Anyone here have experience with the Kosmic Gnostic current?

[Serapis418]

Looking to hear other people's thoughts, experiences, and associated practices with this current!

I'm probably not the best to explain these currents outright (for those curious I'd recommend The Benighted Path by Richard Gavin, David Beth's works, and stuff published by Theion more broadly) but to summarize to the best of my understanding; Kosmic Gnosis revolves around an inversion of the gnostic paradigm in which the immanet phenomenal world is ultimately the deeper reality which has been disrupted and obfuscated from us by the parasitic Spirit/Logos/Nous. The current draws a lot from Ludwig Klages - especially his ideas around the Geist and Seele - and Beth's own experiences with afro-centric practices. It rejects the transcendentalism embodied by the Logos and Logocentric thought forms to in turn embrace the fluxing vitalisitc world of the Body and Soul. In short it's a lot more orientated toward the darker, immanent, and ecstatic side of things than the sorta rationalist, material denying, and transcendent rigaramole of most popular occultism.

I'm not initiated into the current by any means, my exposure is entirely through Gavin, Beth, and my own reading of Klages, but the whole jist of it struck a deep chord within me and has radically transformed my approach in thought about all things occult. My first proper exposure to it was years ago when I was in my Hermetist days, practicing what was laid out in the Corpus Hermeticum, and I remember being almost appalled by the ideas in The Benighted Path and the introduction to the second edition of Cult of the Black Cube. After that initial exposure the inseminated ideas gestated within for a good while and I've come really around to it since then.

Personally, the rejection of transcendentalism feels really quite liberating, and the idea of Night Consciousness tickles the inner part of myself that's always been searching for something more - something dark and spooky - that led me into the occult in the first place.
A lot of my entheogenic experiences always seemed to conflict pretty heavily with the general transcendental notions anyhow, like I certainly would enter another realm in those states but it never really felt higher or purer; it always felt deeper, more fleshly, even more material than the experience of the waking phenomenal world. My dreams and dream worlds as well also never seemed to fit with the clean sorta rationalizations prescribed by the standard occult millieu.

Anyhow, lotta ranting, point is this stuff's really spoken to me, and I would absolutely love to hear other people's thoughts and experiences with it!
Have you worked within the current? Do you disagree with it? Somewhere in the middle? Had you never even heard of it before this? Have you experienced Night Consciousness? Any and all contributions to this discussion are appreciated : )

 

[ZSLMH]

This sounds like a book review of a book no one here wants to read.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 10:34 AM

I can no longer edit my post, or delete it. But I apologize for my snark. All the best to you, OP. I should not be so flippant towards views I disagree with.

 

[ashlesha]

Beth has several podcast interviews and lectures posted online where he states his position is a counter to the average occultist, who falsely convinces themselves of some level of transcendence while not having actually accomplished anything. He's mostly targeted towards thelemites. I agree with a lot of his takes on those interviews! His baseline premise is nice, but he doesn't go anywhere with it that resonates to me. I haven't read his latest book, but I was unconvinced by his essays online, and his book Voudon Gnosis didn't really add much to the Voudon Gnostic Workbook. Michael Bertiaux's Ontological Graffiti and Voudon Cartography, in contrast, gave so many more tickling insights!

All that said, his idea that true gnosis lies in the phenomenological experience isn't a major countercultural esoteric idea. It's a baseline premise of every nondual tradition, where the most-transcendental principles must be embodied and experienced. These nondual models don't also throw out growth and advancement for being nondual, as our lived experience is constantly changing and transforming. Deriving gnosis from anything other than your own being is sort of... self evident?

I feel a little obtuse in my criticism, but to me it just feels like a lot of bark and no bite. The other people in his sphere are similar: Kyle Fite, Craig Williams, Jessica Grote, Sean Woodward, and the rest of the other typhonians. Michael Bertiaux is definitely at the top of their ladder.

 

[Soror Epihania]

I'm currently reading The Black Pilgrimage and have found it to be an edifying work. Beth echoes many of the epiphanies and visionary teachings I've received from work with the dead and the daimonic. The practical rites he gives are quite nice, I've been using some of the prayers. The methods he shares are reminiscent of traditional craft approaches to ritual work.

I'm lukewarm on the 'gnostic' angle. He uses the image of Spirit or the Usurper to criticize a wide swath of very different ideologies and spiritual currents. He gathers a very broad idea of modernity, transcendent spirituality, monotheisms, tech culture all under the same label in a way I don't find convincing. It sometimes feels like Spirit in the Kosmic Gnosis is a free-floating signifier for things they feel impede spiritual development. From what I can tell he makes the link between these things by a shared tendency towards alienation through abstraction that he attributes to the Logos and subsequent logocentrism championed by many currents within Platonic/Abrahamic thought. Targeting abstraction in occult work is important but the way it's done in Black Pilgrimage feels too broad.

He's also really into blood lineage. He drops the line 'the dead speak through blood and soil' early on in the book. I am all for ancestral veneration and reestablishing ties with the land in practice, but I think it's work that needs to be done as part of a broader project of decolonization from supremacist myths that have turned so many Euro-descended lifeways and ways of thinking into monstrous forms that have pillaged the world. Dropping slogans used by the Nazis while basing your thought in Vitalist philosophers who were appropriated by the Nazi party while Far-Right movements are gaining power in Germany is irresponsible. Beth does disavow 'profane supremacy' once in the book, but I think he could have done more to explicitly prevent a racialist interpretation of his work. It feels ironically abstracted away from the current social realities shaping the rearrangement of 'the West' in this current era of collapse (which is a critique I hold for much of contemporary occulture).

Overall I've gotten a lot out of the book. Beth's writing has depth without indulging in complicated language, its poetic but clear, and offers a beautiful vision. I also think Ashlesha is right, the immanence Kosmic Gnosis is talking about isn't that new or radical. I've not seen much that has me interested in engaging deeper with Beth's work, though I wish him and his cohort all the best in advancing the work and coming to a place of wise relations with the world and its depth.