Voidlight

The Mystery of Gnosis in Distance

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A Gnostic Collective of Artists United by the Luminous Glow of Wisdom Eternal

All content copyright 2010 Radiatus All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any format without the express written permission of the author.

Voidlight
The Mystery of Gnosis in Distance By
Radiatus

Introduction Part One "The Wisdom Eternal" I Impermanence II Dualism III Emanation IV The Visible World and the Demiurge V Gnosis VI Liberation Part Two "Distance" VII Distance VIII On the Selection of the Poets IX The Gnostic Element of Distance in Blake X The Gnostic Element of Distance in Wordsworth Epilogue References

INTRODUCTION

The most important thing for an individual to do is not to figure out who they want to be, but rather to remember who they really are. where did we come from? The distance between where we are and where we are going is an illusion; in terms of true evolution we can take no further stride, we are in fact standing still. But something moves about us. The true distance lies between where we are and where we originated. And it is this distance, along with our own ignorance of it, which gives rise to every wave of existential torment that crashes maddeningly, incessantly upon the shores of our perception.
THE PURPOSE

The fundamental

question in life is not where are we going, but rather

The purpose of this text is two-fold: to remind you that you are sleeping, and to offer you a source of Light to guide you towards an Awakening. This is a

work of Gnostic philosophy, presented in two parts: an exegesis on the Gnostic creation myth, and a Gnostic interpretation of the literary works of Blake and Wordsworth concerning the notion of Distance. The entire text is guided by this the theme of Distance, or separation from one's source, which can be interpreted both literally and symbolically. This Distance is at once the fatal flaw of our Universe and the key to our individual Redemption. In this work, the redemptive act of Nostalgia or Recollection is used to bridge the gap between Here and There, between Thesis and Antithesis, in order to establish true Gnosis, or Knowledge, of a primordial and absolute Unity. The recollection of these origins is an act of Revelation and Epiphany for those who have the Divine Light within them, and merely a passing oddity for those who do not. This recollection is the first step on the path of Liberation, the path of Awakening, and is initiated by the awareness of one's own alienation. Moreso, recollection represents a shift in perspective from looking forwards (or outwards) to looking backwards (or inwards). Inward is the Way to Gnosis.

ON THE STRUCTURE OF THIS WORK

This is a hermeneutic work of philosophy and analysis which is essentially Gnostic in character - but this only means that the guiding principle of the text is the belief in Gnosis, a state of no-mind, or vacuity, in which the human being may directly experience the essence of Divinity which lies within themselves. Though the various historical Gnostic sects were highly individuated and syncretistic in their mythologies, applying different names to similar ideas, they were all founded on this same essential notion: that a piece of the Divine lies within the individual, and direct experience of this Spark is the only way to know Truth in a world of Error and Illusion. However, not every individual may be capable of unveiling this Truth. Some sects believed in an Elect, or a group of individuals pre-destined for Gnosis; in this case, the Gnostic was an individual whose origins lay somewhere far beyond Earth, where the souls of ordinary men are bound. Other sects adhered to a tripartite division of humanity into the Pneumatics, Psychics, and Hylics, or those who had achieved Gnosis, those with the potential to achieve Gnosis, and those of the Earth who would

ultimately return to its dust, respectively. This notion of Gnosis, without the attached assumption of either Election or universal salvation, is the only guiding principle behind the present work; there is no underlying dogma, doctrine, or morality. This work is influenced by various currents of Gnosis, from Luciferian to Ophite, and beyond. However, it would be inaccurate to place this text into any particular category. Instead, the historical Gnostic sects and traditions are cited in an effort to relate the general weltanschauung of Gnosis. The first section is an exegesis on the Myth of Creation from a Gnostic/Neo-Platonic perspective, with an emphasis on the process itself: Emanation. The purpose of this exegesis on Gnostic cosmogony is to illuminate the hidden history of the Universe and of reality as we know it, in order to burn away the darkness of Illusion and Error which holds dominion over our understanding of existence. To understand the concept of Emanation is to understand the laws of this Universe (dualism and determinism). And with knowledge of these Laws comes knowledge of how to break free from them. This is the true passion which

drives the Gnostic sensibility: Liberty. As Rudolph has noted, even the very act of receiving the story of Gnostic cosmogony can be seen as a salvific actioni. In this exegesis, many references are drawn upon, and are duly cited. The reader is urged to follow up with the cited sources, as the texts selected offer a wealth of information on the Gnostic path, across the genre spectrum, from academic to esoteric. The second part of this text focuses on discovering traces and hints of this Gnosis in the literary works and philosophies of William Wordsworth and William Blake. The text will show that each of these authors held a philosophical belief in a supramundane consciousness which can be accessed or energized via mystical experiences. Furthermore, each author illustrates how the recognition of the Distance between the solitary Man and his Divine Origin is the catalyst for his Liberation. The nature of Gnosis is personal and is focused upon, and shaped by, the individual. This present text may help to Illuminate the path for those who are Lost, but true power lies within the consciousness of the reader, not within these words.

Those with eyes to see, will see.

A NOTE ON THE NOTION OF THE OCCULT

Often, texts which deal with religious or mystical systems of thought are divided into specific categories, such as Scholarly and Occult. Many books which are written with a clear mystical theory and practice in mind are considered Occult, whereas objective, third-party observations of these systems are called Scholarly. This text blurs these lines of demarcation, as many other works of literature do. For any work to be considered scholarly or academic, it must meet certain criteria which are established through empirical means. Following the scientific method, academia requires scholarly texts and ideas to provide adequate evidence in support of a hypothesis to qualify said hypothesis as being true or valid. However, the core assumption of the Gnostic worldview is a fundamental devaluation of all concrete objects and ideas, in opposition to an invisible world which is prior to and superior to all things visible. Thus, the very quality of an idea which qualifies it as valid evidence in an empirical study (i.e. concreteness)

is the same quality which disqualifies an idea as valid evidence in a Gnostic system. Our study draws upon scholarly sources and uses established criteria to cite and attribute ideas to their source text, particularly in the first section (the exegesis). However, the subject which we are exploring, for which these texts are consulted, is of a supramundane, anti-empirical character and is guided by assumptions and observations of an entirely different character than what most readers may be used. A genre is a label applied to, not derived from, a particular text. Thus, it may be best to avoid the distinction of genre altogether.

NOTHING WITHIN THESE PAGES IS TRUE

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PART ONE

The Wisdom Eternal A Brief Exegesis on the Various Gnostic Creation Myths and The Nature of Gnosis

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I Impermanence All good things must come to an end. In our human lives, part of the social maturation process involves coming to terms with, and accepting, the notion that our happiness as well as our existence is temporary. Facing the inevitability of death, the certainty of decay, we find that the only solution is to face these horrors stoically, aided in our plight by either theological or philosophical systems of thought. And in so doing, we feel that we have accomplished something, as if the purpose of human life is coming to grips with temporality, or putting on a happy face as we march unceasingly towards doom. Our cultures throughout history have wrestled with the idea of mortality, the idea of time, and the inexorable spectre of death. We have crafted theological systems to extend our lives beyond death, for those of us incapable of accepting our mortal destinies. Some of us have turned to Art as a way to survive the holocaust of time. Others are content to write their name in wet concrete. All of our actions are essentially of no cosmic consequence at all. As humans

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we have generally characterized the end of things as bad and the beginning (or lasting) of things as good. This is evidenced by the predominance of notions of eternal life in the worlds various religions. And because every single thing in this universe must come to an end, there seems to be a predominance of things bad, or malignant, or evil. Most will argue that good and evil are subjective terms. However, this is not entirely accurate. We all agree on the definition of good, for example; it is the opposite of evil, and vice versa. The meaning of evil is static. What we do not agree on is which particular objects or ideas should fall into which category. What is subjective is the process of categorizing something as being good or evil. Regardless of our subjective valuations and categorizations, the fact remains that our lives, as well as everything else around us, is temporary. Despite every good thing we can find in this world, despite every reason to live that we can postulate, the fact remains that we exist in a flawed universe haunted by death and error. In response to this recognition, some choose to believe that as humans, we expect too much

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of our cosmos, or of reality in general. Perhaps we are foolish to judge the temperament of Nature and reality in human terms (good or bad, happy or sad). If we recognize the universe as an amoral, uninterested system which exists independently of humanity and human consciousness, we supposedly gain a clearer view of the fundamental characteristics of cosmic reality. In other words, the universe is cruel and flawed because it is completely disinterested in the plight of humanity; we are cogs in a machine who, blindly, believe that the machine was created for our benefit. Thus, this universe is not necessarily characterized by an evil force, radiating sorrow and loss at humanity. Rather, humanity has created a completely artificial expectation of goodness in a universe of which humanity plays only a small and totally insignificant part. This notion is similar to the Existentialist idea of Geworfenheit, or having been thrown - as in, having been thrown into a system or cosmos which is totally unrelated to or not cognizant of human desiresii. In such a system, there is no need for gods. There are others who perceive the presence of a Creator, or the fingerprints of a cosmic Architect

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scattered across our universe.

