Wisdom's Dare: The Future of a Divine Experiment

Around 1997 when I undertook to write a book on the Mysteries of pre-Christian Paganism, I faced a formidable challenge. Central to the scant surviving textual evidence of the Mysteries is a problematic body of material called the Nag Hammadi Codices. Problematic on several counts. First because these writings (of unknown origin) are in their content fragmentary, chaotic, and contradictory. Most of the documents are pastiches of incongruous material with breathtaking gaps in continuity. Problematic again because this mess of pottage comes down to us in a scribal shorthand called Coptic, an awkward language riddled with grammatical errors, misspellings, inconsistencs of syntax, and contextual ambiguities (e.g., possessive pronouns as "theirs, ours" have uncertain reference). Not to mention that Coptic is totally unfitted for high sophistication of metaphysical and cosmological syntax, the signature of Mystery teachings. I compared it to hiking boots on a ballerina. Mud-caked hiking boots.

No wonder scholars prattle endlessly over the meaning of passages in the NHC,  even the meaning of single lines, and never get around to extracting the message contained in that flawed but precious legacy. An unfortunate omission, there. For this material carries a message not to be found elsewhere, not in any spiritual teachings be it the Vedas or Navajo creation myth, and not in any metaphysical corpus, ancient or modern.   

Despite the deplorable condition of the materials, the NHC presents traces of a unique spiritual achievement in the form of a master narrative: the fallen goddess scenario. This narrative is actually a full-length cosmography, that is,  the biography of a divine cosmic power called Sophia. This common name means "wisdom" in Greek, hence Sophia is the wisdom goddess. Gods are gendered in all myths, reflecting the interplay of polar forces in the cosmos, and the female polarity usually carries a special spin indicating the matrix of organic existence, living creatures. So Sophia is a mother goddess -- of sorts. The narrative says that she morphed from a pure energetic state (stellar plasma, if you will) into the material body of the earth. Hence, the fallen goddess scenario (FGS) is a planetary myth that describes the origin of the earth. To my knowledge, in the entire body of world mythology there exists no other complete and coherent scenario of planetary evolution but this one.

On top of that, the FGS also describes the origin of humanity, anthropogenesis. It says that Sophia, before she morphed into the earth, engineered the human genome in consort with another divinity, a male counterpart named Thelete, "Intended." Sophia is therefore the preterrestrial parent of the human race, both the source of  the human genome (anthropos) and the setting in which humanity unfolds its genomic potential. Take it or leave it, the Sophianic vision story presents outstanding features not to be found in any other mythic scenario.  Such was the astonishing discovery I made upon delving into the daunting dung heap of Nag Hammadi writings.

Being Aimed

The FGS was the sacred myth of the founders and teachers of ancient shamanic cults called the Mysteries. They called themselves telestai, "those who are aimed." From the Greek telos, "aim, goal, objective." Their opponents, ideologues of the salvationist paradigm of Judeo-Christianity, contemptuously called them gnostics, "smart asses, know-it-alls." Gnostics did not call themselves by that name still attached to them, which originated as a slander and dismissal, often coupled with an outright threat: "You are too damned smart for your own good and you need to be shut up." In the precincts of the Mystery cults, they called each other "those who are aimed" in specific reference to what aimed them: namely, a guiding myth, a master narrative. For the telestai, the Sophianic vision story was unique and paramount, surpassing all other myths known to the human species. And as such, it was the myth supremely designed to guide the human species in coevolution with the natural world.

Understand myth here in the sense of a true description rendered in poetic or metaphorical terms, not a lie or fantasy contrived to explain what is not understood. Writing on the Egyptian Mysteries of Isis and Osiris, Plutarch, one of the last known Mystery initiates, insisted that sacred myths are veracious accounts of real events: "Whoever applieth these allegories to the blessed Divine Nature, deserves to be treated with contempt. We must not however believe that they were mere fables without any meaning, like those of the Poets. They represent to us things that really happened."

