Are Witches Gnostic?

[Background: I am first and foremost a Gnostic, spiritually, religiously, and philosophically. I have also been involved in magickal study for over 20 years, having being initiated into several Witchcraft tradions and delivering workshops and lectures with such people as Starhawk, Ray Buckland, and Janet and Stewart Farrar. I became involved with the Caliphate OTO in 1988 and ran Parzival Camp in Victoria British Columbia, and served as a Deacon in the OTO's Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica. During this period I also hosted and interviewed Robert Anton Wilson, Antero Ali, and Soror Meral of the College of Thelema. Since leaving the Caliphate OTO I became involved with the "Akkadite" A.'. A.'. - which bases their study on the Work of Charles Stansfeld Jones 9°=2, and an independent Ordo Templi Occidentalis group known as M.'. M.'. G.'. I am currently in the process of transferring my Diaconate to the Apostolic Johannite Church - the only legally registered Gnostic Church in Canada. I am a Witch, though not a Wiccan, and while there are many philosophical elements of Thelema I admire I do not call myself a Thelemite. Caught up now?]

The purpose of this longish post is to illustrate that a bridge exists between Wicca and Traditional and Apostolic Gnosticism by way of Thelema-as-Gnostic-revival.

Some terms: (all of which are by necessity gross and incomplete generalizations, forgive me).

Witchcraft is a practical, magical religious philosophy that is Gnostic in essence though not in origin. Its tenets are animism (an inherent soul in all things), and the use of intuitive states to communicate and interact with this soul, often for practical purposes (healing, fertility, success). These states are accessed via poetry, myth, and psychodrama.

Gnosticism is a pre-Christian syncretic religion which combines Roman, Kemetic (Egyptian), Hellenic and Judaic themes and philosophy. Its central tenet is that the liberating experience of knowing oneself profoundly and intuitively - gnosis - is essential in knowing and experiencing the Divine. Its central rite is the Eucharist, which is the manifestation of incarnate Divinity in the form of Mithras/Dionysis, Wasir/Heru (Osiris/Horus) and the Logos/Christ. While much of Gnosticism resembles Christianity aesthetically and structurally (particularly since the Gnostic Revival of the 19th Century), it is an older and distinct religion in its own right.

Thelema is a 20th Century religion drawing from Rabelaisian philosophy ("Do what thou Wilt") and Kemetic aesthetics. Its central document is a prose poem written in a trance state in 1904 by Aleister Crowley. Also Gnostic in essence, Thelema demands its adherents discover their true nature and maintain its integrity in all things. Its central rite is the 1913 Gnostic Mass, a re-envisioning of the Eucharist. Thelema had originally three main organizations: A masonic (some would argue pseudo-Masonic) fraternity, the OTO (which predated Thelema but a majority of Lodges chose to embrace the new religion); a more public Church, the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (at least those congregations of the pre-existing EGC which chose to proceed along Thelemic lines) and the A.'.A.'., an initiatory system of meditation and alchemy with a strongly Buddhistic and Kabalistic orientation.

Wicca is a 20th Century agrarian/folkloric religion with central themes of the sacred environment and the Divine Feminine. It was conceived in its entirety by Gerald Gardner, who originally gave it the trappings of nudism, Co-Masonry, and practical occultism, along with the nostalgic aesthetic of Witchcraft by way of Shakespeare, Goya, Grimm, and the medieval Inquisitors. It is distinct from Witchcraft in that Wicca is specific "operational envelope" while Witchcraft is more general, and free of Wicca's presumptive histories and hierarchies.

[While I personally find the modern Wiccan aesthetic disingenuous (pretentious magical names, the disrespectful pillaging of myriad cultures, and irresponsible historical revisionism) this is not to imply at all that there is not genuine religious experience to be had there. I respect the sincere efforts of Wiccans to work toward personal and planetary enlightenment.[

Many Wiccans will take serious issue with the above definition, having read repeatedly that Wicca is a surviving pan-European megalithic Goddess cult, the word having Teutonic origins. This understanding is in its entirety a fiction.

Most Wiccans have heard the "rumour" that Gerald Gardner employed Aleister Crowley to create rituals for a new, populist occult religion - and that these rumours have been thoroughly discounted. Readers will encounter how Gardner met Crowley at the end of his life in 1947, when he was enfeebled by drug addiction and old age, and that their meeting was an unique, casual introduction. Such dismissals are likewise false. The facts bear out the assertion that;

- While some ancestral trappings of pre-Christian Europe survived through the centuries (maypoles, superstitions, folk dances, nursery rhymes) these cannot be said to constitute a religion. There is no evidence whatsoever of a magical Goddess religion being practiced in England before Gardner and after the Christianization of Europe.

