Pynchon and Gnosis (was: Re: gnostic esoterica)

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

We've been discussing this since the 1990s at least four or five times. It's not that there's nothing to learn from Eddins' book, but still ...

"Dwight Eddins's The Gnostic Pynchon bases its argument on a terminological error resulting from an inadequate understanding of the Gnostic hatred and resistance to power. Eddins mistakenly argues that Pynchon uses the Gnostics to represent sadistic, 'anti-human' forces that manipulate and dominate human beings, lust to transform life into inanimate objects, and worship death (4-5, 8, 12). Despite Eddins' s many interpretative insights into the novel, his use of 'gnosticism' as an explanatory model runs against the grain of the actual religious Gnostics of the secondary century and the historical tradition of commentary on them. [Here follows a footnote from which this sentence is most important: "Because Control occupies an analogous position to the archons in the Gnostic cosmos, Eddins's association of Control with 'gnosticizing cults' themselves in misleading and inaccurate (130)." - kfl]. Eddins also disregards or inadequately reads many of the direct references to Gnosticism in Gravity's Rainbow, which indicate Pynchon's association of Gnosticism and heresy with rebellion against the oppressive forces of a technocratic orthodoxy."
(pp. 24-25; pdf: 31-32)

Jeffrey Lamar Howard --- Heretical Reading: Freedom as Question and Process in Postmodern American Novel and Technological Pedagogy.

https://www.lib.utexas.edu/etd/d/2007/howardj93632/howardj93632.pdf

Which discusses Pynchon together with Nabokov and PKD.

Howard also published an excellent article on M&D.

"Magic is a means of re-opening metaphysical possibilities, re-enchanting the world, that counters the loss of possibilities lamented by Cherrycoke and documented throughout Mason & Dixon. Magic is thus a form of what Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow calls "counterforce," something that opposes the dominant cultural forces of decadence and entropy. It functions both as a metaliterary trope for the fictional processes that lead to recovered metaphysical potential and as a metaphor for the attempts of characters within the narrative to re-enchant their worlds. This re-enchantment is, however, partial and fragmentary in that it results in ambiguous pockets or islands of possibility within a larger context of politico-economic domination and manipulation. Magic in Mason & Dixon takes the form primarily of feng shui, kabbalism, and magical signs or sacred glyphs. It can be both(,) black magic, investing history with a sense of malevolent but otherworldly conspiracy, and white magic, granting aspects of America('s) tentative hope and lyric beauty." (Jeffrey Howard: The Anarchist Miracle and Magic in Mason & Dixon. Pynchon Notes 52/53, 2003, pp. 166-184, here 176.)


Am 09.07.2017 um 20:51 schrieb Allan Balliett:
Description

The appearance of Vineland, his first novel in seventeen years, has rekindled critical debate on Thomas Pynchon. Written before the publication of the new novel, but remarkably prescient about its themes, The Gnostic Pynchon is a provocative reading of Pynchon's work.

Where most critics find in Thomas Pynchon a postmodern writer of indeterministic, relativistic, contingent fiction, Dwight Eddins also finds a man on a religious quest. Pynchon's quest, Eddins shows, is for some principle of organic order that will provide an alternative to hopeless ambiguity, or an equally hopeless choice between total chaos and total control.

The Gnostic Pynchon is a profoundly revisionist view of one of this century's most important writers.


On Sun, Jul 9, 2017 at 1:39 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com<mailto:mark.kohut at gmail.com>> wrote:
https://www.amazon.com/Gnostic-Pynchon-Dwight-Eddins/dp/0253319072/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499621885&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=eddins+on+gnosticism

On Sun, Jul 9, 2017 at 1:34 PM, Tomas De Minos <tomasdemino at gmail.com<mailto:tomasdemino at gmail.com>> wrote:
Gnosticism has experienced a huge surge in popularity these last couple years, owing to public intellectuals like Graham Hancock and psychedelics, I think.

I myself read the Nag Hammadi library on a whim back in October. It's become apparent to me that the Jesus was more like Mani and Zoroaster than he was a Jew.

e.g. The Water of Life is misunderstood unless it is associated with the Avestan apas.

When Jesus mentions Truth, he clearly means Ma'at, Ma, and Satya. Indeed, his Mary is his consort and a manifestation of the feminine deity Sophia/Ayahuasca.

