User talk:Gnostrat

Welcome to Gnostrat's talk page.

Please post your new topic at the bottom of this page. Please start each new topic with a new ==Heading==. Please indent your posts with ":" if replying to an existing topic (or "::" if replying to a reply, and so on). Please be civil. Please sign and date your posts by adding four tildes (~~~~) at the end. I will generally respond here to comments that are posted here, so you may want to Watch this page until I respond. Please let me know if you'd prefer me to post the reply on your Talk page. Remember that I am busy in real life. Please be patient if I sometimes take a few days to reply.

Welcome!

Hello, Gnostrat, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page
• Help pages
• Tutorial
• How to write a great article
• Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  Mak (talk) 22:49, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Your views on race?

What are they? I'm curious based on the things on your userpage and your contributions. Ungovernable Force^{Got something to say?} 05:50, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Let's say I object to a simplistic sort of anti-racism as much as I object to racial bigotry. I know that needs more explaining so I'll get back to you. Not sure when, because I'm going to be moving around a bit; watch this space. Meanwhile, see my post on the National anarchism talk page; it looks like somebody had a massive hissy fit over the Black Ram/anarcho-swastika stuff - and, surprisingly, it wasn't the 'mainstream' anarchists! Gnostrat 03:01, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

So I see you put more extensive views on your userpage. Based on what you said, I agree more or less. There are clearly differences between different racial groups, and there is a biological cause for some of them (although socioeconomic status is probably the largest factor in a lot of it). Certain groups are more prone to certain diseases than others for example. That's probably biological, whereas the high rates of incarceration for non-whites in the US is almost definitely a socioeconomic issue at its core. Just like there are differences between men and women: women score better at verbal tests, whereas men score higher on mathematical ones (on average). I'm guessing that's biological. And as you say, difference does not equal inferiority or supremacy. I too am critical of the whole "everyone is exactly the same" stuff people try to push. I guess if they are saying it in terms of everyone deserves equal consideration and respect, than I agree, but if they really mean to say there are no inherent differences between various groups then they are ignorant. Although I don't think I'm as upset by it as you, just mildy amused.

I also agree, though some may give me shit for it, that humans are naturally more comforatble with people of their own ethnic backgrounds usually. I am sure to emphasize usually because, like most things, it is by no means universal. It gets slippery though because those types of beliefs can lead to separatist beliefs, which are usually a mask for supremacist beliefs. On a psychological level, people are just naturally racist, at least on a subconscious level, but that doesn't mean that racism is ok, or that it should mean we just abandon the idea of living with others. It just requires trancending an easy, non-conscious existence and actually looking at things from a rational viewpoint.

Your mention of the melting pot as racist made me find a passage that really struck me in The Culture of Make Believe by Derrick Jensen:

I've always been amazed that so many people continue to think of the notion of the melting pot as a good thing. Unless all parties act under conditions of equivalent power, and unless the melting is purely voluntary at every step of the process by everyone concerned, it seems by definition genocidal: whoever gets melted--assimilated--loses separate cultural identity. That's genocide.

But if you start making the claim that the melting pot is genocidal, you quickly find yourself alone (except for a few radicals, mainly people of color) in a room full of white supremacists...

I'm not quite so keen on the whole racialist label though for a number of reasons. One, I'm not convinced that race exists outside of a social construction. There are clearly many aspect that are socially constructed. But I'm more into cultural than physical anthropology, which would explain my bias in that direction, as well as my lack of having read much about the topic. I read a bit about the biological reality or lack thereof during my physical anthro class a couple years back, but it was just a brief intro to the subject. Second, far too many outright racists use the term racialist as a way to make themselves look more appealing and to hide their true beliefs, so I would never use the term myself, even if I did believe in the existance and differences of races.

As for the issue of PC, I don't see what's wrong with trying to avoid pissing people off with clearly crass wording. Some people take it too far, but I really fail to see how it is acceptable to go around calling people fags or niggers. Not to say it should be forced on people, but it's really quite sad to me that people wouldn't do it voluntarily. I really like this song by the way, which fits in well with my beliefs.

Finally (as if it didn't take long enough), I'm interested in knowing about your experiences with Christian Identity. From what I've read about it (all of which has admittadly come from biased sources), I don't see how you could have been a part of that unless you had different views on race in the past. Isn't the whole theology about how non-whites are all inferior mudpeople working for the Jews? Ungovernable Force^{Poll: Which religious text should I read?} 06:19, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

At last I've got some free time, and nothing on Talk:Anarchism needing attention, so I'll get right down to your post. I think we're close to agreement in a lot of areas (though I'm not sure about the song). And I'd go along with the idea that race is socially constructed to a degree. There is no such thing as a white race really, but there is a Caucasoid continuum which embraces people of European, north African, west Asian and south Asian descent, many of whom are of course shades of brown. This continuum is well-defined genetically and physically (although the edges are a little fuzzy in the Horn of Africa and across northern Asia) in a way that 'whites' are not. When I speak about my race, Caucasoids are the people I mean. The fact that a lot of 'whites' think people from India belong to a different race (instead of the other 'end' of the same race) only demonstrates why educational establishments need to give students a good grounding in race-science!

That's a brilliant quote from Jensen. He's right on the button, in fact I think I'll start reading the guy. What he writes there about polarised views is true to my experience. Oppose the monoculture and you do find yourself fellow-travelling with, at least, white separatists. There isn't a lot of room for a middle ground where sane views can establish themselves, and more likely than not anybody who tries is going to get shot up from both sides and treated like subhuman scum. Anti-racists can be as bigoted and dehumanising as their opposite numbers. I long ago realised that the only way through is to make a virtue out of the inevitable. So I'm not shying away from terms like 'nationalism' and 'racialism' (though probably you're right in saying that we're not ready for swastikas yet).

I can understand why you're backing off from them, though, and impressions do count with some people. But hey, I'm trying to do some crude (and maybe premature) 'Hegelian' synthesis here. That means both sides are in the picture. It's risky to step outside of left/right 'tribal' politics, but that's true of anything that's worth doing.

So here's the other way of looking at it: it can't do any harm if some entrenched ideas get shaken up and a few minds jolted out of their easy assumptions. I mean, I've had to ask myself whether the way in which political ideas are classified could almost be designed to divide and conquer by parcelling out the radical opposition into left and right 'extremes', which (a) suggests that the capitalists in the middle are 'moderate', and (b) persuades the 'extremes' that they are necessarily each other's polar opposites so as to prevent them forming alliances. Maybe some on the 'radical right' that 'we' (lefties, though that's not a category I care for much) had dismissed as fascist bigots, aren't that at all. Look past some differences in attitude and style, and maybe it turns out they're travelling the same way. Third positionists are people from a radical-right background who cottoned on to the same realisation (about some of the left) three decades ago. And they're still getting called 'fascists' by people who don't know the difference. (Unfortunately, some third positionists also don't know the difference, which doesn't help any.)

There are reasons of personal history which account for why I look at things in this way. In the 70s, what some British anarchists did wasn't anti-fascism but counter-fascism. Anti-fascists (largely Trotskyist-led) just wanted to get out on the streets and "smash the fash". Counter-fascists (lagely nonviolent-anarchist) wanted to struggle creatively with them in ways which appealed to their humanity and sense of justice. The rationale was that people who dehumanise others are people who've been dealt some pretty dehumanising treatment themselves. We wanted them to let go of their hate and redirect their anger, not persecute them into the ground and screw them up further. If you don't want them as enemies, don't relate to them as if they were.

I've also had some real nightmare experiences with anti-fascists, and reaction against that had a lot to do with how I got into Christian Identity. It seems you're not the only one who's curious about that involvement, which gives me an excuse to cunningly sidestep the PC question (though we could come back to it).

I first ran across Christian Identity publications in the 80s. I had joined the committee of a welfare claimants' campaigning group and one of the other committee members had been the local parliamentary candidate for a recently-defunct English Nationalist outfit. He passed me some zines from a South African CI group which had an agent in the northeast of England. At the time, I was a practising Wiccan with Odinist leanings, and the Identity Christians struck me as paranoid reactionary nuts. Still, there is a 'racial' aspect to Odinism too, so I couldn't dismiss the CI worldview totally.

Anyway, the ex-EngNat guy had done magnificent legal work on behalf of black and Asian claimants but, incredibly, the left in my home town had him tagged as "more right-wing than Hitler". They turned on the claimants' organisation, figuring it was a fascist front, and all of us - presumably including one Christian Marxist - were damned by association.

I took myself down to the local 'alternative' paper to put the case for the claimants' group, only to find they were planning a big exposé and I was thrown out on my ear. It seems that these people - who included former colleagues from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament - then got together with some Trotskyists, concocted a story that I was an active member of a far-right party called the National Front (nobody here calls it the British National Front), and on this basis blocked my membership of the local socialist club. I was left politically and socially isolated, except for the committee. Aversion to left/right tribal politics apart, maybe you can see why I went a tad sour on anti-fascists, who I have often found to be the very mirror-image of bigotry. (As Nietzsche observed, he who fights too long with dragons becomes a dragon himself.)

One guy from the claimants' committee did turn out to be a Ukrainian nationalist with connections to Count Nikolai Tolstoy. We became friends for a few years, especially after my Christian conversion experience in '85 (and Christianity with me was always inclusive or pluralist, so I never renounced any prior interests and affiliations, even though the Elim Pentecostals were really anxious for me to do that.) His background was Ukrainian Orthodox but, like his ex-EngNat friend, he was heavily into Christian Identity as well. Before long, we had a small study group going (the 'Ariosophy Circle'); I was sour enough on the trad left that CI started to make a lot more sense (as in the idea that anti-fascist and anti-racist movements were being manipulated from behind the scenes by the same shadowy Zionists and finance-capitalists who were behind fascism in the first place).

The outfit that we were most connected with was Bill Gale's Ministry of Christ Church in Glendale, California. Although we were independent, they sent us tons of their stuff. We would sit for days listening through their sermons on cassette tape, and then we would copy and distribute them. The MCC was a seminal CI organisation, but I never heard them use the expression "mudpeople". There was plenty of ranting against "Jew-boys". Blacks and Muslims were seen as potential allies against the Jews; they could swing either way. The Jews were always the enemy (and we would have to edit out the crasser anti-semitic remarks from the tapes), but the real vitriol was reserved for white gentiles who supported them. We also received material from other CI churches who reckoned Jews were actually ok; I'm not quite sure who they thought the 'real' enemies were, though it usually boiled down to some combination of high finance, Communism, Freemasonry and the United Nations.

