by John Lash
February 2006

from MataHistory Website

Spanish version
 

In my recent interview ("ET and Ancient Texts" - below audio) with George Noory for Coast to Coast AM, a listener called in a crucial question that I did not answer properly, due to the fast-paced, improvisational nature of the on-air format:

ETs & Ancient Texts
February 16, 2006
Host: George Noory
Guest: John Lash

 

Scholar and mythologist John Lash shared revelations about aliens and UFOs that he gleaned from his research of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi texts.

The Scrolls, he said, were written by an apocalyptic sect and contained numerous descriptions on the "hardware" side - sightings of crafts and close encounters.

The aliens were also written about in a positive light.
In contrast, in the Nag Hammadi texts, written by Gnostics, intrusive encounters and abductions are highlighted, with predatory aliens known as "Archons."

Described as "draconic," these entities were said to not be of Earth, yet hail from our planetary system.

The text explicitly warns of the Archons implanting divisive religious ideologies into the populace for their own purposes - a situation he sees being played out today.
Lash outlined Nine Theories of ET Contact which encompass various ways of comprehending ufology.

Among the paradigms he presented: The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis, which suggests our government cut a deal to trade access to advanced technology for the right for ETs to conduct experiments on humans and animals.

The Mind Control Hypothesis, as exemplified by Jacques Vallee, which posits that UFO phenomena is real "but not in the sense that it appears to be."

And the Benevolent Hypothesis, which assumes "space brothers" are here to helpfully intervene and initiate humanity into a higher evolution.

Sometimes, in responding to a question concerning the complex subject matter of mythology, it is necessary to frame the answer carefully, but radio interviews do not allow time for this.

In the following short piece I will have another try.
 

Who Are the Gods?

The listener asked me if the identification of the Sumerian Anunnaki and Gnostic Archons with modern ETs could be applied to other gods in different cultures, such as the Greek and Nordic myths.

A great question, and absolutely essential for a clear and sober orientation to the perplexing issue of alien entities, visitors, ancient astronauts, "gods in flying saucers," etc.

I use three simple classifications for the various gods described in mythology and ancient texts (the Sumerian cuneiform tablets, the Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi codices, etc), and the entities reported in ET encounters and UFO sightings. The first classification is purely psychological. Some "gods" are not autonomous entities, independent of us, but projections of natural and intrapsychic processes.

I call such "gods" psycho-deities because they manifest through our psyches. Even if they represent forces operating in nature, what happens in the natural world also impacts the human psyche, and permeates it, so "nature gods" are also intra-psychic.

For instance, in Nordic myth Wotan or Odin is a shamanic deity, or a deified shaman, who represents the power of higher seeing and the gift of divination. These are capacities that come to be embodied, or personified, if you will, in the figure of Odin. The capacities Odin possesses are paranormal, hence "god-like," both in the sense of being beyond the human norm, and in the sense of resembling faculties we might imagine superhuman beings to have.

Yet, they are intrapsychic capacities, fully within our range of evolution.

Or consider the nature god, Osiris, who was central to Egyptian religion. He represented processes of death and regeneration in nature, at the cellular level (hence a "grain god"), paralleled by other processes in the human psyche. As a "dying and resurrecting god," Osiris does not stand totally beyond human reality.

The psycho-gods are interactive within the range of our mental and sensorial experience. They are, in a sense, extensions and reflections of ourselves and other sentient creatures.

Nordic mythology describes the celestial conflict between two generations of "gods," the Vanir and the Aesir. The Aesir represent a class of "gods" of a superhuman, cosmic stature. They are not psycho-deities but cosmo-deities, divine powers that pervade the cosmos at large. They produce and sustain the manifest worlds, without manifesting themselves.

Of course, they also can reach into the human psyche, and enter our consciousness. They can go anywhere they like! Gnostics taught that the authentic cosmic gods, the pleromic divinities or Aeons, do not invade and overwhelm us. They have excellent boundaries. They do not assume human form. They are not of this world, but they are not entirely inaccessible to this world, either.