As it is said in the Gospel of Thomas, the scribes and the pharisees are holding the keys of Gnosis. Once we unlock the symbols, see Amen as Amun-Ra, Christ as Horus and Osiris, we see Christianity as it was meant to be read.

On Jul 9, 2017 12:02, "Keith Davis" <kbob42 at gmail.com<mailto:kbob42 at gmail.com>> wrote:
I've been to Claymont...

Www.innergroovemusic.com<http://Www.innergroovemusic.com>

On Jul 9, 2017, at 11:58 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com<mailto:mark.kohut at gmail.com>> wrote:

"The Planetization of the Esoteric". Phrase of the day.

I remember Lindisfarne Books. No planetization, so to speak.

On Sun, Jul 9, 2017 at 10:24 AM, Allan Balliett <allan.balliett at gmail.com<mailto:allan.balliett at gmail.com>> wrote:
To drift further away, here's some info on William Irwin Thompson's now defunct Lindisfarne Association

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindisfarne_Association

from Wikipedia

Goals and doctrine[edit]
The Lindisfarne doctrine is closely related to that of its founder, William Thompson. Mentioned as part of the Lindisfarne ideology are a long list of spiritual and esoteric traditions including yoga, Tibetan Buddhism, Chinese traditional medicine, Hermeticism, Celtic animism, Gnosticism, cabala, geomancy, ley lines, Pythagoreanism, and ancient mystery religions.[8]

The group placed a special emphasis on sacred geometry, defined by Thompson as "a vision of divine intelligence, the logos, revealing itself in all forms, from the logarithmic spiral of a seashell to the hexagonal patterns of cooling basalt, from the architecture of the molecule to the galaxy."[9] Rachel Fletcher, Robert Lawlor, and Keith Critchlow lectured at Crestone on the application of sacred geometry, Platonism, and Pythagoreanism to architecture.[10] The exemplar of these ideas is the Grail Chapel in Crestone (also known as Lindisfarne Chapel), which is built to reflect numerous basic geometrical relationships.[11]

Lindisfarne's social agenda was exemplified by the "meta-industrial village", a small community focused on subsistence and crafts while yet connected to a world culture. All members of a community might participate in essential tasks such as the harvest. (Thompson has speculated that the United States, 40% of the population could work at agriculture, and another 40% in social services.) The villages would have a sense of shared purpose in transforming world culture. They would combine "the four classical economies of human history, hunting and gathering, agriculture, industry, and cybernetics", all "recapitulated within a single deme."[12]

(The "Meadowcreek Project" in Arkansas, begun in 1979 by David and Wilson Orr, was an effort to actualize a meta-industrial village as envisioned by the Lindisfarne Association. This project received funding from the Ozarks Regional Commission, the Arkansas Energy Department, and the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation.)[13][14]

The villages would be linked together by an electronic information network (i.e., what today we call the internet). Thompson called for a counter-cultural vanguard "which can formulate an integral vision of culture and maintain the high standards of that culture without compromise to the forces of electronic vulgarization." [15]

According to the Lindisfarne Association website, Lindisfarne's fourfold goals are:

The Planetization of the Esoteric
The realization of the inner harmony of all the great universal religions and the spiritual traditions of the tribal peoples of the world.
The fostering of a new and healthier balance between nature and culture through the research and development of appropriate technologies, architectural settlements and compassionate economies for meta-industrial villages and convivial cities.
The illumination of the spiritual foundations of political governance through scholarship and artistic communications that foster a global ecology of consciousness beyond the present ideological systems of warring industrial nation-states, outraged traditional societies, and ravaged lands and seas.
Thompson has also stated the United States has a unique role to play in the promotion of planetary culture because people from all over the world mingle there.[16]

Lindisfarne sought to spread its message widely, through a mailing list and through book publications of the Lindisfarne press.[17]

Journalist Sally Helgesen, after a visit in 1977, criticized Lindisfarne as confused pseudo-intellectuals, citing for example their attempt to build an expensive fish "bioshelter" while overlooking a marsh with fish in it.[18]

Allan in WV who hopes that this post doesn't open the door for a discussion of the Claymont Society

On Sun, Jul 9, 2017 at 10:19 AM, Allan Balliett <allan.balliett at gmail.com<mailto:allan.balliett at gmail.com>> wrote:
The Schumaker College has made a bunch of  conference tapes related to William Irwin Thompson available for FREE at mp3s at

https://archive.org/search.php?query=william%20irwin%20thompson

I don't see anything directly addressing the Gnostics but a lot of lectures on Man and Nature, Man and Industrialism and similar topics.

