Manta Bombs

This graphic was created in Adobe Illustrator. It started out as a promo illustration for Jeremy Puma’s collection of gnostic essays, Running Towards the Bomb, but then morphed into something else entirely. The manta rays are supposed to be archons (gnostic super-villains) and the use of that shape goes back to an encounter Rev Max told me about a while back, where he said he was tripping in the desert and witnessed what he thought was an archon, this huge shadowy manta ray type entity. The bombs come from Jeremy’s book. The reason I chose seven bombs and three mantas comes from this passage in the gnostic Apocryphon of John:

“Now the archon who is weak has three names. The first name is Yaltabaoth, the second is Saklas, and the third is Samael. And he is impious in his arrogance which is in him. For he said, ‘I am God and there is no other God beside me,’ for he is ignorant of his strength, the place from which he had come.

“And the archons created seven powers for themselves, and the powers created for themselves six angels for each one until they became 365 angels. And these are the bodies belonging with the names: the first is Athoth, a he has a sheep’s face; the second is Eloaiou, he has a donkey’s face; the third is Astaphaios, he has a hyena’s face; the fourth is Yao, he has a serpent’s face with seven heads; the fifth is Sabaoth, he has a dragon’s face; the sixth is Adonin, he had a monkey’s face; the seventh is Sabbede, he has a shining fire-face. This is the sevenness of the week.

The three mantas are Yaltabaoth, Saklas and Samael, and the seven bombs are the seven powers which emanated from them. The theme “United States of Archonica” is going to soon become an online comic book series by me.