Much of basic psychology today instructs us to beat down our negative emotions by " getting out of our minds and into our lives ." It is called acceptance and commitment therapy. Certainly such advice can be valuable to those of us who are living lives full of what psychologists call the "negative self-scripts", or influence emotions, that we generate from feelings of low self-esteem, guilt, self-consciousness, and feelings of inferiority. To overcome these negative self-scripts we are instructed to develop "self core skills" with mindful self-scripts based on affirmation, assertion, focusing, humanizing, and tension-sensing to rationalize and diminish the debilitating negative emotions we all live with. We are to use the polarity of our two basic kinds of emotions -- innate emotions and influence emotions -- to wage a war between our soul and our mind to keep us on the straight and narrow. There is something of "wild gnosis " in this kind of psy...

Someone once said they won't enjoy old age because there's no future in it. More profound words were never uttered if we cannot see beyond our own lifetimes. Could it be that we live just a few decades on the face of this earth, struggling as best we can to make the most of this short time, only to fade away to nothing but whatever legacy we've left behind when we die? Do any of us really believe in our heart of hearts that that's all there is? Could it be that there is no further purpose for our existence – not so much as even some mysterious purpose beyond our human perceptions or understandings? To believe in your heart and mind that this life is all there is seems incomprehensible to me. If you are in touch with your own soul, you intuitively know there is more. In previous essays I've discussed the pleroma, hierosgamos, the union of opposites, the bridal chamber, the esoteric knowledge of the Gnostics, pagan myths and their relationship to modern day religious ...

Hierosgamos may be generally defined as an overt spiritual or sacred act of physical sexual intercourse between a deity and a man or woman for the purpose of gaining divinity for the human partner. Symbolically, the celebration of the Eucharist is the same thing. In ancient Sumeria, for instance, a hierodule participating in the act with a god became a deity of the goddess Inanna in the same manner as the taking of bread and wine represents the body and blood of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist communion today. The roots of this ancient act run deep even today in some religious and neopagan cults, but the fact that it is also ritualized in many Christian faiths, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, seems to indicate that the myth of copulation between gods or goddesses and human beings is based in physical reality. Read no further into the Holy Bible than the 6th chapter of Genesis and you will find that sons of god marry daughters of men: "And it came to pass, when men began to...

There was a time when the term sacred prostitute was not at all an oxymoron. As is so common in the altered meanings and definitions of language and the duplicity of our great patriarchal society, the spiritual has been separated from the sexual by men, for men cannot deal with the concept that the woman is equal, if not superior, to the man in every way that was ever meant to be – except perhaps for the hunter/gatherer/defender role. Back then, immanent sexuality and transcendent divinity were inseparable, for mankind understood intuitively the roles between the sexes; the business of life was pure and simple, mostly unfettered by the devious archons that dominate our lifestyles today. Just as night follows day, as peace follows war, life follows death, north opposes south, and love follows hate, our existence is linked together by a polar, yet magnetically attractive, consciousness that has been all but beaten out of us by the patriarchal way. It is called the union of opposites . I...

When I began to look deeply into Gnosticism – particularly Sophian Gnosticism – I found that underlying all the intellectual, spiritual and religious works and studies, the ecclesiastical rituals and ceremonies, the Eucharist, or all the aspects of the Bridal Chamber, there is a profound simplicity to the entire concept of its existence. Tau Rosamonde Miller of the Church of Gnosis explains it this way: "Gnosticism is better understood through art, music, and poetry and not through intellectual pursuit . . . . It is better understood in terms of Buddhism than of Christianity. I find that one of the simplest, truest ways of describing the experience of Gnosis is found in the lines of the Tao Te Ching, 'The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.' Just substitute "Gnosis" instead of "Tao". In this instance the terms can be interchangeable." But the simplicity of Gnosticism might best be understood by the term Wild Gnosis . The concept of Wild G...

"Every organized [patriarchy] works overtime to contribute its own brand of misogyny." - Robin Morgan Considering the huge flap over the Halloween-influenced hanging of Sarah Palin in effigy, I wonder what today's social circles would think of the real thing -- the actual hanging of an innocent female -- except that in this case the murderers were the politically and socially elite ones, and the female victim the scapegoat for those men and women who had come before her and an inhibiting omen for those who would come after her. It happened on a July afternoon in 1889. The following is excerpted from the Preface to my historical novel manuscript, presently in an edit iteration, The Sweetwater Conspiracy: the Legend of Cattle Kate. In the summer of 1889, during the settling–up of the American west, a sensational news story drifted off Wyoming's high plains, making international headlines, and shaking the resolve of the westward pioneering spirit. The story told of th...