Paolo Riberi: the “Gnostic Renaissance” in modern cinema

We are pleased to report to our readers the publication of the new work by Paolo Riberi, Red pill or black lodge? Gnostic messages in the cinema between the Matrix, Westworld and Twin Peaks (Lindau, Turin, 2017), in which the author honors the writer of the mention of the article The secrets of Twin Peaks: the "Evil that comes from the woods", published on this site.

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In this third work of his, which follows The Apocalypse of Adam. The Genesis of the Gnostics (Lindau, 2013) and Mary Magdalene and the others (The Age of Aquarius, 2015), Paolo Riberi, graduated in 2011 in Philology and Literature of Antiquity at the University of Turin, aims to decipher the relationship between the ancient apocryphal gospels and some of the films (Matrix, Eraserhead, Noah, V for Vendetta, Truman Show, Dark City, Jupiter, Donnie Darko, Ghost in the Shell, Fight Club) and TV series (Twin Peaks, Westworld) cult of the last decades.

« Reasoning around the salient features of all esoteric knowledge - first of all the conception of the world in which we live as an illusion, a virtual prison guarding which there is the figure of a Demiurge -, the book frames gnosis, alchemy and the Kabbalah in the broader story of culture pop that characterizes post-modernity [...] "

So the back cover.

Riberi's analysis draws its strings from the Platonic myth of the cave [La Repubblica, VII]: "According to Plato, the dimension in which we live is a copy, a simulation engineered by a god-craftsman [...] who organized the matter inspired by the real world. Human souls, even if coming from this afterlife, remain on Earth after death, migrating to a new body with reincarnation or metempsychosis."[P. 15]. Unaware of their own deceptive situation, they see only the shadows of real things, which is why it is impossible for them to escape from this demiurgic prison. The material simulation in which we live would in fact be nothing more than a gigantic prison, guarded by this "false god" and by his demons, the cd. Archons.

The only way to escape from this illusory simulation is samsaric consists in "opening one's eyes" and consequently allowing one's own "divine spark" to return to its rightful place, the "Kingdom of Heaven", which has nothing to do with the Demiurge Yahweh, "the angry God of the Old Testament [...] that in Genesis creates the earthly prison, shapes the body in which the soul is locked up and periodically unleashes cataclysms and persecutions against those who dare to rebel against the rules of this prison"[P. 18]. This is the Gnostic conception, which in the first chapters of his book Riberi integrates with other similar ones: the Manichaean one, the Cathar-Albigensian one, to reach the illuminations of William Blake. 

Thus the author summarizes the salient features of what is called "gnosis" [pp. 31-32]:

1. there are two different realities (theory of two worlds);
2. the reality we live in is a virtual prison;
3. guarding the prison there are jailers and / or an architect, the Demiurge;
4. the three preceding points are a secret that almost all of humanity is unaware of;
5. the chosen Gnostic discovers the truth through a divine or initiatory revelation;
6. the initiate, through knowledge, acquires an otherworldly power;
7. the earthly world is an illusion: therefore so is the body and its survival.

This applies to the introductory part on Gnostic doctrines [pp. 1-32]. In the second part, much more substantial [pp. 33-196] - followed by a brief conclusion -, Riberi analyzes the recovery of these esoteric suggestions within the world of cinema and television series.

Starting with Matrix, the author points out that [p. 43] "the world in which the protagonists live is nothing more than a neuro-simulation [...] and it is the instrument by which, in the XNUMXrd century, machines can literally cultivate human beings to feed on their energy. This form of parasitism or vampirism to which humanity is systematically subject is very important as it represents a recurring Gnostic trait". For his part, the Architect, Lord of the Matrix [p. 45] "it's a program: it's the software that created the whole virtual reality. Arrogant and conceited [...] consider humans as mere variables in a mathematical equation". We leave the reader the pleasure of discovering the other points in common that the author has wisely found between ancient Gnosticism and the famous film by the Wachowskis.

The chapters on follow Westworld, Jupiter, Truman Show e Dark City. In Jupiter to reign over our universe are a host of powerful alien monarchs, in whose perspective "our planet is nothing more than a kind of plantation, and the captive humanity that inhabits it is the cultivated fruit"[P. 76]. These alien Archons act as parasites, stealing the genes of humanity to ensure immortality and eternal youth. Similar topics are also covered in Dark City, of which Riberi cites, among other things, this particularly meaningful dialogue [p. 90]:

“Before there was darkness. Then came the Strangers: they were a race as old as time, and they were masters of the most powerful of technologies, the ability to alter physical reality by willpower alone. They called this ability "matching." But they were dying: their civilization was nearing its end, and therefore they left their world in search of a cure for their mortality. An endless journey led them to a small blue world, in the most remote corner of the galaxy. Our world. "

We then move on to Noah by Aronofsky, who draws heavily from Enoch's "Book of Watchers" rather than from the Old Testament. And again, the author analyzes the Gnostic suggestions in Donnie Darko, Ghost in the Shell (where is the Ghost it is the incorporeal spirit trapped in a bodily shell, lo Shell precisely) and Fight Club, finally reaching one of the most clearly "esoteric" directors of recent decades, David Lynch, whose author analyzes Eraserhead and the very successful TV series Twin Peaks.

