new illuminati: gnosis

Showing posts with label gnosis. Show all posts

Saturday, 24 December 2016

Archons, Dominions and Thoughts that Run Wild

By Julian Websdale

There is a simple premise in esoteric literature: thoughts have power. Even modern science accepts that behind the structure we know as the material world is a web of energy, and the interactions between different types of energy create the semblance of solidity we call matter. Thought, then, as a form of energy, has the same power. This is why in so many traditions there are admonitions about controlling the thought process, while thinking and doing are still different things, thinking does have its effects.

Clairvoyants of many persuasions have seen and documented the shapes and forms produced by various types of thought; witness the work of Charles Leadbeater. While many of these forms are fleeting, when empowered by the emotions and by memory they become more than just thoughts, they become thought forms.

These thoughtforms exist beyond simply when they are thought – they take on an independent existence within the mind of the thinker. They then influence memory and condition our perceptions of everyday life. We may want to see these thoughtforms as only existing within the psyche of the neurotic or unstable, and yet all of us have our lives conditioned by the thoughtforms we have created in the past. For most people they never see the present unfiltered, all experience is sieved through thoughtforms created from childhood, and even beyond through past lives.

“Meme: (pron. ‘meem’) A contagious idea that replicates like a virus, passed on from mind to mind. Memes function the same way genes and viruses do, propagating through communication networks and face-to-face contact between people.”

– David S. Bennahum.

Thoughts however go much further. As documented in much modern research on Memes, thoughtforms can become like viruses of the mind. They can spread throughout groups, families, nations and indeed the world and are passed through the deeper levels of the unconscious we all experience. Rumours, tales and urban myths are all memes or thoughtforms. While they may be primarily passed by the printed word, internet, media, etc., there is a time when they reach a certain “saturation point” and then become part of the collective unconscious. This is exceptionally dangerous as negative and violent forms can control groups and crowds creating mob violence and aggression. These group-minds are really thoughtforms out of control, and are known in the Gnostic Tradition as Archons. There are multitudes of Archons dwelling both within our minds and within the collective unconscious.

Not only can Archons exist in the unconscious collective mind, they can create a breach into the astral worlds through which fallen spiritual entities can then move into the earthly spheres and control the thoughtforms created. The Archons are the products of mankind enlivened by fallen spirits and fed by our own emotions. They can control and influence individuals, collectives, even nations and governments.

In Gnostic literature these Archons can so increase in power that they become Dominions, forces which control whole groups of people; even races and countries. People of many religions think that they are worshipping the I-AM; however they are actually feeding a false god, an Archon they have created from their own ignorance. This happens all too often and is why the esoteric tradition is imperative.

Without the guidance of esotericism, many will be caught within the web of exoteric (outer) religion. Fundamentalism, cults, literalism, extremism are all products of incorrect readings of the spiritual tradition. When these groups develop, their thoughtforms take on a life of their own and, not being connected to the “real” energies of the Great Chain of Being, they soon sour and become a nexus for the manifestation of fallen entities from the astral worlds.

These fallen spirits work out of step with the universe and invigorate these forms so that they become independent, discrete fields of energy within the astral world (Archons). They grow from Archons to Dominions and rule from their astral kingdoms. Their poor and unfortunate worshippers think they are following the “true god” but are actually feeding monsters created from mans suffering and ignorance. Many of these forms feed on suffering, while others feed on pleasure, and they amplify the emotions of their members to gain more and more sustenance. In some sense they are truly “spiritual vampires”, and without esotericism, all religions and traditions succumb.

“(They took…) The name of those that are good and gave it to those that are not good, so that through the names they might deceive him (mankind) and bind those to those that are not good.”

– Nag Hammadi Gospel of Phillip 54:18-25.

The imagery of Archons is very strong in Gnostic literature, and because it has become mixed with tales of cosmological dualism, many have come to believe that the Archons are the result of a cosmic error or fall. The reality is that there was no cosmic error, just a misinterpretation caused by ignorance. Yet at the same time this ignorance has created a doorway through which fallen forms can enter and it is these Archons, or whatever we call them, which keep us from appreciating our own misperceptions. Indeed, it is through our own permission that they enter the earth sphere. This is the idea which gave birth to the “fall of man” tradition. Since man in his ignorance created fallen thought forms and allowed fallen entities to enter into the earth stream, then ultimately man is responsible for the present condition of his planet, his culture and his soul.

