SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL [Noah, the movie]

The world of Aronofsky’s Noah is a thoroughly Gnostic one: a graded universe of “higher” and “lower.” The “spiritual” is good, and way, way, way “up there” where the ineffable, unspeaking god dwells, and the “material” is bad, and way, way down here where our spirits are encased in material flesh. This is not only true of the fallen sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, but of fallen angels, who are explicitly depicted as being spirits trapped inside a material “body” of cooled molten lava.

Admittedly, they make pretty nifty movie characters, but they’re also notorious in Gnostic speculation. Gnostics call them Archons, lesser divine beings or angels who aid “The Creator” in forming the visible universe. And Kabbalah has a pantheon of angelic beings of its own all up and down the ladder of “divine being.” And fallen angels are never totally fallen in this brand of mysticism. To quote the Zohar again, a central Kabbalah text: “All things of which this world consists, the spirit as well as the body, will return to the principle and the root from which they came.” Funny. That’s exactly what happens to Aronofsky’s Lava Monsters. They redeem themselves, shed their outer material skin, and fly back to the heavens. Incidentally, I noticed that in the film, as the family is traveling through a desolate wasteland, Shem asks his father: “Is this a Zohar mine?” Yep. That’s the name of Kabbalah’s sacred text.

Okay. That’s weird. But, hey, everybody in the film seems to worship “The Creator,” right? Surely it’s got that in its favor!

Except that when Gnostics speak about “The Creator” they are not talking about God. Oh, here in an affluent world living off the fruits of Christendom the term “Creator” generally denotes the true and living God. But here’s a little “Gnosticism 101” for you: the Creator of the material world is an ignorant, arrogant, jealous, exclusive, violent, low-level, bastard son of a low level deity. He’s responsible for creating the “unspiritual” world of flesh and matter, and he himself is so ignorant of the spiritual world he fancies himself the “only God” and demands absolute obedience. They generally call him “Yahweh.” Or other names, too (Ialdabaoth, for example).

This Creator tries to keep Adam and Eve from the true knowledge of the divine and, when they disobey, flies into a rage and boots them from the garden.

In other words, in case you’re losing the plot here: The serpent was right all along. This “god,” “The Creator,” whom they are worshiping is withholding something from them that the serpent will provide: divinity itself.

I think Mattson illustrates the movie’s Gnostic theme quite effectively. And given the similar Kabbalist theme in Aronofsky’s previous film, Pi, the context fits. The number of Gnostic references has to be intentional.

Gnosticism is misrepresented by the focus on the "evil God." It's exactly the same as if Catholicism was wiped out down to the last man, woman and child, and then the killers pointed to the crucifix 700 years later and made a big thing about Catholics murdering God and being a torture cult. The "evil God" teaching of the Gnostics was not in any way an equating of that with the infinite God - it couldn't, by definition. Instead, it was a way of teaching that desire will not be, and cannot be, satisfied in human life. Only in the next life, the "higher life," will desires be satisfied in the soul, through union with God. And that this world is infested with demons who wait to snare people - something we increasingly see every day all around us, and which is directly stated in Ephesians 6:12.

In fact, this split between these "two" Gods was an enormously powerful teaching tool - to only look for satisfaction in spiritual life and in following Christ's teachings about how to live and treat each other, rather than for any worldly gain, because such gain is limited and will inevitably fail. Because they could see it all around them in the hardships and dissatisfactions of life, and how they were hunted down and destroyed for their faith. In fact, the teaching went so deep in the people, and was so profoundly imbibed, that when they were slaughtered and burned alive, the priests of the inquisition and the soldiers supporting them marvelled at their calm in facing death, even to the point of singing psalms as they died.

Gnostics were a gentle people who loved God. Those who mock and denigrate them, even to this day, only reinforce the truth of their beliefs by the irrationality and selective memory of their hatred.

Aranofsky represented none of any of that, and Mattson used the movie to promulgate hateful stereotypes about these people. But of course, to the victors go the spoils. And if people are going to praise the extermination of an entire religion down to the last child, what does that make them, if they do not villianize their victims? Thus, to this day, "Christians" spit at these dead - who died praising Christ, at the hands of those who claimed the "protection" of the faith. So who acted like demons?

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