Since the esoteric-initiatory implications of the latter have also been dealt with by the writer on the pages of this site, in an article [cf. The secrets of Twin Peaks: the "Evil that comes from the woods"] quoted by Riberi himself in the book being analyzed here, we want to point out some additional intuitions of the author, which will also allow us to integrate what has already been said previously.

In the opinion of Riberi [p. 160], "the many mysteries of Twin Peaks represent a real encyclopedia of esotericism that is not limited at all to gnosis: it goes from Quabbalah to theurgy, from Aleister Crowley to oriental religions, and again from shamanism to alchemy". An analysis of the main "demonic" characters of the TV series follows, from Bob to Mike to the Nano and ai woodmen, and therefore an essential reference to the mysterious garmonbozia, "that is, the human suffering that these creatures eagerly feed on. There was a pact for the breakdown of this substance, but Bob stopped observing it and it got out of their control. These beings not only invade the bodies of men, possessing them as the demons of the Christian tradition do, but they feed on them as parasites and to do so in the best way they manipulate everything that happens in the earthly world to increase human suffering to feed on."[P. 163].

These topics are also dear to Jacques Vallée, proponent of the cd. "Paraphysical hypothesis" which we will discuss in one of the next articles of the cycle "Magonia". "These entities — Riberi points out [p. 168] - they go up and down in the earth's atmosphere, blocking the threshold between this world and the otherworldly one. After all, that the forces of evil that govern the Earth are aerial entities was already Paul's opinion, in one of his most cited passages and taken from the Gnostic Gospels:

"Our battle is not against creatures made of flesh and blood, but against Principalities and Powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the evil spirits who live in the celestial regions." (Letter to the Ephesians, 6, 12) "

Naturally in the TV series this "world of darkness" is the sinister Black Lodge, a dimension superimposed on ours in which these entities proliferate and consume garmonbozia. Writes the author [p. 175]: "In addition to being a temple consecrated to the cult of matter, the Black Lodge is also the beating heart of Chaos, being a place where all the laws that govern the cosmos falter. In this dimension, for example, time does not flow linearly […] ». Furthermore, "not only Mike, the Dwarf and the other Archons dwell in the depths of this Gnostic hell, but also the souls of the dead" and especially "the doppelgänger reside, that is the dark and corrupt counterparts of every man and woman, living or deceased who are».

The counterpart of the Black Lodge is the White Lodge, which is distinguished from the first in that what happens inside it is ineffable [cf. episode 8 third season]. Unlike the Black Lodge which is placed in an "underground" dimension, the White Lodge is «located on top of a mountain that rises right in the center of the primeval purple ocean"[P. 181]. Its ruler is the Giant who however [p. 179] "unlike what the Archons do [...] it does not manipulate the life of its host [the "doting waiter", ed] with a systematic possession, but on the contrary uses it only as a messenger to manifest itself to Cooper when necessary". The only characters in the series who manage to access this dimension of pure spirit are Major Briggs, "the simpleton police officer»Andy and Agent Dale Cooper.

We must also give credit to Riberi for having provided in record time a personal and coherent interpretation of the third season of Twin Peaks, released this year. Absolute novelty of this new part of the saga is the presence of entities of the type of Dougie Jones, which in the opinion of the author [p. 188] "on closer inspection, it is not even human. It is a golem, an automaton artificially modeled from a golden marble and a mass of black, shapeless and teeming matter. Being a handcrafted construct made by an Archon [Bob, ed.], is not a man; rather, as medieval alchemists would say, he is a sub-human life form, a homunculus ", who remembers"the shape of clay and mud that the lords of matter create in Eden to imitate the divine model of spiritual ManThat is to say what the Gnostics defined "Archontic man". Likewise, even the Diane we see would be nothing more than a fictitious shape created by the Archons to mislead the protagonists: "the real Diane is the woman without eyes, imprisoned in limbo between the two Lodges"[P. 189].

Bob's "creation" by means of the atomic explosion of Los Alamos in 1945, the obscure ritual formula uttered by the "lumberjacks" ("This is the water, and this is the well: drink deeply and descend"), The incarnation in our world of the atavistic archon Judy, who in the guise of an insect takes up residence in the body of the very young Sarah Palmer and who reminds the author of the gnostic Achamoth,"corrupt and material version of Sophia» — every salient point of the new season is gutted by Riberi in a clear and coherent way.

There is much more to say about this interesting work just published by Lindau, but we want to leave the reader the pleasure of investigating firsthand the implications of this "Gnostic Renaissance" in contemporary cinema to which the author mentions. And perhaps, following the traces left by Neo or Agent Cooper, he too will have the opportunity to deflect the nefarious influence of the Archons and allow his "divine spark" to return to its rightful place.

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⇨ Interested parties can buy Paul Riberi, Red pill or black lodge? Gnostic messages in the cinema between the Matrix, Westworld and Twin Peaks on site of the Lindau publishing house, its Amazon and IBS.it.

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