AREN Interview

Here's bits of an interview I did recently with Christopher Blackwell of the Alternative Religions Education Network (aren.org)

Christopher: Father could you give us a bit of back ground about you?

I'm a dad,  I write books, I'm a dog person.  I live on a tiny artist-colony island in the Pacific Northwest.  And I'm a Gnostic priest.  I'm a Jungian, and that bias is reflected in most of the artifacts of my activity.  My background is in advertising; I used to teach film school, and I lived briefly in Brazil in the dot com era.  So I go from suit-and-tie business meetings to clericals to gumboots pretty readily, although most days it's beaches and gumboots. 

Christopher: Your spiritual life have taken a great many paths to get where you are now, some which might be considered more spiritual than others, some perhaps more magical. Could you give our readers a bit of what paths that you followed, perhaps how one lead to another?

I identified with the word "witch" from an early age, in the archetypal sense of seeing and working in the borders of experience.  The witch is a liminal figure, between life and death, between the village and the wild wood, between waking consciousness and dreaming.  I've always felt very free in such spaces, creatively and spiritually.

What I came to realize is that in the 19th and 20th centuries, this was largely a literary construct formed in response to anti-clericalism from the French Revolution.  So it's been poets, the Romantics and Symbolists and Decadents, who sought the witch archetype, and enshrined her, and brought her center-stage.  The core of that approach and presentation was laid in the Renaissance revival of Neoplatonism and Hermeticism, due to availability of translation. The witch's aesthetic, via Goya and Shakespeare, was still rooted in this practical and academic Renaissance exploration of classical mysticism.

Going back further, we see these communities of Hellenized (Greek speaking, Greek educated, toga-wearing) Jews, living in Alexandra around 200 BCE.  Much of the Greek magical papyri which resurfaced in the Renaissance and kicked off the whole "witch" thing originated in these communities, and there's a tremendous overlap between these Orphic cults and the Gnostics, in terms of their vernacular, aims and aesthetic.  So, honestly, I took a time machine from 1970s neo-Paganism to 200 BCE Gnosticism. 

Jung, too, looked to root his work to the Gnostics, and spent a great deal of research into identifying a ligature between their world and his own.  Eventually he seized on the Alchemists as the bridge between classical Gnosticism and modernity.  Following Jung, I've spent a great deal of time in the alchemical milieu. 

Christopher: Is there any ties between what we think as spiritually and magick?

In my experience that excreted "k" never fails to endumben the conversation.  I could kick Crowley, I really could.

I think a more apt word, if we're afraid to talk about magic, is theurgy.  Wonder-working.  Things like banishing demons and turning wine into the blood of God.  So of course there's a tie; there's never not been a tie.  Theurgy, whether it's the transubstantiation of the Eucharist or the summoning of angelic blessings, has always been the practical application of spirituality.  So too, ultimately, I think, are great works of art, when they are rooted in spiritual enthusiasm and mindfulness.  We are all of us constantly engaged in the wonder-working of kindness, of compassion, of charity.  And I find that fascinating and marvellous, this innate and expressed priesthood of ordinary people.  It's lovely.  That's Sophia, Wisdom, blossoming into flower in the daily lives of absolutely everybody.  I find that miraculous.

Christopher: So what led you to train for the ministry and how did you find the Apostolic Johannite Church. Could you tell us a bit about this Gnostic Christian Church. 

Well, Gnosticism hangs its hat on the maxim "know thyself".  This knowledge, or naked self-knowledge, is the "insight" to which the term gnosis best equates.  Such an objective and world-view is the crux of what's been called the "perennial philosophy", and has always been around, expressing itself in such things as Qabalah and alchemy and various societies.  We can blame Plato and Pythagoras for almost all of this stuff.

In 1804, Napoleon's doctor claims to come across a medieval copy of a dark-ages copy of an ancient copy of the Gospel of John.  In this version, John, with his obviously Platonic leaning and high Christology (Christ as manifest God, less about the person of Jesus), is the heir of Christ, and not Peter. Also there is no resurrection narrative, and Jesus is said to have studied his wonder-working in Egypt. Well, that implies that this is something study-able, learnable.  The good doctor uses this text to reboot the early Church of John, the Johannite Church.  Now, there have been survivors of this Church and this idea from antiquity to the present age; the Mandaeans of Iraq, and to a lesser extent the Druze of Israel, medieval French Cathars, and Chinese Manichaeanism, although the latter's a bit of a stretch.  Regardless, the doctor's Church gains valid, apostolic succession from the Archbishop of Haiti, and ticks along as a kind of parallel Catholicism, protected by Napoleon, who was mad about Egypt, and liked having something with which to annoy the Pope.

If you're familiar with Gerard Encausse, or "Papus", who was an esoteric mover and shaker of the late 19th century, he was a Gnostic bishop and Martinist who worked very hard at maintaining vitality in this tradition.  One can draw a line from Encausse to the Golden Dawn or Wicca or any other expression of 20th century freakiness you choose.

Well, Independent Catholics tend to be an incestuous lot, so all manner of Indie Cath churches have this lineage, this heritage, via cross-pollination and "sub-conditione ordination" which is an elaborate game of tag played by men in large pointy hats.  Honestly, while some claim exclusivity to some thread or another, we all have one another's family tree.  The Apostolic Johannite Church, however, makes this particular strand in the tapestry its main focus of inquiry and spiritual work.  This Johannite Tradition is the stuff we show up for.

The Church has a four year seminary program, which is reflected in the traditional Minor Order rites of the Church.  It's academic in emphasis but there are practical aspects as well, manifesting in volunteering, chaplaincy, hospice, prison ministry, what have you.  We're very old-school; we employ the seven sacraments of Western tradition, but with an esoteric ("deeper"), alchemical understanding.  You can bring your granny to Mass.  But if you've some experience in the Western Mystery Tradition, you'll catch on pretty quick as to how we're doing what we're doing and why.

Christopher: For our readers could you tell me some things about the Gnostics? First where do they come from and how do they relate to Jews and Christians?

What we now called Gnostics were individual, separate, and arguing communities of Greek-educated Jews living in Ancient Egypt down the block from the temple of Isis, on the doorstep of the Roman Empire, 2200 years ago.  They were writing Plato fan-fiction, and influenced the origins of Christianity by writing Christian fan-fiction.  They revelled in myth and metaphor and simile and jazz-riffed off each other's ideas, joyously pillaging the intellectual heritage of the classical world.  They were beat poets who figured out that we're all imprisoned by forces who wish only power and our submission, and the Gnostics were planning a jail-break through wit and intuition and creativity and love and cipher.