That's how I came to find myself in the company of Christian Identity for a while. But, as I wrote on the Anarchism talk page, it was the obsession with Jews that pissed me off finally. I don't subscribe to the classic Elders of Zion conspiracy theory, nor to Holocaust denial. I am a passionate anti-Zionist though (meaning inter alia that I don't recognise Israel's right to exist as a state), and it's as plain to me as the nose on my face that you and we do now have what is effectively a Judeo-Evangelical conspiracy on our hands (called neocons).

Actually, I never changed my basic views on race through all of this. There have been changes of emphasis, but my current views are essentially the same ones as I've always held. I simply switched my ideas of who I thought best represented them, from 'left' to 'right' and back again. During my CI phase I was more open to white separatism, but I wasn't into hate, supremacy or (God help us) exterminationism. I make no claim to righteousness but, with me, that was genuine. With some ICs and white nationalists, when they said "We believe in difference but we don't hate", it was window dressing.

But at the same time, I've brought away with me some big ideas and insights that I still find valuable, theologically and politically. I don't mean that I bought into the theory that white folk are the lost tribes of Israel; that's full of supposition. I mean three other big ideas, and I think these stand up rather better (in scriptural terms). First, the idea that the human races are separate creations, and only Caucasoids are descended from Adam and Eve. (That, in part, underpins my convictions about diversity and shouldn't bother you if you're an anti-speciesist.) Secondly, the idea that Jews are not Israel and are mostly not even of Semitic descent. (That invalidates the premisses of Zionism and anti-semitism at one fell swoop.) And third, the idea that you can't save yourself Billy Graham-style by making your own "decision for Jesus", since it's not a matter of choice, but of heredity. (That means you really don't need to worry about salvation: Caucasoids are born saved, other races never needed saving - they never 'fell' - and the only ones bound for hell are the demons.) All of these ideas, by the way, have analogues in one or another version of ancient Gnosticism, which points up one route by which I arrived at my present beliefs.

By all means get back to me if there's anything you want to discuss further. I'm not sore about the template, although I hope my posts on Talk:Anarchism incline people to reconsider. Gnostrat 01:22, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Thx

Whatever you believe and do in other edits, it seems to you are doing good cleanup work at Nazi mysticism an related articles -- they have been an ugly wart since long and always attract crackpots adding more and more speculation. You've also seen the flying saucers, Nazi moon base and Neuschwabenland.

BTW: I hope your Gnosticism prevents you from siding with Alain de Benoist and that faction, but whatever -- as long as you do good contributions.

Pjacobi 23:36, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragement, much appreciated. It's a big article but I'll continue to do what I can. I've been watching Secrets of the Third Reich (on Nazi space stations, Aryans from Aldebaran &c.) which has a link from Nazi mysticism or somewhere similar. Actually I've a soft spot for UFOlogy but this is so bad it's hilarious.

You'll probably be disappointed when I tell you that I have sympathies with some of Benoist's positions but he's one influence among many. I think I'm closer to Third Way (UK), classical 19th-century National Liberalism and some strains of anarchism, but it isn't so much "where I stand" as where I shuffle about. Anyway Gnosticism isn't dogmatic, either theologically or politically, so I might go off all of them yet. Gnostrat 02:00, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah. Thought so already. That would put as in different "camps" I assume, only that I've ceased to be that much politically involved. And in Wikipedia co-operation can rather astonishingly succeed between people of different opinions. Can.

During my time in organized anti-fascism I was (a very hobbyist) "expert" on Nouvelle Droite and their german-speaking counterparts, especially Armin Mohler (oops! no article on enwiki!) -- never thought that it would mix with Gnosticism.

A somehat unrelated advice: If you ever feel not that bold and need a second opinion, you may perhaps want to ask de:User:Maya (mostly working on dewiki, but always willing to help), who isn't only a student of religious studies and sinology, but also the dewiki resident expert on all things magick, and to some extent, gnostic.

Pjacobi 15:11, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I'll bear that in mind. My boldness may get some testing around here.

Wouldn't say that I am Nouvelle Droite exactly (I'm not sure that even Benoist thinks he's Nouvelle Droite anymore) but I suppose if you go by Tomislav Sunic's understanding of European New Right as essentially a protest movement against "the dis-enchantment of the world", then I fit the profile. The idea of something magical and divine hidden within and beneath everyday material existence is pretty Gnostic. So is the idea that the material creator god of mainstream Judaism and Christianity (and the materialism of his followers) constitutes an obstacle to knowing it. But if that looks like it leads straight down the road to 'metaphysical anti-semitism', don't forget that Gnosticism emerged out of sectarian Judaism as a protest by First-Temple polytheistic conservatives against Second-Temple monotheistic innovators. That's a pretty nuanced 'metaphysical alignment' (which could also fit in with ND's neo-paganism).

My political history has been pushing me towards transcending the whole left/right polarity as a desirable outcome. That just happens to be in tune with what Benoist is articulating, but I also understand it as a particular case or form of the Gnostic path: harmonising polar oppositions as a route to achieving wholeness and realising inner divinity. (There's a widespread misconception that Gnosticism equals dualism. It isn't just about dualism, but about recognising a dualism and then overcoming it.)

I wouldn't be so quick to assume that we're in different camps. It's just that I can't figure ND as a fascist (even a neo-fascist) movement. That may put us at odds in terms of political analysis but not necessarily in political core values -- nor (as you point out) in editorial policy, which is what counts here. Gnostrat 17:01, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Theozoology

Thank you for your concern. This translation of this title is the translation on the version published by Europa House, which is the translation I uploaded onto Internet Archive. My German is basic too, but I have seen "kunde" translated variously as "lore", "science" or even "culture". The rest is primarily a question of semantics - if you read into Theozoology and his ideas about the "Gotter-Elecktron" you will see that his concept is ... complex. God created Aryan man, and only Aryan man, in his "image" and the "Gotter-Electron" is this medichlorian-like substance that is imbued into each Aryans soul, and when we die, we all join the other Aryan souls as well as the original creator in a kind of collectivity. It is a difficult concept to convey into two words, but since Lanzs' theology leans more toward montheism, of a sort, I beleived "Divine Electron" more accurately conveyed the original sense. --Dudeman5685 23:45, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

gnostisism?

 In your writings on the judeo vs. gnostic bible are you refereing to the tradition gnostic
sect of middle ages, the power through knowledge sect, or are you refering to a new gnostic
sect?  I share your belief about paganism (insofar as i have seen) however that is also mind
you in the traditionall judeo/christian bible.  Do you ascribe to odinistic beliefs or is that
also too judeo for you just asking don't answer if you feel it too personal a question.

No, it's not too personal. I'm pretty close to Odinist beliefs and I don't think they're "Judeo" at all.

When you say that you can find paganism in the Bible, I entirely agree with you, but the Bible is not very "Judeo" either! Most of the Old Testament was written before the Captivity in Babylon, and there weren't any Jews at that time — just Israelites, who were pagans and believed in many gods, like El Elyon, Baal and Asherah who can easily be identified with the gods of Odinism. Yahweh/Jehovah was just one god among many, and he is most like Loki in Odinism.

It isn't surprising that Germanic people and ancient Israelites had the same gods, because Semites and Indo-Europeans were both descended from Noah and their languages share a common root (see Nostratic theory).

The Jews were a mixed group of mostly non-Israelite origin who "returned" to Palestine from Babylon after the Captivity, and they had converted to the belief that Yahweh was the only true god. So the Jews suppressed the true religion of the Israelites and edited the Old Testament to add their own bias in favour of Yahweh.

The Gnostics were a movement of sectarians who kept the old beliefs from before the Captivity. They were originally known as the Nazoraean sect, so that when Jesus is called "the Nazoraean" it simply means he was a member and leader of the sect. Jesus was an Israelite neo-pagan, and Gnosticism was the original form of Christianity.

When I speak about Gnosticism, I am mainly thinking about the "classical" Gnosticism of the period from the 1st to the 5th centuries: Simon Magus, the Ophites, Carpocrates, Valentinus, the Gnosticism of the Nag Hammadi scrolls — and also, to a certain extent, the Catholicized Gnosticism of the Alexandrian school (Clement and Origen in particular).

Actually, the Gnostics didn't reject the "Jewish" Bible; they simply said that if you read it in the right way, it proves that Jehovah is not God.

Our present-day Christianity, of course, makes no such claim. That's because it originated from a Jewish group which set up a rival church claiming that Jehovah is God and that Jesus was just a regular Jewish messiah. By the end of the 1st century, this Jewish-Christian movement had split into two main factions: the Ebionites, who wanted to keep it Jewish, and the Catholics, who wanted to convert all the gentiles as well. But they both hated pagans, and they both hated Gnostics!

I hope that answers your questions. And before anybody calls me "anti-semitic", I have absolutely no prejudice against Semitic people (such as the ancient Israelites and modern Arabs). It's simply that Jews are mostly descended from non-Semitic converts to the Jewish religion, which has done more than anything else in history to suppress the genuine cultural traditions and spiritual heritage of the Semitic peoples. That is why I believe Judaism itself is anti-semitic to the core. Individual Jews, of course, can always convert back to paganism. Gnostrat 00:45, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

You are an enlightenment through knowledge gnostic then much like the buhdist, I would assertain as such any way. Interesting thing about the isrealits though they actually still exsist as worshipers of the sun god rah (whatever your chosen spelling ) even in the bible it states that under moses they ate grain from the graineiry of the gods of egypt, then they were made unto a nation of priest as per the law given to moses. Alot of modern day antijew/semitism, both external and internal, raises from both the disdain for that reality and feelings of deceit even though they were aware of what was going on at the time of the exodus. Of course you know they are called jews because jew is derogitory/common lingo for son of the mother. I myself am a christian form of satanic the new testament is sometime interpreted incorecctly in my opinion, people substitute evil for wickedness and weakness to temptaion not understanding the correlation of evil to good. Evil is a optimal jail (without being used for w or w) good is closer to hippie. Yet even the blind of knowledge can obtain enlightenment in my opinion. that is where my belifes differ from the gnostics i suppose.

IF not to rude are you of the interesting belief some have that baylon was the egypt spoken about in the bible some people corelate nebakanezar and his dreams to the pharoh of joseph? I mind you myself do not? but I have seen reference to such beliefs in society. I ask due to your captivity in babylon reference followed by the statment that the isrealits then converted to Ja-O-Ba/Va (ism) or ywhw as some spell it. As oppesed to moses on the the mount with god. Or do you belive the isrealits awaiting moses'e desent from the mount is a temporal allagory towards babylon? When they reverted to idolatry waiting on moses.