The issue of Archons is complex for there is an interaction between our own thoughtforms and real fallen astral entities. The thoughtforms allow these entities to interface with our own unconscious. They can change form according to the language of the culture through which they communicate and, being a mixture of our own thoughtforms and “fallen” spirits, can mimic our own hidden desires and needs. While in Medieval periods we may have had demons, incubus and succubus, in the present we have aliens, UFO abductions and medical experiments by creatures we cannot see. In the modern mode, these Archons are sometimes called “ultraterrestrials”. However we must realize that these forms are spiritual in origin. Although there are many other races within our universe, it does seem that a percentage of UFO sightings and experiences reflect our own fears, terrors, needs and desires and hence have an Archontic origin.

“The world is the work of lowly powers which, though they may mediately be descended from Him, do not know the true God and obstruct the knowledge of Him in the cosmos over which they rule. The genesis of these lower powers, the Archons, and in general that of all the Orders of being outside God, including the world itself, is the main theme of Gnostic speculation … The universe, the domain of the Archons, is like a vast prison whose innermost dungeon is the earth, the scene of man’s life. Around and above it the cosmic spheres are arranged like concentric enclosing shells. Most frequently there are seven spheres of the planets surrounded by the eighth and of the fixed stars…

The religious significance of this cosmic architecture lies in the idea that everything which intervenes between here and the beyond serves to separate from God, not merely by spatial distance but by active demonic force. Thus the vastness and multiplicity of the cosmic system express the degree to which man is removed from God…

The Archons collectively rule over the world and each individually in his sphere is a warder of the cosmic prison. Their tyrannical world-rule is called Hiemarmene, universal Fate … [This universal fate] aims at the enslavement of man. As guardians of his sphere each Archon bars the passage to the souls that seek to ascend after death, in order to prevent their escape from the world and their return to God.” – The Gnostic Religion, Hans Jonas.

So when we read a description of Gnosticism such as that found in the classic text The Gnostic Religion by Hans Jonas, we must appreciate that the seeming cosmic dualism is actually a dualism between the real and the unreal, between the light of the higher worlds and forces which have been created through ignorance. They are like “monsters from the Id”, they seem real enough and since the physical world is shaped and formed by our perceptions, they are for all intents and purposes real. The only way for us to escape Hiemarmene (universal fate) is to realize that we have created the prison bars ourselves.

“What a tragic world this is, he reflected. Those down here are prisoners, and the ultimate tragedy is that they don’t know it; they think they are free because they never have been free, and do not understand what it means. This is a prison, and few men have guessed. But I know, he said to himself. Because that is why I am here. To burn the walls, to tear down the metal gates, to break each chain. Thou shalt not muzzle the Ox as he treadeth out the corn, he thought, remembering the Torah.”

– The Divine Invasion, Phillip K. Dick. HarperCollins 1981.

“For we contend not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness.”

– Ephesians 6:12.

While the Archons and the Demiurge are creations of man’s ignorance, they are used by the fallen spirits as a source of power. This is one of the major problems with the Archons we create – they attract forms and spirits which are themselves in ignorance and hence follow them.

Reference:

The Institute for Gnostic Studies. (1997-2000). The Gnostic Handbook. [e-book].

From Julian Websdale @ http://julianwebsdale.tumblr.com/post/91483272614/archons-dominions-and-thoughts-that-run-wild

For more information about archons see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/archons

- Scroll down through ‘Older Posts’ at the end of each section

Do you LIKE this uniquely informative site?

A genuinely incapacitated invalid maintains, writes, edits, researches, illustrates, moderates and publishes this website from a tiny cabin in a remote forest.

Now that most people use ad blockers and view these posts on phones and other mobile devices, sites like this earn an ever shrinking pittance from advertising sponsorship.

This site could really use your help.

Like what you see? Please give anything you can -

Contribute any amount and receive at least one New Illuminati eBook!

(You can use a card securely if you don’t use Paypal)

Please click below -

And it costs nothing to share this post on Social Media!

