On postmodern Gnosticism

Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint! Und das mit Recht;
denn alles, was entsteht, ist wert, daß es zugrunde geht

 

Goethe, Faust

 

Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo

 

Virgil, Aeneis

 

 

‘The time is out of joint’ and it seems it’s getting more absurd every day. Only last week we had to read about the romantic escapades of some middle aged man and his octopus, celebrated in certain corners of 'woke twitter' for its curageous ‘transgression of boundaries’. Now this incident is ofc. in itself quite negligible but remains nevertheless interesting for it reveals quite alot about the postmodern psyche as a whole.

 

In short: we want to argue that post-modern leftism is in fact a neo-gnostic cult, with its own mythology and eschatology (not a very original thesis to be sure, but still worth talking about at least briefly). Now a ‘myth’ is really an ‘initiatory’ technique that transmits a ‘spiritual influence’, that is then to be ‘actualized’; all authentic mythology comes not from the lower recesses of the ‘collective unconscious’ (as Jung liked to think) but represent truly a ‘condescension’ from ‘above’, rendering visible through ‘images’ (or ‘symbols’) higher truths that would otherwise remain inexpressible.

 

The neo-gnostic mythos of post-modern leftism is ofc. nothing of the sorts but a pure ‘counter-initiation’ plain and simple; it is not ‘myth’ properly speaking but mere ideology. It nevertheless fulfils the same basic role of telling the ‘initiate’ who he is, where he comes from and what he is to eventually become.

 

Ofc. every story needs a beginning, and, according to our gnostic narrative, ‘in the beginning was the womb’, the primal chaos, the ‘primordial waters’. This is not the ‘chaos’ as understood traditionally, as ‘all-possibility’, in which everything is contained in actu et ab aeterno in a wholly ‘immaculate’ manner (‘fused but not confused’) but really a formless, confused nothingness; not simply ‘Non-being’ as negatio negationis (which is ofc. purissima affirmatio) but in a sense an ‘immanentized’ caricature of it, a kind of pseudo-Hegelian ‘pure negativity’ (we might even speak of a ‘collective unconsciousness’ a vague psychic substrate of the lower order).

 

We can already infer that the neo-gnostic ‘spirituality’ (which is rly a ‘psychism’ properly speaking) is of ‘lunar’ or ‘telluric’ quality (and as such essentially ‘pantheistic’) and thus in opposition to the ‘solar’ spirituality of Traditional Forms (cf. Evola’s foreword to Bachofen’s Mutterrecht, who gives an excellent exposition on this topic). Its central ‘Deity’ is not the ‘Father in Heaven’ (Ouranos) but the Magna Mater (Gaia) who dwells in the chthonic darkness ‘below’. We could also introduce the dichotomy developed by Nietzsche (who is certainly not without influence on the cult in question) between ‘Apollo’ (the god of light, order, form, logos) and ‘Dionysius’ (god of ecstasy, intoxication, dissolution and formless chaos).

 

Ofc. Nietzsche was wholly ignorant of the ‘metaphysical’ signification of the Dionysian mysteries as celebrated for example in Orphism and interpreted the Dionysian mythos of ‘dismemberment’ (descent into the underworld) and ‘rebirth’ not as a realization of the ‘supra-individual’ states by ‘overcoming’ the lower ones, but as mere ‘ecstatic’ descent into the ‘infra-human’ states, a pantheistic dissolution of the principium individuationis, or plunge into the ‘lower waters’; thus instead of ‘becoming god’ the Nietzschean shaman merely falls to the level of ‘beast’ (a theme omnipresent in the Nietzschean corpus as a whole).