Seems like it's potentially a great find!

-allan in WV

On Sat, Jul 8, 2017 at 5:29 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de<mailto:lorentzen at hotmail.de>> wrote:

Gnosis has always been important to me because therein the question of theodicy can be answered better than with the Lutheran Protestantism I grew up with. The Gnostic teaching also provided a psychonautic map for navigating through the psychedelic experience. In recent years, however, my ways led me to India ... Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha ...

http://gnosis.org/gnintro.htm

> ... Gnostics do not look to salvation from sin (original or other), but rather from the ignorance of which sin is a consequence. Ignorance -- whereby is meant ignorance of spiritual realities -- is dispelled only by Gnosis, and the decisive revelation of Gnosis is brought by the Messengers of Light, especially by Christ, the Logos of the True God. It is not by His suffering and death but by His life of teaching and His establishing of mysteries that Christ has performed His work of salvation.

The Gnostic concept of salvation, like other Gnostic concepts, is a subtle one. On the one hand, Gnostic salvation may easily be mistaken for an unmediated individual experience, a sort of spiritual do-it-yourself project. Gnostics hold that the potential for Gnosis, and thus, of salvation is present in every man and woman, and that salvation is not vicarious but individual. At the same time, they also acknowledge that Gnosis and salvation can be, indeed must be, stimulated and facilitated in order to effectively arise within consciousness. This stimulation is supplied by Messengers of Light who, in addition to their teachings, establish salvific mysteries (sacraments) which can be administered by apostles of the Messengers and their successors.

One needs also remember that knowledge of our true nature -- as well as other associated realizations -- are withheld from us by our very condition of earthly existence. The True God of transcendence is unknown in this world, in fact He is often called the Unknown Father. It is thus obvious that revelation from on High is needed to bring about salvation. The indwelling spark must be awakened from its terrestrial slumber by the saving knowledge that comes “from without” ... <

For a longer read I recommend "A History of Gnosticism"  by Giovanni Filoramo.

Then there's "The Gnostic Religion" by Hans Jonas. The study is the English version of the dissertation he wrote as a student of Heidegger whose existential categories from "Being and Time" Jonas uses for the explication of the Gnostic teaching. This works because there's a genuinely Gnostic element in Heidegger's thinking.

Those reading German should also check out the 1031 pages reader "Weltrevolution der Seele. Ein Lese- und Arbeitsbuch der Gnosis von der Spätantike bis zur Gegenwart", edited by Peter Sloterdijk and Thomas Macho, where you'll also find texts from people like Samuel Beckett, Stanislav Grof or Jorge Luis Borges.

https://petersloterdijk.net/werk/weltrevolution-der-seele/

Some ancient source texts can be read in the Nag Hammadi Library:

http://khazarzar.skeptik.net/books/nhl.pdf



Am 08.07.2017 um 03:28 schrieb David Morris:
I never studied Gnosticism.  It always seemed to be negating, but then so does Zen.  Nothing is real.  The common thread is that our shared fallen/illusory state is transcendable.  A return is possible via disciplined practice.  The return is to experience our source, gnosis, consciousness.  We are not primarily physical beings.  That illusion is our fallen state.

All religions have their mystical paths, probably always discovered by accident by real devotees.  Sufism, Kaballaism, Mystical Christianism, all sorts of Budism, Hinduism, and Shamanism.  My list is too short.  Their common thread is personal transcendent experience, not dogma.

David Morris


On Fri, Jul 7, 2017 at 7:25 PM L E Bryan <lebryan at sonic.net<mailto:lebryan at sonic.net>> wrote:
Ah yes. The good old days of 20 years ago when Pagel’s "The Gnostics” came out. About the same time William Irwin Thompson’s “the Edge of History” came out. It was in the latter I first came across the demiurge, Ialdabaoth. Hadn’t thought about old Iald in years. The book is still available on Amazon. I wonder if I would still be impressed with his eruditeness.

Lawrence











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