The Case for Jesus as Archmage:
Or A Sorcerers Notebook is Back!
Abọru Abọye Àbósíse (Ah-boh-ruu Ah-boh-yay Ah-boh-she-shay) “May prayers and eboo from the marketplace be raised back home.” or alternatively:
May your Prayers be raised from Earth To Heaven Beloved!
A Sorcerer's Notebook is back! If you are noticing the schedule matches school, you might be like: that doesn't make sense. Who writes extra pieces while at school? Short answer, me.
Long answer: I am at the Graduate Theological Union, in the Historical and Cultural Studies of Religion Department, with a concentration in New Religious Movements. My research is in the epistemologies, theologies, and historical narratives of mystics, seers, mediums, witches, channelers, esoteric orders, mages, diaspora healers and the emergence of priesthoods, orders, societies, and their own self reported beliefs on what they believed they were doing to the world. The period I am studying is 1850-1910.
My particular goal is to create a decolonial counter narrative that makes clear the incredible battle Black peoples of the Americas, with an emphasis on those who are descended from, or ended up here during that period as victims of, chattel slavery. To shift them from the narrative of passive victims and started to sketch out the story of warriors, healers, kings, queens, and divine mystic beings beyond binary through a monistic duality, or african notions of reality, who were “mounted/imbued” with energies that have lived as several genders and tied to mortal shells, who had to recreate whole cosmologies,systems, and reinvigorate ancient epistemologies, and start to re-crate the cycle of incarnation, ancestor worship, and embodiment in creation. So I just sort of share what I am working on.
It is literally A sorocorers notebook. Emphasis on “a” because who am I really and what the fuck do I really know about the incredible majesty of this cosmos, in this particular life?
Next to nothing.
Today's Episode: Jesus as Archmage. Or how Lenny really pissed off like a few reaaaaaaaalllllllyyyyyyy dedicated people.
Let’s be clear. The idea that Jesus could be anything but “other”, a state of Divinity bestowed upon one, and one alone, and most importantly: only through him, and also the only way to get your small measure of this cup is dangerous.
The very notion Jesus could be anything other than Divinity, unknowable, unattainable, and utterly unlike you and me, this dangerous idea, has got many a thinker, or mystic killed. It is why we look at the Gnostics as a joke almost, but yet we here all are, trying to get back to their more ethereal and otherworldly approaches. These kinds of thoughts have light stakes on fire, inspired inquisitions, and are political. The difference between Shaman, ( a highly disputed term) medicine healer, priest, pastor, sorcerer, witch etc is often political. Here is a much more learned scholar from school explaining it if you have the time:
Thus we relegate Jesus, and by Jesus your pastor or denomination means them, the Church , big C, Grace.
This odd thing we call “grace” that we admit has magical properties.That is bestowed by a third spirit. The church is quick to remind us it is “Holy Spirit”. Because they sanction it. This Holy Spirit has Alchemic properties. The ability to possess and change your actions. It is imbued with sacred divine feminine energies so powerfully many of us call her Sophia.
We don't talk about it that way because we aren't given language for it like that. But let's take a deeper dive shall we?
What do we turn to this Spirit for? Healing. Prophecy (Read:church sanctioned divination). For the ability to preach and to “know the will of God.” We use the Holy Spirit (allegedly) in all discernment. From the moment some poor soul enters whatever ecclastical red tape nightmare is there to meet them with the bitter pill of mainline church reality. The fact that they won't be entering an almost convent-like atmosphere full of progressive people doing incredible things. The people, yes. Atmosphere …….not so much. It was mostly just a series of hoops that sometimes let you near the altar, the pulpit, the tools of the office. By the time I had an opportunity to discuss “the epiclesis”, the moment when an ordained pastor places their hand above the communion, after the words of institution, like THE only moment in the liturgy and the infusion of the Holy Spirit, only for those whom through Apostolic Succession, the literal tracing of the laying on hands all the way back to Apostle Peter, where the bishop of Rome, the Pope, throne sits on Peter’s bones. Like the literal meaning of Ordination. The only thing a layperson “can’t” do. People were so burned out they read it like ingredients off a soup can in that class.
If it wasn't magic, an incantation, an invoking, then evocation of ancient forces that literally transform bread and wine, then why not let everyone do it? Why do people get so upset if you disrupt the rhythm and the liturgy? If this is how Jesus taught us to pray, taught us to gather, then what was Jesus really doing?
