Richard Smoley, author and philosopher, in his book Forbidden Faith, writes about the secret history of Gnosticism. We learn why this set of beliefs was considered 'the great heresy' of Christianity and dive into its pervasiveness in the American mythos and psyche. We explore everything from Madame Blavatsky and the new age movements to Philip K Dick's Blade Runner and its gnostic influences.
Copyright 2023 by Letters to the Sky
Richard Smoley, author and philosopher, in his book Forbidden Faith, writes about the secret history of Gnosticism. We learn why this set of beliefs was considered 'the great heresy' of Christianity and dive into its pervasiveness in the American mythos and psyche. We explore everything from Madame Blavatsky and the new age movements to Philip K Dick's Blade Runner and its gnostic influences.
Copyright 2023 by Letters to the Sky
Stephan Downes:
Hi, I'm Stephan Downes.
Adam Rizvi:
And I am Adam Rizvi.
Stephan Downes:
And this is Letters to the Sky, a podcast about the metaphysical iconoclasts, philosophical visionaries, and religious leaders of the world.
Adam Rizvi:
Whether you consider yourself religious, spiritual, neither, or something in between, we invite you to take a deep dive with us down metaphysical rabbit holes and learn to see your life from a new perspective.
Stephan Downes:
Hi, Adam.
Adam Rizvi:
Hey, Stephan.
Stephan Downes:
How are you doing?
Adam Rizvi:
Very well. Thank you.
Stephan Downes:
Great. Do you know that we have a website now? Did somebody tell you?
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah.
Stephan Downes:
It's Letterstothesky.com and it is like our podcast website and it has all of our episodes there. It has show notes. It has how to get in touch with us, it has a link to our Patreon page where people can support us.
Adam Rizvi:
We have a website?
Stephan Downes:
Yeah. Did you hear what I just said about it?
Adam Rizvi:
This is amazing.
Stephan Downes:
Anyway, dear listener, that was awful. But we wanted to let you know that we have a website now. Letterstothesky.com and it has kind of everything you need on there. It has our episodes, links to our episodes on wherever you're listening to them. It has show notes, it has a link to our Patreon page where you can support us if you'd like, use it to stay up to date with people and in communication so please check it out.
Adam Rizvi:
It's got a lot of pretty pictures on it and we put some effort into trying to make most of it relevant and I hope you enjoy it.
Stephan Downes:
We put some effort-
Adam Rizvi:
Some effort-
Stephan Downes:
Guys, we put 60% ... no, fair, fair warning, we did not make all of that ourselves.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah actually, shout out to Katie Australas and her team, which I think is a team of one, but Katie, you correct us. Your efforts won't go unnoticed. It's beautiful. It's one of the best websites I've seen anyone create.
Stephan Downes:
All right, cool. So, Adam, what are we talking about today?
Adam Rizvi:
Let me lay it on you. We've got something amazing in the spirit of the holidays. This is being recorded in December 2020. I decided to tackle a book that I think is going to cover a lot, a lot of material very relevant to Christmas to the holiday season. It is called, Forbidden Faith: The Secret History of Gnosticism by Richard Smoley.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah. Okay. So I just want to say first off and we'll get into this, Adam, because you're going to read about what gnosticism is and things like that. I learned so much from this book and not, for me, it was less of like oh, that's interesting ancient tradition and more realizing how deeply tied all of this is to everything that I know and modern American culture and the modern American mindset. So listeners, keep that in mind as we go through this. I think you'll recognize a lot of what we're talking about and if you're interested, please grab this book. It's a fascinating read. It has a ton of historical background information and it also goes right up to the modern era.
Adam Rizvi:
I picked up this book and initially was drawn to it because you know I like comparative religion. I think gnosticism is fascinating. I'm interested in alchemy and those kind of things and mainly the symbolism behind religion, which gnosticism is replete with. But then when I went into this, I realized, oh my God, like all the stories we know, modern American culture, the movies, I mean, we'll be talking about Blade Runner and The Matrix and Minority Report, and a few other movies like that are heavily heavily based on the ideas of gnosticism so it's not ancient by any means. It's very much prevalent and pervasive in the modern ethos.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah all right, let's dive into it. Adam, please tell our listeners what is gnosticism.
Adam Rizvi:
Gnosticism. I'm going to read straight from Wikipedia because it does a relatively good job and then I'm going to give a brief update on who Richard Smoley is.
