The Joy of Spiritual Memes

Apr 06, 2025

Mystical Perks

One of the benefits of writing on mystical topics is occasionally you get to meet one of your heroes. Sometimes it’s a teacher or a healer. Sometimes a writer, or an intuitive with powerful gifts.

And sometimes it’s a meme lord.

By now we’re all aware of the power of memes. Their ability to make us laugh, or highlight the absurdity of a situation, while also transmitting layers upon layers of meaning almost instantaneously, via a simple picture along with some text.

I first discovered the great esoteric meme creator,

The Fourth Way

, on Twitter/X sometime last summer. Around that same time I also heard him interviewed by Jim O'Shaughnessy on the

Infinite Loops

podcast.

Who is The Fourth Way?

He’s an anonymous creator who specializes in mystical content based largely on the ideas of 20th Century mystic G.I. Gurdjieff. And his handle derives from Gurdjieff’s spiritual system of the same name (The Fourth Way) which integrates the mind, body, and emotions through self-observation and conscious effort in everyday life.

And The Fourth Way also happens to be the greatest esoteric meme creator in the world. In fact, if you’ve ever laughed out loud at a spiritual meme, chances are high that The Fourth Way may have created it.

And for those of you unsure of what a spiritual meme might be, here are a couple of examples to begin:

In fact, for every mystical idea I share with friends or family probably half of them are in the form of memes. It seems to be a less threatening, more light-hearted way to crack open someone’s reality to the truths of our infinite existence.

But The Fourth Way is more than just memes. He also creates in-depth content on Gurdjieff and all sorts of mystical topics, both on Substack and YouTube.

(I really loved his video on Moses the Magician.)

Fascinating content.

The Original Memes?

Before we get to the good stuff (more memes!) it’s also worth considering the irony here, that perhaps when we look back into history, and even prehistory, the earliest memes known to humanity may have arisen from those we call the mystics, handed down to us in the form of symbols.

Yes, the ancient mystics may have been the creators of the original memes.

These encoded messages would’ve been in the form of symbols loaded with both exoteric (obvious) and esoteric (hidden) meanings.

Some include:

The Spiral, representing the infinite dance of cosmic and natural cycles.

The Serpent, a creature rising from the dust to ascend to the Divine, perhaps via kundalini. (The rich symbolic meaning of the serpent has of course been corrupted, although I’m not arguing to bring it back. I’m as averse to snakes as the next person.)

The Triangle, symbolizing the sacred triad, spiritual ascension, harmony, and the infinite.

And an even more intriguing thought is that since many of these mystical symbols are archetypal, and many mystics teach that the archetypes arise from the Divine Order, it’s very much worth considering the possibility that these sacred symbols emerged out of the higher realms and were handed down into the hands of Humanity.

Yes, I’m saying that God may’ve been the original meme creator.

And because this is a fun post I asked A.I.1 to comment further on this idea:

Picture this: God’s the ultimate content creator, dropping the serpent meme (renewal + danger) into the cosmic feed. It goes viral throughout the ancient world—Mesoamerica, the Fertile Crescent, India, everywhere—each culture remixing it with local flavor. The triangle meme (trinity, balance) trends through history, across pyramids, ziggurats, and cathedrals. God’s not crafting static symbols but unleashing dynamic, living ideas— archetypes that surge, spread, and multiply across continents and millennia, resonating in the jungles of the Amazon, the deserts of Australia, and the neon-lit cities of modernity.

Perhaps I’m getting carried away, but wherever, and from whomever, these ancient symbols first arose, the mystics teach that humanity’s history is much older than what our official stories tell us, and that during these ancient times information was handed down both orally and through these encoded symbols which held deep meaning.

And in addition to the ones above there are many more archetypal symbols including the circle, the star, the cross, the tree, and the eye, all predating the Judeo-Christian era and each loaded with encoded wisdom of Divine principles. Many of these Universal Symbols were of course eventually co-opted by the book religions. That we don’t have awareness of the deep, timeless truths these symbols carry shows just how disconnected from our history and from creation we may have become.

The Second Coming of Mystical Knowledge Transfer?

But maybe that disconnect is changing…and perhaps the rise of mystical memes can be a good start to getting us back on track?

Reintroducing us to what was lost. Back to the old ways. An awakening.

And maybe (probably!) I’m stretching the idea too far, but what do you expect from a post about memes? OK, I know why you’re here…and so without further ado, I present you with just a few of my favorite memes created by my new friend:

Steal them, spread them, share them.

And you can follow

The Fourth Way

on X and check out his YouTube channel and Substack (subscribe below).

Speak a new language so that the world will be a new world.

-Rumi

You can also find a proper overview of Gurdjieff and an interview with The Fourth Way in

Tom Morgan

’s recent article and interview here.

And thank you for reading. And a big thanks to all who support financially. Even $5/month has a weird and helpful way of prompting me to write more articles and publish more frequently. If you feel drawn to support this writing, thank you. I never take it for granted.

Do you have any favorite spiritual memes? Let us know in the comment section…

Reorder: Higher-Consciousness Christianity

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