Interview with John Lash for Mythos Editora

Recently I was contacted by Gilberto Schoereder, editor of the Portuguese publishing house, Mythos Editora. He submitted some thoughtful questions on Gnosis, shamanism, my personal psychic and mystical experiences, and the Gaia Mythos. This interview will be published in the Brazilian magazine, Sexto Sentido.

Mythos Editora Interview:

ME: Some historians say that the Gnosticism is a syncretism that originated in Alexandria – not by any chance, since the town was the cultural center of the world at that time. So the Gnosticism would have been influenced by almost all known religions from that period. I read an interview where you connect Gnosticism with the Shamanism, so that it would be originated around the year 6000 BC. Is it really so? Is it possible to identify other influences to the development of the Gnosticism in the first centuries after Christ?

JLL: I reject the view held by most historians that Gnosticism originated at the time of the earliest surviving textual evidence – that is, about 150 AD. To me these documents (such as the Nag Hammadi material) represent the end of the Gnostic tradition, not its origin. The syncretic Gnosticism of Alexandria and the Levant was the final and decadent phase of an ancient preChristian tradition.

The earliest scholars assumed a distant preChristian origin for Gnosticism, but their views are now been disregarded. However, I trace the origin of the Gnostic movement back to the Magian Order, the priesthood of ancient Iran, around 6000 BC. The first priests were shamans who degenerated into religious authorities and social manipulators. Gnostics preserved the true path of shamanism and developed a program for guidance and education, independent of power games. Gnosis was based on the shamanic practices (“archaic techniques of ecstasy,” as Mircea Eliade called them) that gave ancient initiates deep knowledge of the cosmos and human psyche. Now that we understand the nature of shamanism fairly well, it is easy to see how Gnostic seers were similar to Indian yogis and mahasiddhas, on the one hand, and Amazonian ayahuascueros, on the other.

ME: You say you don’t like the term “Gnosticism”. Could you explain it better for us?

JLL: Gnosticism is a construction of scholars who have had no mystical experience. The -ISM carries spurious notions that conceal the true nature of the ancient Gnostic path. Gnosticism is a label, but Gnosis is an eternal quest. Gnosis is the exceptional or transcendent knowledge that we acquire by developing nous, divine intelligence. I am interested in the actual practice of Gnosis, here and now, not the scholarly commentary attached to GnosticISM. Through Gnosis we can become anthropologists of the Divine and learn directly about God, the cosmos, etc. Thus, I refer to “Gnostic teachings,” rather than “Gnosticism.” No expert or learned scholar can define Gnosis, if they lack direct personal evidence of mystical and shamanic experience.

ME: Do you believe it’s possible that ancient mythological tales from several races, as they refer to gods that came from the skies, could bear any relation to the Gnostic texts with references to the Archons? Zecharia Sitchin, for instance, has mentioned the Anuaki, supposedly originated in our own solar system to come up in Summeria.

JLL: Ancient myths about gods who came from the skies have to be put into two categories: tales about the Archons or Annunaki and other non-terrestrial races, and tales about the first men who descended to earth early in its evolution. In some cases, the “gods” described in the myths are non-human beings, but in other cases they are human beings, our most ancient ancestors. One must be extremely careful to make this distinction.

The situation is complicated because the second category, the male part of humanity, did not originally evolve on earth, but in outer space (in Orion). The female part of humanity, on the other hand, did originate with the earth. The complete model of humanity, the Anthropos, was “seeded” from the galactic center by panspermia, but the female half evolved with the earth from its origin, and the male half came to earth later. This is a secret teaching on the “division of the sexes,” taught in the Western Mysteries. Hence, some descending gods were actually proto-humans.

As far as I can tell, Sitchin’s scenario is about the Archons. So, Annunaki = Archons. Passages in the NHC describe the same activity of the Annunaki found in the Sumerian tablets. But in addition to describing the activity of the Annunaki-Archons, Gnostic teachings also explain the origin, motive, and methods of those extraterrestrials, and how to resist their influence. Sitchin’s material is quite valid in places, but it is weak in two ways: he does not present a convincing explanation of the origin of the Annunaki, and he does not describe how they look.

ME: You’re known to have said that no scholar will ever say what you say about the Gnosis and the Mysteries, but none of them has the true experience in that matter. What is your own experience in that regard? Have you ever experienced the ecstasy described in ancient texts?

JLL: As I said above, scholars who write about Gnosis have no experience of mystical, shamanic, and paranormal realities. Or if they do, they don’t admit it! I find myself in a paradoxical situation. Usually, in any field where a writer is working, the writer is expected to have direct experience of the subject matter. If I write about exploring the Amazon, for instance, you expect that I have been then and sailed that river, met the natives, etc. My experience qualifies me to write about the subject.

