Uncle John's Band: Jordan Peterson and the Occult, A Review of Vox Day's Jordanetics Part 1: Gnosis

If you are new to the Band, occult imagery posts are shorter looks at the background and meaning of occult images. For more posts on occult symbolism, click here. For an introduction to the Band and the Dismantling Postmodernism series, click the featured post to the right or check out the archive.

Other links: The Band on Gab; The Band on Oneway

Part 1 of 3

Sometimes things line up. The Band had been thinking about some posts on occult principles when a book called Jordanetics by Vox Day, a political philosopher and author among many other things, turned up. The connection between this critique of famed public intellectual Jordan Peterson and the occult isn't obvious on the surface, but the further we read, the stronger that familiar smell of brimstone became. The reason why the Band started the shorter occult posts was to reveal the underlying structures and patterns in this type of thought, and to show why it is nonsensical, dyscivic, and ultimately evil. When the occult principles that had been under consideration all turned up in this book, it seemed serendipitous. This post is the first of three that will use Jordanetics as a way of exposing some core occult patterns, and hopefully discourage others from starting down this dark path.

A note on Peterson and the Band

The Band payed little attention to Peterson after he appeared on the scene a few years ago, riding some ginned up outrage about pronoun use that, when you look back on it, amounted to nothing. At the time, he appeared to be one of a crowd of purportedly anti-leftist voices popping up on the internet in the lead-up to the 2016 elections, although he quickly eclipsed the rest in popularity. His sudden fame made him impossible to miss completely, but the handful of times that the Band caught some interview or clip, the impression was underwhelming - chains of superficial associations between poorly-understood concepts delivered in strained, almost stream-of-consciousness bursts that make the exchange of ideas associated with a conversation impossible. Ignorance and demagoguery have little appeal to the Band so there was no incentive to look deeper. Fortunately, others did.

No one had looked as closely at the Peterson's actual words as Vox Day. Jordanetics is the culmination of an investigation that began with calling out a small lie about IQ scores, only to find layer upon layer of deception and madness like a decaying onion. The book is a devastating critique that begins by setting up the context - laying out the reasons for the book, then providing extensive comments documenting the cult-like behavior of those threatened by it. These become a bit repetitive, but as a group they work as a proof of concept. Following this the book systematically examines the sources and "logic" of Peterson's thought, compliling a mountain of errors, evasions, and incoherence that is to extensive to summarize.

Day's critique is so effective because it relies so heavily on Peterson's own statements. Each chapter can more or less stand alone, but they work best together, slowly revealing a pattern beneath what on the surface appear to be allusive ramblings. What was most striking about this was how closely it conforms to central concepts in occultist thinking. This is not to say that Peterson openly advocates occultism, though leaning on Jung to any extent in the 21st century certainly doesn't rule it out. The issue is one of patterns - common conceptual structures that recur in occult thought are central here as well. The next three posts will look at a trifecta of occult ideas that are uncovered in Jordanetics

1. Gnosis
2. Balance
3. Lucifarianism

It is important to remember that these are general categories made up by the Band for observable occult patterns. Gnosticism is a 17th-century term for some occult beliefs that appeared in the late Roman Empire. These have connections to ancient Jewish and Christian communities but were rejected as heresy. The historical details are unclear but this isn't the point. We're after the underlying structure that the ideas are built on. What is the concept of reality that is being expressed?

There were different versions of Gnosticism, but the consensus is that they shared the same structure - ancient knowledge as a pathway to transcendence.

Here, we are referring to what philosophers refer to as ontology or ultimate reality - Being with a capital B - the absolute, timeless, unchanging foundation of everything else. This is beyond any concept of reality since it is the "backdrop" against which everything that "is" is. Even Bill Clinton. For monotheistic religions like Christianity and Islam, God is ultimate reality. Buddhists and others believe ultimate reality is an impersonal transcendence. Modern science has no conclusive answer because it's based on material foundations, and ultimate reality is beyond the material. In any case it is a question of faith.

Gnostic ontology had a transcendent ultimate reality or God like the Buddhists, but this was purely divine, and did not create the material world. A lesser divine being - the demiurge - that actually did the creating, meaning that there is nothing of the divine in physical reality. Given that evil is by definition the opposite of the divine/Good, the material world isn't just fallen, it is inherently evil. This disqualifies religious salvation since there could be neither a Christian Incarnation, nor Jewish or Muslim prophecy, in a world detached from the divine. But Gnostics did agree that humans had a dual nature - body and soul - only from their perspective, that meant a spark of the actual divine trapped in a debased material existence with no faith-based pathway to God. The only route to transcendence was through hidden knowledge - Gnosis means "knowledge" - drawn from various sources. Jesus offered wisdom because he attained a form of divinity through perfect gnosis, not through a divine nature.

Matthäus Merian, Microcosm and Macrocosm, from the Basilica Philosophica, vol. 3 of Johann Daniel Mylius' Opus Medico-Chymicum, Frankfurt, 1618

This image is technically alchemical, but there is a lot of alchemy in the post-Renaissance notion of gnosis, and the conceptual structure is similar enough. The blending and balancing of arcane knowledge leads to knowledge of ultimate reality.