Dare to care and share - YOU are our only advertisement!

Xtra Image by R. Ayana – https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5714/23455442971_11847cbe4f_k.jpg

https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1509/24332536673_e6e8fec94f_k.jpg

For further enlightening information enter a word or phrase into the random synchronistic search box @ the top left of http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com

And see

New Illuminati – http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com

New Illuminati on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/the.new.illuminati

New Illuminati Youtube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/user/newilluminati/playlists

New Illuminati’s OWN Youtube Videos -

https://www.youtube.com/user/new1lluminati/videos

New Illuminati on Google+ @ For New Illuminati posts - https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RamAyana0/posts

and see https://plus.google.com/115562482213600937809/posts

and google.com/+newilluminati-channel

New Illuminati on Twitter @ www.twitter.com/new_illuminati

New Illuminati on Google Follow - http://www.google.com/friendconnect/settings/edit?smpl=true&st=e%3DAOG8GaCFDeBRZ1yDY2DjCaq61tFDiwO07s%252Fwv3x8%252B%252FJgZJTLx5igbMomJIu3796Ja6n05WaS8qnJ0DLyeGk1q49tLD8m%252FhV1K%252Bq%252BQIOGOwLeWznnm5IGhzjfWzVnq5I4UJr3fw8yk%252B8W2OqwlCbL7BNsW32uouSc79Br%252BkOZQ1Fpzg6J3KMIZkzmg0%252FcPHsWUPqZv845VKS31S%252FbCm8NpINhlK1kDxUdRmcCkT37dIc4RB6PNurjCcd2%252BVkNBveCm4kAgeb8A3Q5hNj6%252FHplvQxKFI%252BW1TYBJVYqHHTKsnBPGcL6wlZdxTUwtfxWU2ZvANJQ%252F%252FUrolBwP7ovb92SZqSWMFJRnN2rsQ%253D%253D%26c%3Dpeoplesense

New Illuminations –Art(icles) by R. Ayana @ http://newilluminations.blogspot.com

The Her(m)etic Hermit - http://hermetic.blog.com

DISGRUNTLED SITE ADMINS PLEASE NOTE –

We provide a live link to your original material on your site (and links via social networking services) - which raises your ranking on search engines and helps spread your info further!

This site is published under Creative Commons (Attribution) CopyRIGHT (unless an individual article or other item is declared otherwise by the copyright holder). Reproduction for non-profit use is permitted & encouraged - if you give attribution to the work & author and include all links in the original (along with this or a similar notice).

Feel free to make non-commercial hard (printed) or software copies or mirror sites - you never know how long something will stay glued to the web – but remember attribution!

If you like what you see, please send a donation (no amount is too small or too large) or leave a comment – and thanks for reading this far…

Live long and prosper! Together we can create the best of all possible worlds…

From the New Illuminati – http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com

Tuesday, 25 October 2016

Is Your God a Devil?

by Richard Smoley

It is one of the most familiar and reassuring lines in scripture: “The Lord is my shepherd.” But when you think about it, the metaphor is a disturbing one.

It’s true that a shepherd looks after his sheep. But he also shears them and kills them and eats them. Does the God we adore act totally with our best interests at heart, or are we a species of livestock that he uses for his own ends?

Voices have occasionally uttered doubt, not about the existence of the gods, but about their beneficence. The ancient Gnostics said that the real god of this world was the Demiurge, a second-order being who mistook himself for the true God. The spiritual teacher G.I. Gurdjieff told a parable about a lazy shepherd who got tired of having his sheep run off, so he hypnotised them into thinking they were men or lions. Then they no longer ran off but stayed around so that he could shear or kill them as he liked. (Again we encounter a shepherd, this one more explicitly malevolent.)

Gurdjieff does not say who this shepherd is. His main point is that man, in his state of waking sleep, is at the mercy of forces that may well not have his best interests at heart – forces that will extract energy from him regardless of his wishes.

This parable is from an early period of Gurdjieff’s teaching; in his later period, epitomised in his magnum opus All and Everything: Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, he portrayed the universe in a more beneficent light. But there are plenty of others who have cast doubts on the motives of the spiritual powers that control our lives.