With mysticism the opposite is true: if I admit to having mystical experiences, I am suspected of delusion. My experience disqualifies and discredits me. It’s crazy, but scholars who have no mystical experience at all control research and discussion of Gnosis.

I began to have mystical experiences spontaneously from the age of four. (I do not believe that I am exceptional, for many people have such experiences, but they are forced to deny or repress them. I always resisted this.) At sixteen I had an intense experience with Kundalini that lasted several months. Through my life I have done lucid dreaming, astral projection, and so forth. I believe that we all have guides and guardians who help us to face these experiences (which can be traumatic), so that we can evolve beyond consensus reality. The central practice of my spiritual quest is cognitive ecstasy, such as the initiates experienced in the Pagan Mysteries. I would not write about this if I did not have firsthand evidence of it.

ME: What do you think about the Gnostic Churches existing today in the world? Do you believe they reflect or sustain in any level the original Gnostic teachings? We happen to know these Churches perform Gnostic rituals. In what manner do these rituals differ from the Christian ones, more specifically to the Catholic’s’? And what’s their purpose?

JLL: I cannot comment because I don’t know much about such churches, and I have no desire to be involved in that kind of Gnostic revival. I do not condemn it, but it is not for me. The method of Gnosis that I am advocating involves shamanic practices of direct contact and communication with Gaia, the Wisdom Goddess (Sophia), or the planetary intelligence, if you prefer. These practices must be undertaken in wild nature, in solitary places. I am opposed to organized religious ritual, rules, hierarchy, and institutions, even when they call themselves Gnostic.

ME: According to the disciples of Simon Magus – whom some believe to be the most ancient of the Gnostics – the Supreme God has created by emanation a feminine principle from which the angels were born. And these angels are the architects of the visible world. They are inferior beings that, envious of their mother, have driven her to the Earth, where she was forced to bear degrading incarnations.

Because his concept embodies the Judaic-Christian notion of a masculine God, it seems to be in shock with your thoughts on the matter. Do you confirm it? Is this concept the same one that says the Earth is the work of the Demiurge/ Ialdabaoth, or the two of them are different notions? In Gnosticism it is said that the earth, the material world, is not god’s creation? And would the angels some Biblical texts refer to be the Archons?

JLL: This raises some complicated questions. There is a lot of confusion around these issues because of disinformation and error attached to the Mysteries. Simon Magus was not the most ancient Gnostic, but one of the latest survivors. He is the earliest initiate from the Levantine Mysteries whose name is known because he came out in public to protest against Christianity. Most of the initiates remained anonymous.

To respond to the rest of the points you raise, consider this paraphrase of the Mystery teaching on creation:

The Goddess Sophia, an emanation from the Pleroma (Supreme God), acted in an unusual manner that produced “the angels” (Archons), an aberrant species. These entities are not “the architects of the material world,” for the earth we inhabit is a transformation of the Goddess herself: it is her body, morphed into a planet. The Archons or deviant angels are cyborgs of the planetary system in which the earth is captured, but not creatures of the earth. The deviant angels do not envy Sophia, but humanity, because we have what they lack: the spark of divine intelligence. They try to blind and entrap humanity with religion, especially doctrines of sin and salvation. The leader of the Archon angels is Jehovah, the Father God. This is an alien entity, an imposter god, the Demiurge – so the Gnostics claimed, including Simon Magus.

To the Gnostics and illumined seers of the Mysteries, the earth is the sacred expression of the Goddess. The entire material world of the senses is infused with the presence of divine Wisdom, Sophia. The Demiurge did not create the material world, but he wants us to believe he did! Religion imposes the belief that the chief of the deviant Archon angels created this world. Gnostics refuted that belief.

ME: It has been said that this kind of concept regarding the true nature of the world is connected to concepts that originated in India. Is this true? What’s the relation? In other words, there seems to be an inversion of the situation presented by the Christianity. Ialdabaoth/Demiurge wanted the human beings to be kept in ignorance, so he created the taboo of the Tree of Wisdom. However, Sophia sent the serpent so that the man, having received his wisdom, can fight Iadalbaoth, that is, he can fight the material and far less than perfect world he’s created, just as the Hindu mystics intend to reach Nirvana by ridding themselves of Maya, the veil of illusions.

JLL: The Indian concept of maya does not mean illusion but apparition, the appearance taken by what is real. As I understand the view of the Tantric schools, the world is a true apparition, like a living dream. It is not an illusion to be dissolved or a prison to escape from. We are limited, not by the material world, but by the conditioning of our minds and senses. Gnosis is a process of deconditioning that allows us to perceive the sublime reality of the world and the magic of our own existence.