Hm. I'll have to think about that one. By the way, I hope you don't mind that I've adjusted your posts slightly to take up less room and read a little easier on the page.

There are academics who think that the Moses traditions were cooked up by the Yahweh-alone people and inserted into the Bible by the Exilic group in Babylon, to provide a false historical precedent for seizing the old land of Israel from the Am ha'aretz (the native Israelite pagans). In other words, they invented a Moses who had led the Israelites to take the Promised Land, in the same way that Ezra's and Nehemiah's Jews intended to take the land from the Israelites who had stayed home while the deportees were in captivity. So Egypt was a metaphor for Babylon, Moses' Israelites were a metaphor for Ezra's Jews, and the Canaanites were a metaphor for the old pre-Exilic Israelites, all projected into an imaginary past.

If you take that view, then nothing happened at Sinai and nobody in Israel lived under the laws of Moses or had even heard of Moses and the exodus until shortly before the Exile. I keep an open mind on that idea. Yahweh — an older conception of Yahweh — was certainly worshipped in Israel before the Exile, but to what extent the same can be said for the jealous Yahweh of Moses, we are still guessing.

The Gnostics took the exodus from Egypt and the law-giving at Sinai as an allegory for the journey of the soul from the material body (Egypt) to the spiritual world (the Promised Land). Maybe it was an allegory that the Yahweh-alone people rewrote as if it were history. But my historical sense tells me that there might have been a tiny movement of Yahweh-alone fanatics all the way through from Sinai to the Exile, perhaps claiming Moses for their founder, but that they were unable to impose their views until King Josiah, shortly before the Exile. Most Israelites had a different conception of Yahweh, as a figure similar to the Greek/Thracian/Phrygian Dionysos or the Hindus' Śiva/Rudra or the old European Horned God, an ambivalent deity with both a gracious and a destructive side. I would say that the Moses people, if they existed before the Exile, inclined to venerate his destructive side.

So, no, I think Egypt means Egypt, but the people who imposed the monotheistic dogma after 540 BC could well have taken the exodus from Egypt as a historical precedent and metaphor for the "return" from Babylon. Anyway, Jesus' priesthood is a lot older and far superior to Moses'. Jesus was a priest in the Order of Melchizedek, which was a pagan priesthood that was conferred upon Abraham from El Elyon, the Most High God, who is the Father of all the 70 gods of the nations and who appointed Yahweh to be the god of Israel (Deuteronomy 32:8-9).

Now to your earlier post, Christian Satanism is an interesting concept (I suppose Origen's idea that the devil will be redeemed could qualify, and so would the Process Church of the Final Judgment with its theory about Jehovah, Satan and Lucifer being the "three gods of the universe") though it's not exactly where I'm coming from. "Good is closer to hippie" — nice one! I was too young for the hippies but I always regretted missing out on the scene. I couldn't consider myself a Buddhist, as I have philosophical objections to its Anatma doctrine and I think that in the final analysis it boils down to a materialistic nihilism. Buddhists have also persecuted and suppressed pagans (Bön-pos in Tibet, shamanists in Mongolia, Ainu in Japan...)

Son of the mother? Well, Jesus means 'son of the mother' (genitive case of the goddess IESO or IASO), if you take the line that the name was intended to be read as Greek, not Hebrew. I hadn't heard it used to explain Jew/Judah, though. As for Ra, I take it you're analysing the name Israel into Ish-Ra-El meaning 'man of Ra the God'? That etymology I have heard before (or something like it) and I'd be careful of what you read in British Israelite sources! Gnostrat 01:03, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Not at all feel free to compress the text. I am an american so I don't know much about the "british israelit". About jesus though on my own studies I would agree with you that as per biblical writings jesus is older in concept and life than moses. After all moses did preach the word of "the lord" in egypt. Remember mind you moses was raised in the house hold of two different pharohs hospitiable to him as if he were there son. As per light lingo phonetically jesus would also have the meaning Ja=son of ze=light of the mother (moon) az light of the father. g-zaz. possible i assertationed as much from the light scripter verses at the end of revelations and well ase~ases (slang in my opinion) means light in egyptian and demonic (ever get that one demon-ic). As for three gods well the concept of montheism is in the bible also, but in joshua JOB JA-O-BA refernce the the egyptian gods as gods not false idols or anything else like that. So iguess I would be a monothieistic pagan. The world is an interesting simple world some times. But then again wouldn't that make the concept of moses. A condemed man preaching the word of the coming glory (either personal or civilizationally) almost an imortal concept older than egypt? Sad thing is egypt saw some better times with joseph and some far worse times with his decendents so would argue the egyptians were racist some that the jews were to blame probibble a little of both. So the journey from egypt you stated would seem in opinion more geared to the exoduses journey for the egyptians they were probible trying to get back to egypt as a higher or return to a higher civilizational or personal state of grace. I must admit I am desendent from some egyptian blood long ago though very white individual though can get a tan at times. so I truelly am trying to remain unbiased. ALthough I probible could pass eaily for austrian. I mean only that i belive christianity in a more basic form was a basic part of the egyptian religion and it brought great calm and stability to egypt and the exodus isrealits took that with them as they search for their promised land. I simcerly belive that christ was an individual that actually lived and through enlightenment did enjoy the life he is said to have had. The crusifiction is symbolic of man's ,of course, joulousy of one another he was imprison for much the same reasons fear that someone who was not them would sucseed about them, basic seven dealy sin stuff. But you british you have first had knowledge of some one endevering to use something good for their own personal gain. They say that is why that King Henry stuff happened. on both episcipalian and catholic sides.

Demonic? Er...you mean Demotic, I hope.

British Israelites are similar to your Christian Identity groups. If you used CI etymologies that connect Israelites to Ra...well, let's just say that I wouldn't. But I do think you're right about the Egyptians practising "Christianity before Christ". Early Christians knew that too, which is why Egyptian Gnostics carried images of the gods of Egypt around in procession.

Sure, the Bible is full of gods. There's no "monotheistic paganism" about it — it's straightforward polytheism! Have you read the bit in Judges 11:24 where Jephthah's message to the king of Ammon recognises the jurisdiction of the Ammonite god Chemosh? Or Daniel's prophecy (11:36-37) which links the Antichrist's blasphemy against the "God of gods" with disregard for "the gods of his fathers"? And why call him "God of gods" if there are no gods for him to be God of?

But you do have to remember that "the Lord" (Yahweh, not Jesus) does not mean God, the Most High! What kind of omnipresent, all-knowing God has to walk to Sodom to find out if the rumours about the place are true? At the very least, you would expect him to beam down like Kirk and Spock. And what should we think about a "Lord" who chooses Moses, sends him off on his mission, and then ambushes him in the desert and tries to kill him? But it all makes sense when you realise that we're talking about a 'fallen' god or angel here, and that whenever we read that "King Somebody-or-other did what was evil in the sight of the Lord", it probably means that he did what was good in the eyes of God!

By the way, who said the moon is the light of the Mother? In Revelations it's the "woman clothed with the SUN", just like in Malachi 4:2 — "the Sun of Righteousness shall arise, with healing in HER wings". Pity the translators can never get the gender right. Gnostrat 02:46, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Very interesting yet I recall God speaking to Abrum about the destruction of sodom and gomora, and at Abrum's request god sent angels to find the house of Lot so as to spair the cities, however the cities inhabitant were slaughtered, yes truelly wiped out. As for moses well as I stated earlier moses was a condemed man given the opportunity of penence by leading the exciles/preist(they did eat from the grainery of the gods) to cainin, given the opportunity before he returned to egypt the first time and killed the workmaster beating the "slave", yet moses did not kill either of the jews fighting upon a subsequent return to egypt. Maybe ol mo fouled up there. However as an alligory goes you need conflict or else your watching a lack of action less than nothing, and well if you can teach lessons to future generations maybe that was the route of least complication. Is not the very moon that circles the earth "clothed" in the light of the Sun, well on full moon nights anyway. I seem to remember a passage in psalms refernece the moon as the "watcher" or something to that effect. Yes GOD of gods. King James states "his wings", New american standard states "it's wings". I myself would love to get my hands on some of the original translations into latin from roman time, teach myself some proper old latin, you know they have copies of those somewhere in the catacombs they have to. Jesus in the bible is refernced as the lord of lords host of host the king of kings but not the god of gods. As for king-somebody-or-other have you every read of esa or ESAW and jacob, their is way to much going on in there for right now but esaw or ESA is the backwards light now jacob himself was a little furry and I myself have modist arm hair and hair in my armpitts, as most people do so I am not "preaching" ugenetics right now but in that story are parables such as you are advocative. I myself would endevour to read any king-somebody passage from every point of very so as to gain deeper understanding. The technique make nebadcanezar seem like a concerned monarch feed up with being jerked around instead of a tyrant, you know a real man of the kingdom.GOD of gods yes a question. Do you believe that god on high is mearly whosoever is mayor or that maybe their is some sort of "highlander" thing going on? While amongst angels and they like concivable their could be some sort of conflict on personal levels from time to time. I am not attempting to mock you this is acctually a subject I have heard reference to the "mayor" or "king" theory.

As for demotic, either the greek desendent language or the egyptian one, I think they are just cleaning it up for the public myself. after all what would the public think If satan himself where an evil shepard endevering for the works of a "father" god, similair but not the same "son of god" (person) as jesus himself, himself. figuring much more prominently in the bible as either good or evil than some people have been lead to belive. Evil is as a path wrought with temptation while the passage does refernece evil "the path of the rightous man is beset on both sides with the inequities of the weak, and the tyranny of evil men" you know ezekeal, from pulp fiction, is rather telling. To truelly be evil and without sin or weakness to temptation requires great discipline much like christ's, although he did toss up and mingle the moneylender's records and money at the temple. One instance in christ's life that could have brought about his cursifixtion. I mean he was the son of god born unto pure love come on a guy like that isn't supposed to do that stuff. But then again it was by his choice the crusafixtion and all that. Heck I consider myself a satanist but I would raise my kids in a christian setting. That's to much for a child to deal with in my opinion.

Regarding your merge suggestions in Nazi mysticism

Well, I'm about to remove on of the merge-tags you proposed. The subsection on Nazi occultism and Germanic neopaganism only refers to The Secret King, a book by some Germanic neopagans on Karl Maria Wiligut. And Wiligut would definitely belong to the Nazi mysticism article. Concerning your other merge-suggestion it would say that it would be best to wait a few months with this. I don't know what will become of the Nazism and religion article. I would like to expand it towards an article on Religion in Nazi Germany, and than the subsection could be moved there.