Many of these

individuals instinctively categorize the Creator, by virtue of his creative power, as an omnipotent Entity whose very essence is synonymous with goodness", particularly due to this Creator's assumed immortality. In such a theological system, the problem of evil revolves around an additional characteristic of omnibenevolence, which argues that God is capable of nothing but good. But how can a totally good Being create things which are evil? Many are familiar with this theological paradox. Some individuals attack this paradox with the claim that though we are governed in this cosmos by a benevolent god, this deity is locked in eternal struggle with a lesser malevolent god. The benevolent god is given responsibility for our higher human emotions (love, joy, forgiveness), but because we cannot reconcile the nature of evil in the realm of a totally beneficent god, we create a rival deity, one who is secondary to the creation and power of the benevolent creator, and assign to this Being the blame for all woe. But this theological arrangement, in which a "lesser" deity manages the currents of evil and woe,

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hardly serves to explain the predominance, the oppressive prevalence of evil forces in our universe. Some religious systems seek to solve this problem by assigning the physical world, the world of flesh, to the dominion of the evil god, which explains the flawed nature of our existence and introduces rewards of joy and eternal harmony in a fabled paradise following death. The physical world is given less absolute value than paradise, the latter being envisioned as a perfect material reality, as opposed to our imperfect material reality. But perhaps the true reason for the predominance of "evil" in our world is that the "true" god, the one who is recognized as pure Good, is actually non-existent in this universe. Perhaps the "true" god is in fact an Alien God (in the strict sense of being an "outsider") who did not have a direct hand in the creation of our universe, despite being the source of all creation. In such a scenario, the man of God finds himself utterly alienated, not only in the world of men, but in the entire cosmos. He finds himself imprisoned in a universe not his own, governed by a tyrannical deity who believes himself to be the absent, Alien God.

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This is the general worldview of the Gnostic. And this worldview introduces the striking and profound idea that the universe is not infested with evil; rather, the universe itself is evil. And this is so because the Universe was flawed from the moment of its creation, irreparably divided and incomplete. Indeed, it was not built by an Architect of expert knowledge, but by a semi- or half-architect, or demiurgos. This Architect is not the same entity as the Alien God; it is in fact an entity which emanated from the Alien God and which has no memory of this creation. This initial fragmentation, this division, this Error, manifests in our reality as the metaphysical notion of Dualism.

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II Dualism Dualism Defined The fundamental problem with all of our human assessments of reality is that our perception is limited by the system of Dualism, and because of this we are unable to perceive Unity. Our bodies and our minds are hardwired in such a way as to only view the universe through a lens which divides everything into Subject and Object, and this division simply cannot be overcome. Dualism describes the metaphysical system in which each individual thing is defined by its relationship to its opposite. Rudolph describes this Dualism on the theological level as "the activity of two more or less independent deities or principles which are made responsible for the differing situations in the world". One of the earliest systems of metaphysical Dualism can be found in Iranian Zoroastrianism, which Rudolph claims "sets a good and an evil god at the beginning of world history and views this history as dominated by the conflict between the two"iii. On a philosophical level, the Dualism of Plato places the

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Intelligible World in opposition to the visible world. On the mundane level, this current of Dualism can be perceived in most of the world's languages, which are composed of words which can only have meaning when considered in relation to their opposite. Light is defined as the absence of darkness; darkness is defined as the absence of light. In other words, we are unable to define one notion without referring to its opposite (the term "fullness" has no meaning without reference to "emptiness"). Thus, our perception is limited to binary oppositions. By our very existence in a Dualistic universe, seen from within a Dualistic mind, our reality and perception is inexorably grounded in the division between Subject and Object, Thesis and Antithesis (we as individuals are subjects, and everything we perceive is an object, separate from us). Thus we cannot perceive Unity, and that which lies prior to the Universe, the All, is Unity. Thus we are seemingly doomed to suffer total separation and alienation from the Divine source of all things. This is the crucial, fatal Distance which, upon recognition, creates existential distress in the human mind - the feeling that one is alone in an absurd universe.

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Beneath these theological, philosophical, and mundane observations of Dualism is a primordial pulse. The observer is witnessing and interpreting the fundamental motion of the universe divided into Thesis and Antithesis. This divided motion becomes the twin, opposing forces of Order and Chaos. These are the two sides of the coin of cosmic inertia. Order and Chaos We have often misrepresented the two fundamental currents of the cosmos, Order and Chaos, by applying subjective notions of good and evil to them. Generally speaking, to the average individual order represents good (that which lasts, that which is unchanging, eternal) and chaos represents evil (that which is temporary, dynamic). This same anxiety can be found in our notions of control, with Order represented by law and Chaos represented by lawlessness. Order and Chaos are also represented in Alchemical literature as the twin processes of solve and coagula. The solve force is the force of dissolution, or Chaos, whereas the coagula is the force of cohesion, or Orderiv.

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From our human perspective, the forces of Chaos are seen as evil because in a universe of coagulated, stagnated matter (order), chaos is manifested as destructive forces. We are quick to see the benefits of change on the microscopic level of our individual lives, to understand that change can be either good or bad, depending on the subjective situation. But when we amplify this change, when we apply it on a larger, more macro scale, it tends to elicit nothing but fear and trepidation from us. Think of changes in the earths crust, and the results. Changes in the weather, changes in the make-up of ecosystems, changes in the sun, the solar system, and on and on. Whenever a large scale object or notion changes, it is viewed (through human perception) as a dissolution, a violently destructive act. A change in state, such as solid to gas, is seen as destructive as well, as when fire turns wood to smoke and ash (even though no matter is lost, we perceive destruction). Due to our limited perspective, we are incapable of extending our understanding of the dual nature of change to a macro level. Indeed, the unbridgeable Distance between the micro and macro levels of observation leads to much confusion.

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But we face the same problem with our perception of Order as well. On the micro scale, we are able to see both the positive and negative effects of order. Stuck in a dead-end job with little pay or benefits, we are quick to understand that change is necessary if we seek a more luxurious or leisurely lifestyle. In this case we apply a term with negative connotations, such as stagnation, to the situation. However, we also see transcendent beauty in that which is unchanging, that which lasts: the unbroken cycle of Seasons, the cycle of Night and Day, traditions, customs, values, the notion of wedded bliss and eternal love, the idea of blood bonds and ancestry. These are all things we see as unchanging and good because of their static nature. We can even mitigate the negative effects of change by slowing change down, such as when we find majesty in the landscape around us, in the mountains and forests and lakes and oceans. It is not that these things are eternal, it is that, from our human perspective, they might as well be. For in our lifetimes, we will not see them change, and in juxtaposition to ourselves, this is seen as a monument of beauty and permanence. Though we seem to be able to put Order

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into perspective on the individual level, we seem to be incapable of adding a negative value to Order on the macro level, always identifying things larger than ourselves as "good" based on their seeming permanence. Once again, the Distance between the two perspectives prevents us from achieving any sense of balance or Unity.

Causal and Acausal Another consequence of Dualism is the necessity of the twin notions of cause and effect. Again, our language (and thus to a large extent, our thinking) is incapable of truly defining a cause without referring to the effect. This is known as Determinism, where history is defined as a more or less linear series of causes and subsequent effects. However, a system of pure Determinism should only exist in a reality governed by the concept of Time, because the measurement of Time is only the observation of a series of causes and effects. Thus Time, and our individual perception of it, is merely a measurement, an observation; it is not a concrete force or metaphysical

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reality. A universe governed by Determinism is said to be causal. In opposition to this, we have the concept of the acausal, which is a system of reality not governed by Determinism. That which is acausal finds its source in the current of Chaos, where all notions of order and rigid pattern are dissolved. Heaven and Hell In most theological systems, the current of Order is applied to Heaven, a realm governed by stasis and form. Hell is often depicted as being governed by Chaos, represented by constant destruction. However, neither of these realms can be truly Superior to the other, because they are both governed by Time. Hell may feature destruction and rending, but this is a process which continues for eternity, which implies systematic re-ordering in an effort to re-destroy. Heaven is defined as an eternal state of bliss, but still must exist as the "opposite" of Hell. Thus, what most individuals call Heaven is not free from Dualism. Therefore, it cannot be superior to the material Universe, which is governed in the very same manner

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and by the same laws. Heaven is still governed by Time, only a different "kind" of Time - supposedly unending Time. The Gnostic individual sees the Judeo-Christian heaven as the realm of the Architect of the material Universe; it is his kingdom. Thus, to be seduced by angels and led to the gates of Heaven can only lead to another imperfect realm, another realm governed by the same cruel Tyrant who enslaved the material universe. This is so because there can be no perfection without Unity, and the Demiurge is irreconcilably separated from Divine Unity by his own ignorance (again, the concept of Distance). Many Gnostic systems seek Liberation from the material universe and from the Kingdom of Heaven by an ascendance to the Pleroma, which lies prior to all of these cosmic creations, prior to Heaven, Hell, and the material world. Thus, the object is not to join the Demiurge in his self-created Paradise, but to actually ascend beyond Heaven itself. Conclusion Recognizing the twin currents of Order and

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Chaos, we must now delve deeper in order to understand how this pulse, how this cosmic Law, came to be. The fact is that this current, this motion, is the first effect in our causal universe. The first cause was the actual moment of Creation, and the effect was the pulse, or the Tzimtzum. And though this moment of Creation is known to many scientists today as the "Big Bang", and is often represented as an explosion, for our purposes we must see the Creation not as an explosion from a small point outward, but as an unraveling, or unfolding; an Emanation. And models for the process of Emanation may be found in the works of the Hermetists, Neo-Platonists, and the Gnostics.

