Documentary from Gnostic Media

How deep does the rabbit hole go? Gnostic Media is proud to present the official online edition of The Pharmacratic Inquisition 2007. If you enjoyed “Zeitgeist - The Movie”, you will love this video; the creators of this video are listed as one of the sources for the Zeitgeist Movie. The Pharmacratic Inquisition 2007 is a video version of the book, “Astrotheology & Shamanism” by Jan Irvin & Andrew Rutajit. The painstakingly detailed and heavily footnoted research in the book comes to life in this video and is now available to you for FREE! For further research of the claims made in this video, please read AstroTheology & Shamanism - this book is available to order as a combo with the DVD. Thousands of years ago, in the pre monarchic era, sacred plants and other entheogenic substances where politically correct and highly respected for their ability to bring forth the divine, Yahweh, God, The Great Spirit, etc., by the many cultures who used them. Often the entire tribe or community would partake in the entheogenic rites and rituals. These rites were often used in initiation into adulthood, for healing, to help guide the community in the decision process, and to bring the direct religious experience to anyone seeking it. In the pre literate world, the knowledge of psychedelic sacraments, as well as fertility rites and astronomical knowledge surrounding the sun, stars, and zodiac, known as astrotheology, were anthropomorphized into a character or a deity; consequently, their stories and practices could easily be passed down for generations. Weather changes over millenniums caused environmental changes that altered the available foods and plant sacraments available in the local vicinity. If a tribe lost its shamanic El-der (El - God), all of the tribe’s knowledge of their plant sacraments as well as astronomical knowledge would be lost. The Church’s inquisitions extracted this sacred knowledge from the local Shamans who were then exterminated…It is time to recognize the fact that this Pharmacratic Inquisition is still intact and destroy it.

(via Dedroidify)

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GSPOT: Wes Unruh interviews Taylor Ellwood.

Phase II: Hypershielf Pt. 2.

GSPOT: Joseph Matheny and Chandra Shukla Interview Andrew Liles.

Viking Youth: Erik Davis on Scientology.

Viking Youth: The Knee Deep Slumber of the American Buffet.

Point of Inquiry: Norm Allen - African American Religiosity, Humanism, and Politics.

Point of Inquiry: Robert M. Price - The Paperback Apocalypse.

Adam Gorightly: Dr. Edgar Mitchell.

Adam Gorightly: Kentroversy Returns.

Occult of Personality: Bishop T Allen Greenfield on gnosticism.

Occult of Personality: Lon Milo Duquette.

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AMID much publicity last year, the National Geographic Society announced that a lost 3rd-century religious text had been found, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. The shocker: Judas didn’t betray Jesus. Instead, Jesus asked Judas, his most trusted and beloved disciple, to hand him over to be killed. Judas’s reward? Ascent to heaven and exaltation above the other disciples.

It was a great story. Unfortunately, after re-translating the society’s transcription of the Coptic text, I have found that the actual meaning is vastly different. While National Geographic’s translation supported the provocative interpretation of Judas as a hero, a more careful reading makes clear that Judas is not only no hero, he is a demon.

[…]

That said, I think the big problem is that National Geographic wanted an exclusive. So it required its scholars to sign nondisclosure statements, to not discuss the text with other experts before publication. The best scholarship is done when life-sized photos of each page of a new manuscript are published before a translation, allowing experts worldwide to share information as they independently work through the text.

Full Story: New York Times.

(via Hit and Run).

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Here’s an extensive collection of Process related material, including photographs, Exit and other texts by by Robert DeGrimston, letters and recollections by former members, and various articles including a wacky article by a LaRouche follower called We Must Exit the Suicide Club: How the Counterculture Ushered in Fascism.

The Process Church of the Final Judgement.

Also: I’m still looking for the PDFs of the old Processeans and The Founders newsletters if anyone has them (I know they used to be online).

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Like their ancestors, contemporary Mandeans were able to survive as a community because of the delicate balance achieved among Iraq’s many peoples over centuries of cohabitation. But our reckless prosecution of the war destroyed this balance, and the Mandeans, whose pacifist religion prohibits them from carrying weapons even for self-defense, found themselves victims of kidnappings, extortion, rapes, beatings, murders and forced conversions carried out by radical Islamic groups and common criminals.

