Are you a lightworker? Are you a starseed? Are you an old soul with many incarnations behind you? Are you a walk-in? Were you sent to this earth just for one incarnation, to help bring about the ascension of the planet? Do you have special spiritual talents? Have you always felt you never belonged, that even though your life seemed especially difficult you were destined for something unique, something great, that those around you could never understand?
If you can say yes to any of these things, then contact me today and for a small energy exchange I can help you journey to your soul’s divine purpose.
Ok, if you have read my earlier article on how Gnosticism is the ancestor of today’s new age movement, and the bricolage of spiritual ideas that followed it, you will get how the language above chimes. Gnosticism, allied with later Platonism, filtered through early modern esotericism, spiritualism and new thought, gives us the spiritual or conscious community we have now. They are worthy ancestors. The spiritual community are worthy inheritors.
And now I get to talk a bit about my own background.
Kia Ora Tatou and welcome to Ending the Cosmic War with me, Karen Effie.
I have been involved in many spiritual and activist groups over my long life. I have also kind of lived in the cracks of these groups. I have seldom been settled or in the mainstream. I say I have seen them from underneath. This is a great position to be in. Over the last ten years or so some of my practice has been adjacent to the spiritual community, although not quite part of it. The pandemic changed my status. Here in Aotearoa New Zealand we had a pandemic of two halves. For the first half, we had a strict lockdown, and many New Zealanders living abroad tried to get back in, because it was seen as a safe place with good policies. Then came the vaccine. The vaccine became mandated for almost everybody in the workforce, partly because businesses did not want to make the decision for their own workspaces. They wanted the government to make it for them. Most of those in the spiritual community did not agree with the vaccine. There was a large and disruptive protest that camped outside parliament for months. Some of the protesters were in the spiritual, wellness, alternative spirituality group; some were libertarians or just health contrarians, and some were downright fashy.
I was working in the health system, doing home help and personal care in people’s homes. It was precarious and poorly paid. Our clients were among society’s most vulnerable. Their homes were hardly hospital level clean. They were often unvaccinated. So, I got vaccinated early. It seemed a strange stance to take, to do what the government wanted me to do. I weighed up the evidence I had and did what I thought was best. At the time I wrote this piece below, because I was aware I was essentially seeing myself out of the alt health/wellness/spiritual room
“For those who are resisting the vaccine, I just want to say please be careful about your fellow travellers. There are people alongside you who do not care about human rights and social justice, and I use those terms thoughtfully I hope. I have done as much reading and thinking as I reasonably can without being obsessed with the damn thing. So: if it looks a bit fashy it probably is. If it looks like it is glomming onto your cause it probably is. If it looks opportunistic or like plain old grift it probably is. We all know how to follow the money and there is some influencer culture that needs to be burned to the ground. If you think your cause is worth hanging out with bad actors, then, well, gosh.
As for some of the things I hear people say, I just don’t believe them. I don’t believe that there is a microchip in me or that the admittedly execrable Mr Gates wants to control our minds or that I will harm you spiritually by leaking vaccine. Yes, I will see myself out now, but before I do:
Here is why I took the vaccine:
I work with vulnerable people in a poorly regulated and poorly resourced part of the health system. The people I work with did not want to be vaccinated themselves. It seemed sensible to get vaccinated myself, so I did.
The drug companies are not our friends. Pfizer has a terrible history and its only redeeming feature is that it is not Purdue (the maker of Oxycontin). They have the governments of the world over a barrel, and I imagine they are laughing all the way to the bank.
Nevertheless, it made sense to get the vaccine for myself and others and so I did. I don’t have to like the drug companies to do what I think is right.
I don’t ‘trust the science’. There is no ‘the science’; that is a chimera. I respect science, the scientific method, and honest scientists doing their best under difficult circumstances. And so I took the vaccine.
Endless enquiry is a fruitless exercise. At some point with any decision we need to use our own sound judgment and act. If something is being subjected to endless enquiry, enquiry that has meaningless questions or sets a deliberately unobtainable level of proof, that enquiry is at worst naïve and at best disingenuous. Watch the arguments about climate change for an example of this. No argument will convince those with vested interests, or those who weaponize irony, or engage in moral outrage porn. These people are acting in bad faith. So I used my own sound judgment as best I could and took the vaccine.
The main context of taking the vaccine for me was
COLLECTIVISM
And no I am not shouting, this is a heading.