What St. Paul called "the powers and principalities"of this world were identified by the Gnostics as destructive, limiting, cruel patterns of behaviour and institution, and they sought to supplant this authority with direct, mind-blowing personal encounter with unconditional love.  So this embraced the Jewish love of learning and literature with the Greek's bias towards evidence and logic, and later the Christian myth of the triumph of love over death.  And they hit purée.

Christopher: Christianity went in many different ways in the beginning, but then there became a fight over its future. Wasn't there an attempt to wipe out the Gnostics? Did  any of it survive and, if so, how?

There wasn't, really, an attempt to wipe out the Gnostics.  We fell into disfavour.  Gnostic texts became unfashionable.  It wasn't so much a persecution as a devaluing.  Gnostics weren't martyred so much as we were either assimilated or ignored.  But this did allow a Gnostic current to survive and flourish within orthodoxy. Every Christian mystic and Orthodox hesychast tapped into the Gnostic vein.  St. John of the Cross, St. Francis, St. Julian of Norwich, St. Hildegaard, all finding gnosis, championing it, and embodying it.  The grail romances are a cipher for Gnosticism.  And, again, of course, alchemy and Renaissance Hermeticism.  We hid in plain sight.

The exception is of course the Albigensian Crusade.  This was a war between Roman-influenced French forces to crush the blatantly Gnostic heresy of what is now southern France.  It was a bloodbath, more political and territorial in nature than religious, as these things always are, but it did drive underground an authentic, contiguous Gnostic culture in Europe in the thirteenth century.

Christopher: Do the ideas of the Gnostics influence the development of Christianity and western civilization?

This is a very complex issue, but the brief answer is yes.  Archaeologically, the first Gospel we have is John.  It wasn't written first, but it's the first we have any scrap of, the first we have mention of.  And John was written in two distinct, phases; a Gnostic phase, and a we-kicked-the-Gnostics-out phase.  According to scholars such as Dr. Bruce Chilton, that second phase was edited to refute ideas presented in the über-Gnostic Gospel of Thomas.  And according to Dr. Elaine Pagels, parts of Thomas were written to address ideas written in The Gospel of Mary.  So in this way, we see Christian canonical texts transforming themselves to refute or clarify Gnostic ideas.  

Christopher: When does Gnostic ideas begin to become popular again? What discoveries have helped it along?

We've always had bits and pieces of Gnostic literature, philosophy, liturgy.  In fact the first Christian theological texts were written by those we now identify as Gnostics.  But it's been fragmentary, with much conjecture.  In 1945, in Egypt, a jar was discovered with a number of codices, books as opposed to scrolls, chock-full of Gnostic literature.  This was a massive game-changer in terms of scholarship.  Rather than the radical world-hating dualists of anti-Gnostic propagandists, Gnostics spoke with their own voice for the first time in 1600 years.  And what they were saying was affirming, beautiful, exotic, rich, nuanced, considered, and lovely.  We now had complete – or more complete – texts of which we'd only had clues or snippets or misquotes from those who wished we'd just shut up and go away.  Having access to primary source texts was an unimaginable gift of grace.

Christopher: What are you hopes for future of Gnosticism?

I have a thousand archaeological questions I'd love answered, out of my own curiosity.  But I really don't have a desire for us to be anything other than what we are: a community of sincere seekers pursuing a solemn, quiet, traditional path; accepting, embracing, creating, questioning.  It wouldn't bother me if our numbers shrank to 10% of what they are now.  We don't convert, we don't proselytize.  We do what we do.  We know what we know.  We love what we love.  We abide in gnosis, and, in doing so, we endure.  The door is open, and the light is on.

Christopher: Anything else that you would like our readers to know?

"Hearken to the Logos, understand Gnosis, love life." – The Secret Book of James.  I can't do any better than that.

St. Ratford's Law

Anything decried as "devil-worship" is automatically;

a) more interesting, and

b) not devil-worship.

The Atheist Student, Death Threats and Insanity

First, this article:

Why Is an Atheist High School Student Getting Vicious Death Threats?
Her state representative has called the student "evil" and she has been threatened with violence, rape and death. What gives?

A complex issue turned into dumbth by a poorly-written article.

First, and well-duh-obviously, there's no excuse for the vitriolic assault on this child. Monstrous.

As an out-of-the-closet religious minority I was verbally assaulted and put up with death-threats from "born again Christans" as a teen (never Catholics, though, something it took me decades to realize).

Since then, as a critic and author working the "god-beat", writing on religious topics, most of my abuse and death-threats come from atheists, and, to a lesser extent, New Agers. But overwhelmingly it's the atheists who want to send me to the hell neither they nor I believe in.

(Historically, humans are very good at punishing those with differing opinions, and no culture of opinion has ever been more _efficient_ at punishing non-conformists than atheism.)

What bothered me about the article most (aside from the obviously horrific recounting of the abuse suffered by this child) was this paragraph:

"Religion, unlike any other belief system or social structure, is based on a belief in that which cannot be seen, felt, heard, touched, or otherwise detected by any normal or reliable means. It is based on ideas that have no good evidence to support them, and that by definition can't have good evidence to support them."

That's a painfully ignorant straw-man fallacy. Hell, mathematics is based on "that which cannot be seen, felt, heard, touched, or otherwise detected by any normal or reliable means". Show me a zero. Show me quantum foam. But underpinning these "unseen, unfelt, unheard" phenomena is a disciplined, rational pursuit of logical examination. So too is authentic, religious experience. Those who pioneered logic in the West were, by today's standards, religious. 

Now, I personally don't subscribe to the majority of religious *conclusions* arrived at by the highly trained and razor sharp minds of Augustine and Aquinas. But that doesn't mean that they weren't employing fierce intellects and constructing logical argument. Religion - real, historic, religion, not this fringe anti-dinosaur silliness - is not based on "huh, this sounds kinda cool, I guess I'll believe that" but rather it's based on MILLENNIA of inquiry, debate, reason, history, testing, and discipline. Which is how you end up with the father of the scientific method being a monk, and Copernicus a priest, and Newton a deeply religious figure.

