History's First Conspiracy Theorists

Also, History's First UFOlogists.

From a work in progress…

GNOSTICS — WITH THEIR EXISTENTIAL DISTRUST of all authority, and their belief that the physical world is both a malicious counterfeit and a prison planet for the soul — are history’s first true conspiracy theorists. Their fevered ontology of a deceitful, inferior Demiurge (“creator for the people”), his evil minions (the Archons), and a cosmic cover-up of these truths enforced by mainstream religion should feel familiar very, very familiar to anyone browsing the Internet today.

• Gnostics saw the entire cosmos locked a dualistic struggle between the material world and the spiritual realm.

• The Demiurge (“Maker for the Masses”) and his Archons (“rulers”) keep humanity trapped in ignorance of their true nature (or “divine spark”), sustaining a cosmic conspiracy to prevent humanity’s spiritual awakening.

• The term Gnosis refers to an salvific, divine knowledge that reveals the true nature of reality, hidden from the uninitiated masses.

• Gnostics believed that only those initiated into this knowledge could understand the greater reality of the Pleroma (“the Fullness”), the purely spiritual realm of the Aeons (roughly analogous to angels).

• Gnostics saw themselves as a spiritual elite, separate from the the hylics (the materialist hoi polloi) and the psychics (“soul-bound” meaning orthodox believers).

• Like conspiracy theorists today, Gnostics were suspicious of religious and worldly authorities, viewing them as agents of the Demiurge and his Archons.

• Gnostics’ rejection of religious orthodoxy as a tool of Archontic deception render them as early debunkers of “official narratives.”

• The Gnostic of the Demiurge’s grand cosmic conspiracy is echoed today in “Truther” (an inexact term, but one that will have to do for now) beliefs about dark forces conspiring behind the scenes, orchestrating world events for their own selfish benefit.

• Like the Gnostics, Truthers see themselves as being clued into a deeper reality, one that the blind masses are oblivious to.

• Gnostics often gathered in secret and their texts were shunned by the professional scribe guilds, who were the publishing houses of their time. Again, very similar to many Truthers being “deplatformed” today.

Gnostic teachings argue the Aeons, who are emanations from the God Beyond God, reside in the Pleroma (Greek for “the fullness”), the realm of divine power and true reality. As such, they see themselves as exiles from the Pleroma, condemned to live in a lesser world of material reality.

German anti-Gnostic theologian Eric Vogelin wrote these words in his volume, Collected Works: Science, Politics and Gnosticism:

“To (the Gnostics), Christ was one of many emissaries from the Light-World, who came to awaken the Gnostic to their true identity. In short, humanity were alien prisoners of a mad Demiurge who created the cosmos (the physical world in the Greek) so he could play God.

“One feature may be singled out as the central element in this varied and extensive creation of meaning: the experience of the world as an alien place into which man has strayed, and from which he must find his way back home to the other world of his origin.”

French Hellenist Jacques La Carriere, though far more sympathetic to the Gnostics than Vogelin, wrote this about the movement:

“Hence their feeling of having fallen onto our earth like inhabitants from a distant planet, of having strayed into the wrong galaxy, and their longing to regain their true cosmic homeland, the luminous hyper-world that shimmers beyond the great nocturnal barrier.

“Their uprooting is not merely geographical but planetary. And to treat them as aliens in the political or civic sense — which is what happened — could be nothing but an absurd misunderstanding, like giving a Martian a temporary residence visa.”

This is exactly what we saw with Heaven’s Gate, the purest modern expression of ancient Gnosticism to date.

Which raises the question — given that the Pleroma is essentially an alien world, and the Aeons and Archons are alien visitors and invaders respectively, are there any UFOs or similar extraterrestrial craft in Gnostic literature?

And the answer is, oh boy — are there ever…