hard to build up an outspoken vision, and it seems like you are determined to promote it in an expansive fashion, and will probably continue to reject the esoteric Christian issue because that would undermine your vision about Christianity as a wholly archonic phenomenon. You embrace the sulphur, but you reject the mercury, so to speak.

My book may be demanding in some ways, and surely is, but one thing I have certainly not demanded is to be taken for a spiritual authority on the order of a High Initiate, or to speak for anyone of that presumed status.

I don’t think you are being honest with yourself. You speak as a Gnostic revealer… implied in that is that you are a high initiate. What else would possibly qualify you to write a book that makes such bold claims about the highest mystery matters? You have not outright “demanded to be taken” as such, but the boldness of your claims implies that you know what you’re talking about, and since you’re talking about the Mysteries, it is implied that you are an Initiate. And if you are an Initiate, then one would hope, given the time it takes to read your book, that you are at least a High Initiate. If I am going to read a monumental opus about the Gnostic Mysteries, I hope that the author is, himself, a High Initiate in the Mysteries about which he so boldly writes.

And the Organic Light, by the way, is a disclosure unique to my book and other writings on metahistory.org. Mr Mercurius co-opts this precious term without showing either that he knows that I mean by it, or why he objects to my view of it (I was trying to speak in such a way that fuses disparate jargon that speaks of the same thing. I’m sorry if I “co-opted” your term. I was trying to communicate. I personally use the term “the quintessence” to speak of the mystery light… the Paracelsian term “Lumen Naturae; Light of Nature.” The Mystery schools have a whole litany of names to refer to this same thing. I quite like your term. Perhaps I should have praised you for it before using it so recklessly). I don’t know what Organic Light he is talking about, but the one I have seen is not “contaminated with matter, ego, and the dark side of human nature (the “terrible dragon,” the “devil”)”. Could it be that his Christian Gnostic Rosicrucian perspective on the core secret of the Mysteries is the problem of contamination, not anything in the Light itself? No. The “contamination” is the inherent in all humanity. We are all part divine, part animal. The latter corresponds to our “fallen” state. We are part fallen, or fully fallen. But we are never totally unfallen. To claim to be totally unfallen is to be a perfected being, without blemish. It is impossible to not be, to a certain extent, “fallen.” Christ redeems particularly these aspects of humanity by spiritualizing it. Through an influx of the Light of Christ, one’s basest instinctual nature, personified in shamanic vision-quest and universally in myth as “the terrible dragon” is transformed into the “child of the philosophers.” Our animal “dark” aspects need to be separated and spiritualized, and Christ is the means by which we can do this. I am not a guilt-laden catholic. Quite the opposite. But I cannot deny the concept of “sin.” In reaction to Archonic Christianity’s utter INSANITY, I can understand why one would speak against the doctrine of “sin,” but I cannot deny that “sin” leaves a mark on one’s etheric body, and the Light of Christ restored your etheric body to a pristine condition. We have primitive instincts, such as lust, aggression, the will to dominate others. If we are psychologically wounded, we spread this woundedness to others. If we are not enacting these instincts, we are suppressing our repressing them, and they persist in our unconscious. Spiritual alchemy teaches us how to spiritualize these aspects of ourselves, to heal our wounds, and the etheric Christ is an invaluable spirit in this process.

The Organic Light I am talking about is the divine creative spark inherent in the earth. This light is pure and perfect. It is the creative spark, independent of matter… it is the spirit of life itself. Once you encounter this light in your own soul, (as opposed to, say, a tree, or a sublime vista of the natural world) you are able to work with it, and embody it in various ways. I suppose I am speaking of the organic light as it exists within the individual human soul. As we seek to embody this organic light in our ongoing shamanic activities (healing, revealing, learning about the spiritual world), it inevitably gets contaminated by the aspect of our psyches that Jung called “the shadow.” It is one thing to encounter the organic light, and it is another thing to embody it in our own soul. The latter requires regular “cleansing,” because it is co-habiting our psyche, and our psyche is filled with, to certain extent, dark matter, and instinctual, chthonic archetypes/spirits. As the shamans understood, the underworld is the realm of wounds. The full scope of initiation requires journeys to the roots of the world tree, the middle world for embodiment, and the upper branches for the celestial dimension. Any attempt to “embody” brings with it the issue of contamination with the inferior aspects of the psyche. This is where the Christ comes in. Why is this idea so threatening and distasteful to you? As I keep repeating, Christ is Sophia’s greatest ally, and without the Light of Christ, we will not be able to embody Sophia without our own unexplored, unconscious shadows contaminating it. There is nothing in the Rosicrucian Mysteries that disavows your treatment of the Pagan Mysteries. Quite the opposite, the Rosicrucian Mysteries validate the Pagan Mysteries beautifully, and are of the same spiritual lineage of Hermes Trismegistus; Seth; Lucifer, or whatever else you want to call “the Revealer”)

