The Freedom of Heresy

Yaldabaoth Revealed

“The God you save may be yourself,” Anton LaVey, The Satanic Bible

God exists only as long as his followers continue to worship him. Y/H/W/H exists as long as we keep dreaming of him — just like all the other gods and goddesses who came before. But why keep dreaming of this vengeful and whimsical being, who required blood, sacrifice, and even violence among nations to sustain himself? If you don’t believe me, read the Bible.

Y/H/W/H is the god from whom Jesus of Nazareth came to save us. He did it through a sacrifice of blood and flesh. According to standard Christian tradition, Jesus was a god-man — conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin girl. Given that Mary was mortal, Jesus was at least half-human. This reeks of a burnt offering: a human sacrifice, something supposedly prohibited. But I guess Jesus is the exception to the rule. The Bible, after all, is filled with exceptions to “Thou shalt not kill.”

The virgin birth is, if anything, a preposterous tale — a myth crafted to fulfill prophecy and support the idea that Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah. More darkly, the story may also mask the rape of a young girl. The gospel writer frames her as having consented, but as we often hear: “They always want it,” don’t they? It’s abominable nonsense — even as myth or allegory. One could make a strong case that the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions are, at their core, deeply misogynistic.

A creator god often serves as a backstop for our deepest, most unanswerable questions. There was no “before” prior to “In the beginning.” Concepts we take for granted — gravity, time, space, direction — didn’t exist prior to the singularity that birthed everything. But could it really have emerged from nothing? I don’t know — and neither do you. It’s a strange paradox. Yet, here we are.

If you must have a transcendent imaginary friend, at least dream up a better one. As author and podcaster Miguel Conner says: “Write your own gospel. Live your myth.” He also reminds us: “Heresy shouldn’t be this much fun, but it is. It just is.” I’m a heretic doing exactly that. And if you’re not an atheist — why aren’t you?

If you must believe in God, stop believing in a transcendent being “out there,” controlling everything with glorious omnipotence. God is within you. In fact — let’s be bold — we are all gods. Together, we make up the body of the one God. We are just temporarily stuck in these mortal bodies, and we often wallow in every form of wickedness. The remedy? Stop doing that. (Unless you score high on a sociopathy diagnostic scale — then we may have a bigger problem.)

Jesus tells us: “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21), and “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand” (Matthew 3:2; Matthew 4:17; Mark 1:15). Everything we need to turn this prison of embodied suffering into a paradise is already within us, and within our power.

In the Gospel of Thomas — a text rejected by orthodox Christianity — Jesus says: “Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all. [And after they have reigned, they will rest.]” (Saying 2)

Be willing to be disturbed. Approach the mystery of being with “fear and trembling,” if you must — but look no farther than yourself. The truth you seek is already shining back at you, like a reflection in a mirror. As mystics from many traditions have said: That which you seek, you already are.

At the risk of burying the lead: Y/H/W/H is what the Gnostics call the Demiurge — a mad, angry creator who believes he is the only god in the universe, and thus the only one worthy of fearful worship. He has many names. I call him Yaldabaoth. He created the world in a fit of deluded self-identity. But within each of us is a spark of the God above gods — a truly unnamable being worthy of the sacred tetragrammaton, YHWH.

We are the embodiment of the divine power that can heal the world and dispel the illusion of duality that imprisons us. I am God, and you are God. This is the truth to live by.