Jacob Böhme, Earth and Heaven Mysterium, frontispiece to his Theosophische Werke (Amsterdam, 1682)

The main idea turns up in one form or another in all the esoteric "unification of all religion" schools of thought - unitarianism, Freemasonry, Jungian symbolism, etc. - that transcendent knowledge is hidden in human sources. Böhme's has more overt Christian symbolism but the basic pattern of a path to transcendence through hidden knowledge is the same.

The diagrams are interesting, but no matter the particular form, one question is always the same - who decides which bits of ancient learning make it to the picture?

Hint: it's pure solipsism.

From Darkness to Light, Masonic poster by Hazen (New York, 1908) with symbols based on 19th century sources.

The whole reason for picking historical, and especially religious, sources is because they come with a built-in credibility, even among those who don't really understand them.

'Jesus and Osiris were both resurrected gods! There's meaning there that only I know'

But when religions are taken on their own terms, and not how an unbeliever wishes them to be, they are complete and self-contained ontologies.

Actually Jesus and Osiris have nothing in common ontologically or theologically and to confuse them reveals only deception or ignorance.

Religious "truths" get their authority from their place in their unified world view. Christian truth has no more weight than narrative fiction without the divinity of Christ - on his own Jesus is another Aesop. What value is there in the Kabbalah if you toss out the Jewish theology that it was based on? On its own, its a magic 8-Ball. The only "authority" is the person making it up.

Without a guiding theology, there is no way to know which religious images point to truth, or what truth it is that they point to.

Peterson uses a couple of common occultist tactics to justify his claims. We'll call them the spray of symbols and magic dreams. The first works better in public speech, with its non-verbal misdirection and lack of written record to linger on, but it is common in writing as well. Things are cherry-picked from history based on the most superficial resemblances and used as props to frame the story that the speaker or author wants to tell. This is actually not that hard to do. Culture is recursive - it is always recycling elements of the past. The occult writings recovered in the Renaissance were already reworkings of things claimed to be even older. It's easy to find recurring shapes. That's why it is necessary to understand each of them as well as possible.

Day points out that the content of the chapters in the Twelve Rules for Life had little to do with their titles - the actual 12 Rules. This may be tactical.

Charles Ernest Butler, King Arthur, 1903

Take the now-famous "Stand up straight." Good posture is something so self-evidently positive that no one can fail to see it is good advice. This is the point of access, something everyone can understand sufficiently to form a positive impression. The spray of symbols that follows has no positive meaning, but most readers lack the knowledge to realize this. It comes off as an impression of deep learning that mutually reinforces the positive impression created by the good advise. If you do understand the references, on first glance they are nonsensical, but on a closer look, sinister.

The symbols seem meaningful because they retain the memory of their original context. But in a typical Satanic move, they are inverted from their original meaning. The notion of Jesus as a mortal teacher is the reversal of his actual message that blocks the path to redemption. This is more obvious in the introduction to a recent Gnostic e-pub, where Simon Magus is "redeemed" as a path to enlightenment. It's fan fiction based on someone else's theology. Time and again we see that evil can't create, it can only pervert and destroy.

Francisco Goya, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, c. 1799, etching, aquatint, drypoint and burin, 21.5 × 15 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Magic dreams are another occult tool. It is true that there were some Biblical dream revelations, but the dreams that guide Peterson are not clear angelic messages.

Peterson's interpretative approach to his dreams could be called psychoanalytic, though there is no evidence of a school of analysis in his readings. Instead, his disturbing dream images are just plugged into the rest of the spray of symbols to shape the narrative they are cherry-picked to tell. But what is the whole point of post-Freudian dream analysis? Deeper insights into your self. There is nothing more personal than the subconscious. Following the logic, the guide to navigating deeper symbolic truth is the innermost self - the furthest point possible from external reality.

Man Ray, Max Morise, André Breton, Yves Tanguy, Cadavre Exquis, 1928, colored crayon, pencil and pen and ink on paper, 30.50 x 20.00 cm, Private Collection

Surrealist artists were caught up in Freudian delusions and tried to unlock the creative powers of the subconscious. This sort of collective doodling was supposed to reveal something. Note the usual creepy sexualization that is typical of leftist "edginess".

When anyone is peddling the subconscious as a guide to anything, ask them how they know this. It's funner when you hold them to the same evidentary standard that they demand of Christianity.

The important question is this: Who determines the ultimate meaning? In Peterson's case, he does. There is no erudition, no depth of knowledge - just a self-appointed dream shaman and his spray of symbols. In one way, this resembles the Postmodern notion that symbols have no real meaning outside of themselves, so they can be used however you want. The difference is that Postmodernists reject the possibility that they can point to anything else, while occults pretend that they illuminate a magic path that they never actually deliver on.

Kokopelli

You are given a similar inward path, only one that doesn't lead to far. Gnosis isn't for everyone, and you wouldn't want to upset the Balance...

Part two of The Band Plays Jordanetics will look beneath the "reasonable" surface of balance and see what is really in play.

As for the book itself? It is highly recommended. The extensive quotations in the early chapters don't flow particularly well, but it is clear why they are there and they work as proof of concept.