Animism and Lessons of Earth's Power - 2. Roots of Disconnect and the Need to Reclaim Indigeny

by Sean Jobst 

5 August 2022

"The Sacred Grove of the Druids" painting from the Opera Norma, 
by Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835). Our Ancestors, being Animistic,
worshipped outside in sacred groves and other natural sites.

   Animism was engrained within the cultures and allegorized through the lore of all peoples, shaping how they related not only to the world around but themselves down to the cellular level. It was only with the rise of Abrahamism in a small corner of the Middle East that this aberration arose of the Earth merely "created" for use and abuse by a human species who are separate and "above" it. The mind-virus posits itself as anthropocentricism, seeming to build up the human while actually internalizing their lesser status to some off-planet god who "created" them flawed. This same god, who is "perfect" while still angered at the flaws of his creation, sent redeemers and saviors to "correct" what is inherently wrong morally and physically with the anthropos. This is projection at its most insidious, rearing its ugly head in its latest forms of Transhumanism and Scientism, that pride themselves in rejection of traditional religions but are founded on the same mind-virus.

   One of the earliest organized critiques of this mentality was by Hellenic philosopher Celsus, whose Logos Alethes (The True Word, 175 CE) was burned by the Christian authorities but unwittingly survived through the attempted critique by early Church father Origen. Basing his arguments on the instinctive animist perspective, Celsus saw human beings as a type of animal like any other but endowed with certain faculties like reason. We are subject to the same natural laws as other beings, part of the same Nature. Many examples can be given of the wisdom, sentience, will to live, desire, conscious healing, and complex social structures of different types of animals. What about their abilities that are instinctual yet require more planning and effort when done by humans? It can't be presumed that the universe was "created" solely for humans, but more correctly that "all things have been adjusted, not with reference to each other, but with regard to their bearing upon the whole."(1) 

   In contrast to anthropocentricism is Biocentricism, centered upon the sentience and sanctity of all life, that all beings have a place within our shared existence. Nature and human beings have innate meaning and value. Abrahamism "prepared the way for a desacralized universe and, ultimately, a dehumanized one," as admitted by the Hungarian Catholic theologian Thomas Molnar. Their "rejection of folk myth and ritual, its reduction of nature to a created object, and its relegation of all holiness to a distant god left humanity with a wholly profane existence for the first time in history."(2) There is a supernatural element festering under this mind-virus we can identify with the Wetiko "cannibalistic" spirit (dehumanizing self-destructive) identified by the Algonquins and other American Indigenous tribes, or the Archontic Infection warned against in the Gnostic texts.(3) 

   This is the Religious Perception of Reality, founded upon the mind-virus that human beings are guilty and sinful for the "crime" of living in a "barren" world fit only for subjugation on behalf of an off-planet father god. At odds is the innate Spiritual Perception of Reality, founded upon the connectedness of everything, the sacred mystery of Earth, and human responsibility. We can identify it as an infection in the mind of specific human beings at a specific time and place in history, festering and spreading over centuries so that it has truly become institutional. "Spiritual reality is based upon responsibility. Religious realities are not spiritual. The religious reality that exists in these technologic industrial perceptions are not about responsibility — they’re about authoritarianism and guilt and sin and blame, domination and submission."(4)

"Wetiko 2" illustration by Liana Buszka

Archontic Theological Roots of Disconnection

   All tribal societies knew Earth as an enchanted place with vibrant interconnectedness of all sentient beings. It was only with an aberration that human beings were seen as separate and distinct from Nature, and this world was viewed as a barren place (as its sentience was denied) to be exploited and was associated with the "fall" of humanity from an off-planet Eden. As I discussed in Part 1, there is the Kabbalistic theme of "divine sparks" (qlippoth)(5) shattering upon the "creation" of this world and became associated with "lower" nature. The messianic, utopian impulses driving control ideologies throughout history have arisen as ways to "save" people from themselves. You are "guilty" for the "sin" of being born into this "lower" world.(6)