Stephan Downes:
Oh yeah, that's a good call.
Adam Rizvi:
So Gnosticism comes from the Greek work, gnostikos, meaning to have knowledge, having knowledge, and it's a collection of religious ideas and systems which originated in the first century AD among early Christian and Jewish sects. These various groups emphasis personal, spiritual knowledge, gnosis, spelled G-N-0-S-I-S, over the orthodox teachings, traditions, and authority of the church. We're going to be talking about that too. Viewing material existence as flawed or evil. Gnostic cosmogony generally presents a distinction between a supreme hidden god and a malevolent lesser divinity sometimes associated with the Yahweh of the Old Testament who is responsible for creating the material universe. Gnostics consider the principle element of salvation to be direct knowledge of the supreme divinity in the form of mystical or esoteric insight. And here's the kicker, many gnostic texts deal not in concepts of sin and repentance, but with illusion and enlightenment. So that will be what we will dive into, all those ideas.
Stephan Downes:
Awesome. Ok, I think we started on that first question. We have three questions today. The first one is, what is gnosticism, which obviously more than just a definition. We'll kind of get into a little bit of its history and everything. And second is, why does it hold appeal? And third is, how is relevant today? So we're going to cover all of this. Apart from its definition of this ancient belief about major and lesser gods and hidden universes and enlightenment, how would you define it? You know? With all that you know after reading the book, what would you say about gnosticism?
Adam Rizvi:
That's a great question. Ok, brief hold. Just quickly on the author.
Stephan Downes:
Oh, right.
Adam Rizvi:
It's all good.
Stephan Downes:
You got it, Adam. Thank you.
Adam Rizvi:
Richard Smoley, he's actually a professor who was educated at Harvard, got a bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, super smart guy, in classics, I think, in 78.
Stephan Downes:
That's the smart one, right?
Adam Rizvi:
That's a smart school. That's where the smart kids go. He went to Oxford. It's like Harvard wasn't enough, he went to Oxford, which is the smart people's school for the international community and then he got a bachelor's in classics and philosophy in 1980. And actually, the cool part about this is he started to study Kabbalah, which is one of the mainstays of the western esoteric tradition and then started to become an editor for several magazines which deal with these ideas and ultimately wrote this book in 2007, Forbidden Faith. So going back to your question, that's a bit about Richard Smoley, very cool guy. What is gnosticism? After everything I've read here, ok, let's just drop all definitions.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Adam Rizvi:
My gut impression now after having read so much about gnosticism is I always see it juxtaposed against traditional Judeo-Christian world views or the Christian world view. Gnosticism for me now always exists as an alternative world view. It's almost like The Man in the High Castle, right. It's like a completely alternate world view. That's a TV show, by the way, for those that didn't catch that reference.
Stephan Downes:
It's about what would happen if the Nazis won.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah.
Stephan Downes:
And the Nazis were in control of North America.
Adam Rizvi:
By the way, do you know why I mentioned that? That came out of a lot of Philip K. Dick's work.
Stephan Downes:
There you go. There you go.
Adam Rizvi:
We're going to talk about Philip K. Dick at some point, who was heavily influenced by gnosticism. So the typical Christian ethos is, or world view, is the idea that an all-powerful god created the universe of form that we see here and I guess if you go really deep into Catholicism then the story of Genesis, it took seven days and on the seventh day, he rested and he sent down his son to die for our sins and the son being Jesus Christ. The method of expiation of our sins. And then if we believe in that and accept that then we are all saved. And the interesting thing about the traditional world view is that, that god can be both loving as well as wrathful. Now, what the gnostics would say is, the god that we think created the world is actually a lesser god.
Stephan Downes:
Yahweh, in this case, the god of the Hebrew Bible. Correct?
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. A lot of gnostic traditions actually claim that Yahweh is not the god God, like capital G, he's like a lower case G and that he is capricious and fickle and he created the world of form and because of that, they view this world of physicality as inherently evil or wrong and that the goal of enlightenment is actually to transcend the physical world. So the very first gnostics, they really saw the world as an enemy, right? It was bad, capital B. Now while all of this is happening, there is actually a holy, pure, true, loving god who is far above all of this and is kind of aloof but is completely untouched by you know, this profanity. That he, this loving god, sent a spark of light to remind all of us where we really come from and that spark of light took the form of Jesus Christ for, at least the early Christian gnostics. There are gnostics of multiple traditions including both Islam and Judaism. But in this, I think we'll largely be talking about Christian gnostics. So that's how I see it as juxtaposed against the traditional world view.
