Gain Access To Not In His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, And The Future Of Belief Authored By John Lamb Lash Disseminated As Pamphlet

is the quintessential book that must be read by anyone who previously or presently has espoused the Abrahamic religions: Judaism/Christianty/Islam, The author is the most learned scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi Codices, and other Coptic texts he shares with us the true meaning contained in these textual materials.


The trends humankind currently follow will be completely dissected and analyzed and exposes what has been kept hidden from view, in order that we may discern folly from truth.
Ultimately, our attention is directed towards true Gnosticism and not some diluted, "christianified" version of it, Anyone seeking selfawareness/enlightenment ought to give this a good study even if only to more closely examine those ideals you're holding onto during and after the process,

the only serious book i ever read three timesAUGAn amazing case for how spirituality and religion can be "weaponized" for empirebuilding, This wellresearched book will deeply disturb some and illuminate others, I don't agree with every observation but his voice is clear, sharp and thoughtful, There's a lot on the Web about John Lamb Lash, Some of the data is contradictory, On the one hand, he's represented as an autodidact, as a college dropout, On the other, a PhD is attributed to him, There's even disagreement about his birthdate, Given the sketchy, eccentric character of this book I strongly suspect he had little academic training,

The book is not entirely without merit, The critique of Abrahamic 'dominator' religions as being antinature is certainly worthy of consideration, Christianity in particular having a poor historical record, its orientation being otherworldly, Its advocacy of deep ecology is something I appreciate,

However, Lash's appropriation of the historical record is, most charitably stated, extremely tendentious, For one thing, he claims an essential unity to 'pagan' traditions in general and to pagan mystery cults in particular, setting them in opposition to the monotheistic religions without much recognizing that these very pagan traditions were the matrix out of which the Abrahamic religions arose.
Indeed, Judaism, itself of henotheistic Hebrew roots, is hardly of a class with its semiderivatives, Christianity and Islam, As regards the assertion of pagan unanimity, the record certainly does not support his bold claim, Indeed, he seems unaware of much of the counterevidence, For instance, he asserts that preChristian Europeans did not practice human sacrifice p,. Is he unaware of the archaeological evidence of the Bogsacrifices in Denmark of the ancient Roman practice of live burial of Moloch offerings in Punic Europe of the Roman accounts of Druidic practices What is one to make of his repeated assertion of the 'life affirming' culture of what he calls 'Europa' in the face of the misogyny, the slavery, the wars, the infanticide, and the slaughters recounted in the pagan histories and evinced by the discoveries of the archaeologists and where, for that matter, does he get the idea that the mass suicide at Masada occurred inC.
E. Lash's rosy representation of an idyllic preChristian Europe is as absurd as much of the Christian apologetic!

To make matters worse, Lash adopts the recently invented term 'Gnostic' to typify his supposedly univocal mystery cults, entirely ignoring its normative scholarly application to beliefs which were radically dualistic.
Instead, he picks and choses, focusing on the occult texts in the tradition of the 'Pistis Sophia' and, to make matters worse still, attempts to reconcile a dubious reading of them to modern physics whereby, incredibly, he treats her, the Pleroma, the Anthropos, the Christos, the Aeons and the Archons as if they were real, substantial beings and the myth, treated in such a way, as reconcilable with contemporary science.
His threeplanet thesis and this business as a whole makes one wonder not only about the author's scholarly aptitude but about his very sanity,

This is definitely not a book for those unfamiliar with European antiquity and the history of religions, nor is it worthy of the attention of those who do have such familiarity.


