Thread by @KrisAtLarge

oh right. I was going to say something about "God"—the being whom right-wing Christians seem to worship, the "God" who seems like so much *smaller* a thing than a truly omnipotent Creator—and how He's a demonstrably loyal friend to authoritarians and bloodstained tyrants.

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https://twitter.com/KrisAtLarge/status/1616983095110160386

#Christianity was permanently warped by its growth medium—the authoritarian and bureaucratic structures of Roman rule. Rome was a harsh and brutal state; "Western civilization", #Christian civilization, continues to imitate the tyrannical Roman model to this very day.

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not once has "the West" ever lost its fondness for rule by absolute monarchy. right-wing blowhards like @DouthatNYT and @MattWalshBlog reflexively fall at the feet of every military strongman or corporate dictator or @GOP politician in whom they sense Great Man potential.

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Christians are still haunted by the glittery fleeting vision of a tyrant who also claimed to be the vicar of Christ on Earth: Theodosius the Great, who forced #Christianity upon the Roman _imperium_ and laid waste to all other religions, has cast an immensely long shadow.

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the modern-day right-wing #Christian, the @dalepartridge / @GovRonDeSantis Christian, remains spellbound by this idol—this hallucination of holy tyranny, one God-Caesar with his boot on the neck of humanity, ruling the Cosmos with a rod of iron. it's the fascıst daydream.

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...which brings me to the insights of Gnostic Christianity. Gnosticism is, officially, a heresy by the rules of my own Christian church—the #Catholic Church. I take Gnostic wisdom seriously, which means that I'm an avowed heretic. (you win that point, Mr. @dalepartridge!)

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you see, when I put "God" in double quotation marks and speak of them as if they were some lesser and inferior being and not the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth...I am merely reflecting the insights of Gnostics who declared that humanity was ruled by a *Demiurge*.

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the "Demiurge" means literally the "half-creator". the Gnostics believed that the work of this Demiurge, this faulty or false Creator, was really a sort of prison for the immortal spirits of human beings—and that the Incarnation was in fact an emissary of the true Creator.

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Gnosticism was never one thing but rather an assortment of subgroups. because of heavy-duty persecution by mainstream #Christianity, most of what was ever recorded about Gnostic beliefs is fragmentary and uncertain. Christians were too effective at purging their enemies.

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yet it is my belief that Gnostic insights into the true nature of the visible Universe—the work of the pseudo-Creator, if the Gnostics are correct—are in fact valid, and reflected in works of inspired fiction and other sources, like individual mystics' private gnoses.

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I think that #GKChesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday" amounts to a work of Gnostic insight—I doubt many of Chesterton's present-day fans would agree with me there, but I don't agree with most of Chesterton's present-day fans.

where's the Gnosticism? you ask.

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it has to do with the seven fearsome persons, the "anarchist council" that Gabriel Syme tangles with—the Council of the Seven Days.

it's eerily reminiscent of a Gnostic concept, the notion that the Demiurge delegated the working of the Universe to a number of "Archons".

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the Wikipedia article on the Gnostic Archons is informative: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archon_(G…

in one system, there were said to be *seven* great Archons—lining up with the seven known planets, and the *seven days*. another scheme names 365 Archons—like the days of the solar year.

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that might seem purely arbitrary. seven Archons, matching something already existing like the seven days of the week? pfft, obviously cookery. right?

well...I don't think so. I'll tell you why: it's because we have found, in practice, that #time can be used for tyranny.

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in fact #time is one of the most powerful tools of oppression. #capitalism has seized hold of time, meting it out according to its desires. we're held to schedules and appointment times. workers are expected to hop around on their bosses' timetable, however unpredictable.

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the clock is used to allot punishment, to judge people as good or bad. "punctuality" has been fashioned into an imitation virtue. "showed up five minutes late, Johnson? that's too bad, you're going to Hell now—"

that's the way right-wing Christians like to manage things.

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and #capitalism, as I've said earlier, makes the great bulk of its soaring #profits by routine collection of #interest—which is collected according to a rigid timetable. "punctuality" is enforced harshly in capitalist society—for the working class. the owners rest easy.

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it's been like this for a long time. the oppressive Roman state imposed its rigid, inflexible solar calendar (which Julius Caesar stole from Ptolemaic Egypt—it wasn't HIS invention) and Roman plutocrats no doubt used the calendar to maximum advantage in extorting money.

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the Gnostics must have glimpsed this. they must have noticed that any human being can be immediately transformed into an implacable despot on matters of #time. "you promised to have the money by the _kalends_, Publius. I'm sorry but that's double the interest now..."

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"it's the *calendar*, Publius. I didn't invent the calendar, don't complain to ME about it."

thus do petty tyrants of #time use things like clocks and calendars as *idols*. they vest these things with power, and pretend that they're only doing what the _calendar_ wants.

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Western civilization, #Christian civilization, has made idols of literally every object or concept or force of nature that can be construed to have some sort of impartial, inviolable power over human beings. Christians grab for Science™, Nature™, Common Sense™...

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...all of these things are, in their way, Archons. they've been made into petty gods of their own, harsh merciless gods with no clemency for the humans they tread under the feet of their unforgivable dominion.

there's seven of them; there's also 365; there's millions.

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you could say that every right-wing #Christian is their own Archon, their own miniature deputy god, exercising absolute tyranny within the scope of their limited domain. @dalepartridge is an Archon, in the Gnostic sense. @DanCrenshawTX and @RickSantorum are both Archons.

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I believe that #GKChesterton glimpsed the truth of this, in his scintillating (yet flawed) novella "The Man Who Was Thursday". he glimpsed a topsy-turvy world ruled by a shadowy council of seven, itself ruled by a single man—Sunday, who laughs in the faces of the others.

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Sunday taunts us with his seemingly limitless powers; he, and Chesterton, both tease us with the possibility that Sunday might somehow be the unknowable One God, in human shape:

“I? What am I?” roared the President [Sunday], and he rose slowly to an incredible height...

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“You want to know what I am, do you?…I tell you…you will have found out the truth of the last tree and the top-most cloud before the truth about me. You will understand the sea, and I shall be still a riddle; you shall know what the stars are, and not know what I am.”

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yet Sunday, massive and imposing as he is, also seems so much *smaller* than we'd like God to be. he jests and japes like a giddy schoolboy at times—but then, so have I.

I've played a Fool's role; I can't be too critical of the President of the Council of the Seven Days.

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I've strayed from the subject of Gnosticism, and should probably wrap up for the night.

I hope at least I've succeeded in conveying something of the mystical complexity that #Christianity has tried to sweep aside with their reductive creeds and formulae for salvation.

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Christianity doesn't *need* to be absurd. it doesn't *need* to be a mere litany or catechism, a set of rules to follow without question—a set of rules that's always growing in number, never lessening. petty-tyrannical Archons always multiply over time, it would seem.

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there's mysteries left in the Cosmos; there's mysteries abundant on Earth. humanity's story is surely not *done*. maybe we've arrived at some sort of "End Times" but the end of one civilization need not mean the end of _all_ civilization. there's so much left to discover.

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I think I've said my fill.

good night, everyone. and good luck.

stay determined.

~Chara of Pnictogen

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