Because I have to tell you reading the stories from the Gospels they allow us to call cannon, even those read very differently if I was actually in the 1st century. Imagine you are in a first century marketplace. Close your eyes. Hear the sounds of people talking, haggling, hawking over wares. There are proclamations from whatever form of empire or government is in control. A clerk or soldier standing there just repeating the latest tax code, or tariff, or restriction, or local form of bread and circuses, like the NFL, but more importantly, behind, over, under and with ( like what I did there?) is a larger cosmological battle happening.
Because on every corner, every nook, every extra platform is someone telling you the exploits of their God, their teacher, their way of touching the Divine. From Baal, to Moloch, the God of Jesus, Yahweh, would have all been there next to the fruits, spices, politicians, thieves, tax collectors, soldiers, I mean: All Centurions Are Bastards! ACAB!
But what I am saying is that the center of almost every provincial to even mid size town in that time was a marketplace of sorts. It is in this really diverse, highly complex world of other prophets, people predicting the future, soothsayers, diviners, healers, exorcist, crop and daily life maintenance and practitioners, and the emergence of priesthoods more almost universally: that is the every day of Jesus.
He is a showman extraordinaire. His moves are political. Calculated. Cunning. Effective. More importantly almost every single one is a demonstration of his innate powers and abilities. All the proofs he offers that he is some other, are honestly quite magical. He opens up doors to the dimension angels come through. Also maybe one is his Dad?
Want a quick reminder of what angels look like again, as described by the Bible?
That's Jesus Daddy, according to some scholars, for it was the angel Gabriel that brought the “spirit of the lord” that overcame here. So again a Spirit, brought by one of those things, birthed Jesus. The only reason we don't call Jesus archmage, Like Dr. Wilkerson explains, is power. The difference between a witch, sorcerer, priest and prophet is power. Who has it. Who owns the popular narrative. The story. That is the power.
The same powers that killed Christ killed Martin, Malcolm, Fred Hampton, Sandra Bland. But we still don't see them. Why? Power.
Why was Jesus killed? Power.
With this new frame how do you read this text?
Mark 8:22-26.
22They came to Bethsaida. Some people[d] brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him. 23 He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Can you see anything?” 24 And the man[e] looked up and said, “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.” 25 Then Jesus[f] laid his hands on his eyes again, and he looked intently, and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 Then he sent him away to his home, saying, “Do not even go into the village.”[g]
Yeah Jesus. Screw them villagers!!!
Why this secret magical act? Ohh that's because in Chapter 8 Jesus feeds 4 thousand people and the Phairsee’s demand more…I'll say “miracles' ' at this point because that is the word the church has officially sanctioned around these acts.
The difference between magic and miracle is simply who is writing the confessional definition.
One more thing that I want you to interrogate with this view of Jesus as an archmage, in a world full of people like this, is this following verse and I’ll save the first part 2 of this article.
Luke 10:1-23
1 After this the Lord appointed seventy-two[a] others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. 2 He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. 3 Go on your way; I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. 4 Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. 5 Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’6 And if a person of peace is there, your peace will rest on that person, but if not, it will return to you. 7 Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. 8 Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; 9 cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’[b] 10 But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’[c] 12 I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.
The church says that from this verse we get ministers, pastors, deacons and the like. But Jesus isn't saying spend 4 years in school, learn how to give side hugs, balance a budget, or even to take a pension.
This is a mystic teacher sending his students to test their new powers in the world. Don't believe me?
Verse 17-20. Same chapter:
17 The seventy-two[d] returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” 18 He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. 19 Indeed, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will hurt you. 20 Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
I think verse 17 reads more correctly: “in the name of Yahwey even the demons submit to us…”since this is the account of Jesus whom referred to himself as the “son of man'' to mock the emperor, and its cult, but I digress.
But here they are. He gave them a charge, a mighty name to speak over people, abilities to heal, face demons and denizens from lower realms. I mean the church says that’s where we get the office of Pastor and Missionary from. How could you read this and see the colonizer and not the Medicine person? How could you see purity culture and not the rugged dirty magical world of humanity? Why doesn't this read witch? They staked him to a cross. Why aren't we reading more Merlin than a passive blunt instrument of God that somehow has all the church needs to control as the only words we here proclaimed?
If it isn't a spell, change the liturgy at your church tomorrow.
Part 2 when I get to it.
Written in Love and Liberation
Lenny Duncan.