- Evidence supports that Gardner and Crowley knew each other as early as 1936

- Gardner was a member of the OTO and had a charter from Crowley to initiate others into OTO

- Wicca was specifically invented by Gardner to popularize Thelemic Gnosticism (specifically the Gnostic Mass).

- Upon Crowley's death, Lady Freida Harris - the artist of the popular Thoth Tarot - understood Gardner (mistakenly) to be the head of the OTO in Europe. It was viewed by many within Crowley's circle that what Gardner was doing (Wicca) was merely an extension and performance of the Gnostic Mass.

- Gardner's Third Degree Initiation Ritual of the original Wicca is an exact copy of the Gnostic Mass

- The Charge of the Goddess used in all "Traditional" Wiccan groups is comprised verbatim of quotes from Crowley's Book of the Law

Bishop T Allen Greenfield has researched this issue extensively. A very long article here

"My bottom line is that Wicca is not related historically in any way other than literary inspiration to any aboriginal pagan religion. It is, in fact, a product of the 1930s and 40s, hugely influenced by the rituals of Freemasonry, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO). It, in fact, is a errant direct descendent of an OTO encampment in London chartered by Aleister Crowley and under direction of Crowley's direct student and would-be successor, Gerald Gardner. It is interesting to observe that Crowley's Acting Master of Agape Lodge OTO in America in the same period also wrote extensively a few years later on a "revival of witchcraft". [...]

"The only man I can think of who could have invented the rites," [Gardner] offers, "was the late Aleister Crowley....possibly he borrowed things from the cult writings, or more likely someone may have borrowed expressions from him.... " WITCHCRAFT TODAY (p 47) [...]

As we have seen, Wicca since Gardner's time has been watered down in many of its expressions into a kind of mushy white-light New Age, religion, with far less of the strong sexuality characteristic of Gardnerian Wicca, though, also, sometimes with less pretense as well. [...]

In introducing a goddess element into their theology, Crowley and Gardner both understood the yin/yang, male/female fundamental polarity of the universe. Radical feminist Neopagans have taken this balance and altered it, however unintentionally, into a political feminist agenda, centered around a near-monotheistic worship of the female principle, in a bizarre caricature of patriarchal Christianity.

So What?
Here's how I understand it.

- Many Wiccans I speak to have a common experience. A love of the sense of community, an honouring of the role of myth, imagination and play, a strong attraction to the role of the Divine Feminine - but a growing disaffection for paperback-populism and spice-rack-sisterhood of modern Wicca. Many also seek a deeper or more fully developed theology.

- Witchcraft, as it is exercised today in the context of Wicca is a deliberate expression of Gnosticism, via the Gnostic Revival Churches of the 19th Century, Theosophy, Thelema, and similar currents. Wiccans are already heirs to the legacy which many of them seek.

- As we Gnostics embrace Thelemites, Freemasons, Theosophists, Hermeticists, and Christians into our celebrations, so too must we make room and welcome for those from the Pagan community.

- Pagans/Neopagans/Wiccans tend largely to be from Catholic backgrounds and are at first extremely skeptical of Church work, which they identify with rigidity and authoritarianism. They should be invited to decode the Eucharist and the Orders from a mythic, almost Jungian perspective - as we do.

- Fundamentally, most Witches are very comfortable with the practical philosophies of Gnosticism - the honouring of the intuitive voice, the strong sense of personal responsibility, as well as specific Sophianic writings, such as Thunder, Perfect Mind.

- We do this NOT out of a desire to proselytize, and NOT out of a condemnation of deficiency in Wicca (or any other religion), but for the simple reason that many people are hungry for what we're doing. Many young people who find themselves to be looking for Gnosticism often explore Paganism first, as it is so much more accessible (and the book covers are cooler).

The Red Pill

"Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know, you can't explain. But you feel it. You've felt it your entire life. That there's something wrong with the world.

You don't know what it is, but it's there...like a splinter in you're mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?

The Matrix is everywhere. It's all around us, even in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you pay your taxes. The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes, to blind you from the truth."

"What truth?"

"That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind."

Speaking of Gnostic films starring Canadian-born Buddhists with Hawaiian names, A Scanner Darkly.

The Degree To Which I Am A Robot Is Astonishing

Sunday, and I grind coffee beans, sprinkle a little cinnamon in the Bodum, put the kettle on to boil. I enjoy the hiss-click-whoosh of the gas flame.I return to the laptop, kids, Monsters Inc. in the background. The kettle's whistle gets my attention, and I return to the stove - only to grab the teapot, dump the old teabag, insert a new teabag, and make a pot of tea. Completely on auto-pilot.

