As promised, a response to Tim Boucher’s “Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory” (in three parts):

Boucher is looking for a new gnosticism. I’ve always found gnosticism bewildering, if metaphysically ambitious. It has its own peculiar beauty, but as I studied it in a mystical theology class in college, I couldn’t help but think that gnosis and neoplatonism were one and the same. And who needs neoplatonism?

When you cut through all the archons, demiurges, and aeons, what gnosticism starts with, at root, is a deep sense of unease in the world. This unease is so radical that it imagines that we are not of this world, that our true home lies elsewhere, that we are trapped here in what Philip K. Dick called the “Black Iron Prison.”

Gnosis, then, is the realization of this radical truth and the story that goes with it. The story usually includes the following elements:

• The true god (or the Fullness) withdrew itself in order to make room for the creation of Creation. Ever since then, things have been fucked up.
• One of the first fucked up things to happen was the accidental creation of the Maker. Depending on who is telling the story, the Maker is evil, stupid, or both.
• This is especially fucked up for us since our particular corner of Creation was made by the Maker. You can see why gas prices are so high.
• Yet each of us still retains an original divine spark from when we were once a part of the Fullness. By learning the truth, we are able to rise above it all and return home to the Fullness, leaving the Maker and his fucked up world behind.

I have here beside me a copy of the “Gnostic Bible,” a collection of historic gnostic literature that skirts the outer limits of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Paganism. I don’t recommend it. The metaphysics are bewildering.

What Boucher seems to be doing in his post series, for one, is simplifying the story of gnosis by stripping it of its tacky neoplatonism. Our raw sense of unease has a simple explanation: this world is not our home. This world, the here and now, is a metaphorical Purgatory. No further metaphysics required.

Who is responsible for this Boucher does not say. What is responsible for it is “the Empire.” “There has only ever been one Empire,” Boucher tells us, though it’s taken many forms thoughout history. The Empire’s sole mission is its own self-preservation, a mission threatened by our own inherent creativity. It seeks to render us docile out of fear of its own demise. The result? The Black Iron Prison, a spiritual Guantanamo.

I find support for this story in biblical scholar Walter Wink’s “the Powers-That-Be” series. Wink notes that in Pauline theology Christ is regaled as victorious over the Powers-That-Be, or “powers and principalities in high places” which are “not flesh and blood.” In gnostic terminology, these are the “archons.” We can imagine new names for the Powers today: Consumerism, Imperialism, Racism, Culture Industy, Militarism, Wealth Bondage, Middle-Class Lockdown, and so on.

Don’t let the abstract names fool you: the Powers are very, very real. They control us, compel us, deceive us. Their methods have been studied by philosophers like Marx, Adorno, Foucault, Hardt and Negri. Our own true natures are hidden by the Power’s deception, and we begin to feel a deep unease. The Powers feed on the unease, promising an escape from the Black Iron Prison, but they only offer what Boucher calls a “Sham Heaven.” Inevitably, we crash after our spiritual sugar high, leaving us wanting more. This is the shape of Boucher’s “grand unified conspiracy.”

Yet there is good news. All is not lost. There are Messengers, Boucher tells us, who would tell us the secret of release. The Powers stomp them out, but the Messengers still manage to visit our spiritual prisons, not in spite of but because of their deaths. Jesus was one of those Messengers, Boucher says, and we read the Gospels wrong if we imagine the story to be taking place in Real Time (as opposed to Mythical Time). Just as there are many empires yet one Empire, there are many messengers but only one Messenger, the two locked in a life or death struggle.

I am not a gnostic: I haven’t had a gnostic experience of release from the Black Iron Prison. But I find Boucher’s new gnosticism strangely compelling in spite of myself. There is truth to it, even if I can’t swallow it whole.

Some questions I have for Boucher (or any other gnostics out there):

• Could there be a reversal of the stereotypical gnostic despising of body and nature? Could a new gnostic story embrace body and nature, placing the Maker’s world in the realm of cultural, economic, and political realities instead? (Perhaps this is what you’re after with the “one Empire.”)
• Is there a place for Trickster playing the role of the Maker? He is a fecund and ambigous character, at once enemy and ally, capricious and creative, clever and foolish.
• Or, instead, is Trickster the Messenger?
• Does the Maker need our help? Can the Maker be redeemed, in whole or in part? (Wink would say yes, though he is no gnostic.)
• Could the Maker be the Tao? I’m thinking in particular of this Lao-Tze passage: “The Tao gives birth to One. One gives birth to Two. Two gives birth to Three. Three gives birth to all things (#42).” Obviously not intended as gnostic. But could it serve in that capacity nevertheless?
• And, where have I misread you? (I’m sure I have, and I’ve had trouble not elaborating on your work more than I have already.)