The author of this article exploits the terror of this girl's experience in order to engage in unfounded anti-religious bigotry, and that exploitation is no less shameful than the vicious morloks who pursued her in the first place.

Hypocrisy

When asked what bothers people most, or concerns them the most about another's character, the answer is often hypocrisy.

The word comes from Greek theatre, and essentially it means "acting" or "faking it".  Playing a role and stating the lines rather than really meaning it.  It starts out implying insincerity, but our cultural context makes it even more malevolent: contradicting your morals.  Stating one thing, and doing the opposite. We take it even further: hypocrisy means telling someone else that they are morally inferior for doing something that we're doing ourselves. 

Let me first get this out of the way.  We all do this.

We're all hypocrites. We establish a set of objective rules, then we subjectively rationalize why those rules, under certain circumstances, don't necessarily apply to us.  But God help someone other than us who feels entitled to the same exemption. Because we know we mean well, and sometimes, y'know, you just gotta do what you just gotta do, y'know?

So, obviously, I'm a hypocrite.  That fact doesn't sit right with me, but that doesn't mean it's not a fact. 

But let's say that hypocrisy is not the worst thing ever.  Because I think it does tell us something about ourselves individually, and it can actually be beneficial collectively.

In a recent study published by the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 17% of scientists who also described themselves as atheists attended church more than once a year (implying that a greater percentage went at least once).  It's a take-the-kids thing.  I get it.  "Let the kids decide for themselves".  I think it's marvelous.  Here we have kids who would otherwise be exiled into the odd cultural illiteracy of never having set foot inside a Church, at Easter or Christmas or both, get to take it all in.  "Ah, yes, here's the common cultural context that built Oxford University and the Parthenon and The Last Supper and the Pieta and orphanages and food banks."  But for the kids to have this experience, to actually have the data before them, their parents have to bend their own rules a little.  They have to embrace hypocrisy, if only for a little while.

An atheist friend of mine said "we atheists aren't all joyless drones", and of course they're not.  Because you can state that existence has no objective meaning, you can state there is nothing "right" or "wrong" outside of relative and disposable social constructs – and then in practice you can discern meaning, do something meaningful, discern the difference between right and wrong and choose the right thing for its own sake.  You can deny meaning, even be morally opposed to the very proposition of meaning, and then act in a meaningful way. 

You can denounce myth and culture and anything that can't be dissected and rail against the evils of imagination and magical thinking... and then take your kid to see Santa, because you're not in fact a joyless drone.  You're a well-meaning hypocrite.  That's a good thing.

Hypocrisy rounds out our edges.  It keeps us from being ideologues.  Keeps us human, frail, vulnerable, open.  Hypocrisy exposes us to experiences and connections we'd intellectually repudiate, enabling us to see that emotion, intuition, and circumstance all have their part to play.

The celibate nun who falls in love.  The staunch environmentalist who plants a non-native-species rose in the garden.  The lit snob who reads a trashy novel on the beach.  All of us who see the cracks in the surfaces of our ideals, and dwells in those cracks for just a little while, just this once.  Because it's okay.

A little hypocrisy won't kill you, because there's forgiveness at the other end of that.  We're very good at forgiving ourselves for our transgressions.  We could all use a little help externalizing our forgiveness.  Then we can turn, again, to our ideals and ask why we have them, why we need them, in the first place.

If you're not a hypocrite, your ideals are too close, and you're not thinking big enough.  Elevate your ideals, fail at them, forgive yourself – and others – and try again.  You have a lifetime to do this.

The Most Important Definition in "A Dictionary of Western Alchemy"

Zosimos of Panopolis (born c. 300 AD) A Greco-Egyptian Gnostic/Hermetic philosopher, alchemist, and the author of the first-known book on alchemy, composed in the fourth century. Included in this fragmentary surviving text is one of the earliest defi nitions of alchemy:

The composition of the waters, and the movement, and the growth, and the removal and restitution of bodily nature, and the splitting off of the spirit from the body, and the fixation of the spirit on the body are not operations with natures alien one from the other, but, like the hard bodies of metals and the moist fluids of plants, are One Thing, of One Nature, acting upon itself. And in this system, of one kind but many colors, is preserved a research of all things, multiple and various, subject to lunar influence and measure of time, which regulates the cessation and growth by which the One Nature transforms itself.

As inspiration to modern or speculative alchemists, Zosimos’s greatest surviving contribution came not from a laboratory, but from his dreams. Zosimos documented repeated visions of either himself or a homunculus being repeatedly destroyed by way of torture, only to be transformed into a spiritual being. Jung was inspired by this account and wrote an extraordinary analysis of Zosimos’s visions (The Visions of Zosimos, 1937).

Okay, so why is this the most important entry in the book?  Because Zosimos, who made such an amazing contribution to alchemical study, did so without a laboratory, without apparatus, without investing thousands of dollars in compounds, supplies, tubes and beakers.

He did it by dreaming.

Magonia Review of Books

... has a critical-but-fair look at the Dictionary of Western Alchemy.  She points out a half dozen terms she'd like to have seen included (as well as stating an omission-that-wasn't), but if someone found even 25 terms missing, the book would be only 5% larger than it is now.  And if I'd stopped at 525 terms instead of 500, someone would mind that I had missed another two.  To me this just speaks to the breadth of the discipline.  And I chuckled at the assertion that one could find all the various bits of the book online, which is more or less true, although in a loss of context, and it raises the question as to why anyone would buy Rumi or Whitman in paperback when it's all available on Project Gutenburg. What are books, exactly?