When American forces invaded in 2003, there were probably 60,000 Mandeans in Iraq; today, fewer than 5,000 remain. Like millions of other Iraqis, those who managed to escape have become refugees, primarily in Syria and Jordan, with smaller numbers in Australia, Indonesia, Sweden and Yemen.

Unlike Christian and Muslim refugees, the Mandeans do not belong to a larger religious community that can provide them with protection and aid. Fundamentally alone in the world, the Mandeans are even more vulnerable and fewer than the Yazidis, another Iraqi minority that has suffered tremendously, since the latter have their own villages in the generally safer north, while the Mandeans are scattered in pockets around the south. They are the only minority group in Iraq without a safe enclave.

Full Story: New York Times.

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Key64. Vol2 #1

Featuring:

• Mordant Carnival tells you how not to end up in a tin foil hat!
• Trevor Blake on the invisible sky monster murder defense!
• Taylor Ellwood takes body language from the external to the internal!
• Lupa on Neon Genesis Evangelion and shamanism?
• Michael Szul asks difficult questions about ecology!
• Adam Lammiman gives instructions out of the Chapel Perilous!

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

EXPANDED Living the Myth by James Curcio!

Nick Pell on light, life, love and liberty!

The Return of the Enigmatic Padre Engo!

Introduction to Zoetics!

PostModern Gnosis!

Plus!

Klint Finley on the not-so-secret history of Key23!

Datamancer interviewed!

Donald Tyson reviewed!

Christopher Penczak personally insulted!

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The full text of the gnostic sci-fi novel A Voyage to Arcturus is available for free on the Gutenberg Project.

A Voyage to Arcturus full text.

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My brain hurts. Bad.

(it’s also available for pre-order from Amazon).

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I recently saw The Fountain, which I’d been looking forward to for a long time. I’m not even going to attempt any deep thought on it until I’ve seen it at least one more time. However, in it Aronofsky weaves elements of Mayan myth — particularly with the Mayan realm of Xibalba.

I am not up to par on my Mayan history or myth, but after doing some light perusing on Wikipedia, some elements here really struck a chord with me.

In Maya mythology Xibalba (pronounced Shi-BAHL-bah) is the name of the underworld, ruled by the Mayan deities of death. The name roughly translates to “Place of Fear” or “Place of Phantoms”. The entrance to Xibalba was traditionally held to be a cave in the vicinity of Cobán, Guatemala. To some of the Quiché descendants of the Maya people still living in the vicinity, the area is still associated with death. In the heavens, the Road to Xibalba was represented by the dark rift visible in the Milky Way.

Xibalba was described in the Popol Vuh to be a city or a realm that existed below the surface of the Earth. It is unclear if the inhabitants of Xibalba, referred to simply as Xibalbans, are the souls of the deceased or a separate race of people worshipping death, but they are often depicted as being human-like in form. The place Xibalba was often associated with death and it was ruled by 12 gods or powerful rulers known as the Lords of Xibalba. The first among the Lords of Xibalba were One Death and Seven Death. The remaining 10 Lords are often referred to as demons and are given commission and domain over various forms of human suffering: to cause sickness, starvation, fear, destitution, pain, and ultimately death. The remaining residents of Xibalba are thought to have fallen under the dominion of one of these Lords, going about the face of the Earth to carry out their listed duties.

The Popol Vuh (Quiché for “Council Book” or “Book of the Community”; Popol Wuj in modern spelling) is the book of scripture of the Quiché, a kingdom of the post classic Maya civilization in highland Guatemala. The K’iche’ (or Quiché in Spanish spelling), are a Native American people, one of the Maya ethnic groups. Their indigenous language, the K’iche’ language, is a Mesoamerican language of the Mayan language family. The highland K’iche’ states in the pre-Columbian era are associated with the ancient Maya civilization.

In the Popol Vuh is the account of the Mayan creation myth:

This is a very general summary; divisions depend on text version:

Part 1

Gods create world.
Gods create first “wood” humans, they are imperfect and emotionless.
Gods destroy first humans in a “resin” flood; they become monkeys.
Twin diviners Hunahpu & Xbalanque destroy arrogant Vucub-Caquix; then Zipacna & Cabracan.