The fall of the wisdom goddess is not a mere allegory, but an event that really happened. And is still happening, for the sacred narrative of the Gnostics is open-ended. The FGS does not conclude with a prescripted triumph of unification in divine love, nor with a gruesome doomsday event pitting the saved against the sinners. It does not conclude at all, for it is a participatory myth whose outcome depends on human engagement in the story. And the moment for that engagement is right now. What it has to be now rather than at any other moment in time, or all through time, for that matter, is the point I wish to show by the end of the essay.

Until my book Not in His Image appeared in 2006, no scholar of Gnosticism or the Pagan Mysteries had ever restored this sacred narrative in its entirety. Or even tried to do so. Gnostic scholarship is a scandal of denial, distortion, and selective omission when it comes to Pagan Mystery teachings, arcane material that legitimate scholars such as Elaine Pagels and Karen King wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole, perhaps fearing accusations of witchcraft. Being progeny of Judeo-Christian faith, these experts cannot allow that sacred instruction never to be found in the Old or New Testament was lavishly developed and disseminated by Gnostic initiates such as Simon Magus, who said: "There is a certain power of immense and ineffable Light whose greatness may be held to be incomprehensible, of which power even the maker of this world is ignorant, and Moses the lawgiver, and Jesus your master" (Clementine Recognitions, 2.49).

As I just noted, scholars blather endlessly over the meaning of the Gnostic Coptic materials from Nag Hammadi, while totally ignoring the imperative message of those materials. A unique and decisive message for humanity, then as now. And more than ever, now. 

So what is the message of the telestai of the Mysteries, and how does it matter to us today?

The answer is alarmingly simple: the Gnostic message is about deviance from our true potential as a species, and consequent jeopardy of the divine experiment unfolding on earth due to our separation from Sophia, wisdom embodied in the earth. Both the explanation of the deviance and the solution to it, including reconnection to source, are contained in the sacred narrative of the Mysteries, the Sophianic vision story.

Because this cosmographical narrative is the biography of the earth, it may also be called the Gaia Mythos. On metahistory.org around 2002  I introduced the neologism Gaia-Sophia to indicate the presence of the wisdom goddess in the material planet, the biosphere, including the atmosphere and the electromagnetic field that permeates the realm of the senses. It's a memorable name because it rhymes, GUY-uh-So-FI-uh, and seems to be catching on.  I propose So-FI-uh to distinguish the sacred term from the common name for a woman, So-FEE-uh. Also, So-FI-uh rhymes with desire. According to the telestai, desire plays a huge role in the story of the wisdom goddess. That would be desire, not love. Please note that distinction.

Astronomical Myth

Working through the Coptic writings and related materials, such as the polemics of the Church Fathers that contain in paraphrase some elements of Sophianic cosmography missing from those sources, I gradually pulled together the plot of the Gaia Mythos. The story arc, to use a screenwriting term. And what a cinematographic opus it is! From around 1996 onward until 2006 when Not in His Image came out, I reworked the story hundreds of time to pare it down to a nine-episode format, with an alternate version in 16 episodes (a prose poem on metahistory.org, incomplete). There are not many ways to tell this story, which is complex and intricate. Like the sacred narratives of indigenous peoples from Australia to the American West, it has to be recounted with huge respect to accuracy of detail and consistency of story-line. There are rigorous boundaries for improvisation on the plot. Some episodes in the past require amplification, but meticulously. The present episode can only be told as it happens, lived through by human witnesses who engage the plot in real time. In other words, the plot does not end but continues with a resolution, a shift that determine the future of the divine experiment. How exactly to engage the plot and contribute to that shift by morals and method, I wish to explain in a second, follow-up essay.

The telestai called the planetary shift now underway, "Sophia's correction." Greek diorthosis, "dual or two-way solution."

As I recovered and restored the FGS, two features of this sublime narrative astonished me, and continue to do so to this day. First, the Sophianic story is a veracious astronomical register of cosmic history. Second, the story arc beyond a certain point depends on direct interactivity between the human species and the wisdom goddess embodied in the earth. Put these features together and it becomes immediately clear that Sophia's correction offers a fabulous opportunity: to unite with our divine source making the correction in planetary evolution as the wisdom goddess directs and reveals it,  and to do so by tracking a specific astronomical event. The correction is hers, and it unfolds in an astronomical event commanded on her scale. But it is our mission as a species on the planetary scale to fit into the cosmic shift she now undertakes. Hence, there is a two-way solution: wisdom proceeds on her self-determined interstellar trajectory, charting her own course in the spiral arms, and humanity (or a self-selected party of human participants) concurs in the course correction, following her designs and purposes. Concurs knowingly and deliberately, acting on free choice, guided by the vision story. Acting by shared intention and according to a common method. I call the directive framework of that method Planetary Tantra.