   Such mental aberration arose at a specific time among the Hebrews, until then just another tribe little different from their Semitic neighbors. So it wasn't their nature but the result of a mind-virus implant, a mental hack not genetic or biological. Its a supernatural attack by predators "that came from the depths of the cosmos and took over the rule of our lives," in the words of the Peruvian-Mexican shaman Carlos Castaneda (through the archetypal Yaqui teacher Don Juan). "The predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind. The predators' mind is baroque, contradictory, morose, filled with the fear of being discovered any minute now."(7) The main result of this mind-virus was mental disconnect of humans from the Source, the living and conscious Earth Mother, with all the self-empowerment and wisdom that inspires; the instinctual Animism known by all our tribal ancestors no matter where in the world. The visionary Gnostic teacher John Lamb Lash expressed it brilliantly: 

   "In the Gnostic perspective the Archons are not only mind parasites - delusional nodes in the human mind, considered as quasi-autonomous psychic entities, if you will - they are cosmic imposters, parasites who pose as gods. But they lack the primary divine factor of ennoia, 'intentionality,' 'creative will.' They cannot originate anything, they can only imitate, and they must effectuate their copycat activity with subterfuge and stealth, lest its true nature be detected. Hence they offer Abraham something that already belongs to him as a member of the human race. The Earth has already been given to humanity: it is the precious habitat the goddess Sophia dreamed for the Anthropos, and which she manifested by the metamorphosis of her own divine luminosity. The Archons approach Abraham with a fake deal, promising him possession and domination of the terrestrial realm, but this is not compatible with Sophia's ennoia, her divine intention. The Earth is not a territorial prize but a precious setting where the human species can realize its innate genius, its capacity for novelty, acting within the natural boundaries set by the Goddess. The Archons mimic the divine ennoia, Sophia's intention, and at the same time they invert it. In place of participation in the divine miracle of symbiosis and evolutionary emergence, which is the true birthright of humanity, they promise Abraham a fake sovereignty that works against that birthright and deviates human purpose from its proper course of unfoldment. This is countermimicry in action."(8)

"The Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek" (1626) by the Flemish
painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). Without ancestors or genealogy
(Hebrews 7:3), Melchezidek was a shadowy figure who anointed priesthood
upon Abraham. The Midrash says he secretly taught Torah to the Patriarchs
before it was publicly "revealed" at Sinai. Talmudic scholars regard him as
"guardian angel" of Israel. The Zohar calls him "the King Who rules with
complete sovereignty." He is identified with the nasi "warrior agent" in the
Zaddikites' Dead Sea Scrolls, a messianic title given to Sephardic financier
and proto-Zionist Joseph Mendes in the 16th century. Paul compares Jesus to
Melchezidek throughout Hebrews 7, as a divine redeemer and savior.

   We can easily trace the steps by which this mind virus was implanted and distorted what was already held by this tribe previously indistinguishable from its other Semitic neighbors. These tribes were united by belief in a father god named El who portioned lands to his "sons" (collectively called the Elohim), who each became associated with a different people (Deuteronomy 32:8). Multiplicity was still embraced in the idea of El presiding over a "divine assembly" to "render judgement among the gods" (Psalm 82:1). According to the Ugarit list of gods, found near modern Latakia, El overthrew and usurped the power of his father. His name is attested in archaeological findings and inscriptions from the Levant as far back as 2000 BCE. YHWH, literally meaning "lord", was El's son who had been allotted the Hebrews (Deuteronomy 32:9). They elevated him as Elyon "Most High" after having been only the local god of Jerusalem. The earliest historical mention of Yahweh is from a 14th century BCE Egyptian inscription on a wall cartouche in Soleb Temple, built by Pharaoh Amenhotep III in Nubia: "The Shashu of Yahweh's Land."(9) 

   This mysterious land has not been identified, although proponents of the Kenite hypothesis identify it with Midian given his associations with a volcano (Exodus 19:16-18, 20:18, Psalm 97:5). His earliest Biblical reference was in association with Seth's son Enosh (Genesis 4:26). At some point YHWH elevated himself over his fellow elohim (Psalm 89:6) and commanded them to only worship him (Psalm 29:1). While proclaiming himself all-powerful, Yahweh was still overpowered by Chemosh's chariots (Judges 1:19, 2 Kings 3). These foundational texts of Abrahamism, which later birthed the scriptures of Christianity and Islam, did not deny the Deities but proclaimed their own tribal god as the one "superior" and "jealous" over the others. Only gradually was this multiplicity of spiritual beings actually denied, after being considered "demons" (which still accepted their existence), in ways foreshadowing how modern atheistic transhumanists deny the soul and consciousness.

