Ah, wait a PaleoBabble feast this one is — a missive from a gullible Dr. John Singh in what I’m guessing is a Canadain version of the Weekly World News. I wonder if Dr. Singh ever actually checked the Gnostic texts to see if John Lamb Lash’s ideas are really there? Hmmmm. I’m betting the answer is no — but readers of PaleoBabble know better, since I posted videos of me looking through the digitized Nag Hammadi corpus (not exciting, but they’re the antidote for nonsense like this).
Someone Else Promoting John Lamb Lash Gnostic Alien Archon Myth
As one who incorporates authentic Gnostic scripture and praxis into my spiritual life, work, books and identity, John Lamb Lash is the bane of my existence. Thank you for contributing to continuing clarity in this regard.
Jordan
@jordanstratford: you’re welcome.
This guy is such a freak!!!!! I can’t stand him. I don’t want that idiot within a 10 mile radius of me.
I have not heard of this theory, sounds interesting, if not accurate. Although I would have to disagree about about Gnostic scriptures being uninteresting.
There’s nothing in the Gnostic texts that supports his thesis — that was the point of the videos.
So are you against Gnosticism?
I’m not a Gnostic.
Do you mean that the quotes in John Lash’s book are not accurate? Do you think he made them up. Is it a question of interpretation?
What would you say drives a culture to the brink of insanity if not a corrupt spiritual system?
This post is so old I can’t recall if it contains the videos of me searching through the Gnostic texts for the terms he uses. I believe it does — in which case, it’s not about a difference of opinion on translation – it’s about what he says is there not being there.
The answer to your question: the wish to be as gods and the assumption of elitism (spiritual or racial or intellectual), which is fed by and leads to more fascism and racism.
As I am reading the book Iam finding several Gnostic ideas discussed that rang with me. One being the notion of a Father, Son but no Mother, another was not do be as gods but to be truly human. The latter is discussed in detail. Did you read the book?
T
the post wasn’t about the book, it was about his alien intrusion theory and attempt to link that to the Gnostic texts. What he has in the book isn’t much different from what he’s published before on this. With respect to the actual issue of the post, what he says isn’t in the texts. The rest is grist for other discussions.
I did not make myself clear, it is crazy to leave the Mother completely out of the Godhead, and then force this lopsided belief onto the people. The violence with which this was done should be an indicator of what the patriarchal systems are really about.
T
where is the mother in Gnosticism’s “true God” that produced the archons?
The Greek word drakona appears in the Apocryphon of John (NHC II 9.15), the Berlin Codex (3,715) and other Gnostic cosmological texts. I read drakona : draconic, dragonlike, reptilian. This adjective describes the form of the “lord archon” or overseer of the archons, the cyborg-like alien race described in the Gnostic creation myth of the fallen goddess Sophia. The weird Coptic term haibe means “abortion,” according to mainstream scholars. I cannot cite exactly where this word can be found as I don’t have my entire Gnostic library on hand, but it is there in the NHC. I read “haibe” ; abortion, prematurely born fetus. I take this term to refer to the neonatal form of grey ETs : morphology that suggests a prematurely born fetus. These terms really do occur in the Gnostic materials. The dominant reptilian or drakonic or reptilian type commands the abortive or neonatal type, consistent with the drone-like hive mentality of the archons. This is the textual evidence of an intrusive alien species in Gnostic writings. Skant evidence, for sure, but clear enough as it stands. And with ample characterization of these entities to support it. It is totally false to say that my interpretations of the Gnostic theory of alien intrusion have no textual basis.
John Lamb Lash
So the word haibe refers to a cyborg and an ET? Absurd. (And could you give me a page number for this word in a Coptic lexicon?) It’s a nice unverifiable and unfalsifiable take (I’d have to prove a negative to come back at you — which is how all such conspiracist ideas work). And why would one think of an abortion as an ET at all? The term abortion could be — a wild guess here — drawn from the writer’s very HUMAN experience. Since humans would have been in abundance in the experience of the writer, I’d say that’s a better option than aliens. Frankly, this is one of the longest string of non sequiturs I’ve seen in a while. And it would help your alien thesis if the Gnostic texts linked these abortions to other planets. You really don’t have a textual argument. You have an imaginative string of non-sequiturs that begins with a word.
what is the Coptic word for “cyborg,” John? What is the Coptic phrase for “other planet” or “extraterrestrial”? Why would we assume that human embryos look serpentine? And why would we think aborted fetuses are gray? Hmmm. Looks liek we’re reading plenty INTO the Nag Hammadi texts, rather than FROM them.