The intriguing topic of Sophia's correction shows up only three or four times in the Gnostic Coptic literature. One pithy instance occurs in a long cosmological text,  the Apocryphon of John (14.10)  "And she [Sophia] was taken up not into the Pleroma, but above the Demiurge, that she might be in the Ninth until she corrected her defect." The Pleroma ("fullness, plenitude") is the astronomical setting of the Sophianic myth, the place where the story happens. Due to trained paranormal faculties, Gnostic seers would have been able to recount events specific to our galaxy, distinguished from what happens elsewhere in the Universe, among the unnumbered congeries of all galaxies.

This myth is specific to the home planet and its galactic setting. Anyone seeking a larger perspective can look elsewhere. Good luck. To my mind, it is just common sense to work out the truth about what's happening here and now, on earth, among humanity and all species, as well as extraterrestrial species affecting the earth, and then go on to look beyond the immediate planetary environment. Call this the Sophianic focus. (And yes, the FGS does include an extraterrestrial presence in the plot. See below.)

The Gaia Mythos is an astronomical account of an event transpiring in our home galaxy. Like their counterparts, Asian yogis, Taoist adepts, and Amazonian ayahuasceros with firsthand visionary access to the heavens, Gnostic seers could detect the elementary structure of the galaxy we inhabit: a lenticular spiral of pinwheel formation with a bulging core and four or five encircling limbs, the spiral arms. They called the galactic core the Pleroma, realm of infinite potential, and the spiral arms, the Kenoma, realm of finite potential where stars emerge and planetary worlds arise. In the Pleroma there is no stellar or planetary form, nor any animal or anthropocentric creaturely life, not even angelic forms. There are only massive torrents of living, animating luminosity, serpentine currents composed of that immense and ineffable Light of which Simon Magus spoke: Organic Light. Although it harbors no discrete creaturely life-forms, the galactic core is the platform for the generation of countless experiments with living forms that unfold in the spiral arms. Such is the Gnostic perspective on how the overseeing gods of our galaxy entertain themselves: by engineering species that emerge in experimental worlds throughout the spatial arms.  This is the panspermia concept enunciated 1600 years before Svante Arhennius in 1903. (Anaxagoras, who was initiated into the Mysteries, propounded this theory in the 5th century BCE.)

To Gnostic seers, it was irrefutably clear that the human species was engineered by Aeons in the galactic core, not by any "advanced species" from another world system in the spiral arms. Moreover, the telestai asserted that one predatory "ET" species called archons did attempt to meddle with the preexisting, Aeonically generated human genome (anthropos), an event described as "the rape of Eve." Attempted, but failed. The Hypostasis of the Archons recounts this crucial incident (89.15): "And the Archons became attracted to Eve, the primal woman. They said to one another, 'Come, let us sow our seed in her,' and they pursued her. And she laughed at them for their witlessness, and their blindness; and within reach of their clutches, she turned into a tree, and left before them a shadowy reflection of herself."

Divine Experiment

The brief citation above describes Sophia, one of those Pleromic gods (Aeons), separated from the core, sequestered in the Ninth until she corrects her defect.  In Mystery jargon, the Ninth is the realm of the planet earth -- nine being the pre-eminent number of the goddess.  The Eighth is the sphere of the Zodiac, and the Seventh or Hebdomad is the zone of the Demiurge, the inorganic planetary system apart from earth, moon, and sun. According to Gnostic cosmology, our home planet earth does not belong to the planetary system but is merely captured in it. An outstanding claim, to say the least. Weird and implausible, you say?  Recent discoveries of the existence of "free-floating planets" make the Gnostic earth capture theory more plausible, if you like that kind of corroboration... Also, I have shown in Not in His Image that the odd notion of an organic planet captured in an inorganic system is compatible in all key aspects with the Gaia hypothesis of Lovelock and Margulis.