Cosmo-deities are the foundational and shaping forces of the manifest worlds, whereas psycho-deities represent our capacities to experience all that is so manifested. In Gnostic language, the cosmo-deities are the Aeons, the pleromic gods or Generators, as I like to call them. Pleroma means "fullness, plenitude."

In astronomical terms, the pleroma of the Aeons is the galactic core, or hub. The opening Episodes of the Gaia Mythos present an attempt to describe the nature and activity of the Aeons. (I use a prose-poem for this purpose, as awkward as that may be, because a literal description would be inappropriate.)

Between these two classes of "gods" is a third group, an ambiguous class of entities who are part psychic and part cosmic. They are called tricksters in anthropological studies and comparative mythology. Indigenous lore of the Americas is full of tricksters who interact with the native peoples, usually in a playful manner.

There is a vast range of trickster entities that do no harm and harbor no intent to deceive.

Their trickery is pure fun, or it may often be a way to instruct humans in survival, adaptation, and even self-knowledge. Many tricksters take the form of animals such as the rabbit, fox, crow, coyote, and so forth. These shapeshifting entities belong to the planetary habitat as much as we do. They are psychic, animistic powers of this world, close to the "animal powers" recognized by all indigenous peoples as allies to the human species.

The fairies and "little people" of Celtic folk-lore belong to this class.

Indigenous wisdom teaches that we cannot fully know what it means to be human unless we show the humility to learn from non-human beings. Trickster entities also include the spirits of various species of psychoactive plants, fungi, and mushrooms.

The niños or hongitos, the "little ones" of Maria Sabina, for example. Or the trolls seen in DMT experiences, reported by Terence McKenna and others.

There is, however, a particular strain of the trickster-type entity that behaves in a different manner. It deliberately presents itself as a cosmo-god, having a divine status. This entity tricks us by pretending to be other than it is. Most tricksters do not act in this way, as you can see from a study of the indigenous lore.

They may be shapeshifters, they may spin tall tales and perform all manner of clever illusions, but they do not pretend to be cosmic gods.

Those who do present themselves as cosmo-gods, our creators, and so forth, could be called "trickster gods." But this is a tricky term! We can call them trickster-gods, not because they are true gods, but because they can be mistaken for true gods.

These tricksters cannot be equated with the animistic type of trickster, nor are they psycho-gods. They can be identified by their deceptive tactics, their attempt to be taken for genuine cosmic gods. In short, they are pretenders, imposters who seek to imitate the cosmo-gods. I propose that they be called pseudo-gods.

Such are the Archons described in Gnostic writings.
 

Demiurge and Sophia

The ultimate imposter deity is Jehovah, the father god of the Bible. This entity of the lord of the Archons, or chief archon (protarchon).

Jehovah is a trickster-god who pretends to be an Aeon, a Generator. When Gnostics explained this distinction, they were violently resisted and, in some cases, murdered by the devotees of the pseudo-god.

Much violence has been done on this planet to protect the Biblical pseudo-god from being exposed. In fact, Jehovah's agenda encourages and sanctions this violence, as any sane person can see from reading a few pages of the Old Testament.

The pseudo-god needs to protect its identity and preserve its deception. To do so, it persuades its human devotees to fight in its behalf. This particular trickster-god is extremely jealous and malicious. This explains why the three mainstream religions, whose followers take the pseudo-god for the supreme creator, are informed by an agenda of violence, aggression, and domination.

We live on a planet where millions of inhabitants are caught in the deceptive spell of a pseudo-god.

This was the Gnostic warning to humanity.

Some writers on Biblical Ufology - see Nine Theories of Extraterrestrial Contact, which I discussed in the Noory interview - have pointed out that Jehovah acts like a murderous psychotic.

Christian O'Brien (The Genius of the Few) is particularly astute in his psychological profile of the Biblical father god, and A.D. Horn (Humanity's Extraterrestrial Origins) flatly asserts that "Jehovah is a lizzie" - that is, a predatory reptilian.

Horn does not cite Gnostic sources, but this is exactly what you will find in the Nag Hammadi materials. The Apocryphon of John (NHC II, 1) and other cosmological texts use the term drakonic for Jehovah, or the Demiurge, as this pseudo-god is also called.