Stephan Downes:
Okay. Yeah. That's a very thorough answer. I think, for me, I was talking to you about this a little bit before we started recording that I feel like gnosticism is at this point synonymous with western esotericism. There's this concept called western esotericism where you know, a lot of the times spiritual seekers who are western born or western educated or they are just a part of western culture first and foremost, they look to the east. They look to things like Hinduism, to Buddhism, Sufism, like you know they look to all these traditions from the east to find wisdom because they are ... We could make commentary about they are completely for it, they don't have concepts already about them, anyway, whatever. But western esotericism is this wholly different like version of spirituality that's loosely based on it. It's kind of loosely based on some of the ideas you know, that not only came from things like gnosticism, historically with Jesus and things like the gospel of Thomas, more recently, but also like certain ideas from the Theosophical Society. We're going to talk about the Theosophical Society like that is a huge influence today on anything having to do with western esotericism. I can think of like the I Am discourses, anything right, it's everywhere. Maybe you don't know what the Theosophical Society is, I guarantee you know their work.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. And Krishnamurti, right? Who himself was raised by Annie Besant.
Stephan Downes:
Yep. He was the Theosophical Society, what do you want to call it?
Adam Rizvi:
Messiah.
Stephan Downes:
Iconoclast.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. Well he originally, he was the messiah.
Stephan Downes:
Anyway, it's all of these seemingly dispersate kind of related things that we call western esotericism you know or some sort of spiritual tradition of the west. Let's just dive into it.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, I feel like you brought it up so let's dive into it. So this is going a little bit into the ramifications in the 20th century and up until the present of the gnostic ideals. So let's talk a little bit about Madame Blavatsky. Do you want to dive into that?
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, that's a great place to start. I think I want you to, for Madame Blavatsky, I like the way you talk about her.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, well why don't I quote, we haven't yet had a quote.
Stephan Downes:
All right. Quote off, here we go.
Adam Rizvi:
We've got to do our traditional quote-off. I'm going to give two quotes here from the book. "Blavatsky was the quintessential iconoclast. For Blavatsky, what was true in the Christian faith was not the creeds and dogmas of the church, but the esoteric doctrine that had been taught in the beginning by the gnostics and by their Jewish kin, the Kabbalists." I want to offer a second quote here, I think, on a related note about the importance of Blavatsky to modern thinking, both philosophical trends and otherwise. It just gives us a really good sense of how deeply ingrained gnostic ideals as well as Blavatsky's work is in our culture.
Stephan Downes:
And that last quote was on page 155, just for those following along in your texts.
Adam Rizvi:
Awesome, thanks, Stephan. This quote is by Christopher Bamford. He's a contemporary scholar. "Although Madame Blavatsky is not yet counted with Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche among the creators of the 20th century, that surely is her place. Despite her wild eccentricity and almost willful freedom of spirit, certainly there is no alternative thinker of our time in no matter what field whose accomplishment does not at some level rest on her strenuous effort. Behind the "new age" whether we think of Rudolf Steiner, Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Peter Deunov, Schwaller de Lubicz, Krishnamurti, or a host of other and apparently unrelated spiritual streams from the pernennialism of Rene Guenon to the magic traditions of the renewal of Pythagoreanism, Hermeticism and the Kabbalah or the search for a synthesis between science and mysticism exemplified by such as Fritjof Capra, Rupert Sheldrake, Lyle Watson and others. Behind all this lies Madame Blavatsky."
Stephan Downes:
Oh man, okay. All right. Madame Blavatsky, not her birth name, by the way, she was Russian and she kind of fell in love, fell in love is the wrong word, she was in London and she saw, I believe it was London and she saw a yogi who was with someone and the yogi, she recognized the yogi as her teacher and then like had all these awakenings and went to India and Tibet. It's actually not clear if she actually was in Tibet or not, or if she was just in India with a Tibetan. But anyway, so then she came up with this kind of gnostic, for lack of a better word, to faith tradition kind of synthesizing some eastern ideals and I think you know she uses the word, uthman and buddhi, things like that. But what's interesting is that it doesn't look anything like religions of India or Tibet. It doesn't look like Buddhism, it doesn't look like Hinduism. It's wholly westernicized, so to speak. I think a lot of people are really quick to criticize Madame Blavatsky as the quintessential Orientalist like when we think about Orientalism as a negative. People who are like appropriating ideas from Asia and then making them some weird bastardization, but it would be one thing to like fine, you can criticize Madame Blavatsky for this, but it is so, as the quote that Adam, that you just read, it's so central to everything in modern western culture and the way we view our spiritual selves that like you can't avoid it. This is someone who completely altered the way that western society operates.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. And I don't think that it can be argued enough her influence on western spiritualism and western spirituality. Like if you heard of the term, ascended masters, it's not a given that most people have, but if you're into new age crystals and dolphins and all of that-
Stephan Downes:
Just crystals and dolphins?