Sophia's defect arises due to something that happened when she was in the Pleroma, prior to her "fall," a plunge into the spiral arms: imagine an immense plume or feathery spike of Organic Light shooting from the core laterally across the galactic limbs.  (Astrophysicists recently discovered the tunnel-like trace of such a plume in the near region of the third spiral arm.) Her defect is like a defection from the cosmic order, a startling  departure from the usual activity of the Aeons who do not enter the Kenoma, even though they oversee experiments implanted there. Gnostics called Sophia  prunikos, "rash, reckless, impetuous, outrageous", due to her excessive desire to see one strain of the anthropos emerge and thrive in a special experiment of her singular conception. Doing so, she violated two norms of Aeonic activity. First, after having acted with her consort Thelete to engineer the human genetic design, she went on to indulge all by herself in her private fantasy of an experiment for the anthropos. Second, due to the sheer intensity of her desire to see this experiment realized, she plunged physically from the galactic core into the spiral arms and became enmeshed in extra-Pleromic conditions such as gravity, differential rotation, electromagnetic stress, atomic and subatomic interactions of elementary matter.

In short, the goddess fell into the steaming stewpot of stellar-planetary evolution because she was dreaming about a recipe she wanted to cook up, all by her lonesome! Do cooks usually fall into the pot? Consider the plight of the Aeon Sophia!

This metaphor in culinary terms indicates an astronomical reality, an event that actually occurred in our galaxy. And it does something else as well: it presents the story of the wisdom goddess in a way that invites empathy and participation. Through and through, in each detail as well as in the overall plot structure, the Gaia Mythos invites empathy for Sophia. But not just blind, sentimental empathy: insightful, knowing empathy. Engaged empathy that compels the human heart to respond to the plight of a divine, superhuman being. Empathy for Sophia is the precondition of the planetary shift on human terms, the portal to her correction.

I would emphasize, however, that such empathy does not entail seeing the earth as a rape victim or a helpless blob of matter at risk of destruction due to human folly. We are not killing the planet, we don't have that power. We are merely killing ourselves and making the Gaian habitat unlivable for future generations. Empathy for the wisdom goddess can be tested by the way it introduces and initiates an individual into her wisdom, and frees the human mind from consensus, convention, and blind speculation. The best authority on life on earth is the intelligence of the earth itself. The only way to really know what risk the planet is facing from human madness is to ask the planet.  The trick is, getting her attention.

Think of Gaia-Sophia as a one-parent planet. Originally, the wisdom goddess co-engineered the human genome with another Aeon in the Pleroma, according to cosmic law: "It is the will of the Originator not to allow anything to happen in the Pleroma apart from a syzygy, the coupling of Aeons" (A Valentinian Exposition 28: 32). But the Pleromic gods are not tyrants, especially not the Originator (Propater), the unitary source of the multiple galactic Aeons. The celestial serpent powers do not lay down laws and punish non-compliance. Love and freedom pervade the foundations of the cosmos. Sophia was free to operate unilaterally, and she did just that, acting on her own sweet caprice. She indulged without a consort in an intense daydream about an experiment that might unfold in one possible world inhabited by one possible strain of the anthropos, her pet species -- that would be us.

"The world as we know it came about through an anomaly (anomou)" (The Gospel of Philip, 1-5). There in a tweet is the consummate message of Gnostic cosmology. Scholars translate anomou as "mistake." But was the Aeon Sophia's impetuous fall really a mistake? No, it was an exceptional event that set in motion weird, far-reaching side-effects, a chain of anomalous consequences.  Get your mind around this astonishing proposition and you get the unique set-up in the human world on earth, why things have gone so badly wrong in the divine experiment the wisdom goddess imagined for us. You also get the solution to the set-up, the way to turn around what's wrong. Welcome to Sophia's correction. Of course, you have to know first what needs to be corrected.

To know that, stick to the story, the sacred narrative of the Mysteries. It tells everything we need to know about the challenge facing humanity on this planet.