Btw: I could not help noticing your views on Gnosticism on your user page. I think you could gain quite a lot from reading Gnosis und Nationalsozialismus by Harald Strohm. iy you want to attempt to read German and mail me your postal address, I can send you a copy. (I have the book copied anyway, since I could not get it rom my local library.) If you haven't already done it, you could also read Hans Jonas' , Gnosis und spätantiker Geist. That should be translated into English. -Zara1709 08:23, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Wiligut wasn't in the mainstream of Germanic mysticism but he is one of the points of intersection between it and Nazi mysticism (as well as having a role in the persecution of other Ariosophists), so he could justifiably be claimed for both articles. I still think that at least parts of those subsections could be copied over to Germanic mysticism because they nicely complete some of it — but I'm also quite happy if you have plans to use the same material elsewhere. I'll leave it all in place, and perhaps we could think about it again later on?

Just a brief response to the reply you left on your own talk page, on getting the emphasis right: I think the section 'Germanic mysticism and the Nazis' could perhaps be renamed 'The occult roots of Nazism?' to add stronger emphasis on this issue, as long as the question mark is in there, because there are different perspectives on this. I am also intending (when I have the time) to insert some more material in that section tracing Ariosophical input into the SS and Ahnenerbe. It wasn't massive, but it was there. Hitler fooled a lot of people, so it would be very surprising if no Germanic mystics fell under the illusion that he would fulfill their hopes also.

I'm familiar with Jonas' ideas, but he wrote that book before analysis of the Nag Hammadi scrolls revolutionised the field. I'm not an existentialist and I have problems with Jonas reading Gnosticism as if it were a prologue to Heidegger. I'll be in touch about Strohm, though. Thank you for that! :) Gnostrat 03:56, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Template sources etc.

Hi thanks for letting me know. Problem fixed, I hope. FYI this was due to a change in the target of the template redirect:- it now redirects to {{refimprove}}. Rich Farmbrough, 13:46 1 June 2007 (GMT).

Strohm's book

Hi again. I should probably have written something earlier, but I was busy with the Lords of Chaos (book) article. I was going to read through Die Gnosis und der Nationalsozialismus again, to see if the book mentions List at all. Currently I am under the impression that you are right in some point: It could be difficult to apply the term 'Ariosophy' to the EARLY List. However, the whole field is (outside esotericism) only interesting as IDEOLOGICAL predecessor to Nazism, and that can best be brought under the term 'Ariosophy'. I had previously noted two pages where Strohm points this out:

Ideologically, Lanz von Liebenfels is a predecessor to Nazism. In his Theozoology he had "obviously [t]he practice of the later concentration and death camps already in view [..]." "Beside the Lebensborn institutes and the concentration camps Lanz already envisioned also the völkisch war - almost four decades before it actually happened." (Strohm 1997, 50: Die Praxis der späteren Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslager schon vor Augen, warnt Lanz eigens davor, dies hehre Ziel durch humanitäre Nächstenliebe aufs Spiel zu setzen. [...] Neben den Lebensborn-Anstalten und Konzentationslagern visionierte Lanz auch den völkischen Krieg - fast vier Jahrzehnte bevor er dann tatsächlich vom Zaun gebrochen wurde. Strohm refers to Theozoologie (German edition), pp. 140 & pp. 159)

"Der spezifische Mythos das Nazis, den man mit Rosenberg als in der Tat deutlich allgemeiner als einen 'Mythos des 20.Jahrhunderts' bezeichnen sollte, gründet in "Geheimlehren"der zweiten Hälfte des 19. und des ersten Jahrzehnts des 20. Jahrhunderts. In typisch synkretistischer Weise schütteten sie Platons Atlatnismythe zusammen mit aufgeschnappen Brocken der wissenschaftlichen Theorie der damaligen Zeit: Lemurien, indogermanische Völkerwanderung, der Pseudo-Etymologie von arya. Unter hehren und vermessenen Selbstetikettierungen wie Theosophie (= "Gottesweisheit"), Antroposophie (= "Menschenweisheit") und Ariosophie (= "Arierweisheit") begann aus diesem giftigen Gebräu auf breiter Ebene der Geist aufzusteigen, der sich bald in Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslagern, in Lebensborn-Anstalten und in der "Ostkolonisation" brutal materialisieren sollte." (Strohm, 1997, 76)

I thought about adding that to the respective articles, but have not yet gotten around to do it. I would provide you with a translation of the second quote, but for tonight it is already quite late for me. Probably tomorrow. Zara1709 22:58, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd be pretty unhappy with applying the "Ariosophy" label to List — and not just the early List, either. As far as I know, he never called himself an Ariosophist. The label would be attached retrospectively, a bit like calling Wagner a Nazi.

However, I can't see any reason why we shouldn't use the Strohm quotes on Lanz in both articles. I'd wait awhile before slipping it in Germanic mysticism, though, because I'm rewriting that entire section "Germanic mysticism & the Nazis" on my PC (and waiting for Robert Prenic to get back to me, hopefully with some references for his bits that have been temporarily removed from that section).

I also think we do need to think carefully about exactly what Strohm's parallels do establish. Tracing Nazi genocidalism back to Hitler's reading of Lanz would imply that plans for a völkisch war and death camps were inherent in Hitler's vision of national-socialism from the very beginning. Whereas I think the consensus is that plans for the Holocaust were not drawn up until Germany was at war, by which time Lanz's writings had already been banned for several years.

Similar visions don't amount to evidence of a causal link. Personally I think we should look for some deeper cultural root which could have influenced both Lanz and the Nazis independently. And there are important differences. Hitler contradicted Lanz's idea of the Jews as ape-like: he said they are further removed from the animals than Aryans are.

"The whole field is (outside esotericism) only interesting as ideological predecessor to Nazism". Actually, I think it is much more interesting than that. The broader völkisch movement (of which Germanic mysticism was a part) is crucially important to understanding the birth of the Nazis, but it is also notewothy because it could just as easily have gone in a left-wing direction (from Herder to Landauer and Mühsam). And the way I read the history, List's ideas were widely influential in both the esoteric and political sections of the völkisch movement.

Other, more doctrinaire ideologues of racial purification like Lanz and the Germanenorden had a very minor appeal, but List had more influence while his ideas on race were more ambiguous. He discouraged interbreeding, but he also said that if it did happen, it would not benefit the non-Aryan side at the expense of the Aryan. In Das Geheimnis der Runen, he even pronounced in favour of "liberty, equality and fraternity", though he saw it as a goal for the far future. (I think I ought to add something in Germanic mysticism about this!)

Thanks for translating the first quote. You don't need to translate the other, I've already got the sense of most of it. Gnostrat 20:23, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

As you will most likely have already seen in your watchlist, I have rewritten the lead of Germanic mysticism. I hope that in mentioning Armanism before Ariosophy, I have taken your concerns about not applying the "Ariosophy" label to List into account. I think I am correct to say that Goodrick-Clarke summarizes these developments under the term Ariosophy. Please see, if you can agree with that; [I would write a lot more on my opinion about this topic, but I only have like 5 more minutes before the university computer I am working at automatically shuts down. :)] Currently I don't know any acadmic author (or half-academic author like Strohm) who uses the term "Germanic mysticism" to describe those developments, so if you don't mind I would prefer to move that article to "Ariosophy". Zara1709 16:39, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree : ) See my reply on the G.m. talk page. Gnostrat 02:23, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:User categories for discussion on -isms

Hi. A user category that you are in has been proposed for deletion at Wikipedia:User categories for discussion. You are welcome to comment. Cheers! bd2412 T 02:11, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Guido von List & whatever

Hi again. If been meaning to write you someting on your talk page for some time now. Due to the suboptimal working conditions here (as obivious from all the spelling errors), I think I will have to concentrate on something else then editing wikipedia sooner or later. But before that we should probably discuss the ideological difficulties of this topic. I have to admit that I am slightly confused by your userbox that says that you are "proud to be Aryan". I don't think that I totally understand what you mean by this. Anyway, if you want to know my viewpoint: I think I can say that I do oppose extreme ideologies, but unlike some other 'anti-extremist', I am aware of the fact that there are differences between Nazism and Socialism. (Which can be seen from the fact that I prefer the term 'Nazism' to 'National Socialism'.) The details on this are complex and probably not that important. When it comes to Ariosophy and the related topics, I think I am mostly taking the academic viewpoint. No matter the ideological content, the article should give an accurate description. I would not got around and seek a reason to delete a picture that has a swastika on it. (Not that I am saying that other editors would do that.) However, whereas I can acknowledge your attempt not to overstate List's ideolical connection to Nazism, I think I have to push against this. Check out Goodrick-Clarke (1985; 89) again: "This totalitarian vision was Lists blueprint for the future Greater Germanic Reich. In his anticipation of Nazi Germany he was only one year out."

I you want to discuss the "linear time scale", the reliability of Stephen E. Flowers or my reasons for creating Esotericism in Germany and Austria we can also do this here. Zara1709 08:58, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

That's a lot for one sitting, but I can address a few issues now, and we could get down to the meat about List next time round.

My userbox? Well, what I mean by Aryan(ism) is a stream of tradition, embracing both cultural and mystico-religious aspects, and with a definite (but also a fluid) genetic and linguistic basis. I am aware that there are philological arguments both for and against the term 'Aryan' in its broad (Indo-European) usage, and also that there are those who don't accept that 'Aryans' are a racial group at all, but, even with all the caveats, the concept has its uses and I'm not prepared to simply surrender it to Nazis.

By Aryan spirituality I am talking about Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and European paganism, which are all parts of that stream of tradition. What ties them all together is that they are strung like pearls on to the same mystical current, which people like Jacolliot, d'Alveydre, Blavatsky, Guénon — and List — all plugged into. But the ancient Semitic polytheism is also kindred, and Christianity is its consummate expression, although much of it has deviated from its pristine form. I don't recognise the Aryan/Semitic contrast; that's phoney biology. But saying that won't make any difference to the bigots who have got it all figured that Asatruar, Gnostics or Hindus are "metaphysical Nazis". (And Strohm's title doesn't help.)

Politically, my own inspiration comes from 19th-century National Liberalism, 19th-century Utopian Socialism and 19th-century Anarchism. The 20th century pretty well lost the plot, but in the first half of the 19th you would have a hard job drawing boundaries between socialism, nationalism and liberalism (which is a good thing), and the same sort of mix can be seen in the Austrian national-socialism which Hitler's party (originally) sought to emulate. I would not describe the Nazis as socialist either, but that isn't necessarily true of other sorts of national-socialism. In its origins it was a genuine form of socialism which "went wrong" (like Bolshevism, although not in the same way). The Austrian form originated in the 1890s, far older than fascism. Our tragedy is that Hitler was too wilfully ignorant to understand the difference.