Adam Rizvi:
Well there's a lot more to it, but if you've heard of the idea of ascended masters, which you know, is the idea that these are beings who used to be human but they evolved to the point of being able to turn their bodies into light and then becoming enlightened and ascending similar to how the Christians would say Jesus ascended to the kingdom of heaven, that these beings are all-powerful. You know? How would you describe ascended masters?
Stephan Downes:
I think they are in line with the idea that this is gross matter that is imperfect and there is the perfect alternative, like they have found that and not only are their minds, so to speak, enlightened, but their bodies are as well. And so their physical form, they have complete control over like in a practical level. You'll read about stories of ascended masters appearing to people, just like angels would except they give very specific instruction about like the evolution of human consciousness and then you get even further into discussions of other ascended races, like the Palladians and things like that, that are even further field than just ascended masters and therefore, I mean, it's huge. It's huge in the scope of what Madame Blavatsky started.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, I couldn't even, I didn't even take it there like the modern UFO culture, I think, is heavily influenced by these new age ideas.
Stephan Downes:
Right. This, I think, gets to the heart of , I think like Madame Blavatsky, things like that. I think, fundamentally for me, something else that strikes me about gnosticism, the heart of it, which you wrote about, when you read about in your first definition of it, is the idea that there does not need to be an intermediary between the human and the divine. And that is something that is so central to us. You know if you think about American capitalist culture, it's this attitude of confidence that I can do it, that I can make it. And that goes into our religious lives as well. Religion in America, even if you talk about Christianity, yes, people go see pastors, yes, people go see priests, but fundamentally, they have their own relationship with God and that is not what was historically present in Europe. You know? We are the descendants of the iconoclasts, so to speak, in American Christian culture, but you know there are people who are diehard fundamentalist Christian who still have very deep relationships with their God. Right? And that direct connection is, I'm not even quite sure if you can directly trace the people who started that movement in Europe to here. If you can trace that to gnosticism, however, the attitude is similar. The attitude is that you don't need the priest class, which is why it's so iconoclastic and why it was forbidden in Christianity. You know, the book talks about it as like the grand heresy is gnosticism because it completely obliterates the need for the church.
Adam Rizvi:
Among many other things, but I think that's probably one of the primary reasons, you hit the nail on the head, Stephan. If you can attain the goal of whatever it is, call it salvation, call it enlightenment, if you can attain that and you do not need anyone else to do so, you've just given away any hope for control of a population, right? Now, this is not in any way attacking the Catholic church, but it is noting an aspect of religion in general as a societal structure, not as necessarily a tool for divine realization. But religion plays a huge role in structuring society and when we realize how that structure exists, we realize, for better or worse, there is a form of control involved and that necessitates an intermediary to understand the divine. That's why there is a clergy or a priest class, as you put it.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah. And if we go back historically, you and I talked and originally thought we knew we wanted to do something with early Christianity for this episode. It originally started off with the Desert Fathers, who we didn't end up going with because the book we were reading wasn't right for it, but there's this whole, I think if you're not familiar with the kind of history of organized Christianity, we talked about on an earlier episode of Misquoting Jesus, but when the church became a state religion, there was a whole population, multiple populations of people who had no interest in it becoming a state religion, they had their own personal relationships with it and really could care less if it was a state religion or not. The gnostics are part of that group.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. You know what's interesting, I just realized now. In chapter three of the book, Dr. Smoley talks about Manicheism. Now that's probably worth talking about at some point, maybe in a later episode, but it was called the religion of light and in fact, he titles this chapter, The Lost Religion of Light, because at one point Manicheism founded by Mani, the Prophet who was an early gnostic, was almost across the whole world on nearly all continents, perhaps not Antarctica, obviously, and maybe South America, but it went over everywhere, all across Asia and into Europe. And this was, it was a highly structured religion with its own clergy and lay people. I believe, if I remember correctly, the priests of that religion were celibate and the lay people would offer something in terms of pay or penance or I'm not quite sure exactly, but it was remarkably similar to the modern Catholic church in terms of its structure. And yet, its fundamental premise was on gnosis which is, you can experience the divine reality yourself. So for me, when I read that I was like okay, the structure of the church and this idea of needing an intermediary, I think is kind of built into societal needs rather than what works and what doesn't work for realizing the divine.