Sophia is separated from the company of Aeons at the galactic core, cut off, momentarily out of contact due to her intense enmeshment in a planetary experiment she had uniquely previsioned. She could not and did not anticipate certain conditions that would impact that experiment, consequent to her fall. She did not, for one thing, anticipate how the impact of her Pleromic luminosity upon elementary matter in the spiral arms would spontaneously produce a species, the locust-like cyborgs called archons. Even before the earth arose, the archon horde erupted in interstellar space (like the Acari insects of the famous experiment by Andrew Crosse in 1837). Commanded by their reptilian overseer the Demiurge, they falsely claimed to be creator gods in their own right. Yet they are nothing but demented insects.

This unanticipated burst of inorganic life-forms in the impact zone of her plume took Sophia by surprize. The archon locust horde was a messy, meddlesome swarm, and quite distracting. To occupy the horde, the goddess allowed them to construct a heaven world for a habitat: the inorganic planetary system of celestial mechanics (stereoma). Picture a maze-like ET Disneyland in the third spiral arm. The archons are a mimic species, cosmic copy-cats. Their habitat is a static, lifeless duplicate of fractal patterns in the Pleroma. In their delusion they take themselves for lords of all the cosmos they survey. They disrespect boundaries, looking aggressively and enviously at any region of the Kenoma that does not fall under the dead mechanical laws of their home zone. They are not evil, but engage in deceit and confusion to entertain themelves. Having no life-force of their own, they are parasitical to organic life but can only live vicariously off sentient energies. 

Sophia did not anticipate that these archon ETs would try to intrude upon the strain of the anthropos she had selected to live out her private experiment. As we have seen, this intrusion went so far as an attempt to hack the anthropos, the human genome, but failed. Sophia and Thelete designed the genome to resist that kind of intrusion, but they did not design the human mind with sufficient resistance to the subterfuge of those same mind parasites who operate through hal, "simulation, virtual reality."  Read the story for the true plot of the human condition: our species was not sufficiently designed to repel archontic mind intrusion because our genomic design was engineered before the conditions for such intrusion arose. This happened by anomaly, a side-effect of the fall of the wisdom goddess.

Does this factor of the vision story tell you something about the human capacity to deal with deception and predation in our own midst? Why most people who are not prone to deceive and dissimulate fall so easily into the designs of the psychopathic few who excel at such tactics? Have you wondered why it appears that deceit has an advantage over honesty in our world? Does the ingenuous or gullible quality of our species make sense in a new way, in view of the archon factor?

Hang on, it gets better. Additionally, Sophia did not anticipate that she would succumb to the conditions of the Kenoma where stars and planets arise. As an entity composed of formless plasmic luminosity, Organic Light, she was not accustomed to the stress and strain of interstellar dynamics. Under these conditions, Sophia morphed into a planet, but a living, organic body on its own, not a member of the archontic carousel. Imagine how the Aeon, dreaming alone in the Pleroma, could not anticipate that she in her Pleromic substance would provide the setting for the divine experiment she so desired to oversee. Not enter and engage, but oversee with fond detachment, letting it play out on its own terms. Yet Sophia did become the very setting of that experiment, the planetary body where it would unfold. Her unilateral desire made her into a one-parent planet. That is why meiosis, propagation by division into daughter cells, and generation of creatures from a female ground plan prevails on this planet. Whereas things could be quite otherwise and certainly are on other worlds, including planets inhabited by other strains of the anthropos.

The Gaia Mythos explains many of the features of material and biological existence unique to our planet, showing how it is exceptional in the cosmic order. Because Sophia acted freely and unilaterally, we live on an organic world directly indwelled and permeated by an Aeonic power. This is not the case for all planetary bodies, even other organic bodies in the spiral arms. Again, I emphasize that the astronomical myth of the Mysteries is unique to this world. Likewise, the correction of the wisdom goddess is unique to the human condition, whence arises the problem to be corrected. 