In response to the question, “where is the mother in Gnosticism’s “true God” that produced the archons?”, some Gnostic cosmological texts in the NHC – The Origin of the World, for instance – say that Sophia, the feminine aeon or goddess who plunged from the galactic center due to her fascination with the human experiment, is the “mother” of the archon race and specifically of Ialdabaoth, the “lord archon” or reptilian overseer of the hive. I do not have my Gnostic library on hand right now but I assure you this point is textually supported.
The myth says that in an act of divine mercy, Sophia, a divine intelligence, conferred a semblance of mind upon the archons. They are a “mimic species,” clones that cannot really think for themselves but only simulate thinking. Yet they have the illusion of being god-like due to the mother’s endowment. However, they use this illusion to “play god” with humanity and trick the human species. Gnostic myth appears to complement the view of a certain sorcerer, namely, that the alien intruders who impose a “foreign installation” in human minds are the way the cosmos tests us. To my knowledge, Gnostics were the first on record to expose the alien threat to humanity and describe the nature of the test.
can you give me the citations? I’d also like a citation about the reptilian appearance of Ialdaoth. It just saves me time. You apparently didn’t watch my video on your work. I want specific citations from you since the translations you use to defend the alien idea in the NHC don’t apparently exist in the English NHC by Brill. I just want to check any specific citations you might give against Krum’s Coptic lexicon. I’m not predisposed to accept anything you say in this regard. (That isn’t meant to be antagonistic, either – it’s my attitude on all sorts of these kinds of things; I want to check myself because I’m not dependent on English translations).
What’s your problem? You think I’m out to con you? I wouldn’t bother myself with cheap thrills. And I have no desire to entrap people in unverifiable propositions.
Right now I don’t have my Gnostic library on hand to provide more precise citations. I am pretty sure the word translated as “abortion” is haibe, I don’t know if you can find it in Krum but it is in the NHC. As for the other citations, I gave the exact locations in Apoc John and the Berlin Codex. The texts say Ialdabaoth has the body of a drakona with the face or guise of a lion. Make of it what you will.
I don’t need to fabricate evidence. The Gnostic diagnosis of archontic intrusion is brilliant, as far as I can see, but the textual evidence for it is slim and fragmentary due to the atrocious condition of surviving texts. It requires careful reconstruction and extrapolation with rigorous attention to the overall mythic frame of Gnostic vision. You can fault me on the extrapolation all you like, but it takes imaginative capacity to recapture what the Gnostics were saying, if not merely to approximate to their own imaginative richness and scope. The Church Fathers condemned Mystery Schools initiates for inventing myths and writing new stories every day. You can do the same to me — I welcome the castigation on that issue. Imagination is also an instrument of truth and accurate vision, as valid as rational and critical thinking. I take risks with my extrapolations but I do not do so with the intent to con or mislead anyone.
As to your comment: “And it would help your alien thesis if the Gnostic texts linked these abortions to other planets.” Gnostic myth says the archontic species arise before the Aeon Sophia morphed into the earth, and that species constructed the solar system or stereoma of celestial mechanics. Hence the myth associated the abortion with pre-terrestrial planetary formations. If you do not trouble yourself to learn the myth completely and in depth, how can you assess such episodes and other baffling mythographic details that show up in the pathetic rubble of surviving texts?
From a metacritical viewpoint, it is helpful to suspend judgement on whether or not aliens really exist: put the issue “in parentheses,” to borrow an old term from phenomenology (Husserl, Brentano). What indubitably exists are arguments about the case. Which arguments are more clear and consistent? This is what I would ask people to consider. After that each person can decide the issue for herself or himself based leveraging the best argument again first-hand experience of the supernatural.
Your position has serious conceptual problems because it proceeds along assumptions that arise from your imagination — not anything the Gnostics actually SAY (you take their words and apply a modern sci-fi hermeneutic — filling the mind of the pre-scientific writer with ideas involving space aliens). I’ll post on this again in the near future and try to articulate this better.
I have to ask, what is your background in intellectual training and studies? Do you have any knowledge of, say, anthropology, comparative mythology, history of religions, comparative religion, symbolic languages, esoteric and metaphysical traditions, entheobotany relative to brain sciences, epigenetics, shamanism, mysticism, psycholinguistics, semiotics, archetypal psychology, parapsychology, psychohistory, or anything else along those lines? Or are you a science fanatic who wants to reduce everything to literal terms? The symbolic codes used in science, mysticism, and mythology are alike in their permutability. One thing does not have to convert literally into another thing. Have you read The Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby?