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Cool. Our next question was, why does it hold appeal? We kind of already talked about that. I think just fundamentally, it holds appeal because it gives the individual power and it also, you know, especially these days, things like secret knowledge, and knowledge are more and more popular whether then, you know, even forms like QAnon, things that are more alt-right or alt-left like political parties and political ideologies are, both of those spectrums are based on there being some sort of secret knowledge and I think that's just a fundamental part of like, especially, I can't speak for other cultures, but like western culture, we just have an ongoing fascination with conspiracy theories and secret knowledge. Conspiracy theories are like, it could be taken derogatorily, I don't even mean that, I just mean like secret knowledge. And that is what gnosticism is all about is, is the secret order to the universe, the secret ultimate truth that is being hidden. And it's not even that it's being hidden by some ... it's not a political thing like it's being hidden by those people over there. It's just like the nature of reality itself, is that there's a hidden truth to it.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. Esoteric versus exoteric. Exo means outside. Actually esoteric, I think originally traces its roots to, etymologically, to eso, meaning inner or further in as Smoley mentions. And then it's I think first experienced, at least in the western, world at the Academy of Athens by Plato where the deeper or the further along you studied the material, you are considered in the inner circle and that kind of idea exists in many ways, the inner circle. In Plato's group of students, the inner circle would be the students of esotericism because they understand the deeper aspects of reality.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah.
Adam Rizvi:
I want to share a hymn by Valentinus who is, there is many teachers of gnosticism, of antiquity that are very well known. Valentinus and his gospel of truth is probably one of the greatest gnostic teachers. Then there is you know Basilides, and then there is Mani from Manicheism, there is Marceon, who we might talk about who basically instigated the creation of the modern New Testament. At some point we might go into that, but Valentinus did what you're talking about. He wrote poetry, I guess you could call it that, using terminology that was so highly symbolic that if you didn't know what he was referring to, you would be completely lost. I'm going to read the hymn, and for the listeners out there, just see if you can get a sense of what he's talking about and then we might dive into it a little bit to sort of outline the symbols and to show this is what gnostic literature was at the time and how they conveyed their ideas. So, the hymn is called, Summer Harvest. "I see in spirit that all are hung. I know in spirit, that all are born. Flesh hanging from soul, soul clinging to air, air hanging from upper atmosphere. Crops rushing forth from the deep, a babe rushing forth from the womb." So, there's a lot of imagery here, but one thing I want to point out is the word, soul. Actually back in the time of early Greek and Latin, actually the closer equivalent is the idea of psyche in the English word which is the realm of mental and emotional realities. It's sort of our inner life. So when the early gnostics talk about soul, it's really referring to the psyche. But spirit, the word spirit, by contrast is really referring to the self, the capital S self, the true eye. Other religions might call it Othman or Buddha nature. If you consider that for a moment, then what he's saying is, in spirit all are born. Right? From that Othman, from that Buddha nature everything flows forth. And then flesh hanging from soul, right, so the body is hanging from or dependent on the psyche, the mind. Which now this is a huge difference between modern day materialism which says that the inner world, the subjective world of mind and emotions actually is an epi-phenomenon of physical processes. Gnosticism, way back then is saying, nope, the flesh is dependent on the mind and the emotions and the mind and the emotions, the psyche is dependent or clinging to air, which is the realm of the spirit and then air hanging from upper atmosphere, which is upper atmosphere is really the heavens, so it's a reference to God. And I think those four levels of symbolism really outline the cosmos of the gnostics.
Stephan Downes:
Super deep. I don't even know what to say.
Adam Rizvi:
It's great stuff. I think the other thing that makes gnosticism appealing is its relationship to women and how they viewed it and how they viewed Mary Magdalene.
