The Gnosis and the Arts - Eden Saga

After the dark years of the two world wars, after the horrors of Nazism and the communist witch-hunt, a new generation has incarnated with a great desire for peace, tolerance and love. It was called flower power. The girls and boys had long hair, flowery clothes and Kohol around their eyes.

The world’s consciousness seemed to wake up from a long nightmare, which can come back at any moment. The disappointed in the current system say that a little nazism would be beneficial. Replace the daily horror with an abomination worse? Let us not forget. The age of populist dictatorships is behind us, and it remains.

From the extreme right or the extreme left, the bastards are talking to the morons. And the morons, of course, listen to them with their mouths open. While others remember. Memory protects against cretinism.

Flower power followers, ex-hippies, neo-babas, may seem old-fashioned, they have nothing to do with the return of populism. The Babas still live in the spirit of generosity that built them. The rediscovered taste for nature, the cult of friendship, clanism as a non-religious means of cultivating human warmth, all traditions that date back to the dawn of time. They also brought her back.

Followers Unknowingly …

Celtitude has played a part. I have seen the revival of bardic songs, revived by Glenmor in the 1960s. I sang with him when he passed by Ploumanach. Modern bard, Glenmor was influenced by the traditional Breton culture, druidism. But also by the American folk-song, itself born of negritude by blues, jazz and gospel.

Beyond Blake and Jung, there are a few new gnosists: Leonard Cohen and his beloved Suzanne, John Lamb Lash, Richard Farina, Devic, Jim Morrison,see below Janis Joplinabove, John Lennon,see below Donovan, Carlos Castanedasee below, Bobsee below and Rita Marley, Jean Millet, Carl Sandburg, Salif Keita, Jean-Jacques Goldman, Alain Souchon, Cheikh Anta Diopsee below, Pink Floyd, Gir Moebius,see below Lewis Trondheim,see below Hugo Pratt, Vinksee below and many others… So many others!

They come from literature, comics, pop, what runs, which vibrates and makes grow. Each of them, and strongly, initiated me at a point in my long life. Most of them left this world. None has left my heart, even if my old head may have forgotten one or another. Let them forgive me.

All these dear friends have one concern, the Spirit — and one purpose, awakening.

Cheikh Anta Diop

It is time to give negroes their rightful place in the history of spirituality, culture and sacred development. For years, Cheikh Anta Diop was the voice that screamed in the desert of incredulous whites. For nothing in the world they would have subscribed to the yet convincing theses of Diop.

This great man, with a courage and resolution that disregarded the barriers and shrugs of shoulders, stood alone against all to proclaim the truth. Today, a university in Dakar, Senegal, bears his name. I would like to see Paris do the same for him. National Education has to change the history textbooks first. You may say I’m a dreamerJohn Lennon …

Anta Diop has rehabilitated the use of the words Negro, or negritude, refusing to use the qualifier of black, which refers only to a skin color while the blacks represent a specific culture, very old. The colour of their skin is not important, especially since it is never absolutely black, but different shades of brown. For Cheikh Anta Diop, saying a Black is as racist as saying the a frizzy hair or a flat nose. Racist and false.

Negritude

Born first, the Black culture flows in our veins, whatever our ethnicity. It irrigates literature, dance, religions, morals. Without it, without this happy mix of fatalism and revolution, wisdom and madness, rhythm and poetry, how will we survive? Without this momentum that comes from far and that carries even further, our world would have already disappeared.

Most of our elites don’t care. Everything that makes life and vibrate, the great ones of this world consider it minor. That’s why they are nothing. Have they even noticed the return of this wave that raised the human ocean at the beginning of the last century? Did they understand that it grew in the 1970s? Did they see that it reigns over youth?

It was called counter-culture. Today it is the new culture. Vibrant and globalized.

What does it matter? We have so much taken the habit of considering Negroes as sub-men that we are not surprised by this kind of forgetfulness. Truth, if we really want to address the question of sub-men, it is not the Negroes.