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III Emanation: The Mechanics of Creation Emanation is the process responsible for the creation of the cosmos, and can be defined as a successive unraveling or radiation of the original Divine Essence into a void. It is crucial to approach this process on a symbolic, rather than literal, level. There is no purpose to this emanation, for the Divine Essence (the All, or the "All the One") is not bound by the laws of determinism; these laws are only valid within a closed cosmic system, where cause must necessarily precede effectv. Thus, one may find it difficult to posit any type of "motive" for the first emanation. Some individuals may find it difficult to envision the All, or primordial Chaos, as anything other than an anthropomorphic deity, or any other varied type of sentient being; thus the motive for the creation of the universe is often sought by said individuals. However, even if we assume that the All is some form of entity or god, our perception of this type of Being is distorted by our flawed nature; we are incapable of truly Knowing and perceiving this "god", thus we can only begin to approach an understanding of its nature. We can never

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truly perceive or imagine this God, in the same sense that Plato argued against our ability to truly perceive perfect Forms; we are only capable of seeing, of experiencing, shadows of the true Essence of things. For now we will present the general idea of Emanation as the unraveling of the All (or Alien God) into two separate manifestations - the Pleroma and the Visible World, in that order. The All, The Alien God At the beginning of the Emanation, from a Gnostic perspective, is the unknowable God, who is totally alien to this world. This is the True God, not to be confused with the Judeo-Christian god, Jehova or Yahweh, who is seen as the creator of the world. While we will examine Gnostic theology in the next chapter, we may find it sufficient to say, for now, that the creator of this world is often seen as a malevolent, or ignorant, god who due to his ignorance is incapable of comprehending his own origins. From this ignorance, or Error, the world is created and man is subjected to the tyranny of this Demiurge. In certain Alchemical and Hermetic traditions,

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the True God may be likened to the concept of the "All" or "One the All". This All is defined as a state of Chaotic potential, referred to by alchemists as the prima materia and symbolized by the Sumerians as the black dragon Tiamat. In Evola's words, it contains "the undifferentiated potentiality of every development or generation" and can be characterized as total Unity; not unity in the sense of harmoniousness, but in the sense of being whole. Evola further explains that "from it and by means of it everything comes," it is the "Father and Mother of itself"vi. It is self-sufficient, containing both the thesis and the antithesis, both everything and nothing; there is no division between subject and object. The Pleroma From this limitless potential, True God, or All, comes an emanation, or a successive unraveling or unfolding of the All into a void created within the substance of Chaos. It is not that the All emanates into an empty space (there is nothing which is not within the All); rather the All creates a vacuum within itself which is then filled with its radiating Light. This void, filled with radiance and all of the individuated aspects of

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Divinity, represents what the Gnostics call the Pleroma. The Pleroma is a realm inhabited by hypostases, or abstractions and natures, of the True God, such as Sophia (Wisdom). Each of these "natures" is composed of two aspects - usually male and female which, rather than referring to biological gender, applies to the esoteric ideas of stasis and dynamism. Though the above description views the emanation as a radiant, concentric unveiling of light, it may be just as helpful to envision this emanation as a fall. The light falls from the highest point, gradually becoming weighed down by and trapped within matter. It is in this context that the Jewish mystics perceive the cabbalistic Tree of Life, where divine vessels are shattered and the sparks of light (pneuma in Gnostic terms) fall to the realm of man (Malkuth, on the Tree of Life). This notion of falling is a fundamental aspect of the Emanation; as the Divine Light radiates, or falls, further away from its source, it becomes weaker as it is absorbed or obscured by its antithesis - solid matter. In the particular theological system of Judaism, a moral imperative is added to this scenario in which humanity is charged with the task of reclaiming these divine

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sparks and repairing the broken vessels (sephira) from which they fell. This process is known as tikkun olam, or "repairing the world". The crucial notion here, again, is Distance. The Distance between the obscured Light and its source creates imperfection, and the further the Distance, the greater the corruption or distortion of the original essence. The Visible World Finally, after the creation of the Pleroma, an event transpires which causes the creation of the Cosmos, or the material universe. This event has been interpreted by the Gnostics as an Error, but by others as a Miracle. For now, it is sufficient to note that this Cosmos is the final sequence of the Emanation, but is inferior to all prior stages not only because of its Distance from the All, but also because it is created and fashioned by the Demiurge, not by the Alien God. It is in this realm that the Divine Light, or Pneuma, is obscured by and trapped within matter, and Illusion and Darkness hold sway. Some Gnostic sects saw malicious intent behind the imprisonment of this Divine Spark

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within human bodies (and according to others, within all material objects to a certain degree), while other systems view this "imprisonment" as a necessary trial, as in the metaphysical model of reincarnation where the soul reincarnates within flesh in order to be purified. Still others consider it an "accident". In the Visible World, the currents of Order and Chaos correspond to the actions of the Demiurge and the Alien God (via Sophia), respectively. The Demiurge and his Archons wish to trap the Divine Sparks in matter, because to ultimately return all of the lost Light to the Pleroma would lead to the dissolution of the cosmos. Thus, the Archons jealously seek to hold the pneumatic fire in the Visible World, continually reinserting the Sparks back into fleshly vehicles (the human body, the creation of the Demiurge). This is the process of Reincarnation, re-imagined from a Gnostic point of view. The Divine Spark, loosed by the trauma of organic death, seeks escape from the universe but is held back and returned to flesh by the Archons. These Archons are imagined as lieutenants of a sort to the Demiurge, usually assigned to govern one of the seven celestial spheres (or planets). In order for the Sparks to

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escape, they must remember their origins and understand their True Nature via Gnosis. From Gnosis are received the "instructions" on how to escape the grasp of the Demiurge, so to speak. On the other hand, Sophia (or the lower aspect of Sophia, or Lucifer, or the Serpent - depending on the particular system) seeks to reclaim those lost Sparks so that she may be made "light" enough again to ascend back to the Pleroma. Sophia is the hypostasis from the Pleroma who is responsible for the creation of the Demiurge, thus a part of her descends into the visible world to reclaim the light which was lost, and which the Demiurge jealously holds. We will delve much more deeply into the Myth of Sophia in the next chapter. In many Gnostic writings, particularly those of the so-called Christian sects, this reclamation of the Divine Sparks is symbolized by the crucifixion of Christ. Though not all of the various sects or thinkers were in general agreement, many saw the figure of Jesus as a fleshly vessel, inhabited (at the time of his Baptism) by the Christ, or the Logos of the True God. It is then believed that, just prior to the crucifixion of Jesus, the Christ left the body, his material counterpart,

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so that only the body would suffer the passion of the crucifixion. In this sense, Christ himself (the Son of Man, the Logos) did not suffer, only his earthly vessel suffered. And this is crucial because the earthly body is the creation of the Demiurge, and thus the creator of the world only punishes his own creation (the body), rather than the actual desired object: the Logos. Conclusion Now that we have broadly diagrammed the Emanation in three (an arbitrary number, simply for convenience) general stages, it may be of use to us in our present study to consider the Creation of the Visible World in more detail. What is particularly important about this stage of the Emanation is that, for the Gnostic, the creation of the Visible World is the creation of a monstrous prison, and life inside this universe is life inside of a cell. And from a Gnostic analysis of this creation, one is able to arrive at what might be called Gnostic anthropology; in other words, an understanding of the nature of creation leads to an understanding of the nature of humanity. The idea that this entire universe is nothing

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more than a prison into which we've been either forced or tricked is a notion so radical, that it necessitates a radical shift in worldview: the Anti-Cosmic perspective.

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IV The Visible World and the Demiurge The Anti-Cosmic Perspective The Gnostic sects shared a common weltanschauung of "anti-cosmic world rejection" based on the idea that the world is the result of a "primordial error" on the part of a "supra-cosmic, supremely divine being, usually called Sophia (wisdom) or simply the Logos"vii. The various Gnostic systems featured stylistic and nominal variations on this myth, but the general themes are evident enough that we can speak of a general myth narrative which relates the creation of the Visible World to a primordial Error. Sophia is seen as the "final emanation of a divine hierarchy", existing at the furthermost frontier of the Pleroma, and it is Sophia's desire to Know the transcendent God (All) which causes the primordial error. Sophia is incapable of truly knowing the All, because even though she exists in the Pleroma, those Beings within the Pleroma are incapable of seeing back into the All. Many Gnostics refer to a halo of light which existed at the boundary closest to the Alien God,

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blinding those who attempt to see back towards True Divinity. Each of the Natures, or beings of Light, which inhabit the Pleroma are divided into two, usually malefemale, aspects. In the various myths, Sophia desires to Know the Alien God, and this act of Will takes place without the assistance of her other aspect, which because it is devoid of the original Unity of the Nature, causes an Error. This Error is described in the anonymous work "On the Origin of the World", from the Nag Hammadi Scriptures, as a "curtain" which hangs between the beings of Light and the future Visible World belowviii. Sophia sought to create an image of the True Heaven (the Alien God, beyond the halo of light), and the curtain is symbolically understood as the palette upon which she created her Work. However, this action necessarily divides the Pleroma, or the "void" created within the All, thus creating two separate chambers, or aspects: upper and lower. The Pleroma, or the upper (or inward) part of the newly divided Emanation, is completely filled with the Alien Light and thus has no shadowsix. However, on

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the other side of the curtain, or palette, there is nothing but Shadow, or darkness. This darkness is what is referred to as "chaos", "the boundless chaos" from which everything in the Visible World apparently camex. This is not the same "chaos" which is synonymous with the All (unfettered, unlimited potential), or that which corresponds to the destructive current discussed earlier. This is what the ancients saw as the Primordial darkness, the fertile waters from which all creation sprang forth. To rule over this newly created Aeon (region) of darkness, Sophia further augments her Error through the creation of the Being who would come to represent the ultimate Tyrant to the Gnostics: the Demiurge. The Demiurge The Gnostics saw the Demiurge as the true identity of the Christian and Jewish God, either an ignorant or deliberately malevolent being who believes himself to be the Supreme Divinity. The Demiurge is, in most extant Gnostic texts, named Jaldabaoth. Regarding the origins of this name, Rudolph relates one version of the creation myth in which Sophia, looking