Most of the review states the obvious – this is not a manual for lab chemistry, and the book is therefore dismissed as "whimsical", which I rather like.

http://pelicanist.blogspot.com/2011/11/alchemy-words-and-meanings.html

DWA makes Theo Forward "Notable Books" List

"The book under review here is not an introduction to alchemy, but it is an extremely useful compilation of alchemic terms and symbols, explained with admirable clarity. Anyone interested in alchemy for its own sake or as an important cultural stream in Western thought will benefit from having this work to consult."

http://www.theosophyforward.com/index.php/notable-books/494-notable-books-10.html

Neoplatonism Tarot Sketches

From the desk of Dr. Jeffrey S. Kupperman, some promising efforts towards a Neoplatonist Tarot.

http://jeffreyskupperman.com/gallery/gallery2/

Aeon Byte Interview

One of the most venerated esoteric arts is Alchemy, which cuts across all religions and ideologies. Both the Orthodox and Heterodox have sought its arcane gifts, whether it's lead to gold or holistic medicine. For the first time a book comes out that categorizes the wisdom of the alchemists in Western Culture, a gathering of important terms, from ancient Egypt to Jungian Psychology. Needless to say, the book is long overdue; and beyond just a dictionary of Alchemy it reveals the various scientific and mystic tributaries it has influenced for thousands of years. We learn about the origins and evolution of Alchemy; and why it's still very important for spiritual liberation in a modern world. We study it from all its angles and traditions that include Christianity, Islam, the Occult, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and even Harry Potter. We leave no Philosopher's Stone unturned!

http://www.aeonbytegnosticradio.com/2011/12/dictionary-of-western-alchemy-12102011.html

We Can Live Without Music

We can.  We don't need it.  Someone could swear off music and not be impacted economically – it wouldn't stop medicines from being invented or skyscrapers from being built or the crops coming in.  Planes would not fall from the sky.

It can be argued that music has caused suicides, homicides, anthem-inspired nationalism resulting in tragedy.  Musicians, too, are suspect, as they tend to be moody, temperamental, impulsive and frequently illogical.  This may explain why a great number – if not the majority – of the world's scientists are not musicians.

Music is divisive.  People feel strongly, occasionally violently, about one sort or another.  Minute distinctions are made between genres, sub-genres, specific time periods of sub-sub-genres. People argue passionately about this stuff.

But we do seem hard-wired, as humans, to create and respond to music.  It emerges from all cultures at all times.  It can reasonably be posited that this musical reflex is a defining characteristic of human experience.

Of course, the exact same thing can be said of religion.

We don't need it.  We could do away with it completely.  But I think we'd we'd be poorer for it, and it's against our nature.

So sit with the music of your religion.  Allow its rhythm to move you, its themes to inform you, its melodies to inspire you.  Dance to it.

Rocking your religion is among the most human of all things.

Alchemist book tour kicks off with Dec. 1 Salt Spring event

“The alchemical world view assumes meaning,” Stratford said. “There is a ghost in the machine, and everything is inhabited by the ghost of meaning. The meaning of a chemical process, in its origin and its purpose, is divine. So in this world view, there is no line drawn between chemistry and theology. It’s the same thing.”

By providing explanations of the terms associated with alchemy, Stratford said he is hoping to reintroduce the language and symbolism that informs that worldview. Those who stand to benefit from adopting its framework are those in psychology, dreamwork, poetry and other creative modes.

http://www.gulfislandsdriftwood.com/lifestyles/134468503.html

Heartbreak and Politics

I'm resigning from political heartbreak.

As a Traditionalist a la Guenon, I'm fatigued from having those who subscribe to my Perrenialism emerge from the ranks and likes of Evola and his ghastly bastards of the Right.  As a liberal, meaning one who holds that the betterment of citizens is through the embrace of the liberal arts, I'm exhausted by the heartbreaking abuses of logic and fixation by those who cling to the label.  I think abortion is sad, that guns are interesting but deeply unwise, that governments need governing, that unions are multi-billion dollar multi-national corporations but I'm glad they exist, that people are inherently generous and kind, libertarians are the most dull and dangerous of all animals, and that conservatives who conserve nothing are Modernist shadow-puppets labelled "self-interest", which used to be a sin.  Much of what used to be a sin was a sin for a damned. good. reason.  And all is lost, there.  The wasteland of individualism without individuation.  The wasteland through which Sophia Achamoth wanders, confused and blistered and amnesiac.

I'm nothing but a cloud of opinions and indignation. An idiot howling at a heedless tempest.

None of this makes me one whit more wise, more deep, more loving, more joyous.  My opinions, my aesthetic, my politics, isn't making me more human or whole or even funny.  Odd how we prize funny over human or whole, but there we are.  I'm done with it.  

I choose human.  I choose loving.  I choose wine and dancing and prayer and kisses.

I renounce political heartbreak.

Magical Buffet: 10 Questions with Jordan Stratford

"The Magical Buffet is where spirituality, politics, and pop culture collide, with hopefully entertaining and enlightening results."

– Read it here.

30 Years Ago Tonight

I walked into a circle of stones and candlelight, and I'm not sure I ever walked out.

A welcome antidote to some of the misrepresentative nonsense of recent weeks:

If you've strained your eyes from rolling skyward after the recent torrent of blather and complete fabrication of the positions of scholarship – something akin to declaring that NASA's lead scientists affirm that the moon landing was faked – here is a considered, rational presentation of Gnosticism and Gnostic themes from one of the foremost scholars (a real, paid, professional academic, not just a paying-audience-member like me) in the field.  Dr. Birger Pearson was recently the guest speaker at the conclave of the Apostolic Johannite Church.  (You know.  One of those "neo-" Gnostic churches that's all new agey and stuff and doesn't read books.  Pay no attention to the PhDs and professional academic researchers and editors in the audience.  They must have wandered into the wrong meeting.)

Here are some salient and fortifying highlights.  Dr. Pearson states:

• "Gnosticism" is a legitimate term, as "Gnostic" is a self-descriptor that existed in the classical period, and both "gnosis" and "-ismos" are universally accepted phrases of that time.  "Gnosticism" therefore is the most logical name for what we're doing, and what we're talking about.

(Basically, if you're being told that "scholars agree that Gnosticism never existed", you're being lied to.  Gnosticism as genre, as aesthetic, as movement and above all as message, is extremely threatening to the world-view of some, and they'll throw any nonsense at you when threatened.)

• Gnosticism and Christianity are distinct movements and entities.
• Gnosticism arose from Judaism, and only later came into contact with Christianity.
• Apocryphon of John is a pre-Christian myth that was later Christianized via a frame-story.

(This latter point was the hypothesis of a paper of mine submitted for my doctoral studies in 2006, and Dr. Bruce Chilton didn't bat an eye.  However I received a great deal of "you don't know what you're talking about, all scholars dismiss this" hatemail when I  posted the paper online.)

His summary of the Gnostic world-view is succinct:

• Gnosis is a pre-requisite for salvation. 
• Gnosis is knowledge of the true nature of both humanity and divinity - two sides of the same coin.
• The human self is of divine origin, and to the divine it shall return

His use of the term "dualism" is highly qualified – used liberally rather than technically – citing the two characters of the transcendent God and the creator god; and the rift / fall resulting in the creation of the kosmos.  Pearson's dualism – Plato's dualism of idea and ideal –  is biased towards distinction, rather than the "irreconcilability" charge of neoheresiologists.