I have written many articles about them which links you will find below. While they knew a cultural and technical development ahead of its time, our ancestors of the West struck flint one against another to light their fire in the open air. They had indeed returned to barbarism for so long that they had no memory of their former glory. They even forgot that without the Negroes, all other humans would not have survived.

For Mandela

Salif Keita, the albino with princely origins, the child with a golden voice who left music for politics, has struggled his whole life within his family to become a singer. He has never stopped working for the valorization of folk in Mali, where he is from, and all over the world.

In 1968, rejected by his family, Salif Keita arrives in Bamako and her life changes. It is the blessed moment of independence: the socialist president tries to guide Mali towards democracy while culture is flourishing and all styles coexist in joy. But in late 1968, a military coup broke the spell and the junta took over. Politics is gradually hardening and forging in Salif Keita a singular and powerful character. (source)

Marked by a painful childhood because of his difference, he campaigned for the integration of albino children. His musical successes are appreciated and ensure a reputation that is useful for his political commitments. He is a constant advocate for the release of Mandela with Manu Dibango.see below His golden voice sounds like a challenge to apartheid, for him music is a vector that allows to reach widely populations. In 1989, the title Nous pas bouger was released. It echoes the charter of Charles Pasqua who left France 37 years earlier and sent 101 Malians back to Bamako.

For Jazz

Jazzman gifted, virtuoso of the sax, nicknamed his fans called him the king of the Groove, Papa Manu or Le Doyen. Manu Dibango, a saxophonist and veteran of African musicians in France, died on Tuesday, March 2024, his family announced. He was 86 years old.

Born in 1933 in Cameroon, Manu Dibango was sent to France by his parents as a teenager to continue his studies, and he then got acquainted with the mandolin and the piano. In 1962, Manu Dibango took over the management of a club in Léopoldville and released “Twist à Léo”. After his return to France in 1965, Manu Dibango created his Big Band in 1967 and participated in the “Pulsations” shows where he met Dick Rivers and Nino Ferrer, for whom he will be a musician for some time, before releasing the album “Saxy party” in 1969, allowing him to reconnect with his African audience. In 1972, the song “Soul Makossa”, a world success later taken up by Michael Jackson and then Rihanna, took Manu Dibango on international tour.

In 2010, Manu Dibango was awarded the Legion of Honour and in 2019 he returned to the stage for an anniversary tour celebrating his 60-year career. Popular musician, known and recognized for his music but also for his humility, Manu Dibango leaves behind him a huge career and a legendary saxophone sample.

Africa Saga

The Incal Light

Honour to whom honour is due. If comics art has a lot of geniuses, the one in front is Comics da Vinci. Jean Giraud signed the pseudo GIR the stories of Blueberry, a western series scripted by Jean-Michel Charlier.

But his masterpiece belongs to the esoteric sf. Or inner sf. Or mœbian sf, since he is the inventor under the pseudonym of Moebius. It is not a single album, but various breathtaking collections, where the virtuosity of drawing combines with the depth of the subject. Is it Gnostic? I cannot say, since Mœbius touches the universal. He succeeds in everything he undertakes, shines in all genres and mooves me in all his works.

In any case, he is certainly spiritualist. As well as esoterist. And… as well… So many things he dug !

Doors of Perception

Jim Morrison & William Blake are not united by chance on this image. If Morrison chose to call his band the Doors, it is an abbreviation of a quote by William Blake, who was not a musician but a spiritualist and gnostic writer.

I don’t believe in Beatles

God is a concept by which we measure our pain, sings John Lennon, who continues: I don’t believe in Buddha, I don’t believe in the Bible, I don’t believe in Jesus, I don’t believe in Elvis, I don’t believe in ZimmermanBob Dylan, I don’t believe in Beatles …

He said too much, it killed him. A madman shot him in the middle of New York on the evening of Monday, December 8, 1980.

Goodbye John. Up there, the choir of angels has taken a facelift since you are their composer.

