Not in His Image (15th Anniversary Edition): Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief

After reading the negative reviews and the claims that Lash was merely making things up I want to recommend this book based on my own experience and studies. The main point or comparison Lash makes in his effort to focus on reconnecting humanity to the earth and creation is to contrast the salvationist-redeemer male creator complex to the Gnostic(Pagan/Initiate/Mystery/Indigenous) models of creation and the cosmos. This book will rub you the wrong way if you are new to the topic or have never thought about the problem or if you have any ties or investment, even a little remaining belief, in the Abrahamic religions. Many are jumping to the conclusion that this critique is anti-Semitic when it isn't.The key contrast is that between what the Judeo-Christian-Islamic faiths promise for following Their God versus what the Gnostics believed and knew about humanity and the cosmos. With the Abrahamic Yahweh believers you get a reward in a heaven after death. You get to inherit the earth or parts of the earth. We should focus on Christianity given the way history was essentially driven by the Roman Catholic then the Protestant branches and dogma. We are facing a potential end to humanity and society because of the book of Revelations and the salvationist promise. The idea that the Archons can only promise a false heaven.With the Sophia myth, humanity already inherits the earth. The potential of the human is to evolve eternally. Evolve psychologically. Conscious evolution with the planet and with the cosmos. This is the basic essential teaching of the Gnostic/Mystery/Indigenous teachings and world views. Go read some Huna books by Serge Kahili King or Wasserman (Bowl of Light). Read 'Grandfather' by Tom Brown Jr. Read 'Opening of the Way' by Isha Schwaller de Lubicz. Even 'Pagan Christ' by Tom Harpur. Go learn the contrasting models. And if you are really brave read 'Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson' by Gurdjieff. There is more truth in Beelzebub's Tales than in the old or new testament.This is the strength of Lash's book. He is just another human who is not perfect so stick to what he says in this book. There are claims that Lash is now espousing anti Semitic or white nationalist rhetoric. This would be an unfortunate development but...there is no evidence that Lash was ever some kind of ascended master. That was never his point.He attempts to show why the Gnostic model of reality and critique of Yahweh reconnects the human being to the cosmos, creation and the the earth. Don't get stuck in literalism. Lash is successful in his aim in this book. I have spent my life reading volumes of books about God and religions and I have engaged experience. There is no heaven after death. There is no punishing redeemer God who will save only his followers after Armageddon. But there is a right wing extremist effort to bring about the end of the world because they think their savior will return. We live in the world created by humans who follow Mammon and Yaldaboath. These people are destroying the planet, our home, only for their own profit. Evangelicals are working to manifest the book of Revelations. We are on the verge of a potential new dark age and the end of humanity. And at the root of this horror is the degenerate demented promise of the salvationist-redeemer complex.