Deviance and Deceit

And what is the problem? A divine experiment originating in the Pleromic center has gone wrong, or is at risk of going terminally wrong due to anomalous, unforeseen conditions. Precisely, conditions that did not factor into the original set-up of the experiment as Sophia previsioned it. Conditions that even the wisdom goddess did not anticipate

And what exactly is the experiment now at risk of going terminally wrong? In a general sense, it is what we of the human species could do here on earth, by way of creating a free, cooperative social order, if we were to realize our divine potential and achieve it according to the designs and purposes of the resident divinity, Gaia-Sophia. That is to say, the highest planet-friendly, coevolutionary culture where the ethos of mutual aid prevails. Fine, clear enough, but there is a nasty twist to the cosmic plot. Due to anomalous conditions impacting the experiment, namely, the intrusion of the archontic mind parasites, we are challenged to detect and overcome an alien factor working in our own minds. This alien factor is a compound tendency to deceive, fake, hoax, conceal, lie, avoid, prevaricate, and pretend, that frustrates the natural talent of our species, our ingenuous, open-ended learning capacities. Children who go to school to learn how to read and write are well prepared to learn but not prepared to be deceived about what they are learning, are they?

Imagine that I teach you how to demount, repair, and remount the carburetor for a '57 Chevvy. Easy enough, for human faculties are geared to learn by example, going through the motions, counting on trial and error. I might, for instance, let you make a mistake in placing a gasket, then allow you to catch the error and correct yourself. Along those lines, you would surely learn the task. The capacity for self-correction is a signature trait of our species, and open to endless development. But if in the process of  teaching you, or pretending to teach you, I intentionally deceive you about the parts of the device, the procedures, or even about how a carburetor works in the first place -- what then? When the moment comes to exercise what you learned about carburetor repair, you would fail. The experiment would be botched by deception. You would be tricked into failing. 

Just so, deception and secrecy, covert operations, fraud and dissimulation, false attributions, lies and cover-ups of lies, threaten the divine experiment that Sophia envisioned for the human strain on this planet, herself embodied. No other myth from any time or culture, no other spiritual teaching no matter how lofty or elegant, exposes and explains the origin and operation of deceit as does the vision story of the Mysteries. Nothing else in human reckoning comes close to this elucidation. Not remotely close.

Note that the Gnostic expose of extraterrestrial intrusion does not blame archons for humanity's deviance from the divine experiment: it states that these entities, also called "rulers" and "authorities,"  prey upon and exaggerate our tendency to prefer simulations of reality for reality itself. By turning ourselves into aliens in our own natural habitat, we foster and fulfill the alienating influence of the archontic mind parasites. We complete in fact and act the deviant bias they merely insinuate in our minds. We are totally responsible for self-delusion. Archons merely piggy-back on our folly and fallacy.

Vision and History

Upon completing Not in His Image, I was reticent to speculate on correction, although I did    advance some tentative remarks and cautious guesses. I respected the fact that Gnostics had left this aspect of the guiding narrative incomplete, unscripted... Now I understand that my restraint had a deeper cause. Being steeped in Gnostic instruction, and faithful to the telestic method of shamanism -- you learn from the supernatural or divine matrix of life by posing exact and cogent questions to it, as Parzival posed a question to the Grail --  I intuitively knew that no one could foresee or preconstruct mentally or imaginatively how correction proceeds. Why not? Because the way correction proceeds can only be known as it proceeds, in real time. That is the nature and essence of correction: simultaneity of human intent and imagination with the incentive of the wisdom goddess.

To conclude this essay,  let's return to the matter of timing. Why should correction be happening precisely now? Rather than at some moment in the past. Or rather than perpetually, as a transtemporal, ongoing event? Or at a moment coded into a calendric system, such as 2012? And how do I know that my call on the timing of planetary shift is true? Uniquely true.

Here I invite you to consider a monumental inference. An inference, however, that can be supported by concrete evidence seen in terrestrial and astronomical changes, shocking events, anomalies. I submit that this entire bizarre mythological narrative of the Gaia Mythos is plausible in telluric and astronomical terms and can be verified by science. It can also be verified by the simple observations of ordinary people: for instance, the observation that the sun rises unusually far to the north lately. That strange rumblings often mount from the interior of the earth. That the entire sky goes ablaze inexplicably. That the pole star seems displaced on some nights.  And much, much more, with such anomalies increasing day by day and reported by many people around the world. 

