Gnosticism in modern times

Gnosticism includes a variety of ancient religions prevalent in the Mediterranean in the third century CE. Prior to the 20th century, little was known about the various Gnostic movements, due to paucity of original material available to scholars and the public. Since the emergence of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945, and its translation into English and other modern languages in 1977, Gnosticism has undergone something of a rapid dissemination, and has as a result had observable influence on several modern figures, and upon modern Western culture in general. This article attempts to summarise those modern figures and movements that have been influenced by Gnosticism, both prior and subsequent to the Nag Hammadi discovery.

Scholars of Gnosticism and those influenced by it

There follows a list of those figures who are known to have undertaken a study of Gnosticism, and who have occasionally incorporated elements of Gnostic systems into their own work, or whose own work subsequently contains recognizably Gnostic traits. All figures and movements, as throughout the article, are organised alphabetically: individuals are organised by surname, while groups are organised by title. Thus, both "Jules Doinel" and "Ecclesia Gnostica" precede "René Guénon" in the listing. Where two or more figures are discussed (for example, in the case of co-authorship of a text), listing is based on the first surname alphabetically.

• Between 1950 and 1977, Samael Aun Weor wrote some seventy books about Gnosis and Gnosticism, explaining the universal basis of all religions in Kabbalistic and Alchemical terms. Perhaps the most dramatic is The Pistis Sophia Unveiled, a 650-page revelation of the long-debated Gnostic scripture. His works are only recently becoming available in English, although his schools count their students in the millions.
• Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, founder of Theosophy, wrote extensively on Gnostic ideas.
• Aleister Crowley's Thelema system is influenced by and thus bears major features in common with Gnosticism, especially in the requirement that adherants work to arrive at their own direct knowledge (or 'gnosis') of the divine (this is referred to in the Thelemic system as the 'Great Work'). There are several Thelemic Gnostic organizations, including Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica as an ecclesiastical body and Ordo Templi Orientis as an initiatory body.
• The philosopher Hans Jonas wrote extensively on Gnosticism, interpreting it from an existentialist viewpoint. For some time, his study The Gnostic Religion was widely held to be a pivotal work, and it is as a result of his efforts that the Syrian-Egyptian/Persian division of Gnosticism came to be widely used within the field.
• Carl Jung and his associate G.R.S. Mead worked on trying to understand and explain the Gnostic faith from a psychological standpoint. Jung's "analytical psychology" in many ways schematically mirrors ancient Gnostic mythology, particularly those of Valentinus and the 'classic' Gnostic doctrine described in most detail in the Apocryphon of John (see gnostic schools). Jung understands the emergence of the demiurge out of the original, unified monadic source of the spiritual universe by gradual stages to be analogous to (and a symbolic depiction of) the emergence of the ego from the unconscious.
  However, it is uncertain as to whether the similarities between Jung's psychological teachings and those of the gnostics are due to their sharing a "perennial philosophy", or whether Jung was unwittingly influenced by the Gnostics in the formation of his theories; although Jung's own 'gnostic hymn', the Septem Sermones ad Mortuos ('The Seven Sermons to the Dead'), would tend to imply the latter, the issue remains unresolved.