Stephan Downes:
How did they view Mary Magdalene, Adam? My understanding is that the gnostics viewed Mary Magdalene as like the one person who kept the true faith. While everything was going down, while Jesus is being crucified and killed, that Mary Magdalene was the one person who was right there by his side, and kept that like pure teaching, that pure knowing.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, yeah. There's this famous gnostic text called The Pistis Sophia, which translates to faith wisdom. And in it, Jesus says, "Thou art she whose heart is more directed to the kingdom of heaven than all thy brothers." And he was referring to Mary Magdalene in that quote, which tells you, at least according to the early gnostics, his perspective of who Mary Magdalene was and I think the other reason why at least when gnosticism first hit the scene in academia and modern parlance in the 70s, it was also the rise of feminism in America, at least, and so it really struck a cord when feminism took a huge place in American society.
Stephan Downes:
Absolutely. And then we get into speaking of why does it still hold appeal, like Jung. I thought the person in the book was so fascinating and Jung and how most people know that he was influenced by, obviously by Freud, he was a student or what would you call him, a protégé before he broke rank.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. At the very least, a good friend, but perhaps protégé.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah, yeah. And then he broke rank with him and he was also influenced by Ray Contiene, but he is just as influenced by gnostic ideas and the book kind of goes into this in chapter eight. Jung was really touched by, obviously he had these archetypes which he considered these fundamental parts of the human psyche, except he was a little different than the gnostics where he said, they are not external. They are parts of our inner worlds. Do you want to say more about Jung?
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, this is also one of those things that you can't stress enough. Just take a moment and consider Carl Jung, and the influence that he has had on society. It is so much more far reaching than just the world of psychology and psychiatry.
Stephan Downes:
Let's get into, because some people listening might not actually be familiar with Jung and his influence on society. Can you talk a little bit about ... so Adam, you can't see it, we're talking on video chat. Adam, just like held his head like, oh my god, where do you even begin. That's what's happening right now. Jung, in psychology, is I think the heart of, especially American, consciousness today.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah. Just think of Joseph Campbell and the re-understanding, the reinterpretation of mythology. Fundamentally, for me personally, Jung's primary idea that, if there is anyone who is a Jungian out there, you know you can write hate mail to me later on.
Stephan Downes:
Please do. Please do.
Adam Rizvi:
If I butcher this. I'll speak from personal experience, that will probably save me the hate mail. My biggest takeaway from Jung is the concept of the archetypes, that there is a fundamental structure to how we perceive our reality that has nothing to do with the outer world out there, but rather how our mind is structured. So, you know, one of the classic archetypes is the anima and the animus, right, this idea of the masculine/feminine energies that are both inside of us that then get perceived externally. Or the idea of the shadow self. Most people who have never heard of Jung, maybe you haven't heard of this idea of the demons within, your shadow self, the part of you that you tend to repress, you don't want out there or don't want other people to see that these are some secret urges that you have. And the thing that Jung did is he said, these are all fundamental constructs, they are literally filters of our own mind, of our psyche, and unless we understand that we are seeing reality through those filters, we will be controlled by them and enslaved by them. And what he did, which I think was powerful, is he reinterpreted the gnostic stories within psychological ideas, within a psychological framework. So, one example would be this idea of the demi urge. So gnostics say that this reality was created by a lesser deity, a lesser god. It's not the one true God and they called that the demi urge, which actually comes from the Greek word, craftsman, to craft. The god that created the craft of this world. Jung said that is very similar to the trickster god, right? In the Norse mythology, one of the trickster gods, or the trickster god for the Norse system is Loki, and he is that which, actually let me read a quote here. "Jung connects the gnostic demi urge with the cosmogonic jester of primitive peoples. A familiar example of the latter is Loki, the trickster god of the ancient Norse. In essence, Jung is saying there is an archetype that puts things arraign, that brings destruction and imperfection into the world. This principle exists in our own psyches. We live it through, in our lives, in the mistakes we make half blindly, half knowingly." That's so cool. That means Loki is not actually, that's such a superficial understanding of the mythology of the Norse people, but if you realize, no, there is no Loki out there, rather if you take it as Jung did, to represent a structure in our own psyche, then you're like, oh man, what is the Loki in me doing with my life and how do I sabotage myself because of that. It's a whole way of viewing mythology.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah. That last quote you did, how am I sabotaging myself in a way I don't know about. That conversation, like how am I getting in my own way, like that is quintessential new age, American new age. It's right there in the forefront of it and this exists, And you brought up Joseph Campbell and the heroes. We talk about the heroes journey, right, and how the travel almost, kind of like through these archetypes in a way and how that is how the framework for modern movies in America, specifically America. But this goes into pop culture, which I think Adam's getting really excited. I think we're going to dive into this third question, like how is it relevant today. Aside from the pop culture, aside from pop culture, I'll get to it later. Let's talk about movies. Go.