I don't even realize this until I go to press the coffee down five minutes later.

Sin is a fascinating idea, that still dominates our superficially secular culture. At its root, it denotes lack, a shortfall or insufficiency. The Greek idea of sin literally means "missing the mark", like in archery, aiming for the bull's eye and hitting instead an adjacent circle, or the green turf below. It's not a particularly judgmental idea, and actually rather forgiving. Oops, I missed, try again.

So my sin is that I missed, just then with the coffee. It's not about the coffee, of course, but rather my aim, which is to live in a state of mindfulness.

"The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware." - Henry Miller

It's not enough for me, as a Gnostic, to seek gnosis. I got my gnosis, thank you very much. It was very nice, really. Perception into the infinite. Stripping away the veils of dokos. Whammo. Enlightenment. Right, check. Nobody tells you that hanging on to it will be the tricky part. Staying awake.

Gnosis is by no means the last stop on the Gnostic train. We're called Gnostics, rather than Pistics (although that's a great name for a band, when you think about it) because of our views on soterology, not because gnosis is something we actually worship. No, gnosis just shows us what the map looks like, it doesn't actually get us anywhere. But it's a necessary start.

Where I choose to get to, with my illuminated map, is to Her - Sophia, who is the Person of Wisdom, the only face we can put on the Divine, that I can become one with Her. For this, I need gnosis not as an intermittent epiphany, but as a residing Charis, a state of Grace. That's the tricky part. That's what I'm aiming for.

CS Jones: A Post-Thelemic Gnostic

Charles Robert Stansfeld Jones b. April 2, 1886 London England; d. Feb 24, 1950, North Vancouver, BC, Canada. Wife Ruby, son Anthony, daughter Deirdre.

Occultist and author, Jones (who wrote under the name "Frater Achad") was a member of a Gnostic Fraternity known as the Order of the Silver Star (the A.'. A.'.), founded in 1907. This was a reconstruction and refinement (with a decidedly Buddhist spin) of the Order of the Golden Dawn, whose members included Oscar Wilde, WB Yeats, and the notorious Aleister Crowley.

Jones became an early student of Crowley's work, and adopted the new religion of Thelema as his own. Thelema is a Gnostic religion promoting a kind of anarchic theosophy based on the credo "Do What thou Wilt". The basic tenet is that each individual has their own inherent path, and that each person has a responsibility to respect and adhere to their specific calling.

Crowley referred to Jones as his "Magickal Son" due largely to his decryption of Crowley's seminal "The Book of the Law". Crowley and Jones enjoyed a correspondence in 1909 that endured until Crowley's death in 1947, and the two briefly cohabitated in New York in 1918.

Jones was the head of the Ordo Templi Orientis in North America, a Freemasonic Order which had its first temple - Agape Lodge No. 1 - at 1352 Lonsdale in North Vancouver. While the original OTO dissolved in 1962, several revivals exist today throughout the world.

Jones' experiments with Buddhist meditation and "astral projection" were meticulously documented with a scientific discipline. An accountant by profession, he had a natural aptitude for the practice of Qabala and wrote extensively on this subject. His foundational writings "QBL", "The Egyptian Revival", and "Anatomy of the Body of God" were privately published in Chicago between 1923 and 1925. Among these is a collection of poems entitled "31 Hymns to the Star Goddess" and a Gnostic exegesis of Wagner's "Parzival" (one of Jones' Magickal names).

In 1926, after financing the publication of a number of Crowley's writings, Jones amicably terminated all business dealings with Crowley.

Jones joined the Roman Catholic Church in 1934 in an effort to convert others to the Gnostic Catholic Church. For this percieved disloyalty, Crowley expelled Jones from the OTO on October 1 of that year. While this would appear to have strained the relationship, two years later Crowley asked Jones to finance further publication of Crowley's writings, which Jones declined citing their agreement of 1926. Crowley also confirmed Jones' initiation to a very advanced degree of the A.'. A.'. in 1938.

Around 1940 he befriended Deep Cove author Malcolm Lowry ("Under the Volcano") and began instructing his new friend in meditation and Magickal practice. Jones slowly developed his own spiritual aesthetic centered around the religion of the ancient Egyptian goddess Ma'at, Goddess of truth and wisdom. In 1947 he formed the "Fellowship of Ma-Ion" which sought to continue and extend the A.'. A.'.s work. His efforts culminated in his declaration of the "Aeon of Ma'at" on his 62nd birthday, April 2 1948.

Two anectodes characterize his eccentricity and humour: in one, he was reported to cast off his clothes in downtown Vancouver, and renounce the veils of illusion.

In another, when someone asked why he didn't use Magick to repair his immobilized Ford, he replied "I tried that, but she just drips oil."

