Jean Haines: A Response to Montague Keen’s References to Irish History
Spirals are some of the oldest known Celtic symbols
The Crux of the Matter Is Also, I Believe, the Answer to the Puzzle Montague Keen Has Posed
Montague Keen keeps referring to the history of Ireland and some deep truth that is there. I believe the understanding of this puzzle and, indeed, the real beginnings and history of the sick matrix in which we have been living can be found in a book I read several years ago. Until this evening, the pieces of the puzzle did not fall in place for me.
The book is called, and very rightly I think, Not in His Image, and it is written by John Lamb Lash. In his book, Lash describes the breadth and depth of Classical Mediterranean culture – something about which very few of us know much at all, and its total destruction, which included the destruction of the Gnostics, an incredibly important but little understood group of people. With this destruction – and the almost total destruction of all the Gnostics’ written records, the world fell into the Dark Ages. The beginning of the Dark Ages is said by scholars to have begun with the murder of Hypatia in 415 C.E. and is a story which Last tells in some detail.
Here is a quote from page 13 of the kindle version that describes the larger battle that took place at that time:
“The battle that took place two thousand years ago, and resulted in the total demolition of the Pagan religious heritage of Europe, was essentially a clash between two paradigms, two utterly different concepts of redemption. Gnostics taught that Sophia is a goddess, a divine being embodied in the earth. The wisdom unique to her is the living intelligence of the planet. All the Mysteries were dedicated to this divinity, the Magna Mater, the Great Mother whom I propose to correlate to Gaia. Initiation in the Mysteries involved a direct encounter with the Sophianic intelligence, that is, “earth wisdom” in New Age parlance. Gnostics preserved a sacred story about the origin of humanity, how the earth evolved, and how we as a species are uniquely involved with the planetary intelligence – not only for our survival, but at the cosmic, transhuman level where Gaia-Sophia (to coin a term) is evolving her own purposes.”
(…)
“Central to the Sophiaic myth was an event called in Gnostic terminology the “correction” of the Earth goddess, a concept that verges toward teleology without predefining it. In Sophia’s correction, Gnostics imagined the realignment of life on our planet with the cosmic center, the source from which the earth goddess originated and emerged. (…) Scholars sometimes translate the Greek dirothosis as redemption rather than correction, but the concept of correction taught in the Mysteries was utterly unlike the divinely insured redemption promised in salvationist religion. It was not a matter of belief in a higher power located somewhere beyond this world, off-planet, but an experiential faith in our connection to the divine power that is here, fully earthbound, providing the matrix in which we live, move, and have our being. Redemption for the initiates was not a grace received, now a deed accomplished for us by divine intercession. Rather, it involved assuming the privilege to co-evolve consciously with the planetary intelligence, to live inside the symbiotic miracle of the earth and learn how it works, loving every lesson, every feat of discovery, every act of transmutation in the divine alchemy of the biosphere. The Apocryphon of John, a long cosmological text from Nag Hammadi, says that we work intimately with the earth goddess Sophia “so that our natural kin, Wisdom, who resembles us, might correct what she lacks by the reflection of the Light we hold.
“This is the core of the Gnostic message as it was two thousand years ago, and as it stands today.”
Now, I skip and then continue to quote Lash:
“As Pagans, the gnostokoi rejected the belief that suffering is redemptive! As theologians, they refuted the claim that divine intervention could alter the human condition. By rejecting the superhuman savior and refuting salvationist beliefs, Gnostics drew a frontal assault from those who were formulating and enforcing the doctrines of the Judeo-Christian redeemer complex. [I do not elaborate on this complex here; Lash describes it in great detail. It is a pathological complex with many unhealthy manifestations from which I believe humanity needs to heal]. The brutal suppression of the Mysteries, the destruction of Gnostic writings, and the wholesale genocide of Pagan culture in Europe belong to the untold story of “Western Civilization” and the “triumph of Christianity.” This is the story as it was lived by the “losers.” To reclaim Gnostic wisdom for today and merge Mystery teachings with deep ecology – which is the dual intention of this book – cannot be done without looking closely at what destroyed the Sophianic vision of the living earth, and why it was able to do so. The genocide of native culture in the classical world went on for centuries, but a cover-up has largely concealed this fact, and continues to this day. To expose the cover-up and reveal both the cause and scope of the destruction so wrought is the secondary, but no less important, objective of this book.”
I believe the destruction of the ‘real’ culture of the Irish people is what Montague Keen is speaking of, and I believe it is what was deliberately destroyed under the cover of conversion. I also believe this book contains the ‘real’ truth of Christianity, which has little to do with the teachings of Jesus.
Not in His Name can be purchased most anywhere. If it is not easily come by, however, you can download a free kindle application to your computer, and then download the book to it from Amazon.com. To understand this topic in full, the book must be read. There is no way I can ever encapsulate this complicated topic in a few short paragraphs. I have simply been trying to create an interest . . . Hugs, ~Jean
http://jhaines6.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/the-crux-of-the-matter-is-also-i-believe-the-answer-to-the-puzzle-montague-keen-has-posed/
