Gnosticism in modern times
Gnosticism in modern times, commonly known as neo-Gnosticism, includes a variety of contemporary religious movements, stemming from Gnostic ideas and systems from ancient Roman society. Gnosticism is an ancient name for a variety of religious ideas and systems, originating in Jewish and Christian social environments in the first and second century A.D.
The Mandaeans are an ancient Gnostic ethnoreligious group that have survived and are found today in Iran, Iraq and diaspora communities in North America, Western Europe and Australia.
The late 19th century saw the publication of popular sympathetic studies making use of recently rediscovered source materials. In this period there was also the revival of a Gnostic religious movement in France. The emergence of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945 greatly increased the amount of source material available. Its translation from Coptic into English and other modern languages in 1977 resulted in a wide dissemination, which had observable influence on several modern figures and upon modern Western culture in general. This article attempts to summarize those modern figures and movements that have been influenced by Gnosticism, both prior and subsequent to the Nag Hammadi discovery.
A number of ecclesiastical bodies that identify as Gnostic have set up or re-founded since World War II as well, including the Ecclesia Gnostica, Johannite Church, Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, the Ecclesia Gnostica Mysterioum, the Thomasine Church, the Alexandrian Gnostic Church, the Ecclesia Gnostica Apostolica Catholica, the Gnostic Catholic Union, Ecclesia Valentinaris Antiqua, the Cathari Church of Wales, and the North American College of Gnostic Bishops.
Late 19th century
Source materials were discovered in the 18th century. In 1769, the Bruce Codex was brought to England from Upper Egypt by the Scottish traveller James Bruce, and subsequently bequeathed to the care of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Sometime prior to 1785, the Askew Codex was bought by the British Museum from the heirs of Dr. Anthony Askew. The Pistis Sophia text and a Latin translation of the Askew Codex by Moritz G. Schwartze were published in 1851. Although discovered in 1896, the Coptic Berlin Codex was not 'rediscovered' until the 20th century.Charles William King
was a British writer and collector of ancient gemstones with magical inscriptions. His collection was sold because of his failing eyesight, and was presented in 1881 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. King was recognized as one of the greatest authorities on gems at the time.In The Gnostics and their Remains King sets out to show that rather than being a Western heresy, the origins of Gnosticism are to be found in the East, specifically in Buddhism. This theory was embraced by Helena Blavatsky, who argued that it was plausible, but rejected by G. R. S. Mead. According to Mead, King's work "lacks the thoroughness of the specialist."
Madame Blavatsky
, co-founder of the Theosophical Society, wrote extensively on Gnostic ideas. A compilation of her writings on Gnosticism is over 270 pages long. The first edition of King's The Gnostics and Their Remains was repeatedly cited as a source and quoted in Isis Unveiled.G. R. S. Mead
became a member of Blavatsky's Theosophical Society in 1884. He left the teaching profession in 1889 to become Blavatsky's private secretary, which he was until her death in 1891. Mead's interest in Gnosticism was likely awakened by Blavatsky, who discussed it at length in Isis Unveiled.In 1890–1891 Mead published a serial article on Pistis Sophia in Lucifer magazine, the first English translation of that work. In an article in 1891, Mead argues for the recovery of the literature and thought of the West at a time when Theosophy was largely directed to the East, saying that this recovery of Western antique traditions is a work of interpretation and "the rendering of tardy justice to pagans and heretics, the reviled and rejected pioneers of progress..." This was the direction his own work was to take.
The first edition of his translation of Pistis Sophia appeared in 1896. From 1896 to 1898 Mead published another serial article in the same periodical, "Among the Gnostics of the First Two Centuries", that laid the foundation for his compendium Fragments of a Faith Forgotten in 1900. Mead serially published translations from the Corpus Hermeticum from 1900 to 1905. The next year he published Thrice-Greatest Hermes, a comprehensive three-volume treatise. His series Echoes of the Gnosis was published in 12 booklets in 1908. By the time he left the Theosophical Society in 1909, he had published many influential translations, commentaries, and studies of ancient Gnostic texts. "Mead made Gnosticism accessible to the intelligent public outside of academia." Mead's work has had and continues to have widespread influence.
Gnostic Church revival in France
After a series of visions and archival finds of Cathar-related documents, a librarian named Jules-Benoît Stanislas Doinel du Val-Michel established the Église Gnostique. Founded on extant Cathar documents with the Gospel of John and strong influence of Simonian and Valentinian cosmology, the church was officially established in the autumn of 1890 in Paris. Doinel declared it "the era of Gnosis restored." Liturgical services were based on Cathar rituals. Clergy was both male and female, having male bishops and female "sophias."Doinel resigned and converted to Roman Catholicism in 1895, one of many duped by Léo Taxil's anti-masonic hoax. Taxil unveiled the hoax in 1897. Doinel was readmitted to the Gnostic church as a bishop in 1900.