Collectivism is people using their freedom to act for and care about everyone. It is more than community. Community means any lobby group these days. Collectivism means you don’t have to be like minded or part of the ‘tribe’. What we have in common is oppression on multiple intersectional points in our lives, some of us more than others of course. That goes for all of us in this terminal stage of totalled capitalism. Acting for others is acting for all. An injury to one is an injury to all. Collectivism thus has no time for ideas of individual sovereignty or purity or cultural atavism. It takes all people as they are.
I don’t have much time for governments actually, tending anarchist, and to the left rather than towards libertarianism. I think if we had more collectivism, we would not have vaccine mandates. Our communities would be really commun-ist and they would take care of people in their own best way. I don’t blame this government any more than any other government, because I think problems are far more systemic. Many, many years of colonialism and abuse have passed and here we are being cajoled and bullied and bribed and patronised and monitored. Because under terminal stage capitalism….. etc etc etc.
There are few examples of anarchist states historically, and in our times Rojava might be a worthy attempt, if it survives the next few months. We have lived in a shitty system for so long that we don’t know any different. We need to unlearn many superficial and pernicious ideas. The fact that collectivism is difficult, and we have few models, does not mean we should not attempt it. The way this system has handled Covid augurs poorly for the next crisis, which will be bigger and more clearly climate related. Those who survive will not necessarily be with the ones they love, the ones who think like they do, their own clan or kin. Finding better ways to be together may be essential.”
For the references: Raimond Gaita, the Australian philosopher, expounded the idea of sound judgment. Tyson Yunkaporta on the fact there is no such thing as “the science”. The aforementioned Behrooz Boochani on kyriarchy.
After the pandemic calmed a little, I realized I had in fact seen myself out of the wellness/spiritual community. I began to notice how apocalyptic they were. It was when someone I had once respected, who had taken to sharing stories from Natural News on Facebook, posted something really out there, that I thought “They think they are in a Cosmic War”. Because this person does. The Cosmic War features in a lot of spiritual thinking and the spiritual community finds itself much closer to the Christian nationalists and the far right than I could cope with, How does this happen?
We need to wipe out our ideas of left-wing and and right-wing and get with the times. One idea is diagonalism. This attempts to explain why characters such as Russell Brand, Naomi Wolf, and even Robert F Kennedy Jnr pivoted from seeming leftist stances, straight to the conspiratorial right.
William Callison and Quinn Slobodian describe the phenomenon as ‘Diagonalism’, as quoted in Mike Small’s article in Bella Caledonia:
“Taking a cue from one of the movements itself—Querdenken in Germany, in particular—we call the strategy behind the diverse movements “diagonal thinking” and the broader phenomenon they represent “diagonalism.” Bridging the more familiar concept Querfront and the more recent term Querdenken, the idea of “diagonalism” exceeds the German context of its coinage, where it means something like out-of-the-box thinking. Born in part from transformations in technology and communication, diagonalists tend to contest conventional monikers of left and right (while generally arcing toward far-right beliefs), to express ambivalence if not cynicism toward parliamentary politics, and to blend convictions about holism and even spirituality with a dogged discourse of individual liberties.”
Here is Naomi Klein, who is very clear she is not Naomi Wolf, quoted in the same article:
“Despite claims of post-partisanship, it is right-wing, often far-right political parties around the world that have managed to absorb the unruly passions and energy of diagonalism. folding its Covid-era grievances into preexisting projects opposing ‘wokeness’ and drumming up fears of migrant ‘invasions’. Still, it is important for these movements to present themselves (and believe themselves to be) ruptures with politics-as-usual; to claim to be something new, beyond traditional left-right poles.”
“That’s why having a few prominent self-identified progressives and/or liberals is so critical. Importantly, the role of these progressives is not to renounce the goals of social justice and embrace a hard-right worldview. On the contrary, they must continue to identify as proud members of the left…while claiming that it is the movements and tendencies of which they were once part that have betrayed their own ideals, leaving these uniquely courageous individuals politically homeless and in search of new alliances.”
I think I can get this, having spoken to many who have sort of “conspiracy smoothie” (Klein’s term) going on. Back in the New Age days, before the 1990’s, people in the spiritual community were not necessarily left wing, but their interests coincided with the left. Their spirituality, however, pointed them in the direction of a studied individualism. Having given up on changing the world, they wanted to change themselves.