Part 2

Diviners Xpiyacoc & Xmucane beget brothers.
HunHunahpu & Xbaquiyalo beget “Monkey Twins” HunBatz & HunChouen.
Cruel Xibalba lords kill the brothers HunHunahpu & VucubHunahpu.
HunHunahpu & Xquic beget “Hero Twins” Hunahpu & Xbalanque.
“Hero Twins” defeat the Xibalba houses of Gloom, Knives, Cold, Jaguars, Fire, Bats.

Part 3

The first 4 “real” people are made: Jaguar Quiche, Jaguar Night, Naught, & Wind Jaguar.
Tribes descend; they speak the same language and travel to TulanZuiva.
The tribes language becomes confused; and they disperse.
Tohil is recognized as a god and demands life sacrifices; later he must be hidden.

Part 4

Tohil affects Earth Lords through priests; but his dominion destroys the Quiche.
Priests tried to abduct tribes for sacrifices; the tribes tried to resist this.
Quiche found Gumarcah where Gucumatz (the feathered serpent lord) raises them to power.
Gucumatz instituted elaborate rituals.
Genealogies of the tribes.

There seem to be a lot of parallels, from my limited knowledge of the world history of myth and theology, but the “wood humans” are just as AD-AM from ancient myth, the first man or race of man.

Adam (”Earth” or “man”, Standard Hebrew אָדָם, Adam; “Soil” or “Light Brown”, Arabic آدم, Adam) was the first man created by Elohim (Allah) according to the Abrahamic religious tradition. He is considered a prophet by the Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Mandaean and Bahá’í faiths.

While I don’t believe it to be takenliterally, that he was one man, the Semitic prophet of the yahoos, I’ve read before that AD-AM was an old Babylonian word that meant the new man, or new race, or something like that. The first term for the species was along the lines of AD-AD or AD-AT or something, the reborn race of man was then called AD-AM.

Part 3 of the Popol Vuh. we see the creation of the four Towers of Jerusalem, or the four elements or what we now know was the four suits in tarot, et al. The tribes suffer the same fate as the Biblical account of Babel. According to Genesis 11:1-9, mankind, after the deluge (which can be seen in Part 1), travelled from the mountain where the ark had rested, and settled in “a plain in the land of Shinar” (or Senaar).

I also wonder if Tohil is akin to the Demiurge, Ialdabaoth? Tohil is the Quiché name for Huracan and was their patron deity. Huracan (”one legged”) was a wind, storm and fire god and one of the creator deities who participated in all three attempts at creating humanity. He also caused the Great Flood after the first humans angered the gods. He supposedly lived in the windy mists above the floodwaters and repeated “earth” until land came up from the seas.

I also have more thoughts on the whole Babel concept, which I am more and more seeing in the works of modern linguists and philosophers. It has nothing to do with building a fucking tower to Heaven, it has to do with Wisdom. (The two may be synonymous in my world, but not to the Christian Army, it seems).

In the Chomskian tradition there is what is known as transformational grammar:

In the early to mid 1960s, Noam Chomsky developed the idea that each sentence in a language has two levels of representation — a deep structure and a surface structure. The deep structure represented the semantic relations of a sentence, and was mapped on to the surface structure (which followed the phonological form of the sentence very closely) via transformations. Chomsky believed that there would be considerable similarities between languages’ deep structures, and that these structures would reveal properties, common to all languages, which were concealed by their surface structures.

Michael Polanyi developed the idea of tacit knowledge:

By definition, tacit knowledge is not easily shared. One of Polanyi’s famous aphorisms is: “We know more than we can tell.” Tacit knowledge consists often of habits and culture that we do not recognize in ourselves. In the field of knowledge management the concept of tacit knowledge refers to a knowledge which is only known to you and hard to share with someone else, which is the opposite from the concept of explicit knowledge. The tacit aspects of knowledge are those that cannot be codified, but can only be transmitted via training or gained through personal experience. Tacit knowledge has been described as “know-how” (as opposed to “know-what” [facts] and “know-why” [science]) . It involves learning and skill but not in a way that can be written down.