And that's just from the first half-hour.  It's good for what ails you.

From the Chick-tract rantings and misrepresentation of scholarship by literalists, fundamentalists, and anti-Gnostic propagandists, O Lord, deliver us.

Amazon Author Central

It's odd that my Amazon Author Page doesn't allow me to add books I've edited or to which I've contributed, but there you go. 

A Note on Tradition

It seems to me entirely exoteric, that is, outer, to dismiss Tradition and orthodoxy and dogma as though these hold nothing for the seeker of the esoteric.

But esotericism, deepening, operates on the assumption that within these same wounding or difficult or uncomfortable or unpopular Traditions is the very heart of the matter, the very thing for which one is seeking.

The Traditions rejected in our wounding, whether by semi-informed advocates of that Tradition itself or from our own need, as we mature, to cast off the cultures of previous understandings, hold for us the promise of a rich vein of inquiry.  As a child perhaps the priest told you there was no room for you at the Eucharistic table, or that rite x was closed to you for whatever reason.  The odds are good that the priest was an ass, and that buried for centuries within the bosom of that same rite is a spark of the Infinite Divine, reserved only for you.

As Gnostics we don't run away from the things that we understandably might.  Liturgy and scripture and thinkers which have been in the past weaponized against our Work, our nature.  Instead we go further in, deeper, and we dive in the waters rather than getting out of the pool.  We examine, play, recontextualize and remix and reconsider and reinterpret the facets of Wisdom we find, buried within the recriminations against finding at all.  It's paradoxical, yes, but we neither accept nor reject what others declare to be orthodoxy.  We treat the whole milieu as a kind of suspension medium, journeying further in with doubt, with wit, with intuition, with our yearning for Holy Wisdom.

Reviews for "A Dictionary of Western Alchemy"

"An impressive collection of concepts and ideas... a standard and classic in the field"

– Brendan Myers PhD., author of Loneliness and Revelation

"Stratford brings his unique insight and experience... steeped in Renaissance lore, Gnostic thought and Jungian theory."

– Jeffrey S. Kupperman PhD., editor of the Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition

"Stratford's work is precisely what has been missing... accurate, insightful and accessible."

– Stephan Hoeller PhD., author of The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead and Gnosticism: A New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing

"Stratford brings cryptic words and images alive, with rich, deep and practical meaning."

– Thom F. Cavelli PhD., author of Embodying Osiris and Alchemical Psychology

B is for Balsam

}+{  balsam 

An emulsion serving as a suspension medium for essences. Paracelsus considered the balsam of vitriol (“the green lion”) to be the vital essence of the human body, repelling putrefaction. From Arabic basham, “perfume.”

A is for Alembic

A simple distillation apparatus comprised of a retort (a spherical vessel with a long, downward-sloping tube) and a cucurbit (the receiving vessel). A substance is heated in the retort, condensing at the capital and collecting downward into the cucurbit. It is used as a metaphor for rigorous intellectual and spiritual inquiry, distilling only the essence of an idea. From Greek  ambix , “mixing cup.”

From "A Dictionary of Western Alchemy" coming this Fall from Quest Books.

You Are Here.

I've been asked to clarify the distinctions between epiphany and gnosis as I outlined in this post.  I just want to talk about the mental state of epiphany, about finally seeing things as they are, and how that informs your history and your journey.

At epiphany, you see the system as a whole and your part in it.  You feel privileged, provided with insider information, and you have the teenager's loathing for childhood.  Propelled forward, but still using pre-existing tools to decipher and interpret your experiences.

Knowing, as you do now, that the old order has been overthrown, you understand that order to be overthrowable, disposeable, and untrustworthy.  The authorities and opinions of your previous understanding having been exhausted, you distrust authority and opinion on principle.  And well you should.

A kind of benevolent paranoia sets in.  Any contrary signal to your current experience is understood as reactionary, trying to drag you "back to sleep." You're antagonistic to those who aren't exactly where you are in your understanding, maybe referring to those poor ignorant souls as "sheeple, implying they're somehow less than fully human.

In Qabalistic parlance you've pierced "the veil of Paroketh", the synthetic world view constructed by your senses and material world, a world you know have obviously outgrown.  Clearly, the light you're looking at was veiled before by the physical, the hylic, and now you're a spiritual being you have no place for that sort of thing.  You're a dualist, of course - what benefit could anything have on the lower side of the veil?

And look at all this LIGHT!  You're enlightened now.  And gnosis means enlightenment.  So that's that.

Except, of course, it isn't that.  You're not there.  You're somewhere else. You need a map.

There are lots of maps out there, but my favourite is often the Etz Chaim, the Tree of Life of Qabalah.

On this map, when you've had this epiphany, you're hovering in that space between Splendour and Victory, between Mercury and Venus, gazing up at the blinding light of the Sun, Tipareth.

You know the UNHOLY THEM are out to get you, you're a radical dualist, you read a lot of Philip K. Dick and you find yourself getting depressed.  But this is the price of gnosis.

Except that this isn't gnosis.  It's a dress rehearsal.  Just as adolescence is not adulthood – but the only way to get there – epiphany is not gnosis.  I get it, I really do.  I railed against and squinted at the forces of patriarchy/capitalism/ whatever paternalistic projection I felt I needed to overthrow, just as the young buck in the forest seeks out the king stag in order to lock antlers and snort.  It had to be done.

As I've said before, Gnostic literature is always a three act play: a unity; being stripped of that unity, cast out of the garden; and then the restoration, the coming home.  Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.  Epiphany and all its sturm und drang is the second act: antithesis.  But there's more of the story to follow, as you progress up the tree.

The difference between epiphany and gnosis is the difference between diagnosis and treatment; one defines the problem, the other defines the solution.

At epiphany, the light shining above you is the solar beauty of Tipareth.  But gnosis is behind this light, above this light.  Gnosis is equivalent, on this map, to Da'ath, the "missing sphere" on the tree of life.  This is the apple in which gnosis was concealed, to be plucked by Eve at the moment of her awakening. This myth makes Eve the first Gnostic – despite the external system imposed upon her, she reaches out to claim gnosis, the apple, as her birthright.