  Uncertain too are Jung's claims that the gnostics were aware of and intended psychological meaning or significance within their myths. On the other hand, what is known is that Jung and his ancient forebears disagreed on the ultimate goal of the individual: whereas the gnostics clearly sought a return to a supreme, other-worldly Godhead, Robert Segal, in a study of Jung, claimed that the eminent psychologist would have found the psychological goal of Gnosticism (that is, re-unification with the Pleroma, or the unknown God) to be psychically 'dangerous', as being a total identification with the unconscious. While Jungian individuation involves the addition of unconscious psychic tropes to consciousness in order to achieve a trans-conscious centre to the personality, this addition is not intended to take the form of a complete unconscious-identification. Thus, to contend that there is at least some disagreement between Jung and Gnosticism is at least supportable.
• Eric Voegelin identified a number of similarities between the characteristics of ancient Gnosticism and those of a number of modern political theories, particularly Communism and Nazism. He identifies the root of the Gnostic impulse as alienation, that is, a sense of disconnectedness with society and a belief that this lack of concord between the individual and the wider community is the result of the inherent disorderliness or even the evil of the world.
  This alienation has two effects. The first is the belief that the disorder of the world can be transcended by extraordinary insight, learning, or knowledge, called a 'Gnostic speculation' by Voegelin. The second is the desire to implement a policy to actualise the speculation, or, as Voegelin describes it, to "Immanentize the Eschaton": to create an, as it were, heaven on earth within history.
  The totalitarian impulse is derived from the alienation of the proponents of the policy from the rest of society. This leads to a desire to dominate (libido dominandi) which has its roots not just in the conviction of the imperative of the Gnostic's vision but also in his or her lack of concord with a large body of society. As a result, there is very little regard for the welfare of those in society who are impacted by the resulting politics, which may range from coercive to calamitous in nature(cf. Stalin's nostrum: "You have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet").
  This totalitarian impulse in modernism has been noted by Catholic writers, particularly in Henri de Lubac's work "The Drama of Atheist Humanism", which explores the connection between the totalitarian impulses of political Communism, Fascism and Positivism with their philosophical progenitors Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, Comte and Nietzsche. Indeed, Voegelin acknowledges his debt to this book in creating his seminal essay "Science, Politics, and Gnosticism".
  Evidence exists that later Voegelin came to regret the emphasis laid upon Gnosticism in his work, at the expense of not acknowledging other potentially negative influences on Western cultural and political development.
  Voegelin's identification of Gnosticism as being best defined as opposition to the world (what he called "the gnostic attitude") has been criticised, as it led to a tendency for him to find Gnosticism in almost anything. Thus, Voegelin saw Gnosticism as the preeminent western philosophy since the middle ages, and the greatest threat to decency on earth. In fact, it would seem that in seeing the negative influence of Gnosticism in everything, and by so urgently suggesting a return to fundamentals, Voegelin too was guilty of the "gnostic attitude," and was indeed trying to "immanentize the eschaton" himself.