Gnostics reversed the Biblical myth of the Fall. They taught that Yaldabaoth and the deviant angels want to keep humanity from seeing reality, perceiving the world as it really is, infinite, mysterious, full of wonders. Sophia aids humanity by giving us the chance to have illumined vision (“heightened awareness,” as Castaneda called it). Our sensory perception is heightened by Kundalini, the serpent in the Garden of Eden. The snake is the ally of Sophia. Paradoxically, we need to be illumined to see the true nature of the sensory world. The world is not a veil of illusion but a magical projection of divine imagination. Gnostics did not hold the negative view of Maya typical of Indian metaphysics. World-rejection was falsely attributed to Gnostics by their enemies, the Church Fathers, and later by scholars who have the stupid arrogance to write about things they have never experienced.

ME: It has also been said that, when the Father sends Jesus to save humanity, his killing by the Jews was instigated by Ialdabaoth. Is there any mention to this within the Gnosticism? Just to be more thorough, on the sci-fi books by Philip K. Dick – an author known to have a strong connection with the Gnosticism – he has described, in a fantasized way of course, that the words of Jesus at the cross –“Forgive them, Father… they don’t know what they do” – were in fact a reference to the ignorance in which people live in this world… unaware of the full sense of reality and unable to perceive what lies behind the appearances of the material world. Is this true?

JLL: Yes, there is a text in the NHC that presents such a scenario. However, not all the texts in the NHC are completely or genuinely Gnostic. A lot of the NHC material represents a late, mixed, and somewhat decadent version of Mystery teachings. It mixes Christian beliefs with half-understood Gnostic teachings. Sometimes it is almost impossible to sort out this tangled tapestry.

In the view of initiates such as Simon Magus, Jesus did not die to save the world. No one can do that. Gnosis is a path of illuminism that does not demand or glorify sacrifice. The concept of forgiveness is purely Christian, but Gnostics were Pagans who did not embrace this concept. Gnostics did not propose that we be forgiven for our ignorance. This is a waste of time. We all have the responsibility, and the capacity, to overcome ignorance. The path of illumination does not reveal the true reality that lies behind or beyond the appearances of the material world, it reveals the true reality of those appearances. The presence of the divine Sophia pervades the sensory world. For Gnostics, the sensations of the human body are essentially sacred. The problem is, we do not really experience the raw, naked reality of our own sensations. If we did, we would experience the Divine.

ME: According to this notion, could we understand that Christ was actually unable to save us, since we are still at the material world, having no clue about the full sense of reality? Then what truly saves the man is the Gnosis, the knowledge instead of suffering?

JLL: Christ never saved anyone. The belief in salvation from on high (beyond humanity) is an ideological implant of the Archons, the deviant angels. Gnostics warned that it is a perverse lie. The Gnostic Christos, as distinct from Christ in Catholicism, is a revealer, not a redeemer. What saves us is knowledge. There is no redemptive value in suffering. It is often useless, and teaches us nothing. It cannot be compensated by some divine plan managed by paternal authorities. This is the radical Gnostic message.

ME: In what ways has the discovery of the Nag Hammadi materials influenced the modern understanding of the Gnosticism?

JLL: The Nag Hammadi Codices were discovered in Egypt in December, 1945. They are considered to be “original writings” from certain Gnostic sects. I do not believe they are original writings, but something like classroom notes taken down in shorthand - Coptic is like a stenographic language - by students who attended the Mysteries in the final years before Christianity forbade all Pagan teachings. Nevertheless, these notes tell us some things about the original and radical nature of Gnostic teachings. The discovery of the Egyptian books (the earliest example of leather-bound books with numbered pages) has brought the attention of the world to Gnosis, but so far, the interpretation of these books has been used to promote and legitimate Christianity, rather than reveal the path of Gnosis. There is still a long way to go. I seriously doubt if true Gnosis will ever be accessible to the mainstream.


ME: Do you find any similarities between the concept of the evos and their governors – like Adamas, ruler of the 13th evo – and the concepts of the Great White Brotherhood and similar philosophies in which there are different rulers or masters acting in our world from an immaterial dimension?

JLL: Sorry, I don’t know who the evos are. But I have a question for you: Do the evos have egos? And if so, what does an evo ego look like?

As for the Great White Brotherhood, I personally do not believe there is such an organization that acts on humanity from the immaterial world. I do believe that there are benevolent guardians and allies in other dimensions and parallel worlds who help humanity. I have often encountered such entities, and learned from them. Sometimes they have saved my life. Gnostics were accomplished seers who knew the difference between deviant non-human entities (such as Archons, Grey ETs, reptilians, etc) and wise, helpful non-human entities. Do these benevolent entities or guides form an organization, like the United Nations of the Spiritual World? I don’t think so. To me the GWB is a joke, but not a good joke. Nevertheless, it’s good to laugh at it.