Mr Mercurius asserts that “shamanic Christianity still, to this day, represents Mystery Wisdom at the highest levels.” I would warn readers that shamanism contains the word SHAM. It’s shamming we’re talking here, not genuine indigenous mysticism, not egodeath, rapturous immersion in nature, and direct instruction from the Wisdom Goddess. I am sick to vomit of hearing this word, shaman. (ego-death, rapturous immersion in nature, direct instruction from the Wisdom Goddess is EXACTLY what I am talking about here…. All the glories of the Pagan Mysteries. What makes you think I’m not talking about this? But I would like to add that the Wisdom Goddess also has a Dark Side. Demeter has Persephone, Inanna has Ereshkigal, and Shakti has Kali, the Virgin Mother has the Whore of Babylon. The dark side of the Goddess is an undeniable aspect of Sophia, and of the human soul. You seem to be in denial of the role played by the dark side of nature. Shamanically, alchemically speaking, the etheric Christ is a powerful tool for whitening the darkness—darkness in which the Light of Nature partakes. I hope you are not about to deny that this darkness exists, because that would basically prove my point that you are in denial of your own shadow, and that is distorting your spiritual vision.

My argument in Not in His Image is that Christianity is not and never was a genuine spiritual belief-system, and mystical or pseudo-Gnostic (unwarranted) variants of the Christian redeemer are no better than the Pope glorified into a transcendental cartoon (this is an immature, reactionary, and short-sighted position. The “variant” I am espousing is a direct encounter with a most sublime celestial being that embodies divine love and grace, that heals and redeems… a far cry from a cartoon pope). I show (no, you CLAIM) that Christianity is a sham, however you cut it, and I explain why. No, you don’t. You explain why ARCHONIC Christianity is a sham, but you do not distinguish it from an authentically mystical tradition that works with the etheric Christ. Why are you so sure that the etheric Christ does not exist? It is so impossible to envision this, when you take into consideration what Shamans have always known: that there are divine beings in the earth, and there are divine beings in the astral. Shamans have always known about the divine beings in the Astral. Christ is a particular astral being. Why is this so difficult for you to consider, especially given the fact that you ally yourself with indigenous European shamanism?

It is most definitely not, and never was, the Mystery Wisdom at the highest level. Quite the contrary, it is the main symptom of the corruption of our capacity to reach that Wisdom. (I have said, again and again, that I have no problem at all with your vision of the Pagan Mysteries. And I don’t see why you can’t be open to the idea that the etheric Christ plays an essential role in the celestial aspect of the Mysteries. Rosicrucianism does not refute your theories about the Pagan Mysteries… it extends them!

I do not write to please or appease. I totally reject the notion that “an authentic, shamanic Christianity has existed in secret for the past two thousand years,” although I acknowledge how important this notion is to people who are attached to Western esotericism. (Again, you are demonizing me, based on your own shadow. Are you examining your own attachment to anti-Christian theory? I am not so attached to “western esotericism” that I cannot consider that I might be overlooking some crucial components. I am simply confident in my personal experiences with the etheric Christ. Why am I so confident that it was an authentic encounter, and not a grandiose delusion? Because these encounters dramatically altered my life in the most “salubrious” of ways. For example, I was finally able to reconcile with my father, with whom I’ve had a wounded relationship for a long time). The Light of Nature did not fill me with grace and love… it filled me with wisdom. Once I experienced an influx of the light of Christ, I suddenly found the inspiration to begin hugging my father and being affectionate with him. The Light of Nature, while it gave me wisdom beyond my years, did not impact me at the level of the heart. As I said, nature is amoral, and so too is the Light of Nature.

Mr Mercurius claims that I make a grave error in not seeing that Christian and Pagan Gnosis are two modalities of one supreme truth. But I do not write to reconcile the original Gaian Gnosis with the redemptive ideology whose perverted proponents and ignorant converts destroyed the Mysteries of the goddess Sophia (the Rosicrucians did not do this. They were a SECRET order because they would have been persecuted just as the Pagan Gnostics.), whom we today call Gaia. I draw the line. (Fine. Draw the line, and fight the illusory conflict of opposites all you want. That line you draw is an illusion, and as long as you take one side of it, and fight the forces on the other, you’re keeping yourself trapped in an unwise state. True wisdom comes from the union of opposites. You can remain reactionary all you want, but the fact remains that the Rosicrucian vision of a harmonious marriage of the Pagan and Christian Mysteries is more unifying, more inspiring, and more healing.

