INTRODUCTION
1. David Van Biema, “The Lost Gospels,” Time, Dec. 22, 2003, 61.
2. Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Karen E. Fields (New York: Free Press, 1995), 208, 211.
3. David Hawkins, Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior (Sedona, Ariz.: Veritas, 1995), 272. I explore the controversies at the Council of Nicaea in chapter 2.
4. Biblical quotations are taken from the Authorized King James Version.
5. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Vintage, 1989 [1979]), 150.
CHAPTER 1. WHO WERE THE GNOSTICS?
1. See The Nag Hammadi Library in English, ed. James M. Robinson (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977), 117–31. There are other works attributed to Thomas, but for the sake of simplicity, when I speak of Thomas, I will be referring to this Gospel.
2. For one example of this argument, see Philip Jenkins, Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 70.
3. The Protevangelion of James. See New Testament Apocrypha, ed. Wilhelm Schneemelcher, trans. R. McLachlan Wilson (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991), 1:285–99.
4. Gospel of Thomas, saying 14, in The Nag Hammadi Library in English, 119. Hereafter references to the Gospel of Thomas will be to this edition and will use its verse enumeration.
5. Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (New York: Harper & Bros., n.d.), chapter 1, 1:214.
6. Plato, Republic 476c–d.
7. Plato, Timaeus 29e–30a; my translation.
8. Plato, Timaeus 41c; my translation.
9. See Plotinus, Enneads 2.9.
10. On Simon and his teaching, see Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 2d ed. (Boston: Beacon, 1963), 103–11.
11. This is taken from the Recognitions (2.37.6), a work attributed, probably falsely, to Clement of Rome. Quoted in Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism, trans. R. McLachlan Wilson (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1987), 297.
12. See Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 130–46; Rudolph, Gnosis, 313–16.
13. On this issue, see The Anchor Bible: Galatians, ed. and trans. J. Louis Martin (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 365.
14. See Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 174–205; Rudolph, Gnosis, 317–23.
15. Bentley Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures (New York: Doubleday, 1987), 248.
16. The Nag Hammadi Library in English; Rudolph, Gnosis, 91–92.
17. This is mentioned in Marcellus of Ancryra, On the Holy Church, 9; in Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures, 232–33.
18. See The Nag Hammadi Library in English, 309–13.
19. Irenaeus, Against the Heresies, 1.24.5, quoted in Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures, 424.
20. The Dialogue of the Savior III, 138, in The Nag Hammadi Library, 235.
21. Pistis Sophia 1.17, in Violet MacDermot, The Fall of Sophia: A Gnostic Text on the Redemption of Universal Consciousness (Great Barrington, Mass.: Lindisfarne, 2001), 114.
22. Gospel of Philip 59, 64, in The Nag Hammadi Library in English, 136, 138. Bracketed words have been added by the translator.
23. Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, 76–82.
CHAPTER 2. THE HEIRS OF EGYPT
1. Wayne R. Shumaker, The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance; A Study in Intellectual Patterns (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 201.
2. Shumaker, The Occult Sciences, 207.
3. Brian P. Copenhaver, ed. and trans., Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation with Notes and an Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 95.
4. Asclepius 24, in Copenhaver, Hermetica, 81.
5. Poimandres 12, in Copenhaver, Hermetica, 3.
6. Poimandres 15, in Copenhaver, Hermetica, 3.
7. Poimandres 9–15, in Copenhaver, Hermetica, 2–3.
8. Poimandres 15, in Copenhaver, Hermetica, 3.
9. Poimandres 25–26, in Copenhaver, Hermetica, 25–26.
10. Asclepius 12, in Copenhaver, Hermetica, 74; Corpus Hermeticum II, 17, in Copenhaver, Hermetica, 12.
11. Herodotus II.123, in Herodotus, trans. A. D. Godley (London: Heinemann [Loeb Classical Library], 1931), 1:425.
12. Herodotus II.37, in Herodotus, 1:321.
13. Origen, On First Principles, trans. G.W. Butterworth, reprint (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 1.8.3, p. 73.
14. See Wouter J. Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 321–22.
15. [Valentin Tomberg], Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism, trans. Robert A. Powell (Warwick, N.Y.: Amity House, 1985), 361.
16. For biographical details, see Clement of Alexandria, G. W. Butterworth, ed. and trans. (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press [Loeb Classical Library], 1919), xi–xii.
17. Quoted in Morton Smith, The Secret Gospel (