What Could Exist Outside the Walls

When I began shaping the deeper spiritual undercurrent of The Harbinger, I wasn’t trying to write about religion.

I was trying to solve a story problem.

The world of the book in the past called for a community that lived just beyond the walls of London, close enough to feel the pressure of the dominant religion of the time, yet far enough removed to carry something quieter, older, and more internal. They couldn’t be overtly pagan, that wouldn’t have been plausible. But they also couldn’t be fully aligned with the rigid structures of institutional Christianity as it was enforced.

I needed a worldview that could survive in the margins.

Something inward rather than performative. Experiential rather than dogmatic. Hidden in plain sight.

It was while watching Ancient Civilizations on Gaia that Gnosticism surfaced; not as a belief system to adopt, but as a way of understanding that finally made sense.

What struck me wasn’t theology. It was relief.

Gnosticism articulated something I had felt for a long time but never had language for; a spirituality rooted in direct knowing rather than inherited belief, inner recognition rather than external authority. It offered a way of understanding the sacred that didn’t require rejecting religion outright, but also didn’t demand unquestioned allegiance to it.

That mattered to me personally.

Like many people, I was raised within a framework that taught belief before understanding, obedience before inquiry. Gnosticism inverted that order. It suggested that wisdom is encountered, not assigned; that truth emerges through experience, discernment, and attention rather than instruction.

That realization marked a turning point in my own inner landscape.

Not because it gave me answers, but because it allowed questions to exist without anxiety. It offered a spirituality spacious enough to hold doubt, intuition, and curiosity at the same time. And it did so without insisting on dogma, hierarchy, or conversion.

When I returned to The Harbinger, I realized this way of understanding wasn’t just resonant, it was necessary.

A community like the one in the book could plausibly exist under the shadow of religious power without openly defying it. They could speak the language of the time, attend the required rituals, and still hold a quieter wisdom beneath the surface; one rooted in memory, discernment, and lived experience rather than rigid creed.

Gnosticism offered that middle ground.

Not pagan. Not orthodox. Not loud. But deeply interior.

It also mirrors how wisdom moves through the novel itself. Meaning isn’t taught. It’s encountered. Memory doesn’t arrive as doctrine. It surfaces through story, symbol, and recognition. The spiritual undercurrent isn’t something the characters declare; it’s something they live.

For readers unfamiliar with Gnosticism, this presence may feel unnamed, sensed rather than explained - that’s intentional. The story isn’t asking anyone to adopt a worldview. It’s simply making room for a way of understanding that exists beyond what many of us were raised to think spirituality had to be.

In that sense, Gnosticism wasn’t something I set out to write about. It was something the story, and my own journey, made space for.

A way for wisdom to survive outside the walls.