Early to mid-20th century
Carl Jung
evinced a special interest in Gnosticism from at latest 1912, when he wrote enthusiastically about the topic in a letter to his mentor Sigmund Freud. After what he called his own 'encounter with the unconscious,' Jung sought for external evidence of this kind of experience. He found such evidence in Gnosticism and also in alchemy, which he saw as a continuation of Gnostic thought, and of which more source material was available. In his study of the Gnostics, Jung made extensive use of the work of G. R. S. Mead. Jung visited Mead in London to thank him for the Pistis Sophia, the two corresponded, and Mead visited Jung in Zürich.Jung saw the Gnostics not as syncretic schools of mixed theological doctrines, but as genuine visionaries, and saw their imagery not as myths but as records of inner experience. He wrote that "The explanation of Gnostic ideas 'in terms of themselves,' i.e., in terms of their historical foundations, is futile, for in that way they are reduced only to their less developed forestages but not understood in their actual significance." Instead, he worked to understand and explain Gnosticism from a psychological standpoint. While providing something of an ancient mirror of his work, Jung saw "his psychology not as a contemporary version of Gnosticism, but as a contemporary counterpart to it."
Jung reported a series of experiences in the winter of 1916-17 that inspired him to write Septem Sermones ad Mortuos.
The Jung Codex
Through the efforts of Gilles Quispel, the Jung Codex was the first codex brought to light from the Nag Hammadi Library. It was purchased by the Jung Institute and ceremonially presented to Jung in 1953 because of his great interest in the ancient Gnostics. The first publication of translations of Nag Hammadi texts occurred in 1955 with The Jung Codex by Henri-Charles Puech, Gilles Quispel, and Willem Cornelis Van Unnik.Gnostic Church of France split, reintegration, and continuation
had been involved with the Eliate Church of Carmel of Eugène Vintras, the remnants of Fabré-Palaprat's Église Johannite des Chrétiens Primitifs, and the Martinist Order before being consecrated a bishop of the Église Gnostique in 1901. In 1907 Bricaud established a church body that combined all of these, becoming patriarch under the name Tau Jean II. The impetus for this was to use the Western Rite. Briefly called the Église Catholique Gnostique, it was renamed the Église Gnostique Universelle in 1908. The close ties between the church and Martinism were formalized in 1911. Bricaud received consecration in the Villate line of apostolic succession in 1919.The original church body founded by Doinel continued under the name Église Gnostique de France until it was disbanded in favor of the EGU in 1926. The EGU continued until 1960 when it was disbanded by Robert Amberlain in favor of the Église Gnostique Apostolique that he had founded in 1958. It is active in France, Ivory Coast, and the Midwestern United States.
Modern sex magic associated with Gnosticism
The association of the term gnostic with sexual magic is a modern phenomenon, emerging primarily in the context of 19th- and 20th-century esoteric revival movements. As religious studies scholar Hugh Urban observes, "despite the very common use of sexual symbolism throughout Gnostic texts, there is little evidence that the Gnostics engaged in any actual performance of sexual rituals, and certainly not anything resembling modern sexual magic."Modern sexual magic as a practice is largely traced to Paschal Beverly Randolph, an American occultist who synthesized Spiritualism, mesmerism, and erotic mysticism into a system of ritual sex magic that emphasized love, will, and transcendence. The connection to Gnosticism came later, primarily through the Gnostic Church of France, which was deeply embedded in the esoteric networks of late 19th-century France. These networks also produced or influenced other occult organizations, including Ordo Templi Orientis, the most prominent sexual magic order of the 20th century.
Theodor Reuss, the founder of O.T.O., envisioned it as an umbrella organization for esoteric and initiatory societies, with sexual magic at its core. After encountering leaders of the Gnostic Church of France at a Masonic and Spiritualist conference in 1908, Reuss founded Die Gnostische Katholische Kirche as an ecclesiastical body under the auspices of O.T.O. Reuss would later dedicate O.T.O. to the dissemination of Aleister Crowley's philosophy of Thelema, making Crowley its most prominent figurehead.
For this purpose, Crowley composed the Ecclesiæ Gnosticæ Catholicæ Canon Missæ—commonly known as the Gnostic Mass—which became the central public ritual of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, the liturgical wing of O.T.O. Although Crowley borrowed terminology and symbolic structure from Gnostic and Christian liturgy, the ritual is fundamentally Thelemic in theology and intent, emphasizing the union of opposites, the sanctity of the body, and the realization of the divine self.