One of the weirdest is found in a book called War in Heaven by Kyle Griffith. Originally it appeared in 1988. It has never been published in a conventional sense; I first read it years ago when I was editor of the esoteric journal Gnosis and there was a spiral-bound copy lying around the office. Today it can be downloaded for free, here.

Comparatively little is known about Griffith himself. From my sources, I gather that he lived in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1980s, the time when he put his book together. He has been featured in an Internet interview, here, and there is a discussion group devoted to his ideas, here.

From a certain point of view, War in Heaven may look mad; from another, it is strangely compelling. I have read it three times over the years. While I’m not prepared to take its claims at face value, I find them both haunting and disturbing.

Griffith’s vision allegedly derives from his telepathic communication with some spirits who say they are associated with the Invisible College. This was the name of a seventeenth century English coterie that was devoted to esotericism, philosophy, and the nascent discipline of science; it is usually seen as a precursor to the Royal Society. Unlike the scientifically minded gentlemen of Britain, the Invisible College of Griffith’s vision consists of disembodied spirits who claim to have inspired the Rosicrucian and Freemasonic movements of the early modern era; more recently, they were behind the civil-rights movement in America and the psychedelic revolution of the same period.

All of these movements were designed with one end in mind: to break the hold of the Theocrats.

The Theocrats, in the cosmology of War in Heaven, are parasitic astral entities who devour the souls of the recently deceased. The normal course of the soul’s evolution involves repeated reincarnations on earth. But these incarnations, as we well know, can be extremely unpleasant at times. The Theocrats have avoided this disagreeable option by maintaining a semiperpetual existence on the astral plane, fed by the souls they eat. Their strategy is simple. When a naïve soul has died, they greet it on the other side by proffering illusory welcomes into a fake heaven, populated with familiar religious figures and loved ones. When the soul has strayed into their trap, it is devoured.

To make this vision even more disturbing, Griffith (or his guides from the Invisible College) contends that practically all of what we think of as religion is nothing more than a Theocratic ruse.

The stages of this religious development, as portrayed in War in Heaven, bear some examination. The first stage was essentially shamanism. This is a crude and primitive form of religion – from the Theocrats’ point of view, that is, not from ours.

Shamanism, we are told, fosters individual psychic development, and as such, it is of limited value to the predatory Theocrats, who benefit much more from the collective trance that conventional religious worship produces. As a result, the Theocrats had to refine and update their methods of mind control.

Second-stage religion was a dead end. It involved large-scale human sacrifice. And history shows that civilisations that had such practices came to a bad end soon. Ancient Carthage, the great rival of Rome for domination of the Mediterranean, was one example. When the Romans decisively defeated Carthage, they razed the city and sowed the ground with salt. Salt is traditionally a substance used for purification, and some have said the Romans did this to cleanse the land from all the human sacrifice that had taken place there. Aztec civilisation, which in many ways was superior to its European contemporary, was another example: for all its might, it was destroyed by a few hundred Spanish adventurers on horseback.

“The third stage of Theocratic religion,” Griffith writes, “involves mass animal sacrifices. Although they prefer human souls, Theocratic spirits can nourish themselves off the astral souls of lower animals to some extent.”

If this were true, it would cast a weird but revealing light on what I have characterised in the accompanying article as the religions of the Age of Aries. They were so obsessed with animal sacrifice – which otherwise seems to be rather a pointless activity – because the Theocrats wanted it.

“However,” Griffith adds, “the astral tissues of animal souls aren’t very compatible with the astral souls of the Theocrats, so they are not a good food source.” To solve this problem, the Theocrats invented fourth-stage religion – the religions that most of the world knows today. Here “Theocrats use religious mind control to delude souls into deliberately putting themselves under Theocratic control after death, thinking they are entering ‘eternal bliss in Heaven’ or ‘union with the Godhead’.” These religions are essentially those of what in the accompanying article I have called the Age of Pisces.

By this view, the gods people worship – whether they are called Christ or Allah or Krishna – are nothing more than parasites on the astral plane who keep themselves nourished by souls of the innocents they prey on. Originally the Buddha was different; he experienced a genuine awakening and thus showed little respect for the traditional Vedic gods of his culture. But his later followers, who distorted his teaching into a religion based on faith in Buddha, became subservient to the Theocrats.