Or some of the stuff I was noticing in the works of R. Scott Bakker, a professor of ancient languages and writer of some good fiction. (I won’t post it all here, but worth the look-see.)

Or just the concept of occultism in general:

The word occult comes from the Latin occultus (clandestine, hidden, secret), referring to the ‘knowledge of the secret’ or ‘knowledge of the hidden’ and often popularly meaning ‘knowledge of the supernatural’, as opposed to ‘knowledge of the visible’ or ‘knowledge of the measurable’, usually referred to as science. The term is sometimes popularly taken to mean ‘knowledge meant only for certain people’ or ‘knowledge that must be kept hidden’, but for most practicing occultists it is simply the study of a deeper spiritual “reality” that extends beyond pure reason and the physical sciences.

The Tower of Babel, that which was being built to Heaven, I believe, was an effort by man to work back to that deeper, tacit knowledge. I wonder why there’s such a dire need for the gods to keep us here…

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CL: I did a road trip in March, I went to Trinity, where they did the first nuclear test in ‘45. I rented a convertible and drove out there to Los Alamos and hung out at the test site. And there was this weird moment where — I think it’s exactly what you’re talking about — where I was driving through the valley where the Very Large Array is, you know, the large radio telescopes? And I had a Brian Eno album on my car stereo, and it was literally like I walked into this alternate reality.

CP: That is so weird, because I’ve been researching time slips, and time slips are so tied to car trips. They almost always occur as people are driving or just after people have parked and left their vehicles…and then they find themselves in the 15th century or something like that.

CL; Oh, right, like those two women at Versailles….

CP: Exactly! Electrical storms, or they had just left their car. Electrical storms, or cars. Whether it’s theta-level trances we slip into as we’re driving, which is a really common thing–

CL: Hypnogogic states, sure.

CP: Exactly. All of that. So, yeah, very much, that’s another road trip thing, that seems to happen.

CL: And also time slips — not in the sense you’re talking about — but the sense of just losing time. Especially at night, where you find yourself at your destination two hours before you think you’re supposed to be there, but you look down and realize you’ve been driving for two hours and you have no memory of that at all.

CP: In my research, I was finding that was tied into the brainwaves we lapse into during long drives, and that that’s a state that’s exactly what people try to achieve through drumming and chanting.

Full Story: Zenarchery.

(If you like this interview, consider helping to send Josh to Africa for some original reporting).

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Gnostic priest Jordan Stratford’s book is out:

An ordained Gnostic Priest Jordan Stratford has just released a response to the The da Vinci Code phenomenon. Dan Brown�s bestselling novel and upcoming film have drawn out countless critics deriding the work as �Gnostic�, and now for the first time Gnostics are taking the opportunity to speak for themselves.

The irony is that the premise of Brown�s novel isn�t Gnostic at all, and the word never occurs in the book. Rather than reject the divinity of Jesus, Gnostics in the early Christian Church understood that the Logos, the incarnated Word of God, was always immortal.

Full Story: Key 23.

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I think I’ve come across this before, but I don’t think I’ve ever posted it. Neuromedia is a cool blog with links to stuff about tantric gnosticism, kabbalah, and torture. Amongst other things.

Neuromedia.

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Our guest, Brian Flemming, announces his WAR AGAINST EASTER!!! Flemming is the director of the breakout hit documentary film, The God Who Wasn�t There, which makes the case that Jesus never lived. So RISE UP, RU Sirius Show listeners� but not from the grave.

MP3 on The R.U. Sirius Show.

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OK, after my embarrassing posting of this article comes a (I think) legit new gospel discovery:

National Geographic unveiled an ancient manuscript Thursday that may shed new light on the relationship between Jesus and Judas, the disciple who betrayed him.

The papyrus manuscript was written probably around 300 A.D. in Coptic script, a copy of an earlier Greek manuscript.

It was discovered in the desert in Egypt in the 1970s and has now been authenticated by carbon dating and studied and translated by biblical scholars, National Geographic announced.

Unlike the four gospels in the Bible, this text indicates that Judas betrayed Jesus at Jesus’ request.

Full Story: CNN.

More: NPR.

(thanks to Dale and Bill who sent word of this story almost simultaneously).