Cyclic and linear time? Sure you can combine them! The result is spiral time, which is a squiggly line if viewed "from the side" and a circle if viewed "from above". So you could have a downward swing of an individual cycle coexisting with an overall upward trend because every new cycle would begin from an improved starting-point. And, whether or not you or I or Goodrick-Clarke think that these two concepts hold together, List did believe that they hold together.

For List, linear time when it appears in a myth or allegory may stand for cyclical time in the 'actual' world. What List wrote in Geheimnis' was that, while the myth of Valhalla outwardly seems to promise a 'final' paradise from which the heroes never return into the world of men (an end-point in linear terms), read esoterically it in fact speaks about continuing human cycles of reincarnation on the earth. (Think about it: every day in Valhalla these guys have a right old brawl which leaves them all dead. But come the evening, they are resurrected and feasted, ready for another day's brawl!) List recognised the warriors' paradise as a reincarnational allegory. And of course, there are further cycles of world-renewal after Ragnarok.

Let's come to List's 'German Millennium', of which Goodrick-Clarke makes so much. Judeo-Christian linear-time apocalyptic, he says. Well, of course List believed that ideas could be outwardly Judeo-Christian but inwardly pagan, and I referred to this in my edit. Even G-C tells us on p.86 that List's apocalyptic is related to the transition to a new age, which slots into perfect accord with List's cyclical chronology. In this case, the cycle brings about the restoration of the Armanist theocracy, which is a renewal of the past. And List's theory of history shows that this cannot be the 'end of the line', either — because it must precede List's eventual socialist utopia, when all elitism will be transcended, and also because the Geheimnis speaks of future epochs before that comes about.

If you've followed me this far, you will no doubt realise why I'm a little perplexed by your addition: "However, in the original norse myths, the cycle of destruction and creation is repeated indefinitely". My edits aren't claiming that List denied that, because he didn't. The problem is that Goodrick-Clarke has muddied the waters by seeing a contradiction between List's cyclical theory and his use of apocalyptic. He is correct to observe (p.79) that "List rejected...oriental fatalism regarding time and destiny". But this was consistent with the internal logic of List's theory of causality; it was not a rejection of cycles (and List was convinced that the ancient Germanic concept of cycles was not fatalist). This is not the only time that Goodrick-Clarke sees incongruities where there aren't any.

Which brings me to the relative merits of G-C and Flowers, and to that quote about List's "totalitarian vision" that you ended on. You can already see that I have big problems about Goodrick-Clarke's reliability in certain areas. But perhaps I should let you respond to the above before I get on to all that! Gnostrat 10:30, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately I don't have the time to write a very long response, so I will just start with with the question of linear and cyclical time. The problem is not whether List's understandig of cyclical time is consistent in itself, but whether it is what the actual adherents of the ancient Germanic Religion would have believed. After all, List is claiming that he is describing that.

What ancient Germans actually believed is beside the point. We are describing what List believed. The issue here is simply that Goodrick-Clarke is not in fact saying that List gave up the cyclic theory in favour of apocalyptic, nor is he saying that List's use of cyclical language was just empty rhetoric. The problem, however, is that G-C's way of putting things can give the misleading impression that this is exactly what he is saying! Gnostrat 22:10, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Now, there are many more problems with that, like that the structure of the ANCIENT Armanist religion seems to include element of Freemasonry, and that generally his time scale does not seem to conform to the archeological evidence.

Well, List did claim that Freemasonry was a remnant of his Armanic guilds. We might as well object that Neopagans are reconstructing Odin using elements of Santa Claus, since they commonly argue that Odin survived in this form. Fair point about the time scale, but skewed time scales are a known effect of clairvoyant vision, and also the archaeology is not as categorical as all that. List's clairvoyance seems to have been spot on about the Quadi, though. Gnostrat 22:10, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

When Goodrick-Clarke says that the Norse myths where completly cyclical, i.e. "the cycle of destruction and creation is repeated indefinitely" he is pointing out that List overlaid the Norse myths with material taken from Judaeo-Christianity.

Actually, at this point he is only describing the Norse theory of cycles and telling us that List agreed with it. Gnostrat 22:10, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Of course, we live in a pluralist society and everyone can combine his faith as he likes. But List should not claim that this where the actual believes of the ancient Germanic Pagans.

As far as I can tell, he didn't. The fact is, there were folk in old Germanic societies who thought they would be going off to Valhalla and not coming back, and there were folk who were no less convinced that people reincarnate. This is linear versus cyclical theories at the individual scale, and we have literary evidence for both kinds of belief. What List provided was a plausible conceptual framework which accounts for them both — as exoteric and esoteric versions of the same doctrine of human cycles. List's whole point is that, in the ancient Germanic religion, what appear to be linear time-frames are indeed only apparent, not real. Gnostrat 22:10, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

But List also intended his books for a contemporary audience. And this is the point where Goodrick-Clarke CAN (in my opinion) draw parallels between List and Nazi Germany. In its proclamation of the Milliennium, the self-proclaimed 1000-year-Reich drew on the material of Judaeo-Christianity apocalyptic, too. (That about an empire lasting 1000 years is somewhere in the Revelation of John, afaik.) So much for the question if Hitler was a pagan.[1]

Not List's fault if the Nazis exploited the biblical Book of Revelation. It is rather more widely known than List's works. Incidentally, this term "German Millennium" seems to have been coined by Goodrick-Clarke. I can find nothing in that chapter which traces it back to List or which explicitly states that he himself ever used it. Gnostrat 22:10, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Now, as fas as I can say in a short glimpse, the quotes of List that Goodrick-Clarke uses in the Chapter on "The German Millennium", are from books that List wrote after the "Secret of the Runes". If Flowers only focusses on that book it would explain why we have apparently a different understanding on this point. I can probably write some more later. Zara1709 12:00, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I started to expand that paragraph, specifying to which works of List Goodrick-Clarke refers. I think the question of cyclical versus linear time might take aus directly to the core of the issue. If you check Strohm's book on this, you will see (if I remember correctly), that Strohm, himself a Neopagan, puts forward a thesis about the religion before the advent of Christianity, Gnosticism and others religions he considers similar, too. Based on his interpretation of the German fairy-tale of Frau Holle he assumes that this religion had a cyclical concept of time. I don't remember if he proposes directly to return to that religion, but, although his evidence could really be better, I find Strohm's thesis quite sympathic. The apocalyptic idea is not only present in Christianity and Gnosticism, but also in the "political religions", Nazism and Marxism (if you want). If we could do completely without it, that question is worth debating. But this doesn't work if you combine cycclical and linear time. Zara1709 19:32, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

I inserted some comments into your first post, but the main observation I would make here is that attributing List's use of apocalyptic to his later work doesn't resolve the difficulty.

Let's take as our starting-point that Goodrick-Clarke sentence: "List rejected this oriental fatalism regarding time and destiny in favour of Judeo-Christian notions of salvation" (p.79). Already in the Geheimnis we find List rejecting fatalism (because the ancient Germanic theory of cycles was not mechanical but recognised unpredictable factors) and talking about redemption — by which he refers to reincarnation! (Please bear in mind, whenever List writes of a national "redemption", that in Geheimnis this term appears to mean further opportunities to fulfill your destiny in future cycles.) So, evidently, there is no sharp division between 'early' and 'later' phases of List. His rejection of fatalism and his salvation-language precede his later use of "J-C apocalyptic" and were formed entirely within the context of his Neopagan theory of cycles. Judeo-Christianity had nothing to do with it (except perhaps for wrapping his ideas up in Christian words like "redemption"). Goodrick-Clarke appears to be mistaken on this point.

In the second place, if List didn't use Christian apocalyptic earlier, it isn't the core of his system. So we need to ask what he thought he was doing by resorting to it later on.

Christianity has only one apocalypse. (Or so we suppose. I'll come back to this.) Paganism has lots of them, endlessly repeated. So obviously List could have used 'apocalyptic' language in relation to ongoing or near-future events and still have remained a good, cyclical Neopagan. There is no evidence in anything that Goodrick-Clarke writes or quotes which would establish that List regarded the 'German Millennium' as the final age. It's difficult to believe that he would actually contradict his earlier scheme in Geheimnis where he writes about further sequences of ages into the distant future.

I noticed that a part of the relevant chapter is given over to a description of traditional western apocalyptic which does not even establish a connection with List. Elsewhere, we have G-C throwing around words like "apocalyptic" and "millennium" in contexts which do not warrant it. Sometimes, as on p.83, "apocalyptic" means no more than that List was a social critic and a conspiracy theorist. (The naive premiss being that political or economic conspiracies are the stuff of fantasy. After the past few decades, I wonder how many are still convinced of that.) Out of the 10 citations of List's two Armanenschaft books which you referenced, just four have a plausible relation with western apocalyptic: note 18 (Tarnhari as an "omen of imminent national redemption" — G-C's phrase, not necessarily List's); note 20 (smash the Great International Party!); note 21 (in praise of battleships); and note 29 (an aborted Armanist revival under the Hohenstauffen emperors). If these are typical of List's apocalyptic, I would not describe the evidence as overwhelming. (Supporting your country in an ongoing or anticipated war is not that weird.)

But admitting some use of apocalyptic by List, we also have to look at how it functions in his system. First, none of the above citations has any bearing on whether or not List viewed these events in a cyclical context. List was indeed writing for the special conditions of his contemporaries (my point exactly!) and, for the benefit of people who were indifferent to cycles but who needed encouragement in appalling circumstances, List was simply addressing them in terms which were familiar. Whenever he employs 'Judeo-Christian apocalyptic', it is in relation to current trials and woes, short-term crises, and expectations for the very near future. If you isolate a short segment of a cycle, it will look linear.

On the other hand, when G-C actually attempts to slot the apocalyptic into its overall, long-term chronological context, as on p.84, suddenly we are back in a cyclical setting: "These speculations concerning the regular creation and destruction of all organisms within the cosmos enabled List to invoke apocalyptic hopes by positing the end of a cycle close in time to his own day: the start of another cycle corresponded to the advent of a new age." From then on, it is all sidereal years and cosmic seasons.

G-C nevertheless tries to have it both ways in his footnote (14): "Within an apocalyptic scheme, the Kaliyuga could be regarded as the period of woes, provided that one ignored the cyclical nature of Hindu chronology, which denies ultimate salvation." All that we get from this reference is that List used Hindu cycles to calculate an age-transition around 1897. The rest is supposition. That List did indeed "ignore its cyclical nature" or that he was thinking in terms of "ultimate salvation" — that List treated the so-called 'German Millennium' as anything other than just the next cycle out of many — is unsupported by a single quotation, yet G-C should have had many such texts to hand if the evidence were so conclusive.

