Nomad Codes

world becomes an omen. Nature gives you a sign, not of an abstract law but a moving message written on the wind.
    Agriculture and the development of the urban state change everything in this myth I have sketched. The walls go up. Eventually monotheism appears, perhaps partly as a metaphysical resonance of the vertical organization of state-craft (the pinnacle of the pharaoh’s pyramid), and partly as an inevitable expression of the synthetic and relational logic of the human mind. (The notion of a singular god is, perhaps, a necessary product of religious calculation.) Meanwhile, the virus of written text spreads, creating a psychic space for the intensification of rational and increasingly abstract thought that is graphically separated, through the man-handled glyphs of writing, from the living sensual semiotics of nature. This space pulls us inside and up, towards an increasingly interior and immaterial sense of the character and locus of truth—the Platonic world of transcendent concepts, the Logos. The body and matter correspondingly suffer as spiritual principles, becoming imperfect copies of abstract truths.
    Gnosticism becomes the paradigmatic spiritual expression of the transcendent religious drive that characterizes late antiquity. The core Gnostic myth is that the creator god described in Genesis is not the true god, but an inferior and even deluded demiurge. This lower god commands a variety of rulers, or archons, and together they are responsible for running our miserable prison planet of a world. But though we are imprisoned in this “abortion of matter,” humanity carries within itself the leftover sparks of the precosmic Pleroma that existed before the demiurge and his creation. Human beings are thus absolutely superior to the ecosystem—not stewards, but strangers in a strange land. Our body and the soul (or psyche ) cloak this spiritual spark and must be tossed aside for us to rediscover our true being. The primary trope of Gnosticism is therefore not sin and redemption, but ignorance and gnosis, forgetting and memory. We don’t need to expiate our crimes, but to discover and remember the way out of a false world created through no fault of our own. And this way out is way out —Gnostic texts crackle with a peculiar energy, an almost sci-fi sensibility of “alien gods” and supramundane universes of light. Though not the first cosmic dualists, the Gnostics may have been the first spiritual off-worlders.
    In addition to fusing Neoplatonic thought and the rhetoric of freedom that characterizes the young Christianity, Gnosticism also presents a continuity with, rather than a rejection of, the intense spiritual experience found within urban pagan and even archaic shamanic traditions. Its rejection of the embodied cosmos is not merely intellectual, but reflects a lived spirituality of gnosis. But unlike earlier and rival Neoplatonic philosophies, Gnosticism also presents an extremely critical perspective on nature and the body, and thereby casts antiquity’s overall religious drift away from embodied experience into extreme spiritual relief. While this world-denying trend will come to characterize normative Christianity to some degree—especially after the ex-Manichaean Augustine leaves his mark on it—the intensity of Gnosticism’s desire to break out of this world may be unparalleled.
    From the perspective of rural pagans, carrying on their ancient and varied practices of nature worship, Gnostic cosmology would have seemed revolutionary, if not insane. Ritually blending with the rhythms and forms of nature, the worshippers of the old gods embrace the deep groove of the seasons and draw sustenance from balancing with the forces of change. Of course, rituals attempt to control nature as well as honor it, but one of the most essential aims is to catch the élan vital , the bursting surge of spring. The Gnostic, in contrast, denies this spirit. The immanent life of the visible cosmos is a trap, and the Gnostic rejects it. Reflecting an intense critical sublimation and a profoundly unbalanced internal split, the Gnostic goes against the grain. The Gnostics were spiritual Prometheans; like the alchemists they later inspired, they dedicated themselves to an opus contra naturam .

FATE VS. FREEDOM

    Here is another way to appreciate the situation. As a pagan embedded in nature, you are compelled to honor the powerful spirits that animate the environment that surrounds and in a sense defines you and