Gnostics vs. New Agers: is there a meaningful difference?

I'm going to start learning more

We are in the “Age of Re-Enchantment” as Carl Teichrib dubbed it, which means we are moving away from Western traditions like rational evidence and empirical data and toward a mystified society of intuition, spiritual enlightenment, and “ancient wisdom” being leaked into popular discourse as if it were a grassroots revolution of discovery. It’s not one particular form of mysticism we are facing, but many. If we’re going to stand against the occult movement, it may be time to start distinguishing them more clearly.

If you haven’t seen my discussion with

Geopolitics & Empire

yet, I highly recommend you check it out soon, it’s becoming popular and making waves:

Terry Wolfe: The New Age, the Great Awakening, & the Green World Order

In the above discussion, Hrvoje Moric and I watch at a clip from a recent E511 Ministry video making a very similar argument to what I have written about in my books, especially Fire in the Rabbit Hole, that the alternative media is saturated with New Age mystics posing as Christians or “free thinkers”. In my opinion, the argument from E511’s video series becomes too strained, however, when he insists that the truth movement is a direct offspring of Gnosticism.

What is Gnosticism?

Gnosticism was a First Century heresy which interpreted the Bible¹ in a radical new way, calling the Hebrew God an evil creator deity—literally Satan according to some of their literature—who opposed the true “Father” God spoken of by Jesus Christ. This school of thought accused the God of the Old Testament of trapping mankind in a prison of materialism and legalism, and said that Jesus represented the ultimate God who wanted mankind to be liberated and spiritual. As E511 sees the situation, Gnosticism is the original conspiracy theory, and therefore it is the mother of all conspiracy theory research. His argument seems to draw a lot of significance from the fact that he finds similar beliefs in the modern “truther” movement, like the New Age. The fact that both Gnosticism and the truther movement tend to claim Christianity for themselves adds to the evidence. Unfortunately, in his logic, this makes everyone who researchers conspiracy theories a Gnostic, and by extension an antisemite, since the Gnostics of antiquity rejected the Jews and their Hebrew God, and modern conspiracy theories stereotypically villainize Jews as well. Quite frankly this is where it loses me completely.

And while E511 is correct to warn about false Christians in the truther movement, I think it’s important to recognize the difference between classic Gnosticism and the kind of broad “Oneness” mysticism that is actually taking over. I haven’t yet bothered to categorize these modern mystics, but it would be safe to say that David Icke is a great example of a traditional Gnostic. And sure enough, E511 has clips of him talking about “Archons” (a hallmark of Gnosticism) and describes reality as a corrupt prison that we must escape through enlightenment. But if we look closely, this is a major departure from people like Alice Bailey, Marilyn Ferguson, and the First Earth Battalion type of New Agers. These two camps might even be opposed.²

What is Oneness?

As you should know by now, the actual “New Age” itself is a reference to the “Age of Aquarius”, which is the astrological notion of a period when humanity will join the divine, and replace traditional religions with a syncretic, mystical form of spirituality after some sort of grand Apocalypse.

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