Regardless of his linear-time suppositions, every time G-C gets down to the nitty-gritty he has to admit that List's system is cyclical. Even though he used Christian apocalyptic language, List pasted it on to a thoroughly pagan concept. Since Norse myth already acknowledged recurrent apocalypses along these lines, in what way is List departing from the ancestral view? Let me underline the point with a List prophecy which G-C supposes to be "consistent with the apocalyptic model", from p.85: "An enormous revolt, redolent of the twilight of the gods or the barbarian migrations, will smash the infernal enemy..." So, not only is the apocalyptic set in a cyclical chronology, but Goodrick-Clarke even recognises that it is pagan in its content. If it's just good old-fashioned pagan 'apocalyptic' to begin with, the Christian overlay looks more and more like a relatively unimportant (and non-essential) concession to modernity.

Now is perhaps not the time (or is it?!) to recall that the apocalyptic tradition is in any case not primarily about disasters and wars, but about the revelation (Greek: apokalupsis, unveiling) of esoteric secrets relating to the changeover from one age to the next. The author(s) of the biblical Book of Revelations expressed this in images drawn from the symbolism of astrological cycles, like the Ram/Lamb on the throne, or the twelve foundation-jewels and twelve pearly gates of the heavenly city. A Church of Scotland minister wrote a book on this in 1985 (Christ and the Cosmos by Gordon Strachan, ISBN 0 948095 07 5) which partly builds on the earlier work of Rev. Prof. G.R. Beasley-Murray (Revelation, 1974). The apocalyptic tradition is not 'linear' either, and I have no doubt that if List ever examined St. John's Revelation, he would have picked up its astrological content and correctly intuited that Revelations, too, is all about cosmic cycles. Too much has been made out of this false contrast. Biblical chronology is like the old Norse chronology — cyclical and apocalyptic.

In practice, after all this has been said, it doesn't seem like we are disagreeing very much about the actual wording in this part of the article, although I would prefer to reorganise it slightly and insert something like: "List, however, following the ancient Germanic and Hindu beliefs, placed these 'apocalyptic' events into a cyclical chronology" — in order to clarify what I meant by "combined".

Now I can come to the related but rather more serious point of Goodrick-Clarke's final sentence on p.89 about List's "totalitarian...blueprint", which he says anticipated Nazi Germany. This interpretation is evidently his own summary of the preceding argument, which is unsupported by any sources except for two List articles in Balzli. He leads up to his conclusion by introducing the "totalitarian" idea on p.88, and we should look at this carefully.

According to Goodrick-Clarke, List waited eagerly for the coming of a strong leader who would exercise dictatorial powers. "Monolithic state"..."totalitarian vision" — all this is spun off from G-C's understanding of an Eddaic text known to List. It described the figure of der Starke von Oben, whom List believed was coming to establish what G-C persistently calls the "millennium". (List would have known that the Edda calls it no such thing.) The verse, as quoted by List and G-C, actually has der Starke as a counsellor who settles disputes by fair decisions. This description might fit a wise judge or a King Solomon, but G-C writes instead of a "divine dictator" establishing a "monolithic world of certainties".

From Occult Roots alone it's impossible to tell whether this is G-C's own interpretation, or List's. But List's essays in Balzli show that he didn't think the Starke von Oben would even be a single individual. Instead, the 'Strong One' means the collective spirit of all those who had died in WW1 and had reincarnated and would be reaching active maturity about 1932 — therefore not an individual dictator, and also way too young for an even remotely plausible identification with any member(s) of the Nazi leadership. Goodrick-Clarke knows this, because he references List's essays on p.89, and because he describes his collective 'messiah' on the same page as the Starke von Oben verse, yet without the slightest hint at the fact that List had identified the two. He is quite happy to leave the reader with the belief that List was hailing a future dictator, even though he must be aware that this is not what List was doing!

You see the POV problem with Goodrick-Clarke. This sort of thing recurs throughout Occult Roots and Black Sun. He is no more neutral than an Old Testament prophet describing the cult of Ba'al. I don't normally have a problem with quoting or referencing Goodrick-Clarke when he sticks to the plain, unvarnished facts. But all too often, he slips in his own unsubstantiated (and usually derogatory) opinion, which I would prefer to leave aside, since we, at least, are supposed to stay neutral. He is less reliable and less objective than Flowers, and the best policy would be to use both authors, but judiciously — an academic may have written stuff but that does not mean we are under an obligation to quote it. I could say more about this, but that's quite a lot for now.

List had no less and no more of an ideological connection to Nazism than Saint-Simon had to Stalin, IMO. Had he lived to see it, he might have interpreted Hitler's Reich as a pre-emptive deception by conspirators intent upon blocking his Starke generation of young Armanists from getting near the actual levers of power. Which is what in fact happened since no esoteric groups were allowed anywhere near. Gnostrat 22:10, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

That is a loot of stuff. I will see if I can find the time to go through it point by point. The problem is, that the question of the relation of Ariosophy to Nazism has to be solved if we want to get the Ariosophy article to B-Quality. There is enough content for that, only the unclear POV issue needs to be solved. This also means that we have to debate the relation of Armanism to Nazism (aside von relation between Ariosophy and Armanism, we should be debated, too). Now, after working with The Occult Roots of Nazism for several months now, I have actually found some minor errors. (Some guy that Goodrick-Clarke refers to as Sigmund Richter was actually called Samuel Richter according to Wikipedia and the dates on the historic Knights Templar were not that exact.) But I still think that the Occult Roots is a good book and the Chapter on the germanic Millenium is in my opionen one of the better. If you are inclined to doubt its exactness, one would have to go back to the primary sources, and I currently don't have the capacities for that. I guess I will finish some work on Nazi occultism and Esotericism in Germany and Austria and hope that some more editors get interested in Ariosophy, maybe one of the can sort that out. Zara1709 19:13, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Black Ram Group

Hey, I wanted to let you know that an anonymous user has deleted the entire subsection relating to the Black Ram Group from the Anarchism and nationalism article. This article was only recently added to my watchlist, so I have not yet familiarized myself with the ins and outs of the content debates. Generally, I look askance upon any such deletions on the part of anons---9 times out of 10 they are just plain vandalism. As you added the content in the first place, and are well-versed in the subject matter and attendant debates, I wanted you to be aware of the situation. I would very much appreciate and enjoy discussing these numerous issues with you sometime soon. Cheers! ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 15:01, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing it, RepublicanJacobite! I recognise that particular editor and I've a fairly well-founded suspicion as to who it is. Anyway, he (probably 'he') appears to be a National-Anarchist or N-A sympathizer who is feeling a little bit put out that a much earlier group came up with the concept first, but along less "racist" and militaristic lines. He tends to get up to this trick every few months, and has been reverted each time. As I've pointed out before on that article's talk page, the existence of Black Ram can be confirmed by reference to the neo-pagan journal Pipes of Pan, issue 10 (Imbolc 1983), p.3. Gnostrat 21:26, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Can you post up your issues of Black Ram like you promised ages ago? I've been eager to read them ever since I read you would be posting them, perhaps torrents? Thanks--Kolia. 23:49, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Erm, well, I think what I actually said was that I was looking at ways to deposit copies where they can be accessed by researchers, but I was thinking more like the local library or uni or post one off to an anarchist publisher? It got put on the back burner for all sorts of reasons. I could scan a few pages and upload them on to a user subpage, but I'm not sure exactly what reactions that would get around here. Maybe I'll try it and hope. Thing is, I've got myself drawn down on an ever-increasing number of vaguely Nazi-related articles and my scanner also has some software glitches, but I'll see if I can get on it fairly soon. Gnostrat 21:26, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Any updates?

Ha, good luck with the Anarchist publishers! You would most definitely get a better reaction from wikipedia! Thanks for your time,--Kolia. 22:43, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Collapsable sections

Hi! You have done considerable work on the {{Nazism sidebar}}. There has been considerable discussion on the issue of the collapsable sections of templates like that one. I created a centralized place for discussion about this issue here. I hope you can bring your views to the discussion. - C mon (talk) 18:41, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Fellow Gnostic - or Syncretic Omnitheist...

Gnostrat - I'm glad you weighed in and must admit to getting a bit excited at seeing the silent "G" in your username. I've skimmed over your userpage and this talk page, and think that philisphically we share a number of views. We're currently starting an esoteric order, tentatively named as Syncretic Omnitheists (all gods are created equal, for lack of proof otherwise), and are basing our founding principles, or axioms as we call them, on some greek notions of virtue, like arete (excellence) as well as a very high-level humanistic approach to spirituality. We believe that the time has come for a new system of deity which internalizes the higher power, and which takes the responsibility for the entire species and its role in the universe. I'm actually using a discussion with another wikipedidan about Free Associations for our governance model. Here's the preamble to the document we're working on, I'll send the axioms themselves via email if you like - would love to get your comments, and my email is posted on my talk page.

Deleted original paste here to clear your user page

Shamanchill (talk) 20:01, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I can't find your email address to send a copy to, G. Mine is chill@r351570r.com - please drop a line and I'll send off the axioms and some other stuff we're working on for your much appreciated input. Shamanchill (talk) 22:17, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Nazism

Hi Gnostrat. A crowd of Christian fundamentalists is attacking the Nazism article occultating the link of Nazi antisemitism with Christianity. Please help me make Wikipedia neutral.--Esimal (talk) 19:58, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Southgate

Hey I am not in violation of anything. I am quoting from an article which is already mentioned in the sources section of the Troy Southgate article. If you do not like it than ask for protection. I f not I will revert it. I see you are bias in favor of TS as you share similar neo-Nazi interests. Please keep Wiki neutral and stop infusing it with your slant and bias! Please ask for protection or leave the article alone. 98.217.67.42 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 00:52, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

It is you who should leave the article alone. I've already explained on that talk page (and in my edit summaries which I've even helpfully referenced there) why you are in violation of WP:Biographies of living persons. "Potentially damaging information" about "people who, while notable enough for an entry, are not generally well known", should be "corroborated by multiple, highly reliable sources". That isn't according to me, that's according to policy (WP:NPF, look it up). Quoting a single journalist's uncorroborated opinion is a policy violation.

