Until about six months ago I hadn’t paid attention to the Q phenomenon. Once the world took a turn for the crazy I started paying attention to Q and the so-called Qanons (Qanons are followers of Q who attempt to decode the various Q drops that show up on 8kun). I read Q’s drops, and have watched various videos made by Master Qanons. Personally, I think Q hits on some real life themes, like: systemic child sex trafficking that takes place at the highest levels of society (think Epstein, Maxwell, and associates); the idea that there is a movement catalyzed by Trump to counter this pedophiliac system; that the Occult is part-and-parcel for some of those associated with this pedophiliac activity (as I referred to here); that the mainstream media, owned by 6 corporations with the same globalist agenda, is part of this satanic cabal (you know, the Illuminati); so on and so forth. I have no problem believing any of that because all of that is out in the open; they aren’t even hiding anymore. The only people who won’t see that are those who don’t want to see that. But Q doesn’t stop there. It has an eschatology, and metaphysical schema; i.e. an ‘end-times’ theory, and sense of the supernatural that either comports with a deistic (impersonal) conception of God; or typically a more New Age monistic understanding of reality where humanity simply needs to self-actualize the universal energy embedded within each human being.

In this post I will attempt to sketch some parallels I see between ancient Gnosticism, and the Q belief system. I will focus, in particular on the correlation between secret knowledge; the decoding of that knowledge; the concept of ‘awakening’; and the idea that humanity’s ultimate goal/telos is to return to a status of ‘light’ from whence they had originally fallen. These are all component parts of both antique Gnosticism, and the contemporaneous phenomenon of Q that has currently swept over a particular demographic in Americana. To start let’s open with a summary of Q and Qanon offered by investigative journalist, Adrienne LaFrance:

If you were an adherent, no one would be able to tell. You would look like any other American. You could be a mother, picking leftovers off your toddler’s plate. You could be the young man in headphones across the street. You could be a bookkeeper, a dentist, a grandmother icing cupcakes in her kitchen. You may well have an affiliation with an evangelical church. But you are hard to identify just from the way you look—which is good, because someday soon dark forces may try to track you down. You understand this sounds crazy, but you don’t care. You know that a small group of manipulators, operating in the shadows, pull the planet’s strings. You know that they are powerful enough to abuse children without fear of retribution. You know that the mainstream media are their handmaidens, in partnership with Hillary Clinton and the secretive denizens of the deep state. You know that only Donald Trump stands between you and a damned and ravaged world. You see plague and pestilence sweeping the planet, and understand that they are part of the plan. You know that a clash between good and evil cannot be avoided, and you yearn for the Great Awakening that is coming. And so you must be on guard at all times. You must shield your ears from the scorn of the ignorant. You must find those who are like you. And you must be prepared to fight.

You know all this because you believe in Q.[1]

I think this is an accurate assessment of Q, in general; despite the fact that LaFrance ultimately repudiates the Q system as a tinhat formed cabal of belief that only quacks, and societal outliers would be prone towards. As you read her article in toto she, in some depth, gets into various elements of the Q revelational system; how it works; and what the various prophecies, made by Q, look like. She also gets into the coding system that Q has used since its inception, and the way Qanons have attempted to map and decode these codes; it is known as the Q Map, and it is like a flow chart that attempts to string together all the various Q drops in hopes of bringing clarity to Q’s various revelations about ‘the Plan.’ Yes, this is another motto of Q, it has many; three that stand out to me are: ‘trust the plan,’ ‘trust humanity,’ ‘where we go one we go all’ ( WWG1WGA). In reduction, as you read her article (and it largely comports with my experience with the Q community): Q is an American cult of belief, that looks to a deified agent (or agents) who has inner-secret-knowledge, who they believe is communicating with them in a way that will ‘awaken’ them (another hot word for Qanons) to the deep (dualistic) reality that stands behind the world. These revelations, ostensibly provided by Q, appeals to an inherent capacity embedded within each human being (like a divine spark) that simply (maybe ‘Socratically’) needs to be triggered, or awakened, by Q (a ‘redeemer’ figure). This awakening, through this revealed or secret knowledge, as the Qanons are re-sparked, will lead them back to a primal starting point, in themselves, which will allow them to be ‘digital soldiers,’ fighting the darkness (the demonic, even) overcoming it with the knowledge of the light that they have received from Q; their ‘redeemer’ figure. The ultimate hope for Qanons (and this is their eschatology), is that Trump, with their help, will defeat the darkness, and usher in a world of peace and security like the world has never known before (sounds like how the New Testament describes the coming of the Antichrist). Many, those deep into the Q mythology, maintain that John F. Kennedy, jr. faked his death, and that he is working alongside Trump to ‘drain the swamp,’ and usher in this new world of light and tranquility; a world that will initially be led by JFK, jr, as Trump will at that point step aside (this would be part of the metaphysical, and ‘redeemer’ mythology I was referring to earlier).