PS For some reason the 'date started' function in Goodreads isn't working today, I started this book at Xmas, having received it as a gift, There are plenty of ideas to ponder and wonder about, I wound up only givingbecause of the painful jumps in ideas and subjects that must have made sense to the author but truly made my brain hurt trying to follow along.
Other members of my book group said the same thing, But the book does have observations that made me change my point of view and reevaluate long held beliefs, I like that. A bold, controversial examination of consensus religion and society, and an impassioned wakeup call to rediscover and realign with natural life forces, Wideranging and well researched, yet at times meandering and repetitive, this is a compelling and important work that provides insightful perspectives intended to challenge ingrained modes of thinking and behaviours.
I was thrilled by this book,

Powerful and relevant in our age of reintegrating mythology and religion in a sustainable path forward,

Just read it and be baffled by its outrageous content and mindblowing wanderings,

Not for the feinthearted,

Lash and his book get a lot of hate, But what stops you from drawing your own conclusions

A thought provoking book! This book comes highly recommended from someone I greatly admire, Laura Eisenhower, the late presidents, great granddaughter! Check out the sub title.
This looks like heavy reading, however, Lash's style is immediately engaging, Little scientific background. He proclaims himself a gnostic, Just rehashes what has already been said, His theory about the galactic core bla bla is just speculation and far from common sense,
It had promise. Sacred ecology, weaponized monotheism. But he went full gnostic, meaning ignorance, Sad. Yep just can't bring myself to read anymore, While the theories within are interesting and some seem legitimate, research on Lash shows that he is racist and I don't support anything of the sort, Sad that such a genius mind is also one full of hatred, A book that can change one's life! I started this book on a whim because I didn't know much about Gnosticism, I feel like JLL started with an interesting premise and exciting build up, but it fell into a full blown rant about how bad JudeoChristian religions are, It got tiring and I gave up, I was hoping for more fact and less angry opinion, It was good at first, though! It started out as juicy and focussed and I enjoyed it very much until the author began to simply rewrite what has been written many times before.
Lash went from objective, pagan and academic to writing about theist characters as though they had credence, His criticism lost me there, It's as though he became tired, It's difficult to maintain, I realise, in a world that andocentrises its mysteries and then talks about them as though they were distant relatives, Didn't finish it. Have access to a dictionary as you read through this very well researched analysis of a group called The Gnostics, By the accounts in this book, their way of life was one of evolution with the natural world using their inner guidance/intuition,

Unfortunately, their time was brought to an end by the patriarchal Salvationist religion that still reigns supreme to this day in, It was a violent end involving outright bloodshed,

This book confirmed what I sensed about ALL modern day religions, but lacked the historical perspective that affirms their malevolent undertones,

A reversion back to the natural world and indigenous ways is the route I will be taking after reading this book,

For some this could be a construed as disturbing recant of early Christianity, that is nothing like that taught in "respectable" schools, However, I found his version entirely plausible and worthy of followup, He also explains in expert fashion the history of the gnostics, the murder of Hypatia and the suppression of Gnosticism by the nascent Church, Like a historical detective he cross references his sources and discusses implications and repercussions, It is an enlightening nonfiction work worthy of study that forces the reader to confront a world where all

may not be what it seems, interesting premise, some really lousy scholarship, Lots of unsupported assertions and at times a refusal to consider some very significant problems with his interpretation, Still, I was intrigued by the idea that Jehovah is actually an inorganic alien parasite who didn't create our world, just commandeered control of it, And there are some ideas Lash develops fairly convincinglythe idea, for instance, that the god of the old testament hates trees, If you're interested in the history of religion, it's worth reading, but keep your bullshit detector on at all times, A brilliant book which examine the roots of all Abrahamic religions as derived from the destruction of the Mystery Schools in Alexandria, Clearly explains the development of salvationist and redemption theology against the backdrop of ancient ecofeminist Gaia belief, The research is amazing and the conclusions brilliant and supported by the Qumran and Nag Hamaidi remnants, Amazing stuff one of my recent faves, Gnosticism presents the Christian story and Reality story as a celebration of creation, celebration of knowing, a refusal for simple salvation, and an urge to cocreate this world into a new, better one.
This book presents those themes, wrapped up in the figure of dreamer Sophia, very beautifully, The author states it as "scifi theology", yet the story put out by Gnosticism seems to explain why the world is the way it is, Very very good!. I look forward to reading it again soon One of the most important books I've ever read, Thick layer of interpretations and opinions are drawn from weak evidence, I were much more happier with the book if it were presented as an opinion piece,

The author, I am guessing an autodidact with little scientific background, has indeed read widely and presents the Gnostic thesis with much enthusiasm but in a onesided way and with little intellectual rigor.