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So this is actually a year old, but this is the first I remember hearing of it:

In what may eventually prove to be a serious challenge to traditional Christian ideas of the life of Jesus, scholars at Oxford University announced Tuesday the discovery of a previously unknown Gospel fragment among a collection of ancient Egyptian papyri. The single papyrus sheet was found among the collection known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, a horde of ancient texts uncovered in Egypt in the last century. The fragment contains dialogue between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and the words spoken suggest something that can only come as a shock to mainstream Christians: that Jesus and Mary were husband and wife.

Full Story: Liverpool Observer on necessaryprose.com.

(via Vortex Egg).

Update:

See what happens when you post things without reading them first? Here’s the passage in question:

“I expected more from you,” she said. “This is not worthy of me. It is not worthy of us.”

“Worthy of you?” he replied, stepping over to the balustrade and looking out over the moonlight dancing on the Aegean. “If it weren’t for me…” But he didn’t finish the sentence.

“It’s true you saved me,” she said. “But still. These places we stay in. And this food. This was to be our honeymoon.”

“I suppose you think I’m not good enough for you then,” he answered, turning back to her.

There was a bitterness in his tone she’d never heard before. She saw the anger flash in his dark eyes as it did when he spoke of the Pharisees.

“Just a carpenter’s son from Galilee,” he went on. “Not quite worthy of Mary of Magdala. I suppose you’d rather be with those seven devils I drove from you.”

“Yes, sometimes,” she said, taking up the challenge. “Sometimes I miss the devils. At least they had a sense of humor. At least they wouldn’t mix their honeymoon with business. At least with the devils I’d–”

“You can go straight back to them!” he said, cutting her short. “I have come to do my Father’s work, and those who are not willing….” [here the text breaks]

And the story date… April. Oh well.

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A Brief Summary of Gnosticism

Nag Hammadi

Hermes Trismestigus

Heraclitus

Asklepios

Elijah

Writings of Jack Parsons (PKD references 1945)

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LVX23 provides the exact reference in Comment 24 of Philip K. Dick’s Exegesis:

The disciples said to Jesus, “Tell us what Heaven’s kingdom is like.” He said to them, “It’s like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, but when it falls on prepared soil, it produces a large plant and becomes a shelter for birds of the sky.” (Gospel of Thomas)

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Recently browsed Jesus links:

Jesus Never Existed

Unknown Life of Jesus

Appolonius of Tyana @ Wikipedia

Paul of Tarsus @ Wikipedia

Jesus @ Wikipedia

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I’ve been meaning to post this for a while: Philip K. Dick’s Tractates Cryptica Scriptura from VALIS.

(via Key 23 del.icio.us).

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It does unfortunately tend to portray those religions as somehow the by-product of Gnosticism, which is not the case.

The purpose of this is to show that, for the countless millions who feel completely disconnected from, say, Islam, that there is in fact an ancient historical relationship not only to the external theologies of Judaism and Islam, or Islam and Christianity, but also a shared, deeper meaning. A familiarity among non-Gnostics with the form and resonance of Gnosticism, I feel, can help in understanding the common ground of all religious experience, particularly among “western” religions. And Gnosticism, as younger than two of these and older than the other two, does seem to serve as a convenient meeting point for a deep-ecumenism.

Link (via Tim Boucher, who also has some related links).

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I’m trying to catch up on some links… this one made rounds a week or two ago, but in case you haven’t read it:

Self-employed professionals, small business owners and executives in major, publicly listed companies are among those joining an expanding network of “covens” organised by businesswoman and self-described witch, Stacey Demarco.

[…]

Charging up to $385 per hour, she uses intuition to detect problems or “blockages” within the organisational structure.

I really should use magic more deliberately at work myself.

Link.

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“[…] an interesting graphic interpretation of a series of events which happened to [Philip K.]Dick in March of 1974. He spent the remaining years of his life trying to figure out what happened in those fateful months.”

This eight page graphic novel (Weirdo #17) is archived on the Internet for your enjoyment.

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Robot Wisdom is now hosting an interesting FAQ about Jesus. “The Talmud claims Jesus’s actual father was a Roman soldier called ‘Panthera’, but this tradition is unattested before 150AD.”
Link.

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