You cannot have a male avatar redemption myth and living Sophianic mysticism on the same planet. (YES YOU CAN!!! Sophia is god’s creative spirit on earth, Christ is god’s redemptive spirit that descended to earth to help Sophia. Why is this so “impossible”? Your thinking on this point is zealous, fractious, and bellicose, and willfully close-minded)

The Steinerite salvationist myth is no better than any other, even if you tack on it a palimony clause including Sophia as female redemptive agent . The assertion that the Organic Light is in any sense trapped in matter is totally alien to my mystical experience, with or without psychoactive plant teachers, and totally contrary to the spirit of the Pagan Mysteries that celebrated direct, ecstatic access to the Divine in the sensory world. (This idea comes from initiation science, as well as my own personal experience. I had to undergo an initiatic dismemberment before I could become aware of the light of nature. Before I was initiated, I was not able to perceive the Light of Nature, because my consciousness was too attached to the material realm. Undergoing my dismemberment liberated this attachment, and allowed me to see the Light of Nature independent from matter, freed from ego-contamination. The alchemists, like Paracelsus, considered the light of nature “hidden in matter,” and in need of liberation from this state. This corresponds, I believe, to the dismemberment initiation that allows the initiate to perceive the Light apart from matter..

I accept that some people will embrace so-called Christian Mysteries, as I myself did for many years, but I do not accept objections to my Gaian revision of the Pagan Mysteries except from those who can show they know what I’m talking about before they protest to it. (I DO know what you’re talking about, and I AGREE with you on your vision of the Pagan Mysteries. But I think you are misguided on the topic of esoteric Christianity, and it’s relationship to the Pagan Mysteries.

Mr Mercurius is offended by my disregard for a belief-system he holds sacred (Not to the extent that I’m frustrated by your reactionary stance that contaminates your otherwise inspiring and very necessary vision for Gnostic ecology.

Well, I guess I don’t know how to speak the truth I see without offending someone… The messianic delusions of the Piscean Age are far from over “The supreme import of the esoteric Christian Mysteries” is in how they show humanity’s loss of faith in itself and its empathic bond to Gaia-Sophia, the sole redemptive force in our story. I do not write to reconcile or compromise with alternative beliefs about redemption. I write to recover a massacred heritage rooted in the biopsychic genius of our species in the way that paternalistic make-believe (again, why do you insist on being so dismissive and bellicose about this point. You do not seem to understand the Mystery of Golgotha. I think you should not insult something you do not seem to understand, or at least you shouldn’t dismiss it so flippantly and assuredly). such as the Mystery of Golgotha are not, and can never be. Do you even understand what Steiner meant by the Mystery of Golgotha? If you really knew your Steiner, you’d understand that the Mystery of Golgotha was the event that allowed a sublime celestial being to enter into earth’s “biopsychic genius,” and thereafter act as a powerful ally. It is a terrible tragedy that Christ’s descent has, thus far, caused a GREAT DEAL more harm than good. Nobody in their right mind will argue against that… and that is definitely not what I am arguing here.

Just for the record: The claim that “the Light of Christ is the means by which the fallen Sophia is redeemed” is an accurate expression of the Valentinian school, the historical source of Christian Gnosticism. I represent the Sethian school of radical Pagan Gnosis that asserted that the course of Sophia’s cosmic adventure relies not on Christ but on “the luminous epinoia,” the power of human imagination. Scholars may argue over these issues all they like, but planetary mysticism is about poetry, not dogma.

All in all, your alchemical opus still needs serious distillation. Your own psychological shadow is contaminated throughout. You rail against dogma, as you yourself assert a reactionary dogma. You speak about wisdom, as you yourself refuse to entertain an inclusive, transcendent view of the Pagan/Christian Mystery split. As you assert your own vision, you promote a certain sort of thinking that keeps one trapped in the illusory conflict of opposites. You do not seek to mend the fissure in Western cilization’s Mystery traditions. Instead, you take up one side, and perpetuate the conflict. I wiser man would try to find a way to transcend the conflict. All mystically inclined people in this world are up against a very real archonic threat to humanity and the life of the earth herself. I do not think it is wise to remain so happily in a position that refuses to transcend the clash of opposites that aren’t meant to oppose one another. Christ and Sophia are both mystical realities that work together in the Mysteries. To deny one is to perpetuate the conflict, albeit in an opposite way, mounted by the archonic church fathers against the Pagan initiates. There is such a thing as the tyranny of the minority. Too much of your vision is trapped in a reactionary stance, and it fails to see the big picture of Mystery Initiation.