Adam Rizvi:
No, you go, man. You're the former director.
Stephan Downes:
That's a big word to call me. Don't nobody else call me that because I'm not showing you anything I made.
Adam Rizvi:
I think you were a wonderful director and if you chose to go back into it, you'd be a great one.
Stephan Downes:
Ughh, all right. Can we talk about the Matrix? Okay, okay. Okay. The Matrix, right?
Adam Rizvi:
Yes.
Stephan Downes:
Shitty, shitty, shitty world that the humans actually live in. Right? One, the shitty world, there is like the shitty world that Neo lives in day to day, then there's the shitty world he wakes up to when he takes the pill and now he's in an even shittier world, and then there's the ultimate truth that Neo alone can perceive, right, that Neo can interact with. And that whole thing is all based on ideas that you could tie back to gnosticism through people like Jung and like Campbell.
Adam Rizvi:
One of the things that Joseph Campbell did is he actually studied all the myths of people from around the world and he realized they all fundamentally follow a particular structure and it's called the heroes journey, or the monomyth is sometimes another way of putting it, where the hero gets a call to adventure and it's really outside of his comfort zone or her comfort zone and at first they refuse the call, but then eventually they answer the call, they go on the journey, they face trials and tribulations. They go into this other world that's completely unknown and scary. They get lost into the belly of the beast where all hope is lost, but then some element comes in, some guide, some mentor, some savior, to teach them what they need to know to fight the last battle and then they achieve, they defeat the dragon. This actually relates back to our very first episode, which is about killing the dragon, Thou Shalt According to Friedrich Nietzsche.
Stephan Downes:
Oh yeah. I forgot.
Adam Rizvi:
And then getting the gold in the cave. Now, the key thing about Joseph Campbell's monomyth is that once the hero gets the gold, that's not the end of the story. The actual end is bringing what you learned, the gold, the treasure, the knowledge, the secret inner knowledge, and bringing it back to your village, back home, and sharing it with your people so they too can go on their journeys and grow and that completes the circle. Ane these gnostic ideas, whether or not you agree with it, have had such a huge influence on modern pop culture and really the way we see reality because it's subconsciously at least being told to us via movies and TV series that are fundamentally based on the heroes journey, which are themselves based on the structure of mythology going back to antiquity.
Stephan Downes:
Yeah. My god. Boy. I feel like I couldn't say enough about all the places that gnosticism is found in modern day. Can you talk a little bit about Philip K. Dick?
Adam Rizvi:
Oh sure. Oh yeah, yeah. Thank you for reminding me.
Stephan Downes:
It's my pleasure.
Adam Rizvi:
Some of you, if you're SyFy fans-
Stephan Downes:
Anytime.
Adam Rizvi:
You're quite welcome, thank you. If you're SyFy fans, you may have heard of Blade Runner. Stephan, give a brief rundown of what Blade Runner is.
Stephan Downes:
Harrison Ford, okay, oh my God. To be fair, I haven't read the book, I've only seen the Harrison Ford movie.
Adam Rizvi:
That's heresy. That's sacrilege.
Stephan Downes:
There's this guy who is hunting down basically what we would call androids. They are machines who are created to look exactly like people and to function exactly like them except they are rouge and doing their own thing now because humanity turned against them and they are not taking it, and so they send someone to go hunt them down and then, what's the spoiler, Adam?
Adam Rizvi:
Have people not seen the movie?
Stephan Downes:
If you haven't seen Blade Runner, ear muffs. Ear muffs, everyone.
Adam Rizvi:
Ear muffs now.
Stephan Downes:
Ear muffs.
Adam Rizvi:
Pause.
Stephan Downes:
Not if you're driving. Ear muffs.
Adam Rizvi:
You can mute us right now. Okay.
Stephan Downes:
Spoilers.
Adam Rizvi:
So it turns out he himself is an android.