   From this mythic event of Yahweh's elevation over the elohim it was a natural conclusion to deny Animism. The Israeli Biblical scholar Yehezel Kaufmann stressed the central difference between Judaism that arose out of the Hebrews, and the polytheistic and animistic Gentiles (goyim "the nations"). The latter is a "metadivine realm" or "meta-dimension" wherein there is permeability between different realms of reality, a magical "fabric" embedded within everything. Earth is accepted as an enchanted realm where human beings can tap into creative power. This is "useless" for the monotheists whose god "transcends" Nature "because their conceptualization of god and their conceptualization of the world does not really allow for human beings to permeate within the fabric of reality in a way to access the source of it all and enter in communication with the gods."(10) 

Hebrew apayim, "nostrils" but often rendered as his "anger" 
(Exodus 34:6, Numbers 14:18, Joel 2:13, Jonah 4:2, Nahum 1:3,
Nehemiah 9:17, Psalm 86:15, 103:8, 145:8). "Smoke rose from 
his nostrils; consuming fire came from his mouth, burning coals
blazed out of it" (Psalm 18:8). "Finding refuge under your wings"
(Psalm 17:8, 57:1, 61:4, 63:7, 91:4). He sent "fiery serpents" 
(Numbers 21:6) and ordered an idol built of Nehushtan
(2 Kings 18:4) while demanding human sacrifice (Numbers 31:17,
36-40). "One transcendent god" hiding his identity in plain sight.

The common worldwide motif of a dying-and-rising hero-god
figure crucified was stolen, then infected with the mind-virus 
of salvationism. Compared to Nehushtan (John 3:14), itself an
inversion of global serpent imagery allegorical of Earth energies. 

   This entity who proclaims himself "transcendent" yet still "jealous" over the Deities and "angry" over his alleged "creation" not submitting to him: Jehovah declares, "I am God and there is no other!" (Isaiah 45:5, 45:22, 46:9). "Besides me there is no savior" (Isaiah 43:11). In archontic fashion, these elohim deluded themselves into thinking they "created" humans "in our image" (Genesis 1:26). In his later iteration once salvationism began festering amongst "the nations" (goyim), he proclaimed: "For there is one God and one meditator between God and mankind" (1 Timothy 2:5). And in a later incarnation six hundred years later he ordered people to proclaim: "There is no god but Allah" (Qur'an 2:255, 4:171, 23:91, 59:22, 112:2)....He changed names to spread variants of his mind-virus to different places and times, but his origins and reality was expressed at Nag Hammadi in Khemet (Egypt): 

   "And he became arrogant, saying, 'It is I who am god, and there is no other apart from me.' When he said this, he sinned against the entirety."(11) "Now the archon who is weak has three names. The first name is Yaldabaoth [child of the void], the second is Saklas [the fool], and the third is Samael [god of the blind]. And he is impious in his arrogance which is in him. For he said, 'I am God and there is no other God beside me,' for he is ignorant of his strength, the place from which he had come."(12)

   "Yaldabaoth himself chose a certain man named Abraham, and made a covenant with him that if his seed would continue to serve him he would give to him the earth as an inheritance. Later through Moses he brought forth from Egypt the descendants of Abraham, gave them the law, and made them Jews. From them the seven gods, also called the Hebdomad, chose their own heralds to glorify each and proclaim Yaldabaoth as God, so that the rest of mankind, hearing the glorification, might also serve those who were proclaimed by the prophets as Gods."(13)