 

It is not surprising then that in the gnostic myth of postmodernism the ‘paternal’ or ‘apollonian principle’ become in fact the main antagonist, for the ‘shattering’ of original wholeness occurs by nothing else than the creative ‘Word’ (Logos), the ‘ray of Manifestation’, or ‘ordering Principle’ that descents into the primordial tohu-wa-bohu and begins ‘differentiating’ it. This ‘ordering ray’ is the evil 'male' principle, the ‘phallic demiurge’, for he introduces distinction: separating light from darkness, earth from water, women from man etc., thus ‘limiting’ primordial fluidity. These ‘signifiers’ or ‘concepts’ (Begriff, logoi, or Platonic forms) which draw ‘being’ out of ‘nothing’ and sustain it from collapsing back into mere potentiality function like the ‘body’ in gnostic mythology, i.e. as a cruel prison in which the infinite spirit is locked by the demiurgos.  

 

Instead of the ‘terrestrial paradise’, i.e. the ‘garden’ (archetypical symbol of ‘order’ established over ‘chaos’), which then ‘falls’ back into ‘chaos’ by the Adamic transgression, the ‘Eden’ of the neo-gnostic is exactly this ‘chaos’ while the primordial ‘fall’ coincides with the very Verbo Fiat.  

 

The whole cosmology is thus based on a complete inversion of the ‘hierarchy of being’ (cf. Guénon’s Reign of Quantity). As is known, in the traditional view the whole ‘chain’ (or ‘pyramid’) of manifestation descends from the ‘upper waters’, the ‘pole of essence’ (or ‘quality’, ‘unity’) towards the indefinite ‘pole of substance’ (or ‘quantity’ and atomistic ‘uniformity’), the ‘lower waters’ and the dark mute foundation of ‘nothingness’ (materia secunda) at the lowest point of manifestation (a nothing that is rly but ‘the shadow of something’ and in no way to be confused with primordial ‘Non-being’).

 

Now, as we already indicated, instead of striving ‘upwards’ towards the ‘higher states’ by ‘integrating’ and ‘overcoming’ (aufheben) the lower, the postmodern gnostic essentially plunges himself into the ‘lower waters’ by trying to dissolve all boundaries or ‘concepts’ in an antinomic crusade against logos, thus engaging in a veritable ‘race to the bottom’ (a race which he can never win for the finite is analytically inexhaustible, and the ‘descent’ becomes thus a truly ‘indefinite’ fall towards a ‘lowest point’ that can ultimately never be reached). Male/female, human/animal, machine/organism all these basic signifiers that make sense of the world become oppressive, pure mechanisms of domination by the ‘phallogocentric’ demiurge and his legions (which is also why Christianity which teaches a clear, unbridgeable difference of quality between man and the rest of creation, or 'male and female' etc. is often seen as one of prime enemies); we are thus dealing with a radical nominalism.

 

The final goal is nothing less than a total breakdown (or 'deconstruction') of the ‘symbolic order’ (which in Lacanian terms is nothing else than ‘schizophrenia’), i.e. a pseudo-Marxian eschatology that posits an ‘eternal struggle’ between the ‘male’ (‘western’) forces (such as morality, laws, structures of power – form) oppressing the ‘female’ spirit (of free sensuality, 'virginal nature’ – chaos), in which the latter has to eventually ‘rise up’ against the former to finally usher in the ‘universal dissolution’.

 

We might even speak of a kind of ‘reverse Hegelianism’, for instead of a ‘coming-to-itself’ of the Idea (or ‘Concept’, Logos) out of ‘primal negativity’ that is effected by its progressive ‘self-determination’ or 'expression' in ‘nature’ (in other words: in Hegel the ‘negation’ only becomes the negatio negationis after having completed the course of history, which is ofc. a total ‘immanentization’ of traditional metaphysics), for his postmodern disciples these ‘determinations’ are already seen as an ‘alienation’ from the primordial ‘womb’ and as such inherently ‘evil’. They too hold that omnis determinatio est negatio, yet these ‘negations’ don’t lead to higher end or ‘affirmation’ (by negating the negation) but only fracture primitive wholeness and must themselves be ‘negated’, until nothing remains but primal chaos (a movement which is also clearly reflected in modern art in its movement away from ‘form’ to pure undifferentiated blobs of color).  

