VALIS
VALIS (Vast Active Living Intelligence System) is a 1981 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick — a heavily autobiographical, philosophically dense work fictionalizing Dick’s own religious and visionary experiences of 1974 (see The Exegesis). It is the first book in the incomplete VALIS Trilogy, followed by The Divine Invasion (1981), with the planned third volume, The Owl in Daylight, unfinished at the time of Dick’s death.
Synopsis
Horselover Fat — the schizophrenic alter-personality of narrator Philip K. Dick — experiences visions of a pink beam of light (called “Zebra”) which he interprets as a theophany: God or an alien intelligence communicating hidden truths about reality. Fat and his friends (Kevin, David, and Phil) form the Rhipidon Society and discover a film called Valis containing imagery matching Fat’s revelations. Tracking down the filmmakers, they encounter Sophia Lampton — a two-year-old girl who is the incarnation of Holy Wisdom (Pistis Sophia) and declares their conclusions correct. Sophia tells them to worship not gods but humanity, then dies in a laser accident. Fat resumes his global search for the next incarnation of Sophia.
Key Concepts
The Black Iron Prison
Dick’s Gnostic metaphor for the totalizing system of material-political control that entraps consciousness. The Empire never ended — the Roman Empire, Nixon’s America, and the far future are all the same structure of oppression. This is the literary expression of:
- The Gnostic_Demiurge’s constructed reality
- The Qlippothic shells of the Kabbalah
- The Veil_of_Maya in Hinduism
VALIS as Divine Intelligence
VALIS itself is described as an artificial satellite beaming information from the star Sirius via pink laser beams, using “disinhibiting stimuli” (symbols, signs) to trigger anamnesis — the recovery of lost divine knowledge (Gnosis). This combines Gnostic soteriology with cybernetic information theory.
The Tractates Cryptica Scriptura
An appendix to the novel containing Dick’s Gnostic philosophical aphorisms, including the famous: “The Empire never ended” and “The Head Apollo is about to return.”
Philosophical & Cultural References
The novel references: Valentinian Gnosticism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Plato, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Jakob Böhme, Carl_Jung, Mircea Eliade, Robert Anton Wilson, the Nag_Hammadi_Library, the Dogon people, and Wagner’s Parsifal. The fictional characters Eric Lampton and Brent Mini are modeled on David Bowie and Brian Eno.
See Also
- Exegesis_of_Philip_K_Dick — The 8,000-page Exegesis from which VALIS draws
- Gnosticism — The primary philosophical framework
- Gnostic_Demiurge — The Black Iron Prison’s architect
- Gnostic_Sophia — Pistis Sophia; incarnated as the infant messiah
- Gnosis — The salvific anamnesis Dick/Fat experiences
- Nag_Hammadi_Library — The Gnostic texts Dick references extensively
- Veil_of_Maya — The illusory reality VALIS seeks to penetrate