Jones died in his home on February 24, 1950 and is buried in North Vancouver Cemetery, plot 528-1.

Valentinus

In Memoriam of St. Valentinus:

"O such magnanimity, such that he draws himself downward to death while eternal life encloses him. Having divested himself of these perishable rags he clothed himself with the imperishability which none has the power to take from him."

From The Gospel of Truth

For more information on Valentinus, I refer you to Terje's wonderful, if infrequent, blog.

The Subtle Knife

"There are two great powers," the man said, "and they've been fighting since time began. Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other. Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and to submit."

- Philip Pullman, "The Subtle Knife"

Mea Maxima Culpa

I have a confession to make.

I'm global warming. Climate change on a massive scale. I'm carbon emissions, and I'm the hole in the ozone layer. I endanger species.

I'm what's hopeless about Africa, and tragic about North Korea. I'm heart attacks in the financial district and teen suicide. I'm terror, and I'm the War on Terror. I'm both the need and the contempt for the Geneva Convention. I'm the Archons. I am the Demiurge. I created all this ghastly injustice, and I did it today. Let me explain.

Philip K. Dick once said that reality is what keeps going when you stop believing in it. It doesn't care whether you observe it, or worship it, or doubt it. This is why the phrase Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam - "to the greater glory of God" - always drove me nuts. God does not need our glory, nor can we give God greater glory.

But the Archons, on the other hand, they need us. They're starving for our attention, for our acknowledgment. Money is their invention, as is time (not early morning vs. late afternoon time, but Wednesday-at-2:15-Pacific time, late for a meeting time, last Friday of the month time). We need to participate in these things for them to have any substance. Our cooperation - our submission - is their fuel. And we're not going to unplug from these things any time soon. So our credit cards and gas prices and hamburgers give the Archons form, make them real. They are not real without us, which is why they created us. They feed on our fear and our confusion, and in turn we make them substantial and important and god-I-hope-this-cheque-doesn't-bounce. Their names are Jealousy and Regret and Covetousness and Greed and Malice and Phobia and Rage. These are the Creators of the World, and they are each of them parasites who cannot survive for a heartbeat without us.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that we all run off to the woods and live in Unabomber shacks. Nor will I be handing over my cell phone, iPod, VISA card and BMW keys any time soon. But Praxis demands "right-livelihood", and "right-actions", and it's worth remembering that the world is the way the world is because of the choices we make, individually and collectively. And when the world is horrifying, it is because we have horrified it, one Wal-Mart visit or GM seed at a time. Spiritually this doesn't necessarily mean walking away from everything, becoming a vegan, and wearing bark mulch - it simply means acknowledging and taking responsibility for our participation. This is not Original Sin, this is This Morning's Sin, which is really just a kind of sleepwalking.

There seems to be a need for the Gnostic, if only for the occasional moment, to step outside the Created World (once you can, I'm assuming a post-gnosis glimpse here) like a fisher needs to get outside the boat to patch it periodically. If Lent is about anything now, it is about taking just such a moment.

Emboldened by this clarity, we can re-enter the boat, and attend to rigging and sails and engines and everything else that keeps our lives ticking over. The difference is to negotiate with these things in full Knowledge of what they are, and who you are. And to do it with honour, with wit, with love, and with the secret joy of getting away with something.

I Changed Myself Into My Seed

"And I went into the realm of darkness and I endured till I entered the middle of the prison. And the foundations of chaos shook. And I hid myself from them because of their wickedness, and they did not recognize me.

"Again I returned for the second time, and I went about. I came forth from those who belong to the light, which is I, the remembrance of the Pronoia. I entered into the midst of darkness and the inside of Hades, since I was seeking (to accomplish) my task. And the foundations of chaos shook, that they might fall down upon those who are in chaos and might destroy them. And again I ran up to my root of light, lest they be destroyed before the time.

"Still for a third time I went - I am the light which exists in the light, I am the remembrance of the Pronoia - that I might enter into the midst of darkness and the inside of Hades. And I filled my face with the light of the completion of their aeon. And I entered into the midst of their prison, which is the prison of the body. And I said, 'He who hears, let him get up from the deep sleep.' And he wept and shed tears. Bitter tears he wiped from himself and he said, 'Who is it that calls my name, and from where has this hope come to me, while I am in the chains of the prison?' And I said, 'I am the Pronoia of the pure light; I am the thinking of the virginal Spirit, who raised you up to the honored place. Arise and remember that it is you who hearkened, and follow your root, which is I, the merciful one, and guard yourself against the angels of poverty and the demons of chaos and all those who ensnare you, and beware of the deep sleep and the enclosure of the inside of Hades.

From The Apocryphon of John