There is no Coptic word for cyborg. There is no ancient Hebrew word for UFO, yet the Dead Sea Scrolls present vivid descriptions of “shining wheels” driven Kenoshim, heavenly angels who are expected to descend and rescue the chosen. Would you say that the inference or suggestion that the Kenoshim may be identified or equated with ETs as understood by some people today is not worth considering? That it must be discarded because there is no literal, word-for-word match between the language in use then and the language in use now?
What do you know about archetypal psychological symbology and how iy shapes perception and language? With respect, I wonder if you may be way out of your sandbox taking me on. Not to mention out of your depth. I wouldn’t argue Rilkean poetics with a truck driver from Louisiana whose only idea of lyricism comes from country western songs.
The word archon comes from a root meaning “first, from the beginning.” In the context of the Sophia myth, archons appear first, at the beginning of the formation of the solar system, before the earth appears. This is how the myth goes. It also says that their domain is in the planetary system, the hebdomad. On the basis of the story line, I designate archons as preterrestrial and extraterrestrial. The use of the words houhe (abortion, premature birth) and haibe (shadow, shadowy being”) and their contextual use within the scenario of the fallen goddess Sophia suggest the kind of entity we now call a cyborg. What do you want me to say: “To me the Gnostic view of archons strongly suggests the current view of cyborgs.” Or, “Gnostic writings describe cyborg-like entities called archons, mind parasites who prey on the human race.” I can say it in a dozen ways. You can say I’m reading a lot into the NHC. So sue me. I extrapolate from the given materials. None of my citations are invented. I do not cite passages that do not exist. What I do with the citations I use may not be to your liking, but then I did not write my book to please or placate the likes of you. The question you might ask is, Why does Lash spin the Gnostic materials in this way, to conform to elements in the current ET/UFO debate? I do it because I am convinced that this ancient literature derives from people who had a profound knowledge of alien intervention in human affairs. In that respect, I am confident that my extrapolations and inferences based on the surviving materials present a fair and veracious picture of what those ancient visionaries knew about alien intrusion.
I just care about the texts. You have no “official” training in these areas either, and I wouldn’t say you need them. A lot of this can be gained through self-study (which I can and have done as well). I’m not someone who thinks people need degrees to know something well. But degree programs *do* force certain disciplines on people — like citation, confusing correlation with causation, peer-review, etc. (have you submitted your alien theory for peer review? Why not?) But these areas aren’t my specialties. I’m an ancient text guy (the CV is on my website if you need a cure for insomnia) with a well-developed BS detector. The Gnostic texts are notoriously elastic, allowing people like you to say what they want about them, and then cloak it under some sort of fringe discipline. I’m interested in how the language works and what the texts say BEFORE centuries of esoteric blather was overlaid to them (that is, a lot of Gnostic text “interpretation” is merely the filtering of those texts through LATER grids — in other words, it is anachronistic in a maximal sense – that doesn’t impress me in the least, as creative as it is). Here’s an example of the kind of thing I’m interested in (admittedly boring). I noticed that you cited no Coptic lexicon for your “root meaning” — why not? I don’t want to assume it’s half baked, deriving from some esotericist who lived and died centuries removed from those who wrote the texts and their literary contemporaries — so the citation of an actual reference resource, produced through the labor of scholars who actually spent the time compiling all this stuff, would be nice.
I won’t sue you for reading INTO the texts (no surprise there). But I won’t be impressed or swayed, either. Anachronistic, self-styled hermeneutics may get by the masses, but I recognize it right away.
Okay, Michael, I think from this response I get where you’re coming from. This is helpful and I would like to respond fairly and appropriately. By the way. I don’t have any degrees or letters after my name. I was not placing value on that kind of academic credentials. I was asking what kind of training you have in disciplines that apply to assessment of mythology and imagination.
You say you are interested in “how the language works” and what the texts of the NHC attributed to Gnostics say before the overlay. Good luck. No one knows that. I don’t think anyone can. All there is in the NHC Coptic corpus is what we can make out of it, one way or another. In itself, the corpus is a hopeless mess. Any interpretation of the Gnostics materials, if it is honest, must admit to being creative, must be partial to certain spins, must involve extrapolations and correlations such as I develop… because there is now way to get back to the “original meaning.” And if you could access such a fiction, what would you have then? What would it say to anyone today?
The work of human imagination is diachronic, transtemporal. There is no anachronism in mythic narrative because myth arises from the timeless process in the human psyche by which it comments on its own experience. I stick as closely as I can to the exact language of the received materials. Doing so, I recover and redevelop the constituent mythology into something I think is relevant today and stands a fair chance of reflecting what the unknown authors actually knew and taught… My work may be anachronistic by your standards but I just do not take an antiquarian view of these matters: wanting to get to the exact and literal sense of what someone meant 2000 years ago. Yet I am convinced that my method of scholarship, framed by the disciplines I listed, fairly represents the mythos and ethos of the visionaries who produced this material.