   Lash traces how this manifests in a pathological hatred of Nature: "Monotheism begins with a god who hates trees. 'Ye shall utterly destroy all the places wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree. And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their idols with fire; and ye shall hew down the carved images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place. (Deut. 12:2-3). The Demiurge of the Old Testament is jealous, insisting that no other gods be honored before him. This demand of course implies that there are other gods, competing deities. They are Pagan divinities who pervade nature, manifesting in all manners of creatures, in clouds and rivers and trees, even in rocks. Monotheism will tolerate none of these sensuous immanent powers. It makes the Earth void of divinity, its inhabitants subject to an off-planet landlord. By a strange twist the biblical deity who claims to have created the natural world forbids humanity to adore his handiwork. For an artist to insist on personal adoration for himself instead of, and in exclusion of, his work, is rather perverse considered in human terms, but with the supreme deity of the Hebrews it is perfectly normal. The wrathful, capricious temperament of Yahweh belies deep insecurity, for if Gnostic myth points to the truth, this god is a fraud, a violent and demented imposter."(14)

Boniface chopping down the sacred Donar's Oak of the Hessi
tribe (known by their Roman name Chatti), backed by armed
force of the Frankish authorities near modern Geismar in 724.
From a fresco by Heinrich Maria von Hess, München, 1834-1844.

Charlemagne's jihadist destruction of the sacred
Irminsul and genocide against the Saxons, 772.
From an illustration by Heinrich Leutemann, 1882.
The Irminsul was a physical representation of the
World Tree, an Axis Mundi that refers to the inter-
connectedness of all worlds and beings (Animism).

Reclaiming Indigeny

   Each and every one of us are descendants of a tribe at some point in history. Many social and psychological problems, nihilism, feelings of disconnect, and identity crises, are direct results from forgetting this basic fact. Remembrance is essential, the ancestral memories within you that ground you to something greater than yourself yet are innately you; that remind you have a personal responsibility to the past as much as to the present and future. Its an empowerment of meaning, carrying within you the blood of generations whose love, joys, sorrows, hopes, heroic actions, hard choices, and overcoming adversities produced you. All of this is within you down to the most basic cellular level, manifesting outward to your physical features, and showing themselves in unconscious thoughts or the talents and moments of inspiration that seem to manifest at the most crucial moments in your life but otherwise cannot be explained. 

   Encoded within every individual's DNA is the collective experience of their lineage from the beginning. There is ancestral memory that we are beings made from the Earth; that all things have being; and that there was a point in time when our tribal ancestors encountered a new technologic perceptional reality that imposed itself upon them in "a war for the possession of the souls of the godless heathens." Our ancestral understanding of Animism was replaced with a control system where "we committed a moral crime for getting here." To understand this process and truly know oneself, every individual should acquaint themselves with what tribe(s) they are descendants of, and how that tribe got "civilized". It was done against the tribes of Europe long before it was unleashed upon the Americas and elsewhere, with the perception of reality being the same but the methods refined over the centuries.(15)

   In this age where existential meaning has been lost, where millions of people have problems resulting from identity crises and how they relate to the world, its more important than ever to be reclaim Indigeny - that sense of being descendant of a tribal people indigenous to a specific biosphere (thus forming an ethnosphere), with all that entails of responsibility and being. Various false identities such as consumerism or authoritarian ideologies and cults, even the latest hysterias and fears, are nothing but desperate surrogacies to fill a void that can never be filled without this return to the Animistic. A mind-virus converted and "civilized" people, and then turned them against other peoples as mercenaries of that mind-virus in a perverse process called the Victim-Perpetrator Bond:

   "....the victim-perpetrator bond works in the course of history as it is known to work in dysfunctional families. The redeemer complex, the insidious core of salvationist belief, asserts the redemptive value of suffering in such a way that it legitimates and even sanctifies suffering. On top of all that, the victim-perpetrator bond makes suffering extremely contagious....The lethal insanity of the victim-perpetrator bond is staggering. The complicity of victims and perpetrators is a gruesome pact, but there is still a deeper dimension to this horror....The factor of 'supernal masochism' comes to expression in what can be called victim-perpetrator collusion. The two parties are not merely complicit in their beliefs, they are intricately and intimately codependent in their actions. Victims and perpetrators need each other desperately and use each other both viciously and vicariously to keep their bond intact. This is not true of first-time, out-of-the-blue victims, of course, but of the addicted kind, those who come back for more, glorify in the victim role and blindly follow the same narrative as the perpetrators, convinced that it puts them on higher moral ground than those who harm them, or believing they are called to suffer for the sake of others."(16) 

This painting by the Dutch-French artist Ary Scheffer (1795-1858)
shows the moment in the Battle of Tolbiac (496/506) when the
Frankish King Clovis offered himself as vector to carry the
salvationist mind-virus for victory in battle against my Alemanni
tribe. A defining moment of this Bond, as he embarked on his crusade
to subjugate and "civilize" the Alemanni in a process of more than two
centuries. It festered among his descendants, especially Charlemagne. 

   Historical examples of this include when the newly-converted Arabian tribes were unleashed as a jihad against the Levant, Persia, Egypt, and eastern Africa. The newly-converted Berber tribes were then turned into the Moorish force that invaded the Iberian Peninsula, as well as southward against the animistic African tribes. After liberation (reconquista), Spanish conquistadores led the effort to convert Indigenous nations of the Americas while oblivious to our own Celtic and Iberian native heritage. Farther north, the newly-converted Franks set themselves up as primary blunt force of the Victim-Perpetrator Bond against the rest of the Germanic Heathen peoples. Once converted, Saxon crusaders were turned against the Pagan Prussian, Baltic, and Slavic peoples. Imbued with the Protestant iteration of the mind-virus, converted people from northwest Europe acted out the Old Testament subjugation of entire nations in "Manifest Destiny" over North America. Further back, we can identify the imperial troops of Rome subjugating the tribal peoples, slaughtering Druids and others who preserved the indigenous wisdom for their tribes, after having themselves been lost to a tribal Italic worldview that preceded the centralization of Imperial Rome.

   Recognizing this has nothing to do with the external shame/guilt complex turned into ideology: An infection of the same mind-virus. Such people only project their own internal feelings that arise from willful ignorance about their identity, appropriating certain causes in a paternalistic way that reveal themselves to be the very racists they decry. To not know oneself makes you nihilistic, with little meaning other than a savior complex. So often I've encountered that white Americans especially have a disconnect from knowing they are also descendants of tribes at some point - those of us from more recent immigrant heritage are more fortunate in this regard. Many just can't wrap their minds around the fact European peoples also had our own rich, deep spiritual worldview that was just as animistic and shamanic as those of other tribal peoples; much less how many folk traditions are living remnants of our ancient traditions. Being linear in their mindsets, they also fail to recognize the historical dynamics of the Victim-Perpetrator Bond. 

   Many others who escape the Abrahamic mind-virus seek to fill the spiritual void by looking to other tribes for their own spiritual meaning, most notably from Native American cultures. While we can and should learn in mutual respect from others, what these confused vultures do is unbalanced so lacks authenticity to even the traditions they counterfeit much less being authentic to themselves. Even others who are on the right track of reclaiming their own native European spirituality often carry over Abrahamic baggage (especially Protestant Christianity) into new forms of neo-Paganisms that do very little in actual reconstruction. These are often centered around specific caricatures (for example, the Vikings who were only a specific time in Norse history much less the wider Germanic world), treating written accounts as revealed books; devolving into more-political (than spiritual) feuds of "folkish" vs. "universalist", while the true historical practice was Tribal and localized; becoming too church-like, with obsessive focus on Deities and thus ignore the vibrant interconnectedness of all Beings.