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down upon the waters (chaos) where the Demiurge was created, calls out "'Young man, pass over to this place', for which the interpretation is 'Jaldabaoth'". But the Demiurge was not aware of Sophia, or of the Pleroma. All he could hear was her voice in the waters and darkness (Chaos), so he named himself after what he had heardxi. Sophia creates the Demiurge out of the darkness, which is also called Chaos and matter itself, because she felt that it was necessary for something to rule over and wield the powers of darknessxii. The Demiurge is unaware of the Pleroma and of the Alien God, and feels that he himself is the creator of the Universe (the shadowed aspect of the Creation). He creates, in many myths, seven Archons, or rulers, to rule over the seven heavens (represented by the seven planets). These Archons are usually seen as a sequence of seven powers which the Gnostic must bypass in order to ascend to the realm of the Demiurge, and ultimately beyond that realm, through the curtain (chaos) and into the Pleroma. The Demiurge rules over all of the Archons and the Visible World because he retains a small part of the

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Divine breath, or pneuma, from his mother Sophia (though he is only half-Divine, created mostly from the darkness or chaos). Jaldabaoth gave the Archons fire, but not the gift of the pure Lightxiii. He also creates a kingdom of Heaven for himself, which is described as a lavish, extraordinary place truly befitting a despot. Continuing the general narrative, the Demiurge is eventually made aware of the presence of Sophia, who tells Jaldabaoth about the Pleroma and the Alien God. However, the Demiurge is defiant, and issues a challenge to the Alien God: if you really are there, let us behold your Light. In order to fix her Error, and in response to the Demiurge's challenge, Sophia's male aspect descends to her, bringing her a small piece of the Divine Spark. thereafter. The Light enters the visible world (usually in the form of Christ) and leaves shortly This only serves to further enrage the Demiurge, who remains defiant despite receiving the "proof" that he needed. Once Sophia sees the true nature of Jaldabaoth, governed by selfishness and greed, she weeps bitterly. Because of her Error, she finds herself trapped in a realm between the Pleroma and the realm of the

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Demiurge; she is unable to ascend into the realm of Light because of the weight of her actions and must remain below the curtain, in the world of shadows, until she is able to reclaim the Sparks. confines of his universe. The Demiurge jealously seeks to hold the Divine Sparks within the It is this evil Act which imposes tyranny upon the entire universe, and which justifies the Anti-Cosmic perspective as a rebellion against oppression and tyranny. From the anonymous treatise "On the Origin of the World", we learn that the Demiurge and his Archons behold the image of a Light-Adam (or Christ), and they are thus made aware of the pre-existence of a Light before the Demiurge. The Demiurge creates a Man, modeled after the Light-Adam or Man of Light, with the belief that the True God would have no choice but to love a creature created as a reflection of Himself, making this creature the perfect bait with which to lure the Alien God down from upon High. The Archons leave their creature forty days on its own, hoping to lure the Divine Spark. And as expected, Sophia acts and breathes the "breath of life" into the Man, thus making Man more

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powerful than his creators (since this "breath" is the Divine Spark, a piece of the Alien God who exists before the Demiurge and his legions). The Archons are pleased to find the breath of Life within Adam, because in their ignorance, they believe that the bodily vessel (created in their deficient image) will serve as an inescapable prison for the Divine pneumaxiv. However, those who truly Know understand that this apparent triumph for the Demiurge is actually the very Key to his undoing. Insight What is crucial about Emanation in our study is the fact that it explains the cause and nature of our disassociation (or Distance) from our Divine origins. Indeed, Rudolph asserts that the mere act of learning about the Gnostic creation myth, or cosmogony, has a redeeming value as a "revelation"xv. It is for this purpose that the current text seeks to present the Gnostic worldview via an exegesis on the common elements of its varied creation myths. From this ancient model of cosmogenesis we can more clearly understand our place in the universe, the nature of Immanence, and

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most importantly, the necessity of accessing that piece of the Divine which exists within us. In other words, understanding the mechanics of Creation and of cosmic sustenance may indeed help us to understand how to escape from that very same Creation. The process of Emanation is indeed represented as a "process", but Evola mentions that it is necessary "to abandon the idea of the Creation as a historical fact over and done with in the spatial and temporal past"xvi. Instead, creation may be viewed as an eternal process, not in a temporal sense of being everlasting, but in the more abstract sense of existing beyond time. Having begun to remember our origins, and having remembered our place in this Universe, it is now necessary for us to discover a way to turn away from this universe of illusion, to regain our true Sight, as it were. We must find a way to experience our True Selves, and this is accomplished through gnosis. The following chapter will define Gnosis, in an effort to further illuminate the purpose of Divine Consciousness within the cosmos.

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V Gnosis Gnosis Defined There is only one way to perceive Truth in this fallen universe, and that is to directly experience the Truth. This experience is not of a sensory nature, it is not something which can be perceived with biological organs. Our sensory organs are products of duality and are incapable of truly understanding anything prior to or beyond this notion. Thus, the only way to directly experience the Truth, or Unity or synthesis, is to completely bypass the human organism, to silence the human mind completely. This is the only way to truly Know, and this state of no-mind is called gnosis (from the Greek, meaning to know). If the human organism is totally bypassed, and we as individuals are human organisms, how can we still perceive things without our faculties and senses? The answer is to access and experience our one True sense: consciousness. There must be a vital distinction made here between consciousness and the human ego; consciousness is suprahuman (or prehuman) and precedes our ego-generated consciousness. We can

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refer to the true consciousness as our True Self, whereas biological consciousness (our state of being awake and aware) is a product of our biological organism, of the electrical current of our brain and nervous system; this lesser consciousness we can call the ego. The ego is who we think we are. Throughout our lives, the biological organism which is our body and mind has created an image of itself, defined by a persons name and social relations, ancestry, socioeconomic condition, class, language, nationality, ad infinitum. This is Rousseaus tabula rasa - the blank slate of a human organism being shaped, behaviorally and socially, by the physical conditions around them. But the individual which we identify ourselves with is nothing more than an animal, a cosmic illusion bound, inexorably, to the physical world. This is the self which religions promise to keep intact during the transition from life to death. On the other hand, the True Self is who we truly are, regardless of our biological condition, regardless of our environment (Jung called this the pure consciousness). The Self is unshaped by this universe and in fact exists prior to and beyond the

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cosmos.

The True Self is like a television signal

beamed into a human body; it is processed and reshaped by our body before being transmitted to the world. The human vessel is only capable of understanding this signal to a degree, and can only interpret things which can be perceived by and identified with the human senses. And while those of the Light experience this "signal" once "turning their television off", it may be that certain individuals instead come face to face with Oblivion. The fundamental distinction between these two gradations of consciousness is that we experience Egoconsciousness as the state of being aware of our surroundings, but we experience our True Consciousness as the state of being aware of being aware. This is the only manifestation of our Divine consciousness within our cosmic reality, itself merely a distorted hint of a greater Truth processed imperfectly by our human mind. In order to more fully experience this True Consciousness, the rest of the human organisms mental apparatus must be paralyzed or otherwise circumvented, so that the veil of Egoconsciousness (and its visceral underpinnings) can be

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removed. Two Major Currents of Gnosticism Rudolph describes two primal currents of historical Gnosticism which are defined by their specific interpretation of the pre-existent principle, the Prime Mover or the True Godxvii. The Syrian-Egyptian branch of Gnosticism interprets the True God as a monad, a seed, which contains everything and from which everything will eventually come. The IranianZoroastrian branch of Gnosticism, on the other hand, recognizes two unique, independent, and diametrically opposed principles, namely Light and Darkness. It is as a result of the interaction between these two forces that the visible universe comes into existence. Both of these currents adhere to the belief in Gnosis, but vary in other, external ways as each line branches off over and over again into the myriad specialized sects and systems of later history. Indeed, the Distance created by Time gradually unravels or weakens the current of Truth. The Gnostic Sects in History Historically speaking, the Gnostics are often

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seen as a product of the Christian world, because much of what we know about them is gleaned from the heresies of the orthodox Church fathers. the advent of Christianity. However, Gnostic sects are believed to have been active far before The Gnostics often syncretistically fused elements of various mythologies together to form their own unique, hybrid mythology. And during the first few centuries of the common era, these sects drew heavily from Hebrew and Christian scriptures, reinterpreting those narratives in light of the True Wisdom. Naturally, the idea that the Divine lies within, and the notion that Divinity can be experienced directly without the need for mediation, renders the Church and its clergy obsolete; nobody needs a priest to mediate between themselves and God. Furthermore, the Gnostics were prolific writers, transcribing their own Divine experiences into books which challenged the hegemony of the orthodox canon. Thus the Gnostics were seen as a critical threat to the hegemony and necessity of the Church, and were roundly criticized in a wealth of polemics written by the early Church fathers. It is from these one-sided, pejorative accounts that we gain most of our historical knowledge of the

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Gnostic sects. However, Hebrew scriptures. the philosophical current of Gnosticism was not born with Christianity, nor with the It may not have existed as a codified system prior to the time of Christ, but one may convincingly argue that it has never been a codified system and that any attempt to trace its origins must be informed by this fact. primary elements of Instead, we can look at the the philosophy (dualism,

emanation, an inner Divine connection) and trace these particular ideas back through time. Through this lens, we can find the origins of Gnosticism in earlier systems such as Hermetism, a syncretistic Hellenic-Egyptian esoteric philosophy based on the Corpus Hermeticum, a collection of writings from Hellenic Egypt attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, or Thrice-Greatest Hermes. Though the true identity of the author is unknown, it is thought that this Hermes is a hybridization of the Hellenic Hermes and Egyptian Thoth, god of Wisdomxviii. Scholars continue to debate the origins of this work, with some offering a creation date which vastly precedes Christianity, and others locating it at around the same

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time as Christ. But elements of Gnostic philosophy can also be found in the works of Plato (dualism and emanation especially), and it is generally believed that the current of Gnosticism is exceedingly ancient, though it is highly fluid, dynamic, and chameleonic. It is also generally believed that Hermetism came into existence as a result of the conflation of Western and Eastern mysticism. LaCarriere, in his book The Gnostics, argues that to try to narrow down the definition of Gnosticism to a single dogmatic doctrine is an "absurd method which might, perhaps, suit the traditional religions based on a clearly established dogma, on canonical texts, and orthodox interpretations, but which, specifically, cannot be applied to Gnosticism, whose most incontestable aim is to break down the arbitrary frontiers established by dogma". He further claims that one of the purposes of Gnostic study is to call upon the most diverse sources and teachings...to promote an open synthesis, new channels of reflection, an original mode of thinkingxix. Thus, relying too heavily on an accurate historical portrayal of the Gnostic sects may effectively obscure the true nature of Gnosticism, which is not

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simply historical but metaphysical. The plural, varied nature of the sects is a reflection of the primordial Error on Earth; that is, the more one relies on someone elses interpretation, the more distant one finds themselves from the Truth.