Now, in light of what I just described let me refer us to Ronald Nash, and his succinct description of classical Gnosticism. You will almost immediately begin to notice the parallels between Q and Gnosticism (of course these parallels only work if my sketch, along with LaFrance’s more developed treatment on Q is accurate—which I think it is). Nash writes (at length):

One of the more obvious beliefs of Gnosticism it its fundamental dualism. In the myth of the Gnostic Redeemer, this dualism is apparent in the conflict between the two worlds (light and darkness), the two superhuman forces (the good god of light and the demons of darkness), and the two parts to human beings (a good soul imprisoned in an evil body). God, spirit, and light are diametrically opposed to demons, matter, and darkness. The idea of the inherent evil of matter, it is impossible that he could have anything to do with bringing such a world into existence. Hence, the Gnostics reasoned, he did not. The material world must be the work either of evil demons (as noted in our account of the myth) or, in some versions, of a second and inferior god, akin to Plato’s Demiurge, whom heretical Christian Gnostics viewed as the Yahweh of the Old Testament.[2]

Before proceeding further with Nash’s sketch, let’s stop for a moment and make a qualification. Q and Qanons certainly operate with a dualistic concept of light versus darkness, but it is not framed by this idea of the material world being evil. Instead Q mythology often collapses this struggle of light and darkness into the immanent frame; in other words, they collapse the metaphysical reality of light, into the material reality where they believe this conflict will finally be resolved. With this sort of modification in mind, let’s continue on with Nash:

Human beings belong to both worlds—the spiritual world of the divine light and the material world of darkness. Human souls are sparks of the divine light that have become entrapped in matter. Unconscious of their divine origin and destiny but still impelled by a subconscious longing for the heavenly light from which they had fallen, these “pneumatics” (as they were called) were impelled to seek deliverance from their bondage of matter. The basic question of human existence is how to achieve deliverance from matter and finally return to the world of light and the god of that world.

Several things are necessary if human beings are to experience this redemption. For one thing, they need to be awakened from their slumber and reminded of their heavenly origin. The basic means by which humans attain salvation from the evil of matter is a special knowledge (gnosis) that they cannot attain themselves but only receive as a divine gift. This gnosis is not intellectual knowledge or philosophical speculation but a revelation from the good god. But it is not a knowledge that just anyone may obtain; it is a secret or esoteric knowledge made available only to those for whom it can be a means of salvation. “In some cases [gnōsis] is no more than a crude magical knowledge of spells and passwords, for to know the name of a god gives power over the owner of the name. In other cases, gnōsis meant an elevated mystical experience, a vision of the divine, a knowledge received by revelation from God Himself.” As explained by Gnostic specialist Hans Jonas,

The goal of gnostic striving is the release of the “inner man” from the bonds of the world and his return to his native realm of light. The necessary condition for this is that he know about the trans-mundane God and about himself, that is, about his divine origin as well as his present situation, and accordingly also about the nature of the world which determines this situation.[3]

Clearly there is not a one-for-one correlation between every aspect of ancient Gnosticism (developed in the 2^nd Century, AD), but there is enough correlation between them that I think understanding some of the basic lineaments of Gnosticism proper allows it to be instructive towards the way we attempt to think about Q. Their shared emphases are: 1) a Redeemer figure (Q), 2) secret revelation needing to be decoded and understood by the ‘elect’ (Qanons), 3) salvation attained as the light aspect of the person is awakened by the Redeemer’s revelation, 4) and ultimate salvation as light returns to the source and all is made whole. I find these parallels to be instructive; and more than simply incidental.

The ultimate problem I have with Q, taken to its logical conclusion, is that just like with the original Gnosticism[s],  it is a riff and perversion of orthodox Christian teaching. It takes some elements, even basic elements, from Christian teaching and grammar, and remodels this teaching into a newfangled superstructure that ultimately has no correlation with what Christian teaching actually entails. The Christian hope is not secret; the Christian conception of revelation is personal, and is grounded in Jesus Christ and the triune God. Christians reject the concept of an inherent capacity latent within the individual that simply needs to be ‘awakened’; indeed, orthodox Christian teaching is directly counter to that. For orthodox Christians, we maintain, according to Scripture, that we are ‘dead in our trespasses and sins,’ and that outwith Jesus ‘becoming sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him,’ we have no hope of eternal life or salvation.

When Q followers attempt to soften the themes of their own belief system, in order to make it more comportable with Christian teaching, they aren’t sufficiently appreciating how fundamentally distinct Q is from historic orthodox Christianity. Qanons, the Christian ones, will often attempt to bring the Q doctrine into line, or at least not in antagonism with Christian teaching. But when Q is deified, and it surely is, just at this point Q no longer is compatible with the Sacra Doctrina of historic and biblical Christian teaching.

For my money: I can recognize that Q has alerted people to various themes present in the broader culture and society, but that is as far as Q can go for me. None of the themes Q has alerted people to, though, are new to Q; except for Q’s claim that there is ‘a plan.’ But I had heard of such ‘plans’ long before Q came on the scene. My point: Q is not required in order to recognize that the world is up against a demonic hoard present in the highest echelons of government, entertainment, and mundane life the world over. This is what the cross of Jesus Christ has been bearing witness to ever since the beginning. I look to Jesus Christ as the Savior this world needs, and I trust His plan. I would challenge any Christian Q proponents out there to really think all of these things through. In my view, adherence to Q can be rather deleterious to your Christian walk. Q is indeed representative of a belief system, and its correlation is not with historic orthodox Christianity, but rather, with an orthodox Gnosticism that is at cross-purposes with the Evangel of the risen Christ.

[1] Adrienne LaFrance, “The Prophecies of Q: American conspiracy theories are entering a dangerous new phase,” The Atlantic (June 2020).

[2] Ronald H. Nash, Christianity&the Hellenstic World (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984), 220.

[3] Ibid., 220-21.