Oh, and by the way:

“The Theocrats want religious believers to feel guilty every time they feel sexual desire or enjoy any ‘pleasures of the flesh’. The guilt literally addicts them to attending church services that subject them to religious mind control.”

There have been few more disturbing portraits of the religious history of humanity than this.

To deliver the hapless beings of the human race from this dire situation, certain advanced souls from other planets came to the astral atmosphere of Earth a few centuries ago. They, along with some enlightened human souls who have managed to avoid the Theocrats, constitute the Invisible College. While the Theocrats have been sending telepathic suggestions to their unsuspecting followers on this plane, saying that all you have to do is believe in the Theocratic gods and trust them, the Invisible College has been transmitting the opposite message: to avoid worship and above all to think for yourself. They inspired the Rosicrucian and Masonic movements of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as the accompanying impulses toward democracy, freedom of thought, and even atheism. After all, it is better to believe in no God at all than to open yourself up to a parasitic astral deity.

According to Griffith, much of the 1960s counterculture was stimulated by the Invisible College. LSD, rock concerts, and similar gatherings were designed to create a different kind of trance – one that would telepathically open people to the idea they should think for themselves.

But the story does not stop there. This effort has led to a reaction by the adversary – “fifth-stage Theocracy,” which “employs electronic mind control instead of religious mind control, and… can enslave people who subscribe to belief systems other than those of organised religion.” Some groups originally inspired by the Invisible College are co-opted by the adversary. Griffith writes, “Every new rock group starts out with a few normal protest or love songs. Then they get swallowed by a group mind controlled by fifth-stage Theocrats, and from that point on all their songs sound as if they were written by the same person.”

It’s not possible here to go further into Griffith’s bizarre but fascinating vision. But there are some things that keep me from dismissing it entirely. The first is the collective madness of the human race – its pathological desire to rage and destroy, its hatred of its benefactors and its insane worship of its most vicious victimisers. There is a point beyond which we cannot explain this by mere mammalian aggression – which, as a matter of fact, does not have such destructive properties in other mammals. Psychology and sociology have no explanations for this mass insanity and show little interest in finding them. If there were such entities on the astral plane trying to control and manipulate us as Griffith says they are, this behaviour would at least be comprehensible.

Another is the powerful collective urge toward what Gurdjieff called the “waking sleep” of man. It is true that, in the West at any rate, mass hypnosis by low-grade religion is losing its hold. But no sooner has this happened than we see a whole new series of mechanisms for putting people back to sleep – the “electronic mind control” that Griffith mentions. It is very hard to go into a public place and see people bewitched by their laptops and smartphones without wondering if something like this is going on.

I don’t think War in Heaven offers a total explanation for the human condition, but I suspect that it has a measure of truth. There do seem to be invisible forces that, for reasons that are difficult to determine, benefit from the collective waking trance of humanity.

Griffith concludes his work with a quasi-apocalyptic vision of the End Times. It is close enough to the End Times as portrayed by Christianity that I have trouble taking it at face value. And while I suspect there are low-grade spiritual entities that very much resemble the Theocrats described here, I am not so convinced that they explain everything about human religious aspiration.

In any case, Griffith and his invisible mentors have some advice for keeping out of Theocratic control. In the first place, make a conscious effort to develop your own psychic powers during this life. In the second place, “read accounts of point-of-death experiences and learn to recognise the common tricks that the Theocrats use to enslave the unwary after death.” In other words, those accounts of near-death experiences are true – but they’re not to be taken at face value. That’s probably a sound rule of thumb for all spiritual experiences – no matter how good or bad they seem.

About the Author

Richard Smoley has over thirty-five years of experience studying esoteric spirituality. His recent work, Supernatural: Writings on an Unknown History, is composed largely of articles written for New Dawn. Smoley is the former editor of Gnosis: A Journal of the Western Inner Traditions. Currently he is editor of Quest: Journal of the Theosophical Society in America and of Quest Books. His new book isThe Deal: A Guide to Radical and Complete Forgiveness.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 142 (Jan-Feb 2014)

© New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
For our reproduction notice, click here.

From New Dawn @ http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/is-your-god-a-devil

For more information about dog see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/god