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VI Liberation Lucifer The figure of Sophia has been, in certain sects and systems, referred to by different names. Her desire to know the Transcendent God was an act of Rebellion, of Evolution, of the desire to Know. Thus she has been seen as Lucifer, the Roman God whose name, rather than his particular mythology, is important to our study. Lucifer is derived from the Latin lucem fero, or I bring the light. Some traditions, particularly some modern esoteric currents, see Lucifer as a function of Sophia, or as her male aspect. In other words, in pursuit of her redemption, she acts as the Light-Bringer, as Lucifer, the one who brings the Light. Some Gnostics viewed Sophia as having fallen into the outer Darkness, and in order to destroy the realm of the Demiurge, she relies upon her male aspect Lucifer, who remains above in the Pleroma, to deliver the Divine Light through the curtain of the firmament. Also, in a general sense, many Ophite gnostics (who took their name from the Greek word for serpent,

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ophis) saw the Edenic figure of the Serpent as the ideal symbol of this function of Sophia - bringing the knowledge of Good and Evil to mankind, knowledge which was jealously withheld by Jaldabaoth. Thus, the Light-Bringer is the one who seeks to bring the light (pneuma) not only into the Visible World (in order to aid Sophia), but also back to the Pleroma in order to destroy the Demiurge. Sophia is often represented as being caught between the kingdom of Heaven and the Pleroma, in a place known as the Ogdoad (the "eighth" sphere, beyond the seven celestial spheres); her redemption back to the Pleroma is accomplished by re-collecting all of the Divine Sparks stolen (or lost as a result of the transgressions of Sophia) and jealously held by the Demiurge. In Greek mythology a comparison can be made with the figure of Prometheus, who stole the secret of Fire (pneuma) from the Gods (Demiurge). True to their syncretistic inclinations, the various Gnostic sects used various elements of various mythologies and mysteries to represent the fundamental truths of Gnosis.

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The Ascent of the Soul Salvation is central to Gnosticism. The very act of achieving Gnosis, of experiencing the Divine, is the reception of Salvation. By experiencing Gnosis, one is saved. However, similar to schools of orthodox Christianity, the Gnostic systems differ in their interpretation of who is capable of being saved. Some Gnostic systems featured the belief in Election, also found in Calvinism, in which each individual possessed a pre-ordained destiny, either to be saved or not, and wielded no control over this destiny whatsoever. For instance, in the Gospel of Thomas, a Gnostic text from the Nag Hammadi scriptures, Christ uses an analogy of seeds being cast from a tree to illustrate the fate of souls. Each seed is viable, but it is where the seed lands which determines whether or not it is able to take root and blossom. If the seed lands on fertile soil, it has the opportunity to grow. However, if no rain falls, or if too much shade obscures the light of the Sun, these seeds may yet lie dormant. Others may fall on infertile soil, and others still may fall across a paved walkway; these seeds shall never come to fruitionxx.

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However, in response to the question of Election many Gnostic systems possessed a three-fold distinction between individuals, based on a person's innate connection with the Divine. These three classes were the Hylic Man, the Psychic Man, and the Pneumatic (or Spiritual) Manxxi. The Hylic individual does not possess a Divine Spark or pneuma - they are entirely creatures of the Earth, of the Demiurge. The Psychic individual contains the Divine Spark, but they have not been able to release it from its captivity. Finally, the Pneumatic is an individual who not only possesses the Divine Spark but has also set it free, allowing themselves to become like a god among men. The Gnostic teacher Simon Magus, as well as his partner Helen, were both said to be Pneumatics who were already saved, and thus could not be afflicted or punished by the Demiurge for anything that they did. This mirrors many of the concerns which go along with Calvinism and the belief in pure freedom by virtue of pre-destined Salvation. Depending on the system, the Hylic individual is either forever doomed to vanish into Oblivion along with the rest of the visible world and the Demiurge, or

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is capable of hearing the call of Gnosis and eventually evolving first into a Psychic, and then into a Pneumatic, usually by the intercession of Sophia. The Hylic individual is a creation of the Demiurge, devoid of Divine Light, and thus does not necessarily experience the malaise, or existential angst, caused by separation or Distance from one's origins. Indeed, the Hylic is not at all distant from his source; he is at home in the Universe and on the Earth. Many Gnostics saw their orthodox Christian contemporaries as Psychics whose belief in Christianity proved that they were capable of receiving the True Wisdom, but their lack of Gnosis caused them to be drawn in by the snares of the Church. In the Psychic individual, an awareness exists of metaphysical Distance and alienation, and it is the recognition of this situation which allows the Psychic the possibility of achieving gnosis and salvation. The specific details of each Gnostic sect's interpretation of Salvation are plentiful and varying, but the one core element which does not change throughout the systems is the belief in Gnosis as the only method of Salvation. There can be no meaningful or effective

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intercession by another individual on one's behalf, thus it is that all human institutions are deficient and corrupt. Churches are merely manifestations of the desires of man (and by extension, of man's creator - the Demiurge), and to the Gnostic represent the strongholds of the dogma of the Demiurge, a doctrine which seeks to enslave man by coercing him through fear and tyranny to submit to the authority of Jaldabaoth, to believe that Power and Eternity are in his hands rather than in their own. In this way, the Demiurge renders those of the Light blind to their True Selves, and ignorant of their True Nature. And when they shed their mortal husk these Souls will blindly follow the will of Jaldabaoth to return once again to a fleshly prison, or to a heavenly prison, where they will live as unwitting strangers who bow eternally to Jaldabaoth the Tyrant.

Left Hand and Right Hand Paths In the Western occult tradition, two pathways represent the two opposing purposes of Initiation and Enlightenment: the left and right hand paths (these "paths" can also be found in the exceedingly ancient

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Tantra schools, where the Left Hand denotes a path of action, and the Right Hand represents a path of meditation). Though the meaning of each path is rife with nuance and subject to debate, the distinction between the two essentially boils down to a decision between unity with (and dissolution within) the Divine, or, on the other hand, Self-Deification. The Right Hand path is said to be the path followed by occultists who seek a final union with the Divine; the identity and nature of the Divine is open to interpretation. The Left Hand Path, however, seeks to ascend to a level of equal footing with the Divine. In other words, this path involves the transmutation of the human into a god, who will thus exist independent of the existing Divinity. Most Anti-Cosmic Gnostic systems would be, if arbitrarily placed into one or another of these occult categories, found on the so-called Left Hand Path. And this is so because for the Gnostic, generally speaking, the existing measurement of Divinity within the cosmos is the Demiurge. Thus, a follower of the Right Hand Path would sometimes be seen as an individual who has been tricked and deluded by the Demiurge and all of the minions of the visible world to seek comfort in his

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kingdom, rather than in the kingdom of the True God. The Gnostic initiate seeks, as a result of the realization of his True Origins, ascendancy back to the realm of the True God, higher than and beyond the Kingdom of Heaven. This is accomplished via the ordeals associated with the "Ascension of the Soul", or the trials of the Archons, where the Initiate must pass through each Archon's gate with the help of secret names, signs, and seals. However, the act of making this particular distinction (between Left and Right Hand Path) seems to repeat itself and grow even more complex, because the very same distinction must be made once the Initiate ascends beyond the world of the Demiurge and enters the World of Light (the Pleroma). In other words, one might argue that once an Initiate has transcended the cosmos and the Demiurges grasp, said Initiate will then be dissolved within, or unified with, the True God, thus ultimately fulfilling the desire of the Right Hand Path. And again, one could argue that the purpose is not unity with the True God, but simply a return to the realm of the True God (or World of Light), where the Initiate would wield the power of their True Self: the

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very same power of the True God, a "Being of Light". Indeed, one may become an Architect of their own realities.

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PART TWO

Distance The Gnostic Notion of Distance in the Literary Works of Blake and Wordsworth

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VII Distance In the previous section of our current study we have shown the fundamental importance of Distance to the idea of Gnosis. Our flawed human condition is created as a result of our Distance from Truth and from our Divine Origins. In order to eliminate this Distance one must achieve Gnosis, essentially re-connecting our True Self with our distant, subjective self and subordinating the latter to the former's Divine Will. The vast gulf between our current condition and our original state of Being is a void of immense Distance, and Man himself is an imperfect recreation of the image of the Light-Adam seen from afar. Distance distorts our perception of reality just as metaphysical distance distorts our perception of a hyper-reality, but even though we live in a flawed universe perceived through flawed senses, Gnosis gives one the power to see beyond all of these limitations, to receive and to perceive with absolute clarity. Gnosis is not simply a bridge which spans the great, vast Distance; it is rather like a wormhole in that it brings two points together

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simultaneously. In order for the Gnostic individual to overcome or eliminate their alienation, they must necessarily possess a supramundane element of Self which, at all times, holds the true Knowledge and Experience of Divinity. For without the pre-existent element of Self, the individual would be unable to access memories, or Knowledge, which is tied to the Experience of that Self. In other words, if there are those among us who are not of the Light, they will not "feel" the Distance. They will not recognize, nor could they ever empathize with, the Gnostic's sense of almost complete and utter isolation in this universe. In the following pages, we will explore the importance of Distance, in a particularly Gnostic sense, in the poesy of William Wordsworth and William Blake. The reason for examining Poetry in particular is that, especially in the theories of these two authors, the Art of Poetry involves direct communication with either a component part of the human mind which is, to some degree, absent from "normal" human consciousness, or with a supramundane, mystical Consciousness. Neither poet necessarily considered himself to be a Gnostic.