   Balance is to awaken to Animism as both a noun and verb to which can be attached specific tribal adjectives to reflect that it's coming innately from the spirit of all peoples. Knowing interconnectedness helps one reclaim Sovereignty, not falling for the latest hysterical and fear-driven iterations of this mind-virus - or the Authorities who use it to construct their control-systems built on those who internalize this Bond and Comply with their free-choice and energy (ignorance is NOT bliss). Transcendence to beyond just knowing: "The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence."(17) Building a relationship with one's ancestors inspires a Blood Gnosis that is the ultimate impediment from authoritarian manipulation. Much more can be said but we will proceed in Part 3 with a truly self-empowering narrative about the Earth's innate power and its access to all free and sovereign individuals; it can never be taken by these authoritarian systems and ideologies who only derive their authority from what others give them of their power.

Footnotes and Sources:

(1) Quoted in Origen, Contra Celcum, Book IV, 99.

(2) Thomas Molnar. The Pagan Temptation. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987, p. 9. He specifically named Christianity, although his insights can be broadly applied to all the Abrahamic religions.

(3) For an in-depth analysis of Wetiko, see: Jack D. Forbes. Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wétiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2008; and Paul Levy. Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2013. 

(4) "A Conversation with American Indian Activist and Poet John Trudell," 1999, <http://bencorbett.net/index.php/john-trudell-speaks/>.

(5) Qlippoth, "shells, husks", considered the spiritual obstacles to "holiness". In Lurianic Kabbalah, the vessels intended to contain seven Sefirot ("emanations" of the divine) at the "creation" event shattered and the Qlippoth came into being by the "sparks of divine light" still caught in these shards. The world thus being associated with these scattered "divine sparks", there is considered a need for "repair" (tikkun olam). 

(6) Aside from the well-known Abrahamic instances like the Amalek "hereditary enemy" are such modern expressions of this mental disease as the financial system's fiction of "national debt" which makes everyone born with a "debt" that was actually incurred by governments and not the people; the Cultural Marxist lie that certain individuals inherit either a "victim" or "guilt" and "privilege" status based solely on their skin color; and the climate alarmists' narrative that one is guilty for their "carbon emissions" so must accept whatever the Great Reset proposes for them. As perverse codependents, meaning is found in such feelings of shame and guilt by these cultists who lack existential meaning.  

(7) Carlos Castaneda. The Active Side of Infinity. 1998.

(8) John Lamb Lash. Not In His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief, 15th Anniversary Edition. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2021, p. 115.

(9) The son and successor of Amenhotep III would be the Pharaoh known as Akhenaten, who imposed a monothestic cult of Aten upon the Egyptians. There is an interesting theory, most prominently held by the psychologist Sigmund Freud, that Akhenaten and Moses was one and the same person. Indeed there is a direct linguistic connection between Egyptian Aten and Hebrew Adonai, and similarities have been proven between Psalm 104 and Akhenaten's Great Hymn to the Aten. 

(10) Yehezel Kaufmann. The Religion of Israel, from Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. His analysis is incredibly accurate and blunt, although he deduced these Deities are "limited" in contrast to the transcendent god who is "ruler" of the entire universe but only "revealed" himself to the Hebrews. While not denying polytheism, he used the "conflicting agendas" argument to make them "lesser" to his own "perfect" god.

(11) The Reality of the Archons, 4:94.20-25.

(12) Apocryphon of John, cited in James M. Robinson, ed. The Nag Hammadi Library in English. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988, pp. 111-112.

(13) Quoted in Irenaeus, Against Heresies, I.30.10. 

(14) Lash, op. cit., p. 227.

(15) This paragraph is my synopsis of John Trudell's speech "What It Means to be a Human Being," delivered in San Francisco, March 2001. Available in many recordings and transcripts online.

(16) Lash, op. cit., pp. 243-244.

(17) A quote by the Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986), from a 1929 talk where he also expounded on the spiritual meaning of Freedom. Theosophists sought to groom him into their own "Maitreya" or "World Teacher", projecting their own Abrahamic salvationism upon the wisdom of the Vedic tradition beyond their infected minds to even comprehend. Being authentic to himself, Krishnamurti rebelled against these efforts and asserted his own Dharma over their well-funded schemes. Theosophists went on to provide a religious framework to Globalist institutions.