It must be added that her first act as an aware, complete individual – a Gnostic – was to share this gnosis with her husband Adam as an act of love.  Not only is she the first Gnostic, she is the first human liberator.

The other thing to remember is that this is merely an illustration – a model used to shed light.  It's a map, not the territory.  In Qabalistic tradition, we are all of us inhabiting every stop along the way simultaneously, but our attention dwells in one sphere or another from time to time.  So I completely understand the angst, the antagonism, of those who've recently had an epiphany – because I'm there, too.  Part of me remains there, rooted in that experience, defined by it.  All I can offer is that every sincere Seeker has persevered, refused to be blinded by the light, and proceed up up up the paths of the Tree, to the promise of the Crown, and beyond.

The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity

Review of Bib Lit here, and an excellent PDF review here.

"While most ancient thinkers emphasized gnosis, knowledge of some particular sort, the use of gnostikoi in reference to people was unusual. The term itself was also a positive one. So Brakke makes the case that Irenaeus would not have volunteered a positive designation of this sort for those with whom he disagreed. Therefore the moniker gnostikoi most likely reflects the group’s own usage. "

Book Trailer: Dictionary of Western Alchemy

Satanic Panic

I was living in ground zero when it hit: Which is to say, my home town, when I was in Jr. High School, was overcome with Satanic Panic.

Michelle Remembers, published in 1980, detailed the "memories" of a mental patient being five years old, tortured by a Satanic coven of hundreds in Victoria British Columbia over many years.  Ritual blood drinking cannibal orgy yada yada.  Of course, there was no record of key elements in the story – a car crash, the girl herself missing, a few hundred Victorians running around sans sacrificed-to-Satan fingers.  People quoted in the book denied ever being quoted, corroborating experts denied ever having corroborated.  The book was, in every conceivable detail, bullshit.

But that didn't stop Geraldo Rivera from exploiting the Hammerfilmesque schlock of the book and turning it into a 20/20 episode; resulting in a wave of hysteria, incarceration, and violence.  The book's author became a millionaire via consulting fees on "occult crime".  Parents lost kids to courts for having tarot cards on their bookshelves.  Pets of suspected devil-worshippers were removed (and put down).  A full-time police officer was posted to the maternity ward at the hospital lest devil-worshippers steal and eat yet another baby (except nobody had ever even tried to take a baby from the ward, but hey, our tax dollars were fighting Satan!).

At my high school, "everybody knew" about the vast Satanic conspiracy that ran the town.  At least the kids in Grade 9 sure claimed to have always known.  And when the Born-Agains rolled into the crowd to get testimony, man, did they get their money's worth: Straight-laced friends who had maybe snuck a cigarette once confessed to being hard-core drug users, driven to chemical excess by the unrelenting pressure of Satanic music.  Like The Scorpions.  Bearers of training bras that had experienced at worst exterior friction suddenly outed themselves as former prostitutes, enslaved by pawns of the Satanic cult.  Mercifully, an army of over-zealous youth pastors had arrived to liberate them from the Satanic menace.  You were nothing without a great conversion story, and the one-upmanship was iceberg-bound full steam ahead.  Otherwise-sane friends came back from summer camp speaking in tongues.  Seriously. Hummalah Bebhulla Zeebuhlla Bop!

Here's the thing to remember: none of it was true.  None of it. It wasn't dramatized for illustrative purposes.  It was just... bullshit.  We'll come back to that in a second.

Eventually, the lawsuits trickled in, and Michelle Remembers (poised for a TV movie adaptation and a sequel) limped to the discount bin.  But it still left its mark on Victoria as "the Satanist capital of the world" (alongside Geneva, for, um, y'know, reasons or something).  Then there was the guy who went on Christian TV and named names of who was in the cult and who had tried to sacrifice him (and his wife, who seemed rather unsure about the whole story).  He got sued for libel and fined 10 grand for pulling that story out of his butt, and the fine was paid by faithful TV viewers who felt the poor Christian was being picked on by the Great Satanic Them™.

As an "out of the broom closet" media weirdo and pentacle-toting PAGAN RIGHTS activist ("Remember the Burning Times!" Yeah, sorry.  Teenager.  Sigh.), I was an obvious target.  A local group of Born Again police officers started an off-duty group to track and report on Those On The List, and I was On The List.  I received overt if silly death threats from various Christian youth groups, usually along the lines of DIE SATAN SCUM on notes under my apartment door.  And then there was the sidewalk conversation with a high-school associate (and his matching purple-tee-shirted gym-friends) that they were "going to find me and kill me" because clearly I was a Satanist (They didn't kill me, but they did kill a flamingo, by throwing firecrackers into a bird sanctuary that was holding a Psychic Fair at the time).

(And I definitely wasn't a Satanist. Oh, I'd read "The Satanic Bible" in a bookstore over several leanings, and found it boring.  This wasn't the key to unlimited dark powers, not that I go for that sort of thing anyway.  This was zitty Nietzschean sulking.  "THEY are sheep.  WE are badass."  It seemed like an excuse to act like a jerk in hopes of seeing a naked lady.  A lot of it struck me as having a very strong anti-Semitic subtext, with no theological point to make except for the insistence that it didn't have a theological point to make.  I did, years later, have a brief correspondence with Stephen Flowers –although I didn't know it was him at the time– about Germanic Neopaganism because he'd said some things in an interview that struck me as batshit crazy, so I wrote to him and asked for clarification.  He replied. The crazy remained.  Anyway, that's as close as I ever got to real honest-to-God-is-dead Satanism.)

The point is, as I said, none of it was ever true.  It was a conveniently-packaged monster-under-the-bed for those with some serious Freudian issues ("they forced me to have sex with a baby, then kill it and eat it" – who makes this stuff up?), but it did have real-world consequences.  What about the children who were told time and again by prosecutors that they were the victims of ghastly sexual and homicidal undertakings?  How do you tell a child who's grown up with this victim-identity for a decade (or more) "oops, we got it all wrong, you were normal and well-loved"?

[Let me state the obvious that there is a handful of people who self-identify as "Satanists" for philosophical, iconoclastic, antinomian, literary, ironic or even commercial reasons.  They're harmless.  I'm not talking about those guys.]

Trotting out Satan is always –always– hysterical and absurd.  Declaring that so-and-so is (or was) a Satanist is always seriously crazy.  Ascribing Satanic motive to x, particularly when motive itself is so hard to pin down, is seriously seriously crazy.  Please put down the Satan, you're embarrassing yourself.  