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However, the insight of Gnosis is hinted at within their works, along with an emphasis on the theme of Distance, and thus warrants our investigation. Things Fall Apart Decay is a product of the universe's alienation from Truth, an alienation which is illustrated by the Distance between the cosmos and the Pleroma. This notion of decay is central to the current study because most of us spend our lives thinking and moving "forward", that is, seeking "progress". This notion of a fundamental chronological progression from primitivism to a superior modernism dominates Western thought. All things begin in a state of simplicity, and gradually move towards a preferable complexity which is usually synonymous with prosperity. However, the true nature of Time and existence is that things actually begin in a state of wholeness (or near-wholeness) and gradually deteriorate and fragment. This process is illustrated by the mechanics of Emanation: as the Light falls progressively farther and farther away from its source, it becomes weakened (or weighed down by and sublimated within matter).

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Whether falling or radiating, distance (or Time) implies a weakening of the original condition of a Thing. In the human embryo we see all the cells necessary for the manifestation, at a later time, of a fully grown adult human being. As this organism grows in size and complexity, Time is always leading the whole organism toward an eventual dispersion or disintegration. When death claims the human being, the process of true physical disintegration begins. This same notion of Decay is found in the Hindu doctrine of the Four Ages, and has been reinvigorated and refined by Rene Guenon and Julius Evola, among others, as a central theme of the system of Traditionalism. While not exceedingly similar to Gnosticism (Traditionalism is intimately intertwined with the history of modern fascism, for example), the doctrine of Traditionalism does share this particular worldview where progress is seen as illusory. According to Traditionalism (and other spiritual systems), all great civilizations begin in a Golden Age, a period in which the civilization in metaphysically and spiritually "attached" to a Higher Truth. As Time progresses, this "center" is lost, and society crumbles

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until a final Apocalypse wipes everything out, allowing a new Age to begin. Each progressive Age features a diminishment of the original Divine force which was once literally present within the physical world. This explains, among other things, the ineffectual nature of ancient religious customs and/or rituals in the modern Age (the Kali Yuga, or "Dark Age"), as well as the general existential state of philosophy and dreariness of modern life. For our purposes, by shifting our perspective from forward to backward (or more specifically, inward) we can begin to understand that we should not be concerned, necessarily, with where we are going; we ought to be concerned with where we came from. As we advance technologically, we continually dig ourselves deeper beneath a sea of matter, of increasing complexity and efficiency, which gradually obscures the Light that burns deep within. The act of releasing one's Light, of removing these burdens and Illusions, will always manifest in our reality as Chaos, or destruction. This creates a key tension between our living organism, which seeks above all to live and to continue to live, and our True

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Self, which can only be freed through Destruction. Such is our unfortunate fate as we dwell within these bodies, torn halfway between two worlds. There is a Distance between our understanding of the fundamental nature of Existence and the Truth of the matter. Manifestation is not driven by the progression from Chaos to Order, but rather by the progression from Order to Chaos.

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VIII On the Selection of the Poets The selection of these particular poets rather than others is only arbitrary in that our current study must necessarily be limited and narrow in focus. Thus, the author has made the subjective decision to limit the present work to a study of the Gnostic notion of Distance in certain works of Blake and Wordsworth, not only because of each author's individual Gnostic character but also because of the general artistic zeitgeist of which their works became a part. Though both authors supposedly pre-date the beginning of the Romantic movement in English literature, they are both seen as being instrumental in the formulation and expression of the Romantic ethos. It should be sufficient to note, for our purposes, a few of the overriding characteristics given to the literature which issued forth during the Romantic period. Among these themes and ideas are the elevation of the individual over the masses, the importance of subjectivity over objectivity, a democratic interest in the "common man", and perhaps most importantly, an

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obsession with Liberty. All of these ideals are quite interesting to the Gnostic observer, given the importance of Liberty and Rebellion in the Gnostic weltanschauung. The elevation of the individual over the masses, both as the subject of Art and in terms of spiritual primacy, is particularly striking when applied to the Gnostic idea of direct, personal Divine experience taking precedence over all dogma and all religious institutions. The above information is provided only to place these particular authors into a general thematic context. It is not the purpose of this text to engage in literary criticism or in an historical analysis of the Romantic period in Britain; the purpose is to identify the element of Distance in certain inspired works, in order to more fully examine the theme itself in light of its manifold representations and inner Gnostic character. Thus, we must be careful not to confuse the true subject of our investigation (the reality of metaphysical alienation) with the objects from which we derive our observations.

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Why Literature? We have chosen to explore the notion of Distance in the literary works of two authors, as opposed to the works of two painters or sculptors or other artists, for two reasons. Firstly, because those who tell stories also have the power to awaken individuals from a state of spiritual somnolence. For example, hearing the Creation Myth for the first time, hearing that "story", has the power to awaken an individual to the presence of a Higher Truth, just as hearing a particularly moving story of any genre or subject matter has the power to greatly affect the imagination. Thus, the power to tell a story is also the power to affect spiritual awakening. Literature is an evolution of storytelling in that it allows stories to outlive those that tell them; we speak not only of the first one to tell the story, but also all those who will eventually follow. Literature is the Art of freezing stories in time, of extracting them from the human consciousness. Secondly, both Blake and Wordsworth believed that the notion of Poetry itself was somewhat mystical, or at least based deeply within the intuition of the Poet

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(the intuition being a preternatural or mystical sense). Indeed, Wordsworth described the creation of poetry as the "spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions". The key here is spontaneity, which is the antithesis of premeditation, and represents the action of the Thus, subconscious mind, versus the highly organized and ordered action of the conscious mind. spontaneous creations seem to reflect a closer connection to our original Nature than those objects of artifice which are heavily shaped by our ego and personal tendencies. On the Structure of This Section In the following pages we shall explore, first in Blake and then in Wordsworth, two notions: the authors belief in and description of a supramundane consciousness, and the way in which each author places emphasis on the element of Distance in relation to the recognition of the nature of said Distance. What we are searching for is the first step in the process of Gnostic redemption - the realization of our own alien-ness. Each author approaches this theme in their own unique way, but it is our purpose to see this element as a

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representation of a universal Principle. We will limit our discussion of each author's biography to the element of their philosophy which corresponds to our notion of a supramundane consciousness. Though each author's individual history is deeply intertwined with the formulation and application of their respective theories, as well as with the creation of their poetic works, we will not devote much time to this subject as our study emphasizes the essence as opposed to the appearance of things. Thus, if we are looking for the suprahuman element of the works of these two individuals, it may be fitting that we try to separate their metaphysical values from their egoconsciousness. Furthermore, it should be noted that exhaustive work has already been done by many individuals to place Blake, in particular, into a Gnostic context, with varying degrees of success. The reader is encouraged to seek out these works, and to keep in mind that our purpose within these pages is to extract a certain Gnostic principle from the works themselves, rather than drawing from the authors biography or from an exhaustive survey of each writers entire corpus.

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IX The Gnostic Element of Distance in Blake The Supramundane: Poetic Genius William Blake's cosmogony was closely related to that of Gnosticism in general, complete with a metaphysical Monism reminiscent of the SyrianEgyptian branch of Gnosis. He held a belief in the direct experience of the Divine, achieved through angelic visions, a power of Insight which originated in a poet's Genius, a higher form of intuition and Wisdom or what we may call the individual's True Self. Blake's cosmogony interprets the Demiurge as an entity named Urizen (or "reason") or Los, who is the creator of the visible world. In the first chapter of Blake's First Book of Urizen, the speaker seeks to know the identity of whoever "form'd this abominable void / This soul-shudd'ring vacuum"xxii. The speaker tells us that some say it is Urizen, a creature who is described as "the dark power", who is "hid" and "unknown" xxiii. In the third chapter, the speaker describes the Demiurge as being hounded by fierce anguish and quenchless flames, sources of antagonism from which he furiously

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tries to escapexxiv.