 

Finally, like so many modern aberration the roots of this can ultimately be traced back to Rousseau and his idea that evil originates in ‘society’ or ‘civilization’ (i.e. the ordering structure imposed over chaotic nature), hence why ‘salvation’ lies in the ‘return to nature’ (a veritable ‘return to the womb’), which is not conceived of as ‘above form’ but prior to all order (whereas the Hobbsian counter-narrative that sees the 'ordering structure' as preventing 'fundamental chaos' from reemerging is ofc. nearer to the truth). 

 

This is also why the central hero of the gnostic myth is the ‘Cyborg’ (cf. Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, which is more than telling in this regard), or what in traditional societies would’ve been more aptly called ‘the monster’ (the omnipresence of such 'monsterous heroes' in modern popculture is likewise telling in this regard). As Haraway writes herself: ‘Monsters have always defined the limits of community in Western imaginations.’

 

The monster dwells on the ‘periphery’, at the very ‘edge of being’ thus signaling the outer most limit of manifestation (‘the end of the world’ – hic sunt dragones) and the furthest possible ‘dispersion’ away from the ‘qualitative center’ before reaching pure 'nothingness'. To consciously posit the ‘monster’ into the ‘center’ (while at the same time pushing 'order’ to the fringes) is really one of the most subversive acts imaginable, which results in a veritable  (satanic) ‘inversion’ of the ’natural hierarchy’ (which is ontologically speaking nothing else than a ‘failure at being’ itself); ‘in hell everything is upside down’ says Mechthild von Magdeburg.  

 

The Cyborg (like the octopus) ‘transgresses boundaries’, namely that of man/woman, man/machine, technology/nature etc. This is not only crucial to understand the ideological basis for all kinds of eschatological transhumanisms or ‘posthumanisms’ with their dreams of finally abolishing the oppressive category of ‘human’ altogether (the Übermensch, which is really a ‘subhuman’) but also shows us why the figure of the ‘transvestite’ is so central to modern leftist politics.

 

The transvestite tries to dissolve the categories of male/female, although yet again in a total inversion of ‘primordial androgyny’ as taught in Tradition, for the ‘androgyny’ totally transcends gender, he is neither male nor female, but ‘like the angels in heaven, neither marries nor given in marriage’ (Matt. 22:30), meaning ordered towards the simple, unitive ‘pole of quality’. The transvestite is not ‘genderless’ but really has two (or more) genders all at the same time, he does not ‘transcend’ borders but simply ‘confuses’ them, signaling a dispersion towards the ‘quantitative periphery’.

 

The transvestite is really the inversion of the angel, as is the cyborg, for whereas each angel (according to Thomistic teaching) is its own species and thus ‘qualitatively’ totally unique, the robot or ‘cyborg’ is really a pure ‘atom' (the 'sub-individual') the final telos of the ‘mass-produced’ individual of modernity (hence why the ‘atomistic individualism’ of indentity politics is in no way opposed to this desire of ‘dissolution’). Ye, finally we might say that due to this ‘descent’ towards quantity in an effort to ‘deconstruct’ traditional identity-signifiers (like race, culture, religions etc.) the neo-gnostic must paradoxically turn back onto these signifiers in their most base and hollowed out instantiation (‘as a black women…’ etc.) because they are the only things that the loose mass of increasingly ‘atomistic’ individuals still has in common and which can serve as a basis for collective action (which ofc. the leftist relies on, being essentially Pelegian); trying to abolish ‘race’, they turn the ‘PoC’ into an idol, trying to relativize ‘sex’, ‘womanhood’ becomes the prime mark of authority etc. but this is a topic for another day.

 

 

In summa we are dealing here with a sect that could truly be called ‘satanic’, a whole conglomerate of spiritual influencing ascending from the lowest pole (or ‘pit’) of the netherworld. But fear not my friends for the enemy is already defeated. Praised be He! Pax.