Anyway, adults saying that x is Satanic because y is a Satanist is never about reality, it's about delusion and neurosis and territoriality and othering, because seeing people as complex and nuanced and acknowledging that a person we don't like may often say things we agree with makes us uncomfortable.  It's much easier to point and shriek "Satan!" that it is to deal with fact, messy human inconvenience, and actual events.   

Every once in a while, still, I get called a Satanist.  Or my friends are "avowed" Satanists.  Or my church is Satanic.  I know there are people out there who have been told to be afraid of me, afraid of things I write, afraid of the sacraments and hospital visits and prison ministries and cups of coffee handed out to the emotionally wounded by my fellow clergy.  I'm either a cover-up-agent or total dupe for not knowing that the Great Satanic Them™ is the (dark, evil) root and (spooky, woo woo) flower of my church.  Unfortunately for the demon-hunters, my church was ever, from its founding documents to local incorporations and every intent and vow uttered and each babe baptized and each couple married and every consecration and ordination, ultimately and irrefutably Christian.  But yes, esoterically Christian.  Gnostic Christian.

I can point out that mysticism, contemplation, and personal insight have always been part of Western religion, and there's a parade of Catholic and Orthodox saints who used exactly the same liturgy-bits we do in our parish for exactly the same reason – consideration, reflection, insight, humility.  I point out that esoteric means "deeper", that "occult" means hidden, because not all our truths or rich veins of inquiry are out there in the open and obvious and surface.  But for some entrenched audiences, I'm just spinning my wheels.  Because there's a straight line in pop culture that says esoteric = occult = Satan.  Unorthodox = Satan.  This is the narrative arc of a Chick tract.  Grown-ups just don't think like that – but it's so much easier than real life.  It explains so much.

It just isn't true.

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Ask Deeper Questions Facebook Page

You might know this already, but this exists:

I only use my FB profile with people I've sat down and had coffee with, so I made this page for, well, everything else.

His Eminence +Shaun McCann and Dr. Birger Pearson

At the most recent Conclave of the Apostolic Johannite Church, the guest lecturer was renowned Gnosticism scholar Dr. Birger Pearson, author of Ancient Gnosticism and other gems.

To me, this seems evidence of a church – indeed a wider movement – continually challenging itself on its assumptions.  Using research and consulting with the top authorities in the world to confront and verify and deepen our understanding of this rich and vastly complex scriptural legacy.  

Of course many of the issues that keep my inbox full (monism/dualism, panentheism, a Pleroma that is in fact a Pleroma) were settled by scholarship in the 80s, and generally settling on the three-act-structure model (monist in origin, temporary and qualified dualism,  yielding to synthesis and liberation), pre-Christian origins and "nothing whatsoever outside the Pleroma" which I've illustrated on this blog ad nauseam.  But it's healthy to not just consult scholarship as a way of proof-texting or shoring up assumptions, but to actually break bread with researchers and wander through the subtleties and nuances that make this field so fascinating and rewarding.

We're none of us "neognostics" any more than 21st century Christians are "neochristians" or contemporary Jews are "neojews".  We're looking (examining, pondering, questioning, theorizing, reinterpreting) critically at our roots, at the context of authorship and both personal and collective relevance, and using this knowledge to further our own spiritual maturation.  Traditional academic scholarship is by no means the only valid way of looking at Gnostic scripture – art and liturgy, psychology and intuition help complete a picture that would otherwise be skeletal and possibly misleading – but it's a good idea to make sure periodically that we've got our Greek (and Coptic) right.

The Banach–Tarski Paradox

First, some gross oversimplification.

We have the timeless experience of gnosis; we have communities of Hellenized Egyptian Jews in the Ptolomaic period (350-30 BCE) writing about gnosis and using mythography to illustrate and amplify this experience (Let's call them "Gnostics" because honestly what else are we going to call them? Gnosis-ists?); we later have "The Jesus Movement"  ("Early Christians")– Jews talking to other Jews about reforming Judaism; later still we have those gnosis-writing Hellenized Egyptian Jews incorporating Christian themes and characters into their literature (we'll call them "Gnostic Christians"); later later we see the Christian conversation spreading West and adopting much of the form and organization of Roman Paganism ("Orthodox Christians") – but this was merely one form of expression among many.

One of the people who was rather fond of that particular expression was Irenaeus, who argued for the primacy of his particular version.  He was rather scathing of the competing forms, regardless of when they had shown up.  He probably wouldn't have thought much of the Jesus Movement, had he been around 170 years earlier.  And he certainly didn't think much of the Gnostics.  

Irenaeus managed to do two curious things:

i) He outlined a plethora of opinions, practices, and quotations and attributed them, rightly or wrongly, to the Gnostics

ii) He ended up defining orthodox Christianity as the opposition to these same opinions, practices, and quotations.  The end result is a wholly new religion that took his reading of "It's Not Judaism™" Paul and cranked it up to 11.

Right.  So we have four distinct entities as a result of this:

a) the ongoing cacophony of the Christian conversation

b) A shiny new product on the shelf, Anti-Gnostic Iranaeus-Brand Christianity™, which would later be known as "orthodoxy"

c) the ongoing cacophony of what we now call Gnosticism, and 

d) Iranaeus' (and later heresiologists') version of what he understood Gnosticism to be, or at least how he wanted it to be understood by others.  Obviously, this is going to be a rather different from how any Gnostic at the time (regardless of what they called themselves) would actually present their world view.

Got it?  Christianity-as-a-messy-whole, a spanking new Orthodoxy, Gnosticism-as-a-messy-whole, and Iranaeus' skewed interpretation of Gnosticism.

On and on through the hoary centuries, and the Gnostic conversation and the Christian conversation began to overlap less and less as the orthodox voice started to drown out everyone at the table.  But that's history - a marketplace of ideas and movements, some adapt and become dominant, others retract and become recessive.  The Gnostics never really went away, they endured in small, insular communities (such as the Mandaeans) or as a magnetic influence in others (such as the Druze or the Bogomils).

Okay, We're All Caught Up Now

Like I said, this is gross oversimplification.  There's no way to accurately sum this up in less than a few thousand pages.  But for our purposes, looking back over our shoulder, we see two distinct entities – what Gnosticism was, and what the heresiologists said it was.