I came to this book with high hopes, as there are all too few works which take full blooded `anti-Abrahamic' approach to the subject, preferring to try and amalgamate Gnosticism and mystery religions to some grand new age vision shared by Greeks and Jews, Hindus and Christians. And Lash starts off doing a pretty good job, showing just how crazy and evil the Jewish `god' is, along with his later Christian and Islamic transformations.In his picture, (compatible with the approach of de Benoist and the other European neo-pagans, who are not mentioned in the text) the destruction of the Second Temple led to the creation of the Jewish mentality, in which temporal triumph (a la Rome and other normal people) is replaced by an eventual otherworldly triumph after the destruction of `this world' -- i.e., apocalypse. Like his hero D. H. Lawrence, he suggests that the Jews co-opted the personal transformation offered by pagan mysteries into an endlessly pre-empted national triumph and fleshly rebirth in a new world. His analysis of `the redeemer complex' is intriguing, as is his use of it to explain how Christianity `triumphed' -- by first violently destroying pagan cultures, "turning them into victims," then offering a "reformulated justification of the victim role" which promised that "they would ultimately be saved," a brilliant way to co-opt victims into future victimizers. And his suggestion that the origins of contemporary suicide terror lie in the Jewish Dead Sea cultists is profound, not cheap and easy sensationalism. As my friend Alisdair Clarke has speculated on his Aryan Futurism blog, is there not the suggestion of something deadly, radioactive perhaps, an ageless evil, almost Lovecraftian, sleeping under the sand of that quarrelsome land with its dead sea and endless tribal violence?Alas, although I obviously endorse much of this book, I find that it fails utterly, when judged as a work of scholarship. Lash, whatever his real qualifications might be, writes like an autodidact, with all of the related faults. No wonder the King of Autodidacticism, Colin Wilson, contributes a blurb saying `Lash's historical and anthropological erudition are [sic!] breathtaking." I'm afraid that grammatical solecism is typical of the book's problems.First, Lash exhibits the bad habit of citing only evidence that supports him, rather than dealing with (apparent) anomalies. Thus, he suggests that the patriarchal god arises from the Jewish patriarchal family, as if most, if not all, pagan societies were not. Tell that to the Roman pater familias!More seriously, Lash avoids all discussion or mention (although I'm going by his unreliable index here, see below) of the mysteries of Mithras, even though this was an official religion of the Empire (before Christianity), gave Christianity a run for its money, and last left us the most extensive records of all the mystery religions (such as the famous Mithraic Liturgy, available in the Mead anthology Lash constantly refers to). Could this omission be due to the fact that the Mithras cult does not fit into his simple patriarchal Christianity vs. Goddess/Gaian mystery paradigm?However, I lost all confidence in Mr. Lash after turning to his `suggestions for reading and research' at the end. First, I only found this at the back because Lash fails to include the bibliography I was looking for, thus making it impossible to track down what editions he's using. The page numbering of my Penguin edition of Lawrence is certainly not his, for instance. I might let that scholarly flaw pass, however, if the "suggestions" were not so flawed as to be insulting. I don't mind his self-described "idiosyncratic" approach to selection and evaluation. I mean that he fails the basic test of being correct about things I know about, thus raising the issue of what he's wrong about elsewhere, where I have to rely on him.Thus, we read the following incredible claim: "Unfortunately, the sole existing English translation [is] by the English Platonist Thomas Taylor....' Now I have only to half turn to my bookshelf to see the pricey but available paperback of the Clarke/Dillon/Hershell translation, along with a number of works, such as Shaw's Theurgy and the Soul which give quite adequate accounts and many excerpts from Iamblichus. This is not buried in obscure scholarly publications. All Mr. Lash needed to do to verify this claim, or to find himself a better translation, was to do what I did: search Amazon.com! How lazy and incompetent is this guy?Later, Lash asserts that Harold Bloom gives a "brief, sober, no discounting passage on ... entheogenic practices." Now this intrigues me, so I consult Lash's index to find what he has to say himself. No entries on etheo-anything! And yet, here is at least one right before me. Did it slip by, because Lash in fact never discusses entheogens elsewhere in the text? No, in fact, a few pages later is a whole section of "suggestions" on the subject!And here is where I throw the book aside onto the `read when bored and nothing else is around` pile. The section is entitled "Entheogenic Theory of Religion" and states "There are hundreds of text-heavy sites and heady forums dedicated to entheogenics on the Internet, but, unfortunately [there's that word again, always a clue to a howler on the way -- Lash mistakes his laziness for empirical restraint], they are all orientated toward recreational use of drugs and sacred plants, rather than sacramental use."All? All? Now in elementary logic, I learned I could refute an `all' statement by finding one counterexample. Again, is it some obscure site? Well, how obscure is something on the Internet going to be? Get on the Google, as our president would say, and 9 hits come up for "entheogenic theory of religion" (the title of his section, remember), two of which lead to Michael Hoffman's Ego Death website, where his epochal article "Entheogenic Theory of Religion and Ego Death" can be found, along with hundreds of pages of articles and links to similar material. And needless to say, all the really new and useful books are unmentioned as well. Clark Heinrich, anyone?Alas, Mr. Lash, as Housman said of incompetent textual critics, "the world is no feather bed for the repose of sluggards." If you want convince anyone but the most credulous, or the already convinced, you will have to do more work than this.Three stars, but only for the Hebrew-bashing!

Hard going, stimulating, never, never dull. The only book I've ever read a second time as soon as I'd finished the first read.John presents to us a documented history of the effect religion has had on society, its origins and our morals by revealing our belief system from before 'religion' and the Church took hold and turned us into who we are today.Crammed with information, John does not back away from telling us how it was, and how it is now, which clearly demonstrates why we need to change our mindset towards as to why we are on planet Earth.Ecology, consciousness, 'quantum' energy fields, and hundreds of years of genocide are just a few of the subjects affected by the way religion has caused us to see our place on this planet.Anyone who has ridiculed the idea of alien visitations in our past will find themselves re-evaluating their concepts.Similarly if you are sitting on the fence regarding this idea or have some knowledge of the Gnostics, Dead sea scrolls and the Nag Hammadi texts, the 44 omitted Biblical gospels, this book brings them all together in a way that is a real wake up call.I highly recommend this to anyone who has even the tiniest inkling that something is seriously amiss in the way humans have behaved over the last 2000 years.I also recommend it to 'new agers' and Pagans who will discover that their ideas are still being deeply affected by religion. They will understand that modern ideas of paganism and 'New Age' are far removed from their original sources.

I can’t stress enough how important it is for as many people as possible to read this book as soon as possible. The only reason not enough people are aware of such a book is likely the acts of suppression by authorities due to their desire to continue their evil agenda and their resistance to the eventual and inevitable retribution that must take place in order for beauty and truth to reign supreme again within the perception of the Human species and across the planet.

This is another great book that teaches you about the history of what went on in this planet. John Lamb Lash is an excellent researcher with a fine mind of his own, penetrating into the mysteries of what went on and why our planet is in such a mess at this time. It all comes right back down to religion. The corruptive archons religion. Like the other book I read, Ramtha's Master's Reflections Part 2, it also talks about the corrupt archons, who Ramtha calls creator gods, but the Cassiopaeans and Pleiadians also call them creator gods. I just call them lizards. Hahaha. Not all creator gods are lizards though. Some gods are really sweet gentle beings. So anyway. John Lamb Lash talks about what he's learned from researching the old works which they tried to hide from us, but they keep coming to the surface, like the Nag Hammadi Codices that were found in 1945. [ http://www.null-entropy.com/2012/10/the-nag-hammadi-library/ ]This book has lots of wonderful knowledge and information.

For those who are fascinated to understand why the world is currently in such a mess this book is a brilliant narration. An unravelling of ‘His-tory’ and the why the ‘power over’ control system has such a grip on humanity. This book holds the clues on how we can collapse the matrix.

This is the most important book you will EVER read