As he struggles to escape these

flames of Eternal fury the Demiurge builds the World as a place of shelter away from these ravenous fires, which could easily be seen as the Light, or awareness of, the True God, which manifests as Destruction in the Visible World because it is antithetical to the ordered cosmos. The speaker even notes that an entity called Los round the dark globe of Urizen, kept watch for Eternals to confinexxv. This is the very same notion of the Demiurge trapping the scattered Divine Sparks within his visible world, as a reaction against the Revelation of the One before him. Blake was a visionary poet, who spoke of receiving angelic visions and of communicating with otherworldly entities. However, when asked about the place in which he saw these angelic visions, Blake would simply gesture towards his head. His poetry was mostly self-published with his own illustrations, using his own method of engraving and inking copper plates which were used to make prints, and all of his artistic output was said to be inspired by his mystical experiences. Particularly relevant to our study is his description of the nature of poetry, which is very much

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a Holy Art, and which is derived not from the human being, but from something called the Poetic Genius. This Genius has been interpreted in many ways, most often becoming synonymous with the imagination itself. In All Religions Are One, Blake claims that the Poetic Genius is the true man, and that the body or outward form of man is derived from the Poetic Genius. This true man can be seen, from a Gnostic perspective, as the Divine pneuma, or the Self behind the self. The outward form of man is derived from this Genius in the same way that the image of Man created by the Demiurge was an imitation of the form of the original Light-Adam, which was an image of the True God. Blake sought to prove the existence of this Poetic Genius in this way:
As none by traveling over known lands can find out the unknown. So from already acquired knowledge Man could not acquire more. Therefore an universal Poetic Genius exists.xxvi

In other words, man must have access, in whatever qualified way, to supramundane Knowledge in order to even conceive of or approach the examination of this Knowledge. This ties in with our notion of Gnosis, in

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which we propose that it is the pre-existent principle in the Pneumatic which allows for experiences of metaphysical Recollection and Gnosis, an Insight which due to its supramundane nature could never be ascertained from the mundane world of the senses. Distance: Innocence and Experience The theme of Distance is central to Blakes ideas of innocence and experience. This notion is derived from the collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience, which were published with Blakes own illustrations as individual volumes in 1789 and 1793, respectively, and as one collected volume in 1794. The central motif is best described as an opposition between the notions of innocence (associated with childhood or nature) and experience (associated with adulthood and a distance from nature). A greater virtue is given to the idea of innocence, whereas the world of experience is seen as being corrupt and limiting. These two notions can be interpreted, for our purposes, as representing temporal states of being (childhood and adulthood) which are symbolically representative of the original Self and the Ego-

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Consciousness, respectively.

The Distance between

these two states of Being is measured in Time, which grinds on inexorably and works to obscure and conceal the True Nature of reality. Indeed, Blake sees the human experience as a process of corruption which, over time, not only destroys the notion of innocence but also brings attention to its weaknesses as well. These weaknesses are a result of this "innocence" being a worldly and imperfect reflection of a higher Innocence, yet another example of two notions separated, and alienated, by Distance. In a Gnostic context, we can imagine the process of experience as a process of gradual accretion, where the Divine Spark is increasingly obscured by layers of material experience and existence. For Blake, the individual became increasingly corrupted by the world around him through the experience of its institutions and its restrictions. The human spirit seemed to blossom in a state of freedom, which is symbolized by childhood, but decay under the influence of rules and restrictive doctrines. The distrust of institutions is important because it illustrates a recognition of the importance of personal experience,

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particularly in relation to the Divine.

Just as the

Christian Gnostics understood that God was within and that no priest could intercede on their behalf, Blake understood that institutions and doctrines only served to introduce Error, and to oppress the individual. Despite all of the problems associated with Experience, it proves inescapable to each and every one of us; we are afflicted by the Error of the world more with every breath we take. And as time goes on we find ourselves alienated from the freedoms of our youth, separated from our Divine origins. However, our Innocence is not eternally lost, for we have the power to experience that state again through the Poetic Genius. In other words, through the mystical Art of Poesy, if it is truly inspired and authentic, the individual is able to experience No-Mind, the total lapse of egoconsciousness which allows the Genius to commune freely with our world via the medium of poetry. And though we have been oppressed, and though we have suffered, we can use this Genius, which is beyond Time and its corrupting effects, to find our way back again. Indeed, the Genius allows the individual to roll back time. It is as though poetry is the voice of our Divinity

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- illuminating the darkness around us and showing us the true nature of all things, past and future. By re-experiencing lost memories and feelings which are derived from our years of Innocence through glimpses of Gnosis, we are reminded of the connection we had with the Divine; though we never saw the Light, we felt its warmth. We finally come to see and to feel the Distance which separates us from Truth. But though we were closer to Truth in the past, we were also naive we were unable to comprehend the nature of our universe or to question the nature of our own existence. Without the key of Experience, we would find ourselves as children again, doomed to walk again headlong into a tempest of utter alienation and darkness, a tunnel which grows longer and deeper with time. Thus, we must use this Key to free ourselves from this dialectic of Innocence and Experience, the dual process of Solve and Coagula, the very breath of the Cosmos. To illustrate these notions we can juxtapose two poems, one drawn from the collection entitled Songs of Innocence and one from the collection called Songs of Experience. These two volumes were published together and were meant to be interpreted in light of one

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another. Certain poems are painted in a lighter shade in the former collection while featuring a much darker counterpart work in the latter. An important thing to note, for the purposes of our study, is that the reader is able to interpret the two collections of poems in light of one another, a task which is made possible by the figurative Distance between the reader and the text. But the crucial Distance here is that between the two individual collections of poetry. From the former collection comes the poem "The Lamb", which begins with the question "Little Lamb who made thee / Dost thou know who made thee" and goes on to equate the lamb with the figure of Christxxvii. The lamb is seen as a benevolent creature, symbolic of the Christ in its goodness. The lamb is seen as a reflection of its Creator (think of man created in the image of a benevolent god). This theme of creation is continued, albeit in a much darker shade of insight, in "The Tyger", the counterpart to The Lamb which is found in Songs of Experience. The poem begins: "Tyger Tyger, burning bright, / In the forests of the night; / What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" In this second poem, the

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speaker has the benefit of viewing a particular creature through a lens of "experience" rather than innocence. And because of this, the speaker is not content to marvel at the beauty of the Tyger as was done with the Lamb; rather the speaker thinks beyond the superficial Beauty of the creature and delves deeper into its Nature. The speaker ponders the wild nature of the beast, of its potential for violence and for death and destruction (this is the Tyger's "fearful symmetry")xxviii. Thus the speaker begins to wonder how a benevolent Creator could craft a beast of both profound beauty and profound cruelty. The speaker goes on to wonder: "When the stars threw down their spears / And water'd heaven with their tears: / Did he smile his work to see? / Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"xxix. These two poems were deliberately made to "match up" with one another in Blake's collection, featuring similar style and construction as well as subject matter. What is crucial for our study is the fact that via the passage of Time, and the accretion of what Blake calls experience, the speaker comes to see that those creatures which he had revered as beautiful works of the Creator are actually possessed of as much, if not

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more, hideousness than docile Beauty. This Epiphany was only made possible by the Distance between Innocence and Experience, by the passage of Time. The speaker uses the Art of poesy, which is Divinely inspired, to both separate and combine the two periods of childhood and adulthood in order to see them as they are, and to learn about each in light of the other. And though the Distance, the passage of Time, is ultimately corrupting, for the Gnostic it also allows for redemption because it allows for Recollection. The speaker in The Tyger sees the hand of the Demiurge in the form of the Tyger, and becomes alive to the destructive potential of that Demiurge by thinking of the destructive nature of his creation. This is the speakers recognition of the Distance between the Demiurge and the True God; this is the moment at which the speaker realizes that the two distinct gods exist. Thus, the recognition of Distance leads the Gnostic to an awareness of the Nature of this worlds Creator and the Nature of the Gnostic himself. As we will see, the notion of Distance is just as important, if not moreso, to the works of William Wordsworth.

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X The Gnostic Element of Distance in Wordsworth

"Here must thou be, O Man! Strength to thyself; no Helper hast thou here; Here keepest thou thy individual state: No other can divide with thee this work, No secondary hand can intervene To fashion this ability. 'Tis thine, The prime and vital principle is thine In the recesses of thy nature..." The Prelude, Book XIII, 188-96

The Supramundane: Organic Sensibility Scholars often debate the extent to which Wordsworth either conflated or separated the ideas of "sense" and "imagination". Many have argued that the author believed that all knowledge issued from the senses; this idea is challenged by those who believe that Wordsworth also felt that the imagination, or the inner workings of the mind, were, inherently, creative. Indeed, if all Knowledge comes from our senses, how could the imagination (which we have chosen to acknowledge as a so-called "sixth sense") be

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independently creative?

Where does this creative

potential originate from, if not from the senses? According to F. Christensen, Wordsworth's poetry "seems to claim at certain rare moments the power of direct intuition"xxx. This "direct intuition" may be understood as Gnosis itself, the direct experience of the Divine. And it is this intuition, or the imagination itself, which is the subject of Wordsworth's theory of "creative sensibility". notion of "creative Though Wordsworth was sensibility" shares similar certainly a unique figure in the pre-Romantic era, the philosophical elements with Blakes notion of the Poetic Genius. The idea of "creative sensibility", generally speaking, is symbolized in most of Wordsworth's poetry as a closeness to Nature, which is present most abundantly and most directly at birth. As time wears on, this sensibility is progressively deadened by the figurative and/or literal "weight of the world". Similar to Blake's binary of Innocence and Experience, once one comes to adulthood, the individual is able to recollect those moments of youth which were imbued with the creative essence via the medium of what he

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termed "spots of time". These moments of Nostalgia, or "spots of time", will be addressed shortly. For now, we can look to a specific example the notion of creative sensibility in Wordsworth's poetic work. In Book II of Wordsworth's The Prelude, the speaker recalls a certain feeling, or essence, which seemed to be abundant within him during his youth, but had seemed to fade away with age:
"...But let this at least Be not forgotten, that I still retained My first creative sensibility, That by the regular action of the world My soul was unsubdued. A plastic power Abode with me, a forming hand, at times Rebellious, acting in a devious mood, A local spirit of its own, at war With general tendency..."xxxi

The mechanism by which the world "subdues" the soul is called here the "regular action". From our particular perspective, and in our own unique interpretation, we can see that the "regular action" of the world corresponds to the proper functioning of the cosmic system; in other words, the process by which the soul is

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ensnared by the machinery of the Demiurge.