The first question to ask with all biographical articles where allegations are involved is always, "true or not, does this need to be said?" Because if it doesn't need to be there, it shouldn't be. You know very well that the Foggo article is referenced in the sources section because Belzub cited (not quoted!) it in a very brief, neutrally-worded summary elsewhere. I think even this much sits in a grey area. But as soon as you quote Foggo unnecessarily and at length you are crossing a line. We have a responsibility to write up biased sources in a neutral way. Quoting a source isn't neutral when its author doesn't know how to weigh up evidence, when it's already been neutrally paraphrased, when the quote is extensive and disproportionate enough to fail WP:Undue weight, and when it's introduced by a sentence which takes for granted what Foggo does not produce a shred of evidence for, namely "his [Southgate's] neo-Nazi agenda". A neutral summary should not agree with the allegations.

I am prepared to discuss all the problems with your text in depth (on the article talk page, not here). But as long as you continue to re-add disputed material while refusing to address other editors on the talk page, you are in violation on that account alone: "if the matter becomes disputed it should not be added back without discussion and consensus-seeking." I am sure you know that if I asked for protection I would be preventing legitimate edits (by the subject of the article for example), but please be aware that, in these circumstances, the three-revert rule does not apply when it's a question of upholding policy. On a biographical article, the onus is on you to justify restoring this stuff. I don't have to justify removing it.

Call it my "bias in favor of TS" if you will – I simply came round (reluctantly at first) to concluding that there's been something amiss with a bias against TS on a number of articles over several years and I took a few steps towards correcting it. As for my "neo-Nazi interests" – guilty as charged, I'm very interested in things I detest. Though the sense which you imply says more about you than me. Gnostrat (talk) 17:14, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Wait a moment here, please. You know that you and I have different political views, but we have been able to sort out the differences on the content in a civil atmosphere so far, and I hope that we can continue this. However, there is no hurry to do that, and I thought that I would wait until I have really a lot of spare time before I would get back on the issue of the reliability of Flowers & Moynihan. But, in the meantime, I think you are misapplying wp:blp here. There source in question [2] quotes Troy Southgate as having said:

"The NRF uses cadre activists to infiltrate political groups, institutions and services," ... "It is part of our strategy to do this work and, if we are to have any success in the future, it is work that must be done on an increasing basis."

The Daily Telegraph is not a tabloid and - unless you have another source that disagrees - should be considered a reliable source. I've had a similar discussion at Varg Vikernes. If person XY is quoted as saying "XYZ", they can always sue the people who quoted them. Of course, if the quote would come from a source like altermedia / indymedia, it shouldn't be used in an article, but again: This is an article from a major British Newspaper.

Currently the article says that Troy Southgate's political views have been documented in several academic publications, but it doesn't say anything factual about them. It would be wp:undue not to include the information from the Telegraph article with one or two sentences, though a long quote is probably not necessary. I will see if I can reword the part adequately.Zara1709 (talk) 20:09, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

National-Anarchism

Hi Gnostrat, there's been some trouble a-brewing over at the N-A article - nothing to worry about just yet, but I think we should keep an eye on things for now. Belzub (talk) 12:55, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, I see the crisis is over and matters are well in hand. Sorry for my non-involvement but I've had some crises of my own and really needed a couple of months' break. This place was also getting me down what with being dragged into an endless weary round of editorial conflicts with people I wasn't even looking for a fight with. Political articles especially are a dog and I've resolved to keep more to zoology, linguistics and religion/mysticism where there's more of a spirit of cooperation. N-A got sorted nicely without any help from me, but I'll keep an eye on it and help out if things get really hairy. Though IMO the contemporary Gnostic mythos that is Doctor Who may have become more vitally important to the well-being of the culture than any political ideology, however enlightened. Gnostrat (talk) 18:34, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

No problem, mate, good to have you back anyway. I know exactly what you mean about the political pages - it can be rather disheartening to discover how many people feel their take on reality is objective truth. I haven't been around much lately myself, what with starting university next week and suchlike. Ah well. Belzub (talk) 21:15, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Black Ram

I was wondering if you could send me some scans of the Black ram or would like to discuss anarchism please respond either on my user talk page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Freedom_nation) or you can email me at wolfsnguns@aim.com nothing has interested me this much in years and I would love it if you would please respond —Preceding unsigned comment added by Freedom nation (talk • contribs) 03:32, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Ariosophy related articles

Hi, I don't know if you're still there, but after Nazi occultism got some negative attention recently, I've decided to clean up some of the worse issues around Ariosophy and neo-völkisch movements. I've flagged The Secret King, Iduna (literature society) and Literarische Donaugesellschaft for deletion, and you might want to object. Zara1709 (talk) 08:06, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Zara. I'm still here (just). Apart from some personal issues, I lost connectivity for awhile and I'm not sure that's resolved yet as one of my PC's chips seems to be giving up the ghost. I suppose it's too late now, but The Secret King is an important enough book to deserve an entry as long as it sticks to the facts and doesn't preach. The other two look to me like they could be merged/redirected to Guido von List but I doubt they deserve separate entries. Why not fill out the Iduna article from Goodrick-Clarke first, then it'd be better referenced. Gnostrat (talk) 14:57, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Concerning The Secret King: You've got Mail. :) I'll probably be able to take another look at those two articles in a few days or weeks, but if not, that won't hurt anyone. Zara1709 (talk) 21:02, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

National-Anarchism

I've radically improved the National-Anarchism article. Any thoughts you would like to share on its talk page? --Loremaster (talk) 01:05, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Gnosticism

Hello Gnostrat, Lately I've been getting increasingly interested in Gnostic ideas, partly through studying the work of Philip K Dick, so I decided to break my Wiki-hibernation and re-initiate contact. A lot of the ideas make an intuitive kind of sense, but I have a couple of reservations towards certain aspects or forms of Gnosticism that, as an entirely ignorant newcomer to Gnosticism, I'd be interested in hearing your views on:
1: Certain strands of Gnosticism appear to demonstrate an extreme anthropomorphism or anti-cosmicism that I find untenable. The epilogue of The Gnostic Religion by Hans Jonas makes an explicit correlation between Descartes' monstrous contempt for the Universe and the denial of the material world central to certain Gnostic sects; is this a fair comparison? A publication by an Australian Gnostic group appeared to argue against this view of Gnosticism, so I'd be interested in other ancient or modern Gnostic strands that lack this anthropomorphic anti-nature worldview.
2: How intrinsic is dualism to the Gnostic worldview?
3: Could a Gnosticism exist that does not view the Demiurge as the creator of the material universe, but simply a corrupter?

I'm probably way off the mark with all of these, so my apologies if I come across as rather cretinous. Hope you are well anyhow. Belzub 12:08, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. :) I'm well enough, and I hope you don't mind the delay in replying. I felt that your entirely non-cretinous questions merited an answer in some depth.

Jonas did the best analysis that could be done for Gnosticism in his day, sweeping aside academic speculations and going straight for the essence revealed in the then known texts. But he himself was caught up in the mania for Heidegger and Spengler and the search for some response to the "crisis of the West", which I suppose conditions the way he reads the sources, refracted through the prism of Heidegger's existentialism. After decades of research on the Nag Hammadi library it is now rather evident that anyone who tries to straitjacket the ancient Gnosis into an interpretive framework derived from Heidegger is going to come seriously unstuck. Especially when Jonas uses a shared anti-cosmism as his criterion for lumping Marcion in with the Gnostics. A whole raft of misconceptions need clearing out of the way before we can even appreciate what the ancient Gnostic position was.

The supposed Gnostic anti-cosmism has a number of explanations. I'm not claiming the following as exhaustive: (1) A good deal of it is just misperceived apophatic theology, familiar from most of the major religions, that stresses the impossibility of describing a transcendent deity in finite and phenomenal terms. (2) In the past, some ascetic writings were wrongly attributed to Gnostics. This particularly applies to the "Thomas literature", which is actually the work of fairly typical Syrian Christians. The Gospel of Thomas may be an exception, at least in part, but this is controversial. (3) Plotinus, Porphyry and other Neoplatonists wrote against "gnostic" groups who denied the goodness of the natural universe. That this was no exaggeration is confirmed by texts in the Nag Hammadi library: for example, the longer recension of the Apocryphon of John inserts a passage which demonises the parts of the human body. We discover that this is an interpolated extract from the "Book of Zoroaster", possibly the one which Porphyry exposed as a Christian forgery. At any rate, it is evident that pre-existing Gnostic texts were being 'adapted' by Christian ascetics. Several other Nag Hammadi texts have had a superficial Christian makeover: the Epistle of Eugnostos exists in both a Christian and a pre-Christian version so we can see the process happening before our eyes. (4) Some Gnostic positions can now be recognised as unrepresentative. The Testimony of Truth, a Nag Hammadi book with a pronouncedly anti-cosmic and anti-somatic stamp, bears the hallmarks of a sectarian offshoot (probably ex-Valentinian) which abjured not just ecclesiastical Christianity, but the entire Gnostic mainstream as well. (5) Anti-somatic Christian movements tend to have their ultimate roots in Jewish Christianity (Ebionism, broadly defined) or sectarian Judaism, not in Gnosticism. The Manichaeans originated in a schism within the Jewish-Christian sect of the Elkesaites which pushed that sect's already-rigid asceticism to extremes. The fact that they took over some Gnostic (as well as Marcionite and "Thomasite") material doesn't erase the basic Jewish-Christian conceptual framework into which they shoehorned it.

Coming to the Marcionites, of whom Jonas makes so much: Marcion's anti-cosmism was thoroughgoing but he wasn't a Gnostic and what he took over from his Gnostic contact, Cerdo, was superficial. In fact, Marcionism is so essentially different from Gnosticism that the Valentinian Gnostics in second-century Rome preferred to side with the Catholics! What is telling is that Marcion builds his entire system around faith and grace. He knows nothing of an esoteric tradition offering initiation into higher knowledge, especially experiential knowledge of the Self as rooted in the divine, which is the irreducible core of gnosis. He has no concept of the human soul as consubstantial with God, because he makes man entirely a creature of the Demiurge and his dualism posits that God and the Demiurge are separate from eternity. If he had been accepted for initiation into a Gnostic circle he would have learned that the Demiurge, as a 'fallen' aspect of consciousness blinded by ignorance of his own origins, derives his essential existence from the divine world...as does matter itself, with which the Demiurge has in some sense identified himself. Because Marcion has no doctrine of emanation, the entire Gnostic mythology is likewise absent, and the Hebrew Bible (which for Gnostics is an inspired source of knowledge about the relationship between the natural universe, the Demiurge and the beings superior to the Demiurge, provided it is interpreted from a perspective contrary to Judaism) is discarded by Marcion as a worthless irrelevance. Marcion's disciple Apelles rectified these deficiencies after establishing contact with a genuine Gnostic tradition and as a result, remodelled the entire Marcionite system.