My conclusion is that the patterns he sees in ancient history tell more of the inner life of a modern American than of ancient world, Reading it with some distance, the book may still be worth consuming, This was too academic and hard to parse for the actual beliefs of gnosticism Really good, alot of ideas, it will certainly challenge you, ideas made me quite uncomfortable, Fantastic book! Lash is on another level above the socalled gnostic scholars, Elaine Pagels and her Gnostic Gospels does not compare to this work by John Lamb Lash,

This book contains a heady mix of history, science, theology, anthropology, myth, and the author's personal testimony of Mystical experience, Above and beyond the several points it develops, this books presents a case for awe, This poses a dilemma, however, because the case for awe cannot be proven by scholarly method, yet that is the approach the author has taken in his argument, Readers of this book will fare more easily with this work if they bear in mind that the author frames his argument in scholarly terms, but the basic convictions from which Lash writes neither derive from, nor rely on, scholarly proof and academic method.


To make the case for awe, Lash goes back to the rapturous bond with nature that was celebrated in Pagan religions in the classical world, He returns to the Mysteries, Lash's account of Paganism may not resemble what you are accustomed to accept as history, But Lash submits that the supreme value of the honest study of history as distinguished from blind acceptance of historical fables is to show readers how we have departed from the proper course of our evolution as a species.
The purpose of the Mysteries was to keep us on course,  

The book is constructed in the form of a sonata of four movements, Rather than straightforward, scholarly exposition it works by a symphonic play of themes or leitmotifs, The allpervasive theme is the goddess Sophia, whose name is wisdom, whose sensory body is the earth, Lash's first objective is to recover and restore the Sophianic vision of the Mysteries celebrated in ancient Europe and the Near East, The guardians of this vision were called gnostikoi, "those who know as the gods know, " To correlate Mystery teachings with Gaia theory and deep ecology the second objective of this book cannot be done without looking closely at what destroyed the Sophianic vision of the living earth, and how it was able to do so.
The genocide of native spirituality in the classical world went on for centuries, but a coverup has largely concealed this fact, and continues to this day, To expose the coverup and reveal both the cause and scope of the destruction so wrought is the third objective of this book, Finally, the fourth objective is to complete Nietzsche's critique by showing what is basically wrong, indeed, pathologically dangerous, in salvationist theology and Judeo Christian ethics, Difficult to read at time but it's brilliant! It's taken me almostyears to go through the book because of it's high intellectual writing style, Worth the time. Really liking this book, can't put it down! Only a third of the way through, Intelligently researched it's the best concerning Christianity's hype and destruction that I've read in ages, Not in His Image describes the rich spiritual world of preChristian classical Europethe Pagan Mysteries, the Great Goddess, Gnosis, the myths of Sophia and Gaiaand its future as a force for reconnecting to the earth.
John Lamb Lashs rivetingaccount describes the decisive arc of history from the dawn of the Christian Erato the present moment of global terror, a trajectory driven by faithbased violenceand fundamentalist politics.
Countering the patriarchy of monotheistic religionswith the Gnostic story of the wisdom goddess, Sophia, Not in His Image gives usback our heritage and guides us beyond destructive social chaos toward a sacredecological path for the future.
John Lamb Lash is an exponent of the practice of mythology, He is principalauthor of the Marion Institutes Web site, www, metahistory. org, an inquiry into thecontemporary meaning of humanitys myths and beliefs, and is author of a numberof books, including The Seekers Handbook, Twins and the Double, The HeroManhood andPower, and Quest for the Zodiac.
.