Now the great Demon began to make aeons in the likeness of the real eternal realms, except that he produced them out of his own power.
Some years ago I wrote a post series called archonology. Although far-reaching in its scope, this was a personal quest. Having been financially and psychologically knocked sideways by the 2007 global financial crisis - and being alarmed by the naïve explanations for it found in the press- I decided to attempt a map of the power structure of Earth so that it may not happen again. Fool me once, and all that.
And when I say personal quest, I mean it. The goal was to get a sense of where Catherine Fitt’s "official reality" bubble began and to at least glimpse the scope and surface area of the much wider circle called "reality".
That's about all we can do. If 2016 has taught us anything, it is that the true governance structure of planet Earth remains opaque. So-called conspiracy theory is not a Rubiks cube. You do not move the pieces about until one day it all fits and then all of a sudden… What? Profit?
So the goal was to get a sense of the inertia of power in politics, economics, technology, in order to adjust my own tiny little plans accordingly. And I think it was successful. I’m currently doing better than most at Cassandra-ing this particular apocalypse.
I still like a good conspiracy theory, of course. Particularly the batshit ones like flat earth or interdimensional spider people from Saturn controlling the governments of the world. They are very useful for keeping the reality tunnel muscles limber. (I call it conspiracy yoga.) Plus they are endlessly fascinating cultural objects in and of themselves. They are what happens in cultures that stop telling ghost stories by the campfire or sending their children off to ‘religious education’ –which typically amounts to the same thing.
But there comes a point, not just in one's life but also in the timeline, where conspiracy or para-political yoga yields diminishing returns. Get in, get your map and get out. We all know what happens when we stare into the abyss for too long. That is the secret of reality tunnel calisthenics. Obsess over a dark world, live in a dark world. (A functional definition of social media if ever there was one.)
What is needed today is precisely the opposite. It is something Austin and I spoke about briefly before Christmas. However much I think the term has been eroded into pointlessness through overuse, the "radical" direction for 2017 is toward personal utopia rather than personal dystopia.
And so in keeping with the loosely gnostic cosmology (which probably only exists in contemporary scholars’ heads) that informed the archonology series, we shall match it with a new series: Aeonography.
The Aeons
Aeons are emanations of light and time that form part of several Gnostic creation stories and are also identifiable in other eastern Mediterranean cosmologies of the time. (And also blended with the god, Aion, which makes for exciting Jesus/Dionysus/Gnostic/Orphic mystery business.) They are a literary and spiritual mechanism for exploring the unfolding of the Divine in Creation. They are simultaneously the presiding ‘good guys’ and ‘good times’. Typically they are birthed by the Divine female ‘first thought’ of the True God; Sophia or –in my preferred manifestation- Barbelo.
This from Three Forms of First Thought, is Barbelo describing her creation, the creation of the aeons and the Son of God. (This is why the mythicist’s atheism is wrong but why I am still a mythicist.)
I am the first thought, the thought that is in the light. I am movement that is in all, she in whom the realm of all takes its stand, the firstborn among those who came into being, she who exists before all. She is called by three names, although she exists alone, since she is perfect. I am invisible within the thought of the invisible one. I am revealed in the immeasurable, ineffable things. I am intangible, dwelling in the intangible. I move in every creature.
I am the life of my afterthought that is within every power and every eternal movement, and in invisible lights, and within the powers and Angels and Demons and every soul in Tartaros, and in every material soul. I live in those who came into being. I move in everyone and I enter them. I walk upright, and those who sleep I awaken. And I am the sight of those who dwell in sleep.
I am the invisible one in all. I counsel those who are hidden, since I know the whole realm of all that exists in it. I am numberless beyond everyone. I am immeasurable, ineffable, yet whenever I wish, I shall reveal myself. I am the head of all. I am before all, and I am all, since I am in everyone.
I am a voice speaking softly. I am from the beginning. I am in the silence that surrounds every one of them. And the hidden voices is in me, in intangible, immeasurable thought, in the immeasurable silence.
I descended into the underworld and shone down on the darkness. I poured water. I am hidden in radiant waters. I gradually dawn on all by my thought. I am weighed down with the voice. Through me knowledge comes. I am in the ineffable and unknowable. I am perception and knowledge, uttering a voice by means of thought. I am the real voice. I cry out in everyone, and they recognise it, since the seed lives in them. I am the father's thought, and through me came the voice: the knowledge of everlasting things. I am as thought for all. I am joined to unknowable and intangible thought. I revealed myself in all who know me, for a joint everyone in hidden thought and exalted voice, and in a voice from the invisible thought.
…
The son is perfect in every respect. He is the word who originated through that voice, who came from on high, who has within him the name, who is light. The son revealed the everlasting, and all the unknown was known. He revealed what is hard to interpret and what is secret, and he preached to those who live in silence with first thought, and he revealed himself to those who are in darkness, and he clarified himself to those in the abyss (of the material realm). To those in the hidden treasuries he told ineffable mysteries, and he taught unspeakable doctrines to all those who became children of the light.
Now the voice that came from my thought exists as three permanences: the father, the mother, the son. The voice is perceptible speech containing the word rich in every glory. It has three masculinities, three powers, and three names. They are in the manner of the triad of three shapes, which are quadrangles, secretly in silence of the ineffable one.
He alone came into being as the anointed (ie Christ). I anointed him with goodness as the glory of the invisible spirit. I established these three alone in glory over the eternal realms in living water: glory surrounding him who first appeared to the light of the exalted aeons and realms. He persists in light. And he stood in a light surrounding him who is the eye of light gloriously shining on me. He gave aeons for the father of all aeons, I the thought of the father, first thought, Barbelo, the perfect glory and immeasurable invisible hidden one. I am the image of the invisible spirit. Through me all took shape. I am the mother as well as the light whom she appointed as a virgin, she who is called Meirothea, the intangible womb, the unrestrained and immeasurable voice.
Then the perfect son revealed himself to his aeons who came through him. He revealed, glorified, and enthroned them, and stood in the glory made for himself. They bless the perfect son, the anointed (i.e. Christ), the God who came into being by himself. And they gave glory, saying, "he is! He is! God’s son! God's son! He is! The being of eternal beings! He sees the eternal beings that he conceived. For you have conceived by your own desire! So we glorify you: MA! MO! You are O, O, O, You are A. You are being! The eternal realm of the eternal realms! The eternal realm he gave!"
So this series will abandon the false aeons created by the Demiurge in favour of the true children of Barbelo –which includes the Demiurge (and therein lies a secret key to your reading of the series). The first series –an ‘ology’- was a subject of study. Fixed, separate. This series –an ‘ography’- is an ongoing writing. It is dynamic, present, continuous.
We will look far and wide for the good things about this world and this time –this aeon- so that their lights may augment your own light. So that there is more light and less darkness in the world.
Now have a New Year's chaplet:
Holy art thou, holy art thou, holy art thou, Barbelo, Mother of the Aeons. Forever and Ever.
Amen.