The Coptic lexicon I use is W. E. Crum, the same that everyone uses. It’s the only one. I don’t cite it because you are I are not in a nose-to-nose scholarly debate, quibbling and splitting hairs.
Yeah, I guess you could say my hermeneutics is self-styled. Fair enough. And I guess I look to you like someone who is proposing a fringe discipline. I’m totally off the charts, you see. Thomas Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) said that the great shifts in any disciple always come from outsiders and amateurs. I might be one of those. In any case, someone has to address the scandal of Gnostic studies with its total denial of the mysticism and supernaturalism in the NHC. I don’t know how well I’ve done that job, but if I’ve done it half-way, it will stand, no matter what you are anyone makes of my mystical extravagance and fringe discipline.
with regards, JLL
I enjoyed reading the above dialogue….and I’m with John Lamb Lash! I have read most of “Not in His Image” and found it to speak to me in ways that most books don’t. He has tapped into something deep in the group psyche, if nothing else, and I find his “out of the box” extrapolations to speak to my soul.
And, frankly, when I read the description of “drakona” and “neonate”….MY first thought was reptilians and greys (intradimensional beings, often mistaked for either physical ETs, demons and/or cyborgs)….even before HE pointed me in that direction! So he is not the only one to think along those lines. I find his work brilliant and articulate.
‘Nuff said.
I don’t obviously. I really have to get back to this at some point. So many things in front of it (in terms of interest and commitment).
You shouldn’t be trusting anyone whose exegesis of a text depends on tapping into “group psyche.” The Gnostic theology itself is so fragmented that you’d have to ask what group is being tapped, but Gnostic thinking is usually portrayed as some sort of unified, coherent, thing. It just isn’t. (But that isn’t a crime). I just don’t want to believe things like women need to become male for salvation (Gospel of Thomas, the last saying / logion, 114). But not all Gnostics would by that, since it isn’t any more unified than other sects of Christianity (i.e., it has no “coherence superiority” by any stretch).
Mike, I eagerly await your return to this topic.
boy; talk about off the radar. Me, too.
I have been a student of Gnosticism for decades. The work done by John Lash is impeccable.
It may not seem familiar to many because of his synthetic process. His research expanded my understanding by leaps and bounds….to each their own.Depends what you are looking for.
If you want access to the mystery tradition behind the wall of misunderstanding this is it. The church has warped the context to which we can examine this field of study….Michael
Thanx John for all your work…
which gnosticism do you like best? By its own documents (sans the Church) it is a wide variety of ideas, many in conflict with each other.
So which gnosticism has it right?
You put it very well John Lash, you made a ton of sense!
thanks!
I don’t understand the point of this thread.
JLL has admitted that he uses his imagination to fill the gaps on a disjointed and fragmentary myth – what is Heiser trying to prove beyond that?
BTW – I read quite a lot of both of you and think your works are indivividually exceptional.
The reassuring thing to me about Lash is his resistance to this ancient astronaut disinformation baloney started by Sitchin to convince us that all we ever were and will be are slaves. Also, the fact that Lash has no discernable business model around his cosmology suggests he genuinely believes what he writes – he may be wrong, but the belief is sincere.
I’m not sure how good a BS-meter I possess, but as a practicing physician for over 15 years, I have a finely tuned capacity for sensing sincerity. John Lash sincerely believes what he’s saying.
Keep up the good work – Heiser and Lash!!
my point is that I like more than imagination to fill in gaps. If one is going to say the texts mean XYZ, then imagination should play a very small role.
I’m still undecided between Team Yahweh and Team Sophia :-), but I learned a lot reading these comments. Thank you gentlemen. I genuinely appreciate you expending the time.
Some words I learned today:
Hermeneutics: The study of the theory and practice of interpretation.
Diachronic or Diachronous: from the Greek word ??????????? (Diahronikos), is a term for something happening over time
Anachronism: from the Greek ??? (ana: up, against, back, re-) and ?????? (chronos: time)— is an inconsistency in some chronological arrangement, especially a chronological misplacing of persons, events, objects, or customs in regard to each other.
Exegesis: (from the Greek ???????? from ?????????? ‘to lead out’) is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially a religious text. Traditionally the term was used primarily for exegesis of the Bible; however, in contemporary usage it has broadened to mean a critical explanation of any text.
hey – glad it’s useful!
Great work from both of you, thanks for the differing views, intelligently presented.
thanks.