This transformation of the self is tough. It involves ego death. It sometimes involves huge financial outlay and travel. It involves turning yourself inside out over and over, doing your shadow work. It involves careful choosing from the supermarket of spiritual ideas. It can involve rejecting the people around you who don’t share your special knowledge. Here we go again with the special knowledge. This stuff is very Gnostic. It is leaving behind the ordinary souls watching the wall in Plato’s cave. It can involve immersion in nature, but more prominent than that is a drive to transcend. There is a plethora of being who can help or harm this. There are angels, and there are dark entities with very low vibrations as well. There is a Luciferian cabal running the political system (or though this may have changed since Trump took power). Aliens can help or harm. There is a multitude of worlds, and it is possible to ascend through them by raising vibrations. The world, Gaia, seen as a spiritualized being, is struggling to ascend into the next dimension and it is the job of lightworkers or starseeds to help her. There is a battle in heaven. Dark and light entities are duking it out, and by raising vibrations, special souls can help. Soon this Cosmic War will end, and Gaia will be able to ascend. She is ready, all the angels and ascended masters and spirit guides are ready, it just needs the final battle to take place. It is the Cosmic War, yet again, and the narrative runs parallel, and occasionally entwined, with the Christian version.
The thing is, it’s dark stuff, and occasionally violent. The Cosmic War is like that.
Dr Christiane Northrup practised as a gynaecologist and obstetrician in the USA and was a populariser of women’s health empowerment. She looks lovely, the grandmother you’d like to have, really sparkly and sweet. Her website is all the usual stuff about natural health and anti-aging, and you can do courses, and buy products. It is very pastel and light and soft-edged. Back in 2015, Northrup had a YouTube channel about wellness, the standard fare from the spiritual community. However, nowadays there is a more problematic side. For this, I need to go to the unmoderated sites such as Rumble and Telegram. There, Christiane Northrup is a different creature. It is not so much a conspiracy smoothie: you can drink a smoothie. On Telegram, Christiane Northrup offers her podcast where she can give us “the uncensored truth about what’s really going on, how we get through it, and how it all ends. This is where I can be me and do what I do best: Continue to awaken humanity.” She supports Pete Hegseth. And RFK of course. She reposts a picture of a guard outside Guantanamo Bay with “Stay Tuned” as a caption. She reposts anti-trans and homophobic posts. She supports a conspiracy theory that the LA fires were aimed at clearing land for high speed rail. Or this beauty: “ The world makes more sense when you realize everyone in power is either a satanist, a pedophile, a satanist pedophile, or being blackmailed by satanists, pedophiles, or satanist pedophiles”. There are hints of violence. In the last couple of years, she has spoken more explicitly about how lightworkers need to go to war against the satanist cabal. She shares a video by Lee Merritt, of Medicalrebel.com, on how “God is restoring his army’, so the language is martial. On Substack, Northrup tells us earnestly that now that starting from the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration, the conspiracies of the Nephilim, Nimrod and Elijah, those interdimensional entities that have parasitized humanity for centuries, will be vanquished, and she shares a prayer for the new republic of the USA.
Ok this is a natural health and wellness to what I would once have called the far-right pipeline. Via the anti vax campaign, and Christian Nationalism. It’s diagonalism, I guess. It starts with these things:
- Individualism, freedom, sovereignty for individuals
- The specialness of the feminine
- Natural things are better and more inherently trustworthy than human made things
- Against corporatism, the deep state, big pharma, globalism
- Purity of the body
- Contrarianism and distrust of the official narrative, adoption of counter-cultural and rebellion narratives
- Nothing is safe except what I advocate and practise
- Esotericism: special knowledge, history is illumined by hidden spiritual forces
And it ends with:
- All of the above
Back in my Occupy Wall Street days, our model for long-term protest was the colourful messy rather glorious anti-globalist protests of the ‘90s. It was then that the idea of distrust of international agendas became a part of the counterculture. I realized, watching the anti vax protesters outside parliament in my own country, that they were singing songs of freedom and rebellion just as I had done.
What is different is the dark stuff. The conspiracy cess pit, the paranoia, the sense that nothing is safe, that the mainstream of society is against us, that people who are not like us are evil, anti gay, anti trans, anti DEI. Oh, and Donald Trump is a lightworker. He may not realize it, but he is here to save us, and now he has done it.
What is also becoming more sharply in focus, is the Cosmic War.
Whew, that was a lot. If you are still with me, thank you, and let’s box on. Ma te wa!
Further exploration:
The Conspirituality Podcast with Matthew Remski, Derek Beres and Julian Walker. I have gained so much from these guys. Listen while you clean your house with your all-natural locally produced cleaners.
https://www.salon.com/2021/03/04/why-some-new-age-influencers-believe-trump-is-a-lightworker/. A fun piece from Salon about Lori Ladd and lightworkers.
Things are changing so fast, much of my years of reading seem less reference-worthy than they used to.