The name given to this entity in the Mysteries was Yaldabaoth, YAL-duh-BUY-ot. Roughly translated this means "breeder of the hive, or horde."

Now, an important distinction: I cannot say if there are malevolent trickster-gods throughout the cosmos, manifesting in various worlds. The Gnostic teachings that survive do not cover this range of phenomena. Gnostic cosmology is specific to the conditions of our solar system and life on earth.

The seers of the ancient Pagan Mysteries observed that Archontic entities are present in the solar system, but they are not native to the earth as we are.

They are literally an extra-terrestrial and non-terrestrial species. As such, they are only capable of flitting into the atmosphere of the earth in erratic ways, making brief forays, and then flitting out again.

For them to remain on earth, special conditions would have to be established, just as when humans set up an outpost on the moon, or in the depths of the ocean. The Archon tricksters cannot live in the biosphere, just as we cannot live on the other planets of the solar system such as mars, jupiter, and neptune.

Gnostics taught that the earth does not belong to the solar system, but is merely captured in it.

As the Gaia Theory of Lovelock and Margulis affirms, the earth differs from the rest of the planets by the strange equilibrium of its atmosphere, providing not only a space for life-forms to inhabit but an interactive medium in which life can evolve, adapt, and innovate.

Such is the miracle of life on earth, including the human species as part of an open experiment overseen by the cosmic gods, the Aeons.

The earth is a special case (as Gaia theory asserts), because it is embodiment of a cosmo-god, the Aeon Sophia, whose name means wisdom. On this planet we see wisdom incarnate, living, evolving, sentient, and we are part of it. Sophia is one of the cosmo-gods of the galaxy we inhabit. She emerged from the core of the galaxy, the pleroma, to become immersed in a planetary body.

This situation is unique to our world. Mythologically, it is called the Fall of Sophia. To us, Sophia is the one Aeon or cosmo-god who is directly, sensorially present. We live in her skin. Our cosmic mother is the Aeon Sophia, whom we now call Gaia.

But Sophia is also the mother of the Archons, the tricky pseudo-gods who want us to take them for Aeons. Gnostic mythology (extensively described on site and in my forthcoming book, working title, Not in His Image) taught that before Sophia morphed into the earth, she produced a kind of spatter in the realms of elementary matter (quantum foam), resulting in a weird species made of inorganic (silicon-based) elements: the Archons.

These entities proceeded to fashion a world for themselves, the planetary system exclusive of the earth, which is Sophia's body, and was formed somewhat later. The Archons are so named, from Greek archai, "prior, previous," because they and their world were formed before Sophia morphed into the earth.

This is all quite a huge picture, of course. I do not expect anyone to digest it in one lump.

But it is remarkable that seers in the ancient Mysteries were able to establish this scenario. Take it or leave it, believe it or not. Personally, I believe this scenario is trustworthy and can be tested against the evidence.

It explains the origin of the Archontic ETs, both reptilian and embryonic or neonate types (the big-headed, bug-eyed Greys), as no other theory can do.

The value of the Gnostic scenario of the Demiurge and his horde is that it gives us a framework for discerning various types of non-human entities, and detecting one predatory type of trickster-god. I do not insist that these are the only predatory ETs in our galaxy - I know there are tales of many types - but the brutal fact is, one is enough to endanger our evolution.

Following Gnostic teachings, I believe that the Archons are the most immediate and intimate threat to humanity.
 

The Insanity of God

Now, just a few more words on Gnostic cosmology, and then I will return to the question that prompted this brief essay.

I often say that the Gnostic seers in the Mysteries were adept at paranormal skills such as lucid dreaming, remote viewing, clairaudience and clairvoyance. If this is correct, they would have been able to observe the Archon pseudo-gods and discern their modus operandi. In fact, about one-fifth of the NHC concerns the origins, motives, tactics, and actions of the Archons.

What those seers were able to determine about the predatory trickster-gods may be crucial to human survival. I want to emphasize one aspect of their dia-Gnosis of alien intrusion: not only does Yaldabaoth pretend to be the supreme creator god, but he falsely believes he is just that.