This was a great exchange – I’m getting to it late. Mr Heisner provides a great service keeping the John Lash’s of the world grounded. Nonetheless I listen to Mr Lash as a point of view in explaining disturbing trends in our world lately. I sense we are losing our humanity in the service of “better” technology – John Lash (and many others) remind(s) me that at one point human beings had potential we cannot envision now. It makes sense that a pagan tradition existed at one point that was repulsed by an “artificial” god because this god limited our potential. If this “story” makes sense, then Mr. Heisner, I’d like to here of any possible links between ancient texts and this idea of the danger of artificiality taking its hold on human consciousness. I’m not metaphysical, but I’m deeply concerned about our future – we need to make some well-grounded assumptions about the ancient world to reclaim our potential. Thanks.
John is a modern Gnostic Master.We need more like him.I read you book back in early 2007.One of he best books i ever read.
If the Gnostics were deemed heretics by those who subscribed to the Roman consolidated form of Christianity- than I would be quite pleased to take a stance of heresy upon heresy.
Toward their doctrinal pretenses ,however “radical” they may be in relative terms, I feel as strong a repugnance as I do toward the State form of Christianity which they supposed to have opposed (though in effect reconfirmed by the symbiosis inherent in reactionary dialect).
I have found the general attitude of the Gnostic to be that of self imposed alienation. It is self imposed for they chose to take on an origin myth centered around Sophia’s (Wisdom) fall from the Pleroma (which implies fullness) to the Kenoma (which implies deficiency).
In the very pre-origins of the Gnostic cosmology an event occurs which places the Anthropos into the spiritual slavery of a Matrix like world created by the Demiurge. However appropriate this may be in response to the state- as a religious sentiment it narrows the Gnostic’s attention onto a problem better solved outside the realm of spirituality, namely the problem of corrupt Authority.
For as we have been shown- spirituality is a hotbed for spawning corrupt Authority. There is an issue of redundant deception in this manner of proceeding. Fighting fire (state religio-propeganda) with fire (neuro-linguistic re-programming of propeganda) leaves everyone burned in the end. And what a fire fight this Christ cult has been.
The Gnostic perspective is replete with linguistic allusions to the State as being modeled after a spiritual machinery of entrapment through ignorance- hence the need for Sophia (…wisdom) to correct it. They called their spiritual oppressors Archons, which in Greek means “ruler” and was applied as a general title in ancient times.
Their chief Archon was often called the Demiurge, another general title applied in ancient Greece to those who were public servants through state craft.
What the Gnostic perspective does, if taken seriously, is gives undue gravitas to the power of the Authorities (elevating them to mythic proportions) while simultaneously offering the hope of Salvation through a transcendent intervention whose implications are on par with suicide or voluntary extinction.
The transcendental attitude of the Gnostic is best demonstrated in (his) aversion to procreation (though lavishly glorifying sodomy). Truly, it is a religion which has no authentic place on this planet, existing only in religious opposition to mainstream Christianity.
Harboring a belief so strongly opposed to life could not be further from the Pagan ethos and yet some modern commentators have forced this connection to espouse the new-age Gaia-Sophia theory. It has been suggested by some, such as JLL, that Gnosticism had pre-Christian roots in some anachronistic Mystery School tradition.
While it is true that the Gnostics had borrowed much from Greek philosophers of their time- they were far from being in tow of any original philosophical concept to warrant putting them on par with the Mystes of East or West. Gnosis is the feigned mysticism of the alienated (societal rejects pressured out of balance with self)- to set self apart by claiming wisdom.
I imagine the original Gnostics must have been a simple people with an inflated sense of righteousness-exiled who were well educated enough to read and write but operated through a xenophobic lens and so interpreted the Wisdom of the Greeks into a countering mirror of their oppressors, the ruling “Judeo-Christian” narrative of the State.
And the modern “Pagan-Gnostic” of the JLL derivative is much the same, though updated in it’s appropriation of Wisdom (through the blazing fast growth of internet new-age memes). In this way, I can almost see the Gnostic as the original New-Ager. It makes sense, as these shifts happen round the Dark Ages (we are currently en route rather predictably).
I’d even go so far as to imagine that the proto-typical JLL type is fully aware of the manner of his assemblage in chop shop meta-mechanics. I sense a hedonistic rush such a Gnostic feels as he fulfills his duty to the predictable rise and fall of civilization. Though ultimately, only stating the obvious through a smoke and mirrors.
The smoke and mirrors of Gnosticism is this…
The Gnostic knows that it is all just a script.
That is why he lavishly takes the liberty to re-write it.
I think he’s not stating archons=aliens as a fact… It’s just a neo-mythical narrative. His method is half evidence half imagination based. Read from that point of view his ideas are very interesting and useful.