It is,

indeed, "regular" because it corresponds directly to a well-functioning cosmos. The notion of childhood is addressed in the few lines preceding our selection above; the speaker is telling his audience not to forget the creative sensibility which he once retained in his youth. Distance: Spots of Time There are moments in our lifetimes when a certain sensory stimulus, such as the smelling of a familiar fragrance, leads our mind directly back in time to a moment frozen in the past. A man smells a familiar perfume, and immediately his mind is filled with memories of a former lover. But the recollection is not so general: he remembers a specific moment in time, and everything about it, re-experienced through his current, older ego-consciousness. Anything associated with that moment is re-experienced through nostalgia: tastes, smells, visions, feelings. All of the senses can potentially play a part in re-broadcasting that moment in time to the conscious mind; each sense becomes a tentacle of the moment. The ultimate effect is the

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bridging of the gap between the Past and the Present. This is the fundamental Distance which Wordsworth is concerned with, and as we shall see, it is almost identical to the distance between Blakes Innocence and Experience. This is, generally speaking, what Wordsworth would call a "spot in time". It is almost like two quantum-entangled objects, the fusion of past and present, separated spatially in time yet perceived as one moment. Key to Wordsworth's notion of the "spots of time" is the notion that each moment that can potentially be experienced (the moment frozen in the past) is highly significant to the individual, and only by recalling that moment in perfect mental clarity can the person understand why that moment in the past was so profound. For a far more succinct and direct definition, we can look to the words of Wordsworth himself: "There are in our existence spots of time / Which with distinct pre-eminence retain / A renovating Virtue"xxxii. Are nourished and invisibly repaired"xxxiii. This These "renovating Virtue" is the power by which "our Minds / "spots" are created in our minds whenever a

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transformative revelation occurs during our lifetime, and through the experience of recollection, later in life, we are able to not only remember the event in perfect clarity but also to add a further, newer level of meaning to it. This notion of hindsight and its reparative properties is strikingly similar to Blake's system of Innocence and Experience in its recognition of Distance. The particular Spot of Time which we will focus on in our study is found in The Prelude. The Prelude is an autobiographical poem which grew throughout the years from two volumes to thirteen, serving as a record of the poet's intellectual and personal growth throughout the years. Though we will not delve too much into his autobiography, it is crucial to at least understand the significance of the French Revolution in Wordsworth's intellectual development. In the early stages of the revolution, Wordsworth emphatically supported the cause of liberty and was consumed with a profound idealism concerning the rebellion. But as the revolution turned more and more bloody, Wordsworth became more and more disillusioned with the cause, and this remarkable event

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became a crucial turning point in his thinking. Idealism began to give way, and a strong emphasis on the individual (rather than any mass of people) emerged in the poet's work. This is yet another example of Distance: the gulf between Wordsworths expectations and the reality of the revolution. One particular Spot of Time which Wordsworth recalls in The Prelude resonates strongly within a Gnostic interpretation. A young William, a schoolboy on holiday, comes upon a boat tethered inside of a cave.
"...No sooner had I sight of this small Skiff, Discovered thus by unexpected chance, Than I unloosed her tether and embarked."xxxiv

The young William rows out onto a lake, and becomes mesmerized by the sight of a majestic cliff high above in the distance, a rocky summit which served as the horizon line and beyond which young William could see a starry sky.
"...I fixed a steady view Upon the top of that same craggy ridge, The bound of the horizon, for behind Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky."xxxv

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But as William draws nearer and nearer to the object of his journey, the feeling of wonder within him turns to dread, as he is awestruck by the awesome size of the Cliff. More strikingly, William begins to feel that it is not he who is approaching the Cliff, but the Cliff which is approaching him.
"...I struck, and struck again, And, growing still in stature, the huge Cliff Rose up between me and the stars, and still, With measured motion, like a living thing, Strode after me.xxxvi

After this experience, William's mood and his thoughts seemed to darken.
"...in my thoughts There was a darkness, call it solitude, Or blank desertion, no familiar shapes Of hourly objects, images of trees, Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields..."

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And then the truly profound closing lines of the stanza:

"But huge and mighty Forms that do not live Like living men moved slowly through my mind By day and were the trouble of my dreams."xxxvii

The young William had, on some level, felt guilty about stealing the boat, and when he caught sight of the majestic Cliff, he imagined that Nature was punishing him for his transgression. However, as an adult Wordsworth looks back on this memory and sees a greater Truth in the experience; in other words he understands why this particular memory became so important to him and why it became a Spot of Time. The real significance of this event, as informed by Experience and hindsight, is that this was the first time that William learned that there was something greater than himself. He would go on to think of this "thing" as Nature itself, and his affinity for unfettered Nature was often expressed in his poetry as an emphasis on images of rural, as opposed to city, life. But we shall take our interpretation further and place it into a Gnostic context. Yes, this Spot of Time served the revelatory purpose of communicating to

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William the existence of something greater than or beyond himself. However, whereas Wordsworth identifies this as a desirable Force (the force of Nature), perhaps it is none other than the Demiurge. And the terror which struck the poet as he paddled madly back the way he came was the Fear with which the Demiurge governs all of existence, an emotional manifestation of a reaction to limitations, to Divine Laws. It is the terror felt at the edge of the Abyss as one gazes into oblivion. And as a young man, the poet flees in fright from this force, because as one who is closer to Innocence (in the sense of Blake) he is more capable of perceiving the true essence of the Demiurge: authoritative and punitive. William feels as though he is being singled out and punished by God for his theft, the recourse of a vengeful god. On a symbolic level we might consider the journey towards the Cliff as the poet's journey towards Knowledge, the passage across a vast Distance. And just as the Cliff rises up to scare him away, the Demiurge rises up to blind the poet to Knowledge. And as the Cliff partially obscures the starry sky, the Demiurge partially obscures the Alien God.

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Perhaps what Wordsworth may not have realized, due to the intercession of malevolent Forces, is that his own Creative Sensibility, his own Poetic Genius, was who he truly was and that nothing was larger, or greater, than that.

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EPILOGUE This brief study is wholly incapable of capturing either the magnitude or the minutiae of Gnosticism in sufficient detail, and the reader is encouraged to consult the books referenced in this work for a broader understanding. The crucial notion of our study is Distance: between Essence and Existence, between Reality and Illusion, between the self and the Self. The recognition of this Distance explains the flawed mechanics of existence, and implies that all outward manifestations in the physical universe are either purely illusory or their inner Essence is buried beneath layer after layer of obscurity. The notion of the Divine Element radiating outward, or falling downward, necessitates a gradual loss of Divinity throughout Space and Time. Thus, the idea of "progress" becomes abhorrent. One must imagine the possibility that it is actually the modern man who is most primitive, in terms of his relation to his Divine perfection. There is a reason that the youngest of Ages is always the "Golden" Age. Every plight of man is doomed to failure. Our

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successes are merely mistakes masquerading as solutions. Thomas Jefferson once noted that if man were able to live without government, he would have never found the need to construct one. All of our efforts to tame the wild nature of man are essentially utilitarian because no society has ever eliminated its problems completely (hunger, violence, poverty, blasphemy), we have only managed to statistically reduce the number of problems. Eventually we arrive at a ratio of more people saved than people lost; yet still there are those who are lost. This can only be justified as the greatest good for the greatest number of people, and is itself proof that society is incapable of completely taming the nature of man. Thus one may come to understand that neither Man nor society can ever be perfected, and this is because both are products of a flawed Architect, a flawed programmer. All things fall apart, and all things must eventually pass away. And then the process begins anew. A new Golden Age dawns, only to disappear amidst the heavy shadows of yet another great Dusk. And this is how the Architect of our universe prolongs his reign, prolongs

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his very existence. The Divine Light remains trapped within the Outer Darkness, alienated from the Living Light of the Pleroma. And this universe of ceaseless birth and gruesome death will live on for as long as the Divine Sparks remain within the Outer Darkness, beyond the Pleroma. Only by remembering, only by turning one's Self completely around can one hope to return those vital Sparks back to the womb of resplendent Light and Truth. And only then, robbed of his false dominion, will the Tyrant fall screaming beneath the black tides of utter Oblivion whence he emerged.

This is the Call to the Light. You must Remember who you Are, And where you came from. You must Consume the Void.

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97

References:

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i Rudolph, Kurt. Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism. San Francisco: Harper, 1977. 70-71.

ii Jonas, Hans. The Gnostic Religion. 3rd Edition. Beacon Press, 2001. 336.

iii Rudolph. 59.

iv Evola, Julius. The Hermetic Tradition. Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1995. 31-32.

v Ibid. 20-21.

vi Ibid. 21-22.

vii Moore, Edward. Gnosticism. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. iep.utm.edu. 2001.

viii Rudolph. 72.

ix Ibid.

x Ibid. 72-73.

xi Ibid. 74.

xii Ibid. 74-75.

xiii Ibid. 78.

xiv Ibid. 96.

xv Ibid. 70.

xvi Evola. 28.

xvii Rudolph. 59.

xviii Evola. 6.

xix LaCarriere, Jacques. The Gnostics. San Francisco: City Lights, 1989. 45.

xx The Nag Hammadi Library. Ed. James M. Robinson. New York: Harper, 1990. 126-138.

xxi Rudolph. 91-92.

xxii The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake. Ed. David. V. Erdman. New York: Anchor, 1988. 70.

xxiii Ibid.

xxiv Ibid. 73.

xxv Ibid.

xxvi Ibid. 1-2.

xxvii Ibid. 8-9.

xxviii Ibid. 24-25.

xxix Ibid.

xxx Christensen, Francis. Creative Sensibility in Wordsworth. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. 45.4 (Oct. 1946): 361.

xxxi Wordsworth, William. The Prelude, Book II. The Major Works. Ed. Stephen Gill. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Lines 377-385.

xxxii Ibid. Lines 258-260.

xxxiii Ibid. Lines 264-265.

xxxiv Ibid. Lines 380-382.

xxxv Ibid. Lines 397-400.

xxxvi Ibid. Lines 408-412.

xxxvii Ibid. Lines 420-427.