IN RESPONSE to the entry on goddess spirituality, Thomas F. Bertonneau writes:

Under the provocation of Kristor’s insight and yours, I am following out some associations in respect of Gnosticism and our reigning elites. I remarked how the “Goddess writer” rejects scholarly diligence in favor of mystic autoscopy. (“The most important place to look for the Goddess is within yourself.”) Le moi – it’s an even easier reference than Wikipedia!

Readers might have noticed that in my initial response to the “Goddess writer,” I parenthetically invoked Sonya Sotomayor, as it might have seemed, rather arbitrarily. On the other hand, Sotomayor is one of those Ivy-League trained mavens of jurisprudence who put “empathy” above the law and who interpret the Constitution in Gnostic fashion not by reference to what the document says (all those dead letter were written, after all, by dead white males), but by reference to what are politely called “penumbras.” Sotomayor had a “short paper trail” although her decision in Ricci came under scrutiny because of her “empathy” ruling. Obama’s latest SCOTUS nominee is Elena Kagan, whose “paper trail” is even shorter than Sotomayor’s, and about whom it is said that, we “don’t really know very much.” Of course, we know that she was dean of the Harvard Law School – the institution that promotes the idea that “empathy” and “penumbras” are more significant in jurisprudence than the letter of the law. Under the concept of Gnosticism, indeed, Kagan’s next-to-non-existent “paper trail” takes on significance. Why should she leave a “paper trail”? “Paper trails” are for people who reason on the basis of recorded precedent and bequeath a record of their reasoning to be judged by their peers. Obviously “Wise Latinas” and savvy softball players eschew anything as material as the letter of the law, or a record of discourse. “The most important place to look for the law is within yourself.” That is the formula of Gnostic Legalism.

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