Even then, "what Gnosticism was" was a whole series of competing, conflicting, nuanced, complex, occasionally bizarre takes on Greek myth and philosophy, esoteric Judaism, early Christianity, Egyptian cosmology, Hermeticism, and anything else that was lying around.  There was no centralized, authoritative, definitive "Gnosticism" per se – just a literary and philosophical movement identified by its allegorical treatment of specific themes.

Anyway, if you throw all of that in a bucket and call it "Gnosticism", what we do know now is that when the heresiologists were talking about it, they got it all wrong.  Either deliberately as a straw-man propaganda thing, or sheer cluelessness.  But the stuff that was in the bucket, and what they said were in the bucket?  Different things.  Let's call them "Gnosticism" and "Heresiological Pseudo-Gnosticism".  Kind of the same way we had authentic Judaism and what anti-Semites later described Judaism to be, blood of unbaptized babes and all.  Different.

But it gets weirder.

Because so much of the contents of the original "bucket" were inaccessible to the West for so long, the only "Gnosticism" in town was Heresiological Pseudo-Gnosticism; deliberately misrepresented Gnosticism.  And as orthodoxy centralized political power, it also accumulated all the blame that goes with such power, which is to say it started to annoy some populations rather a great deal.  The thinking went that anything which bothered the powers-that-be can't be all bad, so we see some groups actually *endorsing* Heresiological Pseudo-Gnosticism as not only authentic, but a good thing, if only to annoy the orthodox.

"World-hating dualism" (and the mutually exclusive extremes of radical ascetism and wild libertinism), which certainly weren't present in the original bucket, featured prominently in Iranaeus' fever-dreams, and became the hallmarks of this word "Gnosticism".  The heresiological hermeneutic got to own the word.  For the most part, it still does (which is why it thinks it has the right to kill it).  So some people embraced these ideas, and called themselves Gnostics.  Some still do.

But now the cat's out of the bag – or perhaps more accurately the djinn is out of the jar – and we have access to primary source texts and know more accurately what the contents of the bucket actually were, why do we still have groups clinging to (and showing preference for) the heresiological view?  Gnostics didn't actually draw straws to pick bishops the way Iranaeus said they did (and he didn't even actually say that, technically, which is a whole other layer of confusion right there) but some people identify as Gnostics because that idea appeals to them so much.  Gnostics didn't hate the world, but some people hate the world and call themselves Gnostic as a result.  

How amazing, elastic, capacious, are the original Gnostic myths that they can accommodate not only their original intent, but also their deliberate mischaracterization and still be spiritually valuable?  It's astonishing. Miraculous, even.

There's a set-theoretic geometry trick called the Banach-Tarski paradox.  You can jigsaw up a three dimensional sphere into bits, and reassemble those bits into two perfect spheres of the same size as the original.  Shouldn't be possible, but it is, and thus a paradox.

Gnostic literature is subject to the Banach-Tarski paradox.  You can take this rich, weird, lush vein of myth and symbol and rite and rant and argument, and you can spin it into the lovely po-mo Jungian Sophia-as-alchemical-insight; and you can spin it into the distinctly Christian you-hate-the-world-and-the-world-hates-you cranky dualist Sophia-as-whore bitterness of the heresiologists and their subscribers.  Two perfect spheres extracted from the same source material, both in their way valid, provable, defensible – the same way you can extract a chunk of Paul and end up with Thomas Merton or the Westboro Baptists.

I've said before that we're the Gnostics now, and we get to decide what to do with this stuff.  Anyone, anywhere, can pick up this stuff in translation (or slog through the interlinears, glossary in hand), identify with it, and own their response to it.  We get to decide what this stuff means.  And it's okay that we're going to see different communities coalesce around these different responses.

The conversation about how Middle-Platonic was classical Gnostic community x or how Christian was  classical Gnostic community y is all well and good and fascinating (and keeps Brill in business), but as far as those first Ptolomaic Hellenized Egyptian Jews were concerned, those angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, it was never about Gnosticism or Christianity or Judaism or any label to begin with.  

It's about gnosis.

You're Not Good Enough

Well, you're not.  Neither am I.

First off, "not good enough" is not the same as "not good."  I'm sure you're good.  

There are two "not good enough"s.  A real one, and an artificial one.  The real one states the obvious.  I'm not good enough to compete in the Olympics.  I'm not good enough to cut an album or win an Oscar or be selected for the space program.  I'm just not.  I remember being eight years old and realizing, on my own, that my artistic ability meant that I would never be good enough to draw Spiderman for a living (at the time, I thought that was the coolest job in the world.  There was a cut, and I hadn't made it).

Many people spend their whole lives being told they're not good enough, for all the wrong reasons.

Too fat, too thin, too tall, too short, too shy, too forward, too cerebral, too emotional, too gay, too straight.

By being told we're not good enough, we're really being told we don't conform to some external ideal.  Obviously this is an absurdly false criteria, and ultimately toxic.  

The "antidote", as presented in popular culture, is that you're perfect the way you are.  God don't make no mistakes.  Celebrate the awesomeness that is you.  You go, girl.  If anybody can't handle you, it's their problem, not yours.

This, too, is toxic.  It's not true.  You're not perfect just the way you are.  You're flawed, you have faults and habits and prejudices and blind spots, and those keep you from loving and accepting love, from living in the fullness of your own ability and abiding in your integrity.  You have work to do.  We all do.

So what to make of all of this?  Both "you're not good enough according to some external ideal" and "you're all that and a bag of chips" are archonic traps, usually designed to sell you something.  A diet,  a yoga matt, or a latté as a reward for being so magnificent.  Both are about exploiting our inner dialogue to provide you with easy answers, not deep questions.

"Know Thyself", as a philosophy and directive, is what differentiates both of these traps from a path to your own integrity.  It's not an easy answer, but an ongoing conversation.

You're good, but you're not good enough. Yes, you're a spark of the infinite divine.  But you're also a bunch of other things – angry, possessive, frustrated, lazy – that get in your way of abiding in your authentic self.  You're not good enough, yes, but you're not alone in this, and through a lifetime of patience, perseverance, contemplation, listening, study, forgiveness, effort, humor, humility and love, you are constantly unfolding your authenticity, getting closer to that spark, and expressing it.

That's precisely what that lifetime is for.  It's okay.  We're all doing this together, whether we recognize it or not.  Know Thyself.