There follows a list of those whose influence by Gnosticism is contested, or is otherwise as yet unproven conclusively either way; also those whose work bears a structural or thematic resemblance to Gnosticism.

• William Blake, the nineteenth century Romantic poet and artist, was according to Gilchrist, his biographer, well-versed in the doctrines of the Gnostics, and his own personal mythology contains many points of cohesion with several Gnostic mythemes (for example, the Blakean figure of Urizen bears many resemblances to the Gnostic Demiurge). However, efforts to dub Blake a "Gnostic" have been complicated by the complex nature and colossal extent of Blake's own mythology, and the variety of myths and themes that are referred to as "Gnostic"; thus, the exact relationship between Blake and the Gnostics remains a point of scholarly contention, though a comparison of the two often reveals intriguing points of correspondence.
• The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche appears to echo Gnostic ideas in his concept of the "eternal return", in which a demon condemns human subjects to live out their lives in endless repeating cycles; this appears to bear resemblance to the Gnostic Archons, which rule the world and impede the spirit's progression beyond it.

Modern gnostic 'revivals'

• In the United States there are several Gnostic churches with diverse lineages, one of which is the Ecclesia Gnostica, based primarily in Los Angeles, which is affiliated with the Gnostic Society, an organization dedicated to the study of Gnosticism. The current leader of both organizations is Stephan A. Hoeller who has also written extensively on Gnosticism and the occult. Parishes of the Ecclesia Gnostica and educational organizations affiliated with the Gnostic Society are active in Portland, Oregon, Seattle, West Virginia, Sedona, Arizona, Salt Lake City, Utah, and Oslo, Norway.
• Samael Aun Weor founded many Gnostic institutions in Latin America, and formed a partnership with Swami Sivananda of the Divine Life Society in India. Among the students of these groups were many noted celebrities (such as Cantinflas) and political leaders of Latin America. Subsequent to his death, his schools and organizations separated and spread to every continent in the world. As an example, although there are hundreds of Gnostic schools teaching in the United States, only a small handful teach in English.
• Mar Didymos I of the Thomasine Church has reinterpreted Gnosticism and the thomasine gospels from an Illuminist viewpoint. The method employed by clergy and initiates of the Thomasine Church involves the use of the scientific method and of critical thinking rather than dogmatism. Mar Didymos stresses the use of scientific theory or the use of a synthesis of well developed and verified hypotheses derived from empirical observation and deductive/indicative reasoning about factual data and tested through experimentation and peer review. The Thomasine Church describes this as antithetical in principle and method as compared to all of the existing modern Gnostic churches.
• After a series of visions and archival finds of Cathar-related documents, Jules Doinel "re-established" the Gnostic Church in the modern era. Founded on extant Cathar documents with a heavy influence of Valentinian cosmology, the church, officially established in the autumn of 1890 in Paris, France, consisted of modified Cathar rituals as sacraments, a clergy that was both male and female, and a close relationship with several esoteric initiatory orders (see Gnostique.net for more information). The church eventually split into two opposing groups that were later reconciled under the leadership of Joanny Bricaud. Another splinter church with more occult leanings was established by Robert Ambelain around 1957, from which several other schisms have produced a multitude of distantly-related marginal groups, orientated towards the occult.
• The "traditionalist" René Guénon founded in 1909 the Gnostic review La Gnose. He believed in and throughout his works exposed the idea that modern thought, by its preference to the quantity more than to the quality, is the root of all evil aspects of modernity. The whole scientific enterprise would just be the beheaded relic of a lost Sacred Science. Modern technology and its realizations, worshipped by his contemporaries, would have been just a latter epiphany of the Kali Yuga (alias Dark Age), in a Cyclical Conception of Time.
• Mar Iohannes of the Apostolic Johannite Church is president of the North American College of Gnostic Bishops, a group dedicated to working together to promote Gnostic growth, while avoiding the production of dogma. The Apostolic Johannite Church is a bridge-building organisation with traditionally-styled rites, understood via a Gnostic interpretation.

Gnosticism in popular culture

Main article: Gnosticism in popular culture

Gnosticism has seen something of a resurgence in popular culture in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This may be related, certainly, to the sudden availability of Gnostic texts to the reading public, following the emergence of the Nag Hammadi library.

Modern gnostic mysticism

Gnostic believers today retain much of the gnostic mysticism of early Christian centuries, in particular that

• human minds (equated with souls) are independent of the realm of matter, and are emanations of the One, the non-physical Spirit;
• the physical world is an illusion created in the Demiurge's manifestation, and it is ruled by Archons, or demons, which prevent the spiritual progress of the mind in every possible way and maintain its entrapment in matter. Aeons, or angels, help human minds to fight the demons in many situations.

Other developments (Gnostic infomysticism) might be said to include relation of Gnostic mysticism to information theory and Digital Philosophy, such as in writings about TechGnosticism (Erik Davis), Infomysticism (Steve Mizrach, [1]), and possibly Rupert Sheldrake's holarchy of morphic fields.

External links

All external links are given in alphabetical order by page title or, where available, by author. If you wish to add to the lists, please maintain this layout.

• Apostolic Gnostic Church in America
• Apostolic Johannite Church
• Church of Gnostic Luminism
• Codex Gnosticus Gnostic Wiki (at the Palm Tree Garden)
• Ecclesia Gnostica
• Ecclesia Gnostica Aeterna
• Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica Hermetica
• Ecclesia Gnostica Mysteriorum
• Eglise du Plérôme - Cathar/Valentinian
• French Gnostic Tradition (i.e. Doinel, et al.)
• Gnostics & The Social Revolution
• Gnostic Friends Network
• Gnostic Teachings
• Gnostic Radio
• Gnosticweb
• Lectorium Rosicrucianum
• The North American College of Gnostic Bishops
• The Palm Tree Garden
• Sophia Fellowship
• Thomasine Church
• Universal Gnostic Church