Stephan Downes:
I can't think of what they call, it starts with an S, I thought.
Adam Rizvi:
Oh man. I forget.
Stephan Downes:
Anyway, android. You get it.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, yeah.
Stephan Downes:
He himself is one. But so, so Philip K. Dick though, the author, has a personal relationship with gnostic ideas and that's, I think, more than the plot of Blade Runner. Although you'll tie it back in. You'll tie it back in.
Adam Rizvi:
Yeah, yeah. So Philip K. Dick, he's a extremely influential science fiction writer. I think he was knighted actually by the Queen of England, but anyway, he wrote several books. The one that became Blade Runner was called, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. The movie that came out, Minority Report, was actually based on some of his writing as well. Tons of stuff, Matrix, indirectly ties to his work as well. So here's the story with Philip K. Dick. I think he was at a market or something talking to a woman and she was wearing a pendant necklace and the necklace was of the fish symbol, which symbolizes early Christian ideals. A lot of people use it to represent different things, but you know how sometimes when you drive behind someone in a car and you see the sort of fish symbol on their bumper, the same symbol. She was wearing it as a pendant and while he was talking to her, he briefly looked down and from the pendant was a beam of pink light that shot and went up into his face and he had this blinding flash. And in an instant, he felt like he was downloaded with a realization that the entire world he's living in was a dream. That it was a big illusion, and that it was keeping him imprisoned, and that there was another world he needed to wake up to. And all that happened in a flash. And he started to dive into gnostic texts and studying them and learning that their ideas were actually quite similar to what he realized i guess with this pink light via the pendant. And if you go back and trace all of his work, you'll find these themes of illusion and reality, or the appearance of one thing but it actually being another, as the case of Blade Runner, right, and then he would often juxtapose androids and humanity and then he would ask you to question yourself, what is real. We talk about a real human versus an android. Well what makes humans real and what does real mean? So that was a big theme in a lot of Philip K. Dick's work which directly ties to gnosticism and gnostic ideas.
Stephan Downes:
I think to kind of start wrapping this up, in this third question, like how is it relevant today. So aside from the fact that it is literally everywhere, in the media we consume, as Americans especially, but western audience more generally, it is, I think it's fundamentally at the core of how we also view religion. You know, for those of us who are spiritual seekers, who are a little bit more out ... I mean not even that you have to be that far outside of the "box of normal mainstream religion" because we've already talked about how it's found in there as well. That urge, that knowing that you can find truth. You know, there are some religions, like Buddhism and Hinduism both have this idea, but I think a lot of people have that knowing without knowing much about Hinduism or Buddhism. They too feel like they can find truth. They can have a relationship with the divine themselves. That is fundamentally a gnostic idea and it is central to the way we live our lives.
Adam Rizvi:
If there are two things that I would leave anyone listening to this with is, what if there was nothing that you needed outside of you to realize truth with a capital T? If you believe that there is, whether it's you know someone, something, a book, or some certification or something like consider where in your life you think, oh I need X, Y, Z in order for me to understand things on a deeper level. What if you didn't? I think that would be one question to ponder, which is very much a gnostic question. And the second question would be, what if the world you perceive is not the end-all be-all reality? What if there was a deeper reality? What if there was a deeper truth that you're not currently experiencing? What if you actually were dreaming right now, what would you do? Would you not want to wake up? I think that would be question number two along the lines of the gnostic consideration.
Stephan Downes:
Awesome.
Adam Rizvi:
Well, Stephan, that was very, very well done. I would invite all of you listening to check out our website, letterstothesky.com, if you feel so inclined. If you love these conversations, I would love for you, I think we would love for you to shoot us an email, suggest a book for us to cover or an author or a famous iconoclast of yours that you would love for us to dive into and talk about. And check out our Patreon page as well, there's a lot of goodies there to be found.
Stephan Downes:
Absolutely. Yeah, you know we've been doing these episodes kind of on our own for a while just to get started, and we would love to have some more interaction with our audience. So if you are someone who likes this podcast, who enjoys it aside from obviously telling other people about it, interact with us, let us know. Let us know what you think, whether it be on our website or on Patreon, we would love to hear from you. All right, now we're going to go to the green room. We're going to go to the after show and I hear they have bottled water back there. I'm very excited.
Adam Rizvi:
That's awesome. Take it easy, Stephan.
Stephan Downes:
Bye, Adam.