Resurrecting Sophia: John Lash Podcasts

This was a good idea. More than a few people have probably gotten bogged down in the pages of metahistory.org or John Lash’s book, Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology and the Future of Belief. This series of audio interviews provides a more intimate, emotionally-textured gateway into Lash’s reconstruction of the Gnostic project and its ‘Sophia Mythos’.

The interviews are conducted by Joanna Harcourt-Smith, Lash’s collaborator and long-time partner. They run in a well-structured, step-by-step approach, covering the main bases, each interview a little over half an hour, … happily for the ADD-inclined amongst us! You get much more of a feeling why Lash has spent so much time poring over these almost hopelessly cryptic Coptic fragments — why a 2000+ year old spiritual tradition might still matter today.

I’ll admit one thing I found irritating was Lash’s tendency to overly esthecize imagery from the Sophia story, and not clarify his own overlay of contemporary astronomy and Gaia theory on top of the original storyline (ie, the Pleroma as galactic center, etc). (Admittedly, he does tease this out in podcast #9.) On the other hand, it was nice to be referred to, if not by name. (”Some people in California setting the Sophia Mythos to rave music,” or something to that effect. More precisely, I’ve got a full-blown proposal to create a participatory ritual theater staging, entitled “Zofaya Dissending.” It just needs some funding and dedicated collaborators — any neo-Gnostic patrons out there?)

Honestly, I’d have a hard time thinking of a more exciting development in esoteric spirituality and radical culture right now than Lash’s feat of ‘psychic archeology’. Why did it take a man and not a woman to pull this off? Who knows? But maybe some day he’ll even get some props from all those eco-feminists.

Will Lash and Harcourt-Smith make it out to Burning Man this year? Will Twist help organize a neo-Gnostic symposium so you all can interrogate Lash in depth? Stay tuned…