Suzanne

Leonard Cohen, flipped out companion of dark hours, your deep sadness in front of this absurd world helped me to grow. Listening to you with all the fibres of my body in the hours of lassitude has driven out despair to avoid the irreparable. The beauty of your gaze on the world is a lucidity that does not destroy, but reassures. We say “hold it? I’m not the only one” … And Suzanne holds the mirror.

Suzanne takes your hand And she leads you to the river She is wearing rags and feathers From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey On our lady of the harbour And she shows you where to look Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed There are children in the morning They are leaning out for love And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror

And you want to travel with her And you want to travel blind And you know you can trust her
For she’s touched your perfect body with her mind

Get up! Stand up!

He is no longer presented. His aura has not finished shining on Jamaica, which without him would have remained an unknown island for a majority of Europeans. Kingston, the City of Kings, is its capital.

And Trenchtown, the City Ditch, is his most infamous neighborhood. And the most typical!

No doubt the brilliant musician is matched by a fervent believer, who belonged to a non-Christian religion, but almost.

His one God is called Jah, close to Yahweh or Jehovah. And his pope is the former emperor of Ethiopia, S.M. Haile Selassie.

Does it give you the right to be included in this section?

NO because he is not really Gnostic.

YES because without him, without his revolutionary protest songs, the spiritualist revolution would have been much less toned, less open, less cheerful and less stoned…

Get up! Stand up for your rights ! Stand up! Stand up for your rights!

Ralph Azam

Brilliant author again, Laurent Chabosy is better known as his nickname Lewis Trondheim. Does the name come from Lewis Caroll? The Swedish name means Maison Ronde. And it is also a city… I met his partner Brigitte Findakly, a talented colorist who I appreciated when I was working on the comics at Bayard.

But with him, alas, our paths did not cross. This does not prevent me from paying him a real cult, especially for his fabulous series Ralph Azham. With a very childish drawing, he tells us a saga that is not at all. This contrast participates in the seduction of the work. Children will read it with delight, but teens and adults will get more. I find it very clearly gnostic. If he reads me, he’ll laugh, shrug and take me for a fool. No problem. We forgive him everything.

Crazy Monk

His name is Vink. His masterpiece is the Mad Monk. In fifteen volumes, the author tells us about the adventures of He Pao, a Westerner who grew up in China. Vink is a master. First of all, by the graphic talent that seduces at first glance. And by the wisdom of history, with its very Castaneda accents.

I read it when it was published in 1984. I loved it. But I reread it a few days ago, and I fell under the spell. Everything is perfect. The depth of the story, the accuracy of the magic, the finesse of the astral descriptions, the permanent subtlety give to this work a fecundity that can only feed a seeking light of my own.

Carlos Castaneda

Essential Castaneda! I will not dwell on this philosopher of action, this site has already devoted so many articles to him! Farewell Carlos. You leave a great void in the hearts and souls of the warriors of light. Your philosophy of action will be taught to children tomorrow.

The Teachings of Castaneda

The Rochefort Years

Flornoy the childhood friend, the idealist, the winner too. Flornoy the nagual and all around him, his tarots, his pottery, friends in a mess who laugh and who scream. The gently sloping years, on the banks of the Mayenne, the sweatlodges at full moon nights, the esoteric library, the exhibition room, the pottery workshop, that of the arcane giants of the Marseille tarot, this guy, this friend was a great man.

Flornoy, Devic and I, the infernal trio. Our passionate debates on this or that obscure point of a legend, on religions, tales, mythologies, on history so mistreated, on the past so reduced to a few gun ranges, on specialists who shoot at everything that moves, on the least word that is not in line. In their line… of sight!

Flornoy, Devic, life passing by, death leaving traces that nothing can erase …

Sayings of the Nagual

Warriors of my age feel quite alone in the middle of their idol graveyard. Witnesses to great things, we pass the relay. It is up to you to continue the march forward when the last ones I have mentioned will have left you.