It’s worth pointing out that my claims are inclusive of yours, but yours are exclusive of mine. In other words, my vision accommodates yours, but yours is based on a denial of mine. Inclusion and integration is far more compelling than denial. Naturally, my position will provoke all sorts of defense mechanisms in you, as you attempt to defend your own carved out stance. And it’s also worth point out that WHEN you are exclusive of my points, you are insulting and dismissive and generally immature and reactionary. The basis of your dismissals is a personal disenchantment, and the ABSENCE of an experience. The basis of my critique of your work is a number of experiences that include, and go beyond, your demarcations. I tell you, the etheric Christ is a reality that can be experienced by the initiate. If you deny me this—if you accuse me of being delusional, stuck in a fantasy, or some such dismissal—you are not according me the sort of respect that you wish the reader to accord you. You are, in a sense, repeating the rigid attitude of the church fathers in persecuting those who do not believe in their dogma, or “dogmatic anti-dogma” as it the case here. And I DO accord you that respect. I can tell from your writings that you work with the Light of Nature. I too work with the Light of Nature, and it’s clear to me that you are an authentic mystic. But I can also tell from your writings that you do not work with the etheric Christ, and for whatever reason are strangely antagonistic towards it. There is nothing in my vision of the Rosicrucian Mysteries that is incompatible with your vision of the Pagan Mysteries, but you reject the Christian Mysteries in a way that is close-minded, and, well, dogmatic. I am not saying that everybody needs to engage in the Christian Mysteries to be a spiritual person. I am merely saying that the etheric Christ is there to be experienced, and it is a wholly benevolent spirit that has nothing but the most positive impact on the person who experiences it. It is NOT a destructive force, per se. The devils who’ve imprisoned it and contorted it (in the typically archonic way of imitating to nullify) ARE THE destructive force, but you do not distinguish between these devils and the Christ itself.

If you and I were living in the same area, I would love an opportunity to work with you in a number of ceremonies designed to open the portal to the etheric Christ. But we do not live in the same area, and I highly doubt you would be willing to work with a smug and arrogant person like me. More to the crux, I suspect that you wouldn’t be open to working with me for a deeper reason: if I am right, everything you’ve worked so hard to establish would be undermined. You have built your vision on being “anti-Christian,” and so you probably wouldn’t be open to an experience that would have devastating consequences on your work, and your intellectual/spiritual authority… that would render a massive portion of “Not in His Image” fundamentally misconceived.

Let’s not forget that we are both enraged with the state of the world, and both of us would love nothing more than for the world to get back in touch with Gaia, and learn how to heal her and to live in harmony with her. All I am saying is that the etheric Christ is a wholly positive force in that direction. Unfortunately 99.99% of Christianity has no clue.

We're on the same side, Mr. Lash.

Mr. Mercurius

Daniel,

That is sound mediating advice, but at what point does it become a cop-out? I agree with you about truth as "degrees of apparentness" and "values" in almost all situations, save for the Mysteries. The Mysteries are not about relative truths, but transcendent truths. Isn't that the whole point? For example, the Light of Nature (the quintessence, the anima mundi, the One Thing etc.) is a mystical truth, perceptible through initiation. Anybody who says it doesn't exist simply hasn't encountered it. But Mystery traditions have always existed specifically to reveal this transcendental truth to the initiate. The universality of these esoteric revelations is precisely what creates the need for Mystery Schools.

The issue between Lash and myself does, I believe, have a right and a wrong answer. The question is, "Is Christ a spiritual/psychoidal reality?" The fact that we're arguing about it shows that it is, at the very least, a psychoidal reality. As for whether or not it is a spiritual reality, it cannot be "proven" through debate. But it can, as you should know, be directly experienced through initiation. And this direct experience may be radically individual, but that does not mean it isn't also universal, via the collective unconscious. I'm all for radical inter-subjective thinking, and treading lightly with a humble awareness that truth is contingent upon the observer, but there are some subjects, namely, the Mysteries, that deal speceifically with humanity's eternal truths. One might even go so far as to claim that the only universal truths are to be found in the Mysteries.

In an effort to remain mercurial and inter-subjective and resonant with the dark matter of the psyche and cosmos (Hermes, the mercurial mediator, standing between Apollo and Dionysus, comes to mind), I fear there is a danger of refusing to acknowledge one or two transcendent mystical, archetypal truths that can only be experienced and comprehended through initiation. And initiation into the Mysteries, though varied somehwhat from civilization to civilization, follows the same archetypal process outlined in hermetic alchemy. The Great Work has been built up over millenia by the world's wisest spiritual sages, and reflects an archetypal complex of initiation alchemy that manifests differently in each individual, but always and everwhere has the same DNA code. My issue with Lash contends a central aspect of this archetypal complex. We're not debating the merits of a Rilke poem here. We're talking about the archetypal ingredients of archetypal initiation alchemy. It's hard to tread lightly, and not sound obnoxious and pompous, when discussing such intrinsically grandiose matters.

Treading heavily onward, with the hope that you'll forgive...

Mr. Mercurius