The chief Archon has a god complex! He is not only trying to deceive us, he is deceived. The pseudo-god is delusional, and his delusion infects all those who follow him - such is the shocking message from the ancient Mysteries.

The Gnostic assertion of the insanity of god must be one of the most astonishing concepts in human experience. But it is not isolated, not totally unique. In The Madness of the Ego I present a Buddhist parallel to the Gnostic Demiurge. Read this scenario and see if it is not an exact equivalent to the Gnostic myth of the Demiurge. Both narratives state that the pseudo-god mistakes himself for the creator of the entire universe.

This, of course, is exactly what Jehovah does, too. Believers in the mainstream religions who take this delusional entity for their Supreme Being are themselves delusional. In blind faith, millions of people are enmeshed in the insanity of a pretender god and implicated in the violence and aggression of the Archons.

The Demiurge is an imposter deity who works against humanity.

Yaldabaoth stands between humanity and the Aeons in the galactic core, pretending to be one of them. The Archon horde, operating on a hive-mentality, try to intrude between humanity and the Aeon Sophia, embodied in the earth. Thus they work against our innate wisdom, so closely connected to the intelligence of Gaia, in the vain attempt to deviate us from that connection.

This is the dia-Gnosis of the Mystery seers.
 

Double Deception

Finally, in closing, I would like to return to the call-in on the interview with George Noory.

Is it possible, he asked, to discern ET-Archons in other myths around the world?

It is clear that the Sumerian Anunnaki and the Gnostic Archons are identical to modern ETs, but it is by no means easy to go through the massive material of myth and folk-lore and weed out every reference to the pseudo-deities.

I have not done this, not completely or exhaustively, but I have made various attempt at it. I would like to report my investigations on another article on site.

Meantime, there is one more crucial factor in the dia-Gnosis. This concerns the double deception of the ET phenomenon: the phenomenon itself tricks us from seeing how it works. Since I have introduced the ET-Archon theory on this site, there has been ever more excited talk about how the gods described in ancient myth were actually extraterrestrials or "ancient astronauts."

I am certain that factoring the Archons into this discussion can be extremely instructive. At the same time, the introduction of Gnostic counter-intelligence on alien intrusion takes the discussion to another level. We now have to become more sophisticated in our understanding of the alien factor.

When we today regard the gods described in ancient times as Archontic ETs, we tend to think that we have finally understood who the gods are. This is not correct: in reality, we have come to see who the gods are not!

In making the identification, Anunnaki = ETs, for instance, we catch sight of the entities who pretend to be gods. In the Sumerian cuneiform record, which are transcripts of channeled materials, the Anunnaki claim to be our creators. But does the fact that something was written on clay tablets 2800 years ago mean that it is true? Of course not.

The Sumerian cuneiform record presents a claim that the Anunnaki are superior creator gods, not proof that they are.

The cuneiform tablets are not evidence of facts, they are evidence of a story presented as fact.

Here we are close to seeing the double deception. Having ascertained that the ancient gods were really ETs, we fail to ask, What about gods who are not ETs? The nature of the ET deception is, first, that it tricks us about the gods, and then, when we get on to the deception, it diverts us from looking beyond it toward the true gods, the divinities of the living cosmos.

Having made the ET-god connection, we must take another step toward more sophisticated knowing.

The sane thing to do, then, would be to ask, If the Archon-ETs were wrongly regarded as gods, who are the genuine gods? It would be a gross error to assume that we have understood the nature of the gods simply by making the ET connection to ancient mythology.

Due to the double deception of the ET phenomenon, we tend to assume that "ancient astronauts", who pretended to be gods and were taken as such, must be the only gods.

With the dia-Gnosis of the Archons, we are just on the threshold of discovering the true Gods. This is a momentous shift.

According to the Gnostics, the "true gods" are the Aeons of the Pleroma. And one of these is Sophia, the wisdom goddess, who morphed into the planet earth. Today we call her Gaia. She is the ground of life and consciousness for the human species and all sentient life, including molecular life.

Such is the ancient Pagan teaching preserved by the guardians of the Mysteries. Today we stand at the threshold of reviving and reliving that teaching.

The trick is, to get past the extraterrestrial tricksters to the real magic of life on this earth.