ME: There seem to be a lot of people or groups nowadays talking about Gnosticism and Gnosis or defining themselves as Gnostics. Do you think it’s all exaggeration or hype? How can we distinguish the true Gnostics from the groups that are only taking advantage of things? Just to be more thorough, there’s a lot of talk today about the use of drugs to reach ecstasy, end even more about Shamanism. In Brazil, the best known work on that regard is possibly Terence McKenna’s. Do you believe these kinds of methods are still possible today, when any kind of drug use is a crime under most of the governments and almost everyone is afraid of the dangers represented by drugs? Is it possible to reach Gnostic ecstasy without the use of drugs?

JLL: Yes, some kind of revival is happening.But I am not involved in any of these groups. Personally, I think that Gnosis can be practiced by individuals and small groups of friends without setting up churches, rituals, rules, and so forth. Essentially, Gnosis is open-ended experimental shamanism. It is a path free of institutional organization, rites, sermons, and other pious games.

The work of R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and others shows that the ancient Mysteries involved the ritual use of psychoactive plants, such as the kykeon (sacred potion) of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Robert Graves was one of the first people to indicate that European shamanism was entheogenic, using sacred teacher-plants. This agrees with my view that the Gnostic movement developed from a prehistoric form of shamanism.

Sacred psychoactive plants are not drugs. Terence said: “The psychedelic message is an anti-drug message.” Alcohol, tobacco, and prescription medicine are drugs that kill and disable millions of people. There is no clinical or medical evidence that psychoactive plants, including magic mushrooms, harm us in any way, physically or mentally. These plants are illegal because using them frees people from social conditioning and turns them against the System, the Church, the government, etc. The sacred plants show us the falsity of the human world.

I am totally against the use of drugs for Gnostic practice. But ritual practice with psychoactive plants (“teacher-plants”) has been done by the human species for thousands of years. This practice cannot be eradicated without destroying the human species itself. It will always continue in some way or another, even if it is forbidden by the authorities who fear losing control of people whose minds are awakened by the plant-teachers. Mythologist Mircea Eliade, author of the classical book on shamanism, initially said that use of psychoactive plants was decadent. Toward the end of his life, he changed his mind. Eliade admitted that ritual use of hallucinogens was essential to true, sane shamanism. To reach Gnostic ecstasy with sacred plants is an elite discipline that has nothing to do with the recreational use of drugs like MDMA, or taking magic mushrooms in social situations such as raves and rock concerts.

ME: What did the Gnostics say about how we rid ourselves of the influence of the Arcones? Which postures or procedures are required to accomplish that?

JLL: Upon encountering the Archons in lucid dreaming or astral projection, you can defend yourself by “magical passes” such as Castaneda proposed, or by mudras and body movements that resemble the martial arts. Practice hand gestures before falling asleep, flat on your back in bed. Just experiment and see how it feels when you do certain mudras, positioning your hands over chest and throat. The effect of defensive mudras is immediate and cannot be analyzed or orchestrated. For offensive action, use deep breathing and the force of rage, murderous rage. I used to tell intruders, “You better know where to hide!” And they would go away and hide! You routinely have to threaten psychic intruders, but you also have to be able to act on your threats. Just as in real life, you have to be willing to kill psychically to defend yourself psychically.

The best protection against the Archons is awakened Kundalini. When aroused, the Serpent Power produces a luminous seal of protection. Gnostics taught that we can repel the Archons by telling them that we know who we are – that is, we know the story of humanity and its connection to the wisdom goddess, Sophia. (See,"A Gnostic Catechism” on metahistory.org for more details.)

ME: You refer to the Gaia Mythos as the heart of the traditional Gnostic teachings and the initiation on the Mystery Schools. Could you tell us more about that?

JLL: The Gaia mythos is my reconstruction of the story of the Goddess Sophia taught in the Mysteries. This story was central to the Gnostic view of life. All the Mysteries were dedicated to the Wisdom Goddess, the Great Mother. To be a Gnostic today is to know by heart, cultivate, and impart what I call the Sophianic vision. My forthcoming book, “Gaia’s Way – Gnostic Vision, Deep Ecology, and the Legacy of the Ancient Mysteries,” presents a complete retelling of the Gaia Mythos. A version of the story can also be found on my site, metahistory.org. The proof of the Gaia Mythos is the encounter with the living intelligence of the earth, not beliefs or fantasies.

Thank you for your interest in my work. JJLL, January 2006