Something is happening astronomically and geophysically in correction. Something that I as a Gnostic scholar, even as a shaman with imaginative technique at paranormal levels, could not have anticipated: the earth is charting its own self-propelled, self-directed course through interstellar space. Gaia-Sophia is making her way beyond the capture of the archontic planetary system. Her course correction is not just a mythical trope, it is an ongoing and verifiable astronomical event.

But this extravagant claim anticipates what I wish to develop more closely in the follow-up essay: using a nautical metaphor to chart Sophia's correction as an astronomical event progressing in real time. To conclude here, I would rather introduce another way to determine if correction really is getting underway right now, and why it would happen uniquely now. For this determination, let's return to the story of the divine experiment previsioned by Sophia before she plunged from the galactic core. How actually did she picture the experiment? What were its terms and objectives? What risks did it involve that would have made it interesting to her. a Pleromic observer? What would have made it an experiment worth her attention, a game with something at stake, that could have played out in various ways, etc.

Well, it is almost impossible to say. Just yet. But this question might be approached by considering two factors relative to the Gnostics, visionary and historical factors.

The visionary factor shows up in the NHC text entitled Trimorphic Protennoia. This arcane document describes how Sophia in the Pleroma dreamed up a three-body (trimorphic) system in which the original intent (protennoia) of her experiment would unfold. As it is, we almost have those initial conditions. Almost. In Gaian theory, earth, moon, and sun are structurally integrated into a single system that supports organic life in large, creaturely forms, distinct from the rest of the solar system. Our world is a three-body system captured in the archontic stereoma, the clockwork realm of celestial mechanics. Or perhaps we only appear to be so captured. Perhaps we are only captured in the fraud or simulation of dead mechanics, the false paradigm of control, rote, hierarchy, fatality. Remember that the archons are messengers of deception, hoaxers and fraudsters who use simulation to captivate our minds. The greater part of their power over humankind lies in the illusion of commanding power which in reality they do not possess. Yet appear to possess if we attribute it to them. Hold that idea for a moment.  

The second factor supporting the monumental inference I am proposing here is historical. Consider the known historical fate of the Mysteries and the Gnostic adepts, the telestai. Additional to the Sophianic vision story, the telestai had a warning for the world of their time, and the world ahead. It concerns what they were up against, what they saw coming with singular perspicacity. The telestai were not merely gifted with paranormal skills and high imaginative talent, they were also astute observors of social behavior. Their observations in that regard complement their visionary perspective and bring it down to direct application.

Drawing on long-term scrutiny of events in the Middle East where theocracy emerged, the telestai detected that the archontic mind parasites had targeted a particular ethnic group, like the vector for spreading a virus. "Yaldabaoth [the archon overlord] himself chose a certain man named Abraham . . . and made a covenant with him that if his seed would continue to serve him he would give to him the earth as an inheritance" (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.3.01, in paraphrase of Gnostic teachings).  The entire Semite group was not infected, but the virus infiltrated the human mind through that discrete selection, a sliver. Gnostic seers said that the Demiurge, the demented pretender god who oversees the archon horde, chose the Abrahamic faith for a vector into human history. The Mystery adepts identified the Demiurge (Yaldabaoth) point blank with Yahweh or Jehovah, the off-planet father god. Upon pointing out this identification to pious Jews and Christian converts to Pauline salvationism, a program  hijacked from Judaism, they were not looked upon kindly. "Your presumed god is a demented alien working against humanity, his agenda of salvation is mere hoax, the pretext for murderous deceit" was not a message well received in the Jewish-Christian communities of that time. Fortunately, it is a message that survived for the world community today.

Ultimate Threat

"Jerusalem is the dwelling place of many archons," warns the First Apocalypse of James (NHC V, 5. 25:18). The singular vector of archontic deceit identified by Gnostic seers in parapsychological terms was historically incarnated in the Zaddikim sect at Khirbet Qumran on the Dead Sea. Zaddik in Hebrew means "righteous, perfect," implying compliance to a standard of perfection above human nature. A transhumanist ideal, it seems. Or an anti-human con? The head of the Zaddik movement is Melchizedek, an eerie, clone-like figure who is said to be "without father, without mother, having neither the beginning of days, nor the end of life" (Romans 7).  In an amazing admission totally ignored by most Christians, Saint Paul declared Melchizedek to be the power behind Christ, superior to Christ, the authority who anoints the Messiah, the Most High of Elyon. To Gnostic eyes, here is the supreme archontic deceit iconically enshrined in the human mind, the seat of all power that operates against the divine endowment of humanity. Here is the crux of the arch-deception on earth.

