Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of BeliefBasing much of Not in His Image on the Nag Hammadi and other Gnostic writings, John Lamb Lash explains how a little-known messianic sect propelled itself into a dominant world power, systematically wiping out the great Gnostic spiritual teachers, the Druid priests, and the shamanistic healers of Europe and North Africa. They burned libraries and destroyed temples in an attempt to silence the ancient truth-tellers and keep their own secrets. But as Lash reveals, when the truth is the planet Earth it cannot be hidden or destroyed. Not in His Image delves deeply into the shadows of ancient Gnostic writings to reconstruct the story early Christians tried to scrub from the pages of history, exploring the richness of the ancient European Pagan spiritualitythe Pagan Mysteries, the Great Goddess, Gnosis, the myths of Sophia and Gaiaand chronicles the annihilation of this Pagan European culture at the hands of Christianity. Long before the birth of Christianity, monotheism was an anomaly; Europe and the Near East flourished under the divine guidance of Sophia, the ancient goddess of wisdom. The Earth was the embodiment of Sophia and thus sacred to the people who sought fulfillment in her presence. This ancient philosophy was threatening to the emerging salvation-based creed of Christianity that was based on patriarchal dominion over the Earth and lauded personal suffering as a path to the afterlife. As Derrick Jensen points out in the afterword, in Lashs hands Jesus Christ emerges as the agent provocateur of the ruling classes. |
Contents
The Murder of Hypatia | 3 |
Pagan Roots | 23 |
The Conquest of Europa | 41 |
Copyright | |
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Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief John Lash Limited preview - 2006 |
Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief John Lamb Lash Limited preview - 2006 |
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Aeon alien ancient Anthropos apocalyptic Apocryphon of John Archons asserts autopoesis beliefs biosphere called Celtic centuries Christ Christian Christic cited codices Coptic cosmic cosmology cosmos cult culture D. H. Lawrence Dead Sea Scrolls deep ecology Demiurge divine doctrine duality earth Egyptian Eleusis emergent entheogenic epinoia ethics Europa evil experience faith Gaia theory Gaian galactic genocide Gnosis Gnostic Gnostic teachings Goddess gods Greek Hebrew human potential human species Hypatia ideology imagination indigenous initiates Jesus Jewish Jews living Lynn Margulis material Melchizedek Mesotes messiah mind moral Mystery Schools mystical myth Nag Hammadi narrative native Organic Light original Pagan Palestine patriarchy perpetrators Piscean Age planet planetary system Pleroma psyche Qumranic redeemer complex redemptive religion religious revealer Roman sacred salvation salvationism salvationist says scholars sense shamanism Sophia mythos Sophianic vision spiritual story survival telestai term Testament theology tion victim violence wisdom word writings Zaddikim