Insofar as the concept of "dualism" has any interpretive validity, I would approach the ancient Gnostics by starting from quantum physics and consciousness studies, which they seem to have anticipated through introspection. We don't directly perceive things-in-themselves and when we try to get a handle on reality through experiment, it slips through our fingers via weirdness like nonlocality or the uncertainty principle. It emerges that matter/energy is constructed from a 'quantum field' of pure mathematics. The equations of physics describe a continuum that is colourless, soundless, odourless, timeless and only takes on appearances when it is observed by a conscious mind. Primary experiences (colours, sounds, hot and cold, pleasure and pain, the feeling of something being solid or fluid, the sense of time passing) are not derivable from or explained by matching them up with sensory impulses set off by abstract numbers. All actual qualities are imposed by consciousness when it plugs into the field of numbers and interprets it. The world of everyday concrete reality is a world of the mind: the substrate of matter/energy being no more than an (in itself unknowable) grid out of which mind constructs its reality. Which leads to the question of what conscious reality will look like when it unplugs from the quantum field (at physical death)? Because if the qualia of everyday experience do not derive their essential existence from matter/energy, the disembodied consciousness experiences a reality that is equally as concrete as what we are wont to call the "material universe"...and no less worthy of respect. A number of scientists have now come out in favour of a form of dualism. I'm not sure if this is really the same outlook as Descartes, in fact I'm pretty sure it's not. There are points of resemblance (as there are also certain resemblances to magical thinking), but is it really contemptuous of the natural universe to locate it within consciousness rather than within matter/energy? Within a world of concrete quality rather than abstract quantity?

The main line of the Gnostic tradition asserts that matter/energy really should not have existed but is a by-product generated by consciousness which had fallen outside of its proper sphere...resulting in individual consciousnesses becoming, for a period, plugged into and conditioned by a deficient plane of existence which is transient, ephemeral, and therefore filled with tragedy and suffering. That's the negative part of the judgment, and I wouldn't call it monstrous, just realistic (especially given what we now know about the truly monstrous cruelty involved in the blind processes of Darwinian natural selection). The positive part is that the beauty and order which consciousness imparts to the universe reflects something of the perfection of the nonmaterial world (the "fullness" or Pleroma) and is worth infinitely more than the mortality and corruption which it takes over from its compromising association with the matter/energy substrate. The plenitude of form versus the deficiency of substance. I'm not sure how this differs in any way from classical Platonism except in being stated a bit more strongly. Platonists, of course, viewed matter as eternal but some Gnostic traditions contain hints of that and, as Gnostics set the creation of matter in 'mythic time', there's no need to go looking for a contradiction there. Though it does seem to me that classical Platonism is more dualistic than Gnosticism because it has no satisfying theory of why an eternal substrate of matter exists in the first place. Gnosticism has an inherently monist answer: emanation from the immaterial world.

Let me translate that into statements from the ancient Gnostic texts. According to the Simonian tradition reflected in the Great Revelation, a single infinite power exists within everything and divided itself in two: "One of these appears on high, namely the great power which is in the universe, which governs all things, male; and the other below, a great conception, which is female, which generates all things". The elements of the natural world are 'materialised' powers of the mind: for example, the sky is "mind" itself and the earth is "thought", air is "reflection" and water is "conception". And thus, "the earth below receives her kindred intelligible fruits brought down to earth from heaven". The Peratae described a mediating principle, the Son or Logos, whom they likened to a snake continually circulating between consciousness (the Father) and the world of matter. The Logos takes the forms or archetypes from the Father and imprints them on matter; later in the cycle he recovers them from matter and returns them to their source. The natural universe is the place where the divine forms manifest, and "anyone whose eyes are so favoured will see, on looking up into the sky, the beautiful form of the Serpent coiled up at the grand beginning of the heavens and becoming, for all born beings, the principle of all movement. Then he will understand that no being, either in heaven or on earth, was formed without the Serpent." The treatise Zostrianos alludes to a comprehensive transcendent realm of archetypes for the natural world: people, animals, trees, fruit and even weeds. In the Trimorphic Protennoia and other so-called 'Sethian' (or more accurately, Classic Gnostic) treatises, the goddess Sophia (Wisdom) reveals herself to be the Father's first thought who is dispersed as a breath or seed within every creature: "I am the life...that dwells within every power...within invisible lights and Archons and angels and demons and every soul dwelling in [the underworld] and in every material soul". It's not an anthropocentric concept: there is no life-form into which consciousness has not plugged itself and no part of the natural universe which cannot in the long term be restored to its proper sphere. Marsanes (another 'Sethian' tractate) pronounces that the observer is "blessed...whether he is gazing at the two [sun and moon] or is gazing at the seven planets or at the twelve signs of the Zodiac" and furthermore, that "in every respect the sense-perceptible world is worthy of being saved entirely". And in the Carpocratian system any dualism is strictly secondary, as Epiphanes' argument for free love and community of wealth rests on the natural order: Moses' laws affirming marriage and property legalise covetousness and violate the equal sharing which "the rest of the animals show".

These observations should set "Gnostic dualism" in its overall context. In 1966 the Congress of Messina proposed a definition that has stood up rather well: Gnosticism "can be summarised in the idea of a divine spark [pneuma] in man, deriving from the divine realm, fallen into this world of fate, birth and death, and needing to be awakened by the divine counterpart of the self in order to be finally reintegrated....this idea is based ontologically on the conception of a downward movement of the divine whose periphery (often called Sophia or Ennoia) had to submit to the fate of entering into a crisis and producing, even if only indirectly, this world, upon which it cannot turn its back, since it is necessary for it to recover the pneuma, a dualistic conception on a monistic background, expressed in a double movement of devolution and reintegration."

The Demiurge is actually not as important within this scheme as Sophia. Ancient Mediterranean cultures assumed that the architect of a project would not be the same as the workman who implemented it. The latter tended to be of rather limited intelligence, as it wasn't necessary for the executor of the plans to actually understand them. Our sources view the Pleromatic Christ or Logos as the original architect or designer, "the first universal creator" as he is described somewhere or other (I've lost track of where). In other texts it's his female aspect or counterpart, Sophia. The Demiurge or workman has a subordinate role. Heracleon says that the Logos "provided the Demiurge with the cause for creating the world" and, in the Tripartite Tractate, the Logos uses the Demiurge as his instrument in "beautifying" the creation. According to Ptolemy, "the Demiurge believed that he had created all this of himself, but in fact he had made them because [Sophia] had prompted him. He made the heaven without knowing the heaven; he formed man without knowing him; he brought the earth to light without knowing it. And in every case...he was ignorant of the ideas of the things he made, and even of his own Mother, and imagined that he alone was all things." These texts show that Gnostic opinions of the Demiurge and of the cosmos which he formed were not unremittingly negative. On the whole, the sources are ambivalent. The execution is flawed only because of the artisan's use of a deficient material substance and/or because his own insecure need to be top dog generates conflicts in an otherwise good creation. The Demiurge is usually distinguished from the devil; his origin is a tragic accident, his ignorance is not wilful, his arrogance is born of fear and ultimately he, too, is enlightened and redeemed.

In some systems where there are more than one Demiurge, the original ignorant and arrogant one is cast out of the highest of the material heavens and is replaced by his more benevolent son, on the model of Kronos and Zeus (or Yahweh Elohim "Lord God" versus Yahweh Sabaoth "Lord of Hosts", if we prefer the Hebrew equivalents). Attested in such tractates as the Hypostasis of the Archons and On The Origin of the World, this type of cosmogony allows the gods or angels who govern the natural cosmos (the Archons) to be viewed in a positive light: they're doing the best they can with what they've inherited from their deposed father. This may have been the original scheme since, even in systems which acknowledge only a single Demiurge, he is regularly named Ialdabaoth and if we etymologise that to mean "Begetter of Sabaoth" (the younger Demiurge), he would have acquired his name within a theology of multiple Demiurges.

The most nature-affirming tractates in the Coptic Gnostic corpus are those works such as the Perfect Discourse (also called Asclepius) which are attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. Here, as in Hermetic gnosis generally, the portrayal of the Demiurge (identified with Zeus, not Kronos) is essentially positive: his purpose is to purge disorder and restore the world to being an image of the highest God.

If I could recommend just one book as an up-to-date introduction to the subject it'd be Ancient Gnosticism: Traditions and Literature by Birger A. Pearson (Fortress Press, 2007; ISBN 978-0-8006-3258-8). This is a welcome and scholarly corrective to popular, slightly sensationalist offerings like Benjamin Walker's Gnosticism: Its History and Influence (1983) which is looking seriously dated now (and its referencing system is ridiculous). Numerous sects which Walker catalogues ('Sethians', 'Cainites', 'Ophites', 'Barbelognostics') never existed; Early Catholic heresiologists were just splitting hairs. The main line of the tradition simply referred to itself as "Gnostic", and the fairly fluid theology and cosmology bear witness to lively internal debate rather than a schism mentality. On the particular question of "anti-cosmism", see especially Michael A. Williams, "Negative Theologies and Demiurgical Myths in Late Antiquity" and other essays in Gnosticism and Later Platonism: Themes, Figures, and Texts (John D. Turner & Ruth Majercik, eds., Symposium Series no. 12, Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta, GA, 2000; ISBN 0-88414-035-0). This volume may be difficult to get hold of, but it well repays the trouble. I'll leave you with Williams' central proposition:

"narrow emphasis on formulas of negation in [Gnostic] myths has frequently been one of the key building blocks in the characterization of an alleged "gnostic" worldview as so "anticosmic" that it could find no help from the visible cosmos in the quest for knowledge of the divine....the category [of Gnosticism] tends to be constructed out of clichés that too often turn out to be misrepresenting many of the supposedly "gnostic" sources. "Anticosmism" is one of the most common of such clichés, and...it is one of the least enlightening and most problematic....it is noteworthy that just those "gnostic" sources that contain the most remarkable instances of extended negative theological discourse happen also to be among the very sources where arguably the most positive -- not most negative -- relationship is depicted between true divinity and the material cosmos."

Hope this has been of some help. Gnostrat (talk) 07:27, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Fantastic, thanks for your response. I think what Jonas was probably trying to do was make Gnosticism seem more palatable to a mid-20th-century audience. I'll try and get hold of the Pearson book.

Would it be fair to say, then, that Gnosticism is quite close to the idea of panentheism? Particularly in relation to the idea of emanation. Belzub (talk) 17:38, 05 April 2010 (UTC)