Gnosticism was a religious movement which flourished
alongside and, to some extent, within Christianity and
Judaism during the first three centuries of the Christian
era. In it, great emphasis was laid on knowledge
(gnōsis) derived from secret revelations and capable
of bestowing salvation on the knower. The term should
be differentiated from “Gnosis,” which refers to any
kind of knowledge of divine mysteries reserved for an
elite. In Gnosticism there is a particular kind of Gnosis,
usually involving the notion of a divine spark in man
which needs to be awakened and reintegrated with its
divine source. The awakening and the movement to-
ward reintegration are provided by a revealer-
redeemer who brings knowledge of the way to return
to the divine source, usually through the heavenly
spheres above.
The modern usage of these terms does not precisely
coincide with that found in ancient sources, where only
a few sects are specifically called “Gnostic” and the
term “Gnosticism” does not appear. The various groups
actually derived their names from their founders or
from localities, activities, doctrines, or objects of wor-
ship. The modern usage is intended to point toward
the basic similarities among the groups, for in general
all agreed in rejecting the world of material phenom-
ena as created by an evil demiurge, inferior and hostile
to the supreme deity known only to the Gnostic. The
Gnostic, like the Platonist, regarded his body as a tomb
and longed to escape from the body and the world,
returning to the “unknown god” (i.e., unknown to
others) who dwells beyond the regions ruled by the
hostile planetary deities and (or including) the
demiurge.
During the late third century and afterwards, Gnos-
ticism was in decline. Its adherents, driven out of the
Christian church and soon proscribed by the state, may
have turned to Manichaeism, similar to Gnosticism but
more vigorous and better organized. Still later, there
were definite Gnostic tendencies among such groups
as the Bogomils and the Cathari, some of whom made
use of old Gnostic books. In modern times Gnosis, if
not ideas derived from Gnosticism as such, is sometimes
encountered in theosophical teaching.
