DeConick A.D

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HELL WALKS AND STAR TREKS
Figure 7.1 James T. Kirk (William Shatner) has a question in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
(1989).
and faces, lives. Sybok claims to be seeking the ultimate knowledge that
humans have sought since the beginning of time.
Sybok does not use ancient Gnostic ritual to release the soul and send
it on a journey through the stars and into the transcendent world beyond
the borders of the cosmos. To make his Gnostic journey to the ultimate
source of all being, Sybok steals Kirk’s starship. The Enterprise breaches
the barrier and whizzes toward this planet of ultimacy.
Captain James T. Kirk is the only person in the film to resist Sybok,
considering him a con man (figure 7.1). As the Enterprise plummets toward
Sha Ka Ree, we wonder whether Kirk’s suspicions reflect his stubbornness
and obstinacy or he is the one with true insight, the real Gnostic
of the movie.
Out of the Cave
Gnostic initiatory rites are an early form of religious psychotherapy. As
we saw in the last chapter, the Gnostics created four types of ceremonies
in order to awaken, purge, mature, and integrate the damaged self into a
stable state of primal and permanent wholeness. These rituals released the
soul to journey into hell and through the stars, so that the spirit could
eventually breach the cosmic barrier and, like Kirk’s Enterprise , enter the
transcendent realm of ultimate existence. It remains to be seen how indi-