Historically, the Zaddikim enforce a plan to wreck the divine experiment because they have another agenda. Read the War Scrolls of the Dead Sea side by side with the Book of Revelation and you will see exactly what that agenda is. Some Gnostics actually encamped near the Dead Sea to observe the Zaddikim fanatics. Knowing their game was detected, the Zaddikim put the Children of Seth, a self-designation of telestai in the Levantine Mysteries, at the head of the hit list on the tenth column of the War Scroll. The battle-lines of today were drawn in 120 BCE. The adepts of Sophia recognized that the ultimate risk to the divine experiment of the wisdom goddess would come from the apocalyptic agenda of this minute faction of genocidal maniacs. And that agenda advances to this day under the sigil of another Z, well-known to the world at large. 

Correction begins at the precise moment of ultimate risk posed by the Zaddikim insanity rooted in Abrahamic faith, although not all adherents to that faith are conscious agents of this program. But evil depends on its minions and accomplices, who are Legion. Not only the Jewish people, but people all around the world are accessory to the latter-day extrapolation of the program of the "Covenanters" of Qumran. Gnostics came out in the open, frontally exposing and opposing this program, and paid with their lives for doing so. But the story is different today,  the plot is more advanced, enough of the human race is savvy enough to catch the con, as Gnostics did. And the odds have shifted, favoring the end of secrecy simply because the massive orchestration required to sustain it has become unsustainable. Still, the ultimate risk has to be met frontally and brutally at the exact moment when the archons reach the consummation of their work. On the Origin of the World (103.15-30) highlights this moment in a pre-terrestrial incident, the declaration of Wisdom's dare.

When Pistis saw the impiety of the Lord Archon [who claimed to be the only god, though not even a true god] she was filled with anger. Acting in her invisible form, she spoke in this way: "You are mistaken, blind one -- false deity who cannot see. There is an immortal luminous child, the Anthropos, who came into existence before you and who will appear among your automata. This luminous child will trample you in scorn just as a potter's clay is pounded [into a lump]. And you will sink away to your proper zone, the abyss, along with those who belong to your legion. For at the consummation of your work, the entire defect [of Archontic illusion] exposed in the light of truth will be abolished, and [that illusion] will be as if it never had been."


That moment is now: the consumation of the works of deceit, of the illusions of power. The moment when Wisdom's dare, calling deceit to the end of its works, is enacted. This is the moment to ask, What is the supreme threat to the divine experiment of human potential on this planet? I submit that Sophia herself, being a Pleromic Aeon, wishes humanity to recognize her radiant primary presence, Organic Light, and to respect the symbiotic web of life in the habitat she provides, her planetary body.  Above and beyond that, she wishes that we realize her laws, principles of Pleromic order, namely, the free energy dynamics at the root of the natural world. With application of free energy dynamics, humanity would be able to create an harmonious social order based on mutual aid and fair distribution of terrestrial bounty. Would it be too much to imagine that discovery and application of free energy dynamics would be crucial to the success of the divine experiment, on Sophia's terms? For a moment, just imagine it could be that way.

And then imagine the scenario that might unfold if that small faction of people terminally infected with the archontic virus, the Zaddikim-Zionist vector, acquired the use of free energy dynamics and turned it into a weapon against the rest of the human race, in service to their anti-human, anti-life, anti-freedom, anti-goddess agenda. In service to murderous insanity.  That is the ultimate threat to the divine experiment, and that is exactly what has happened on this planet, 9/11 being the proof.

So, I assert that correction happens right now because the moment when the ultimate threat becomes a reality is also the moment when the myth comes true and the dare of the wisdom goddess can be enacted for the future of the divine experiment on earth by those who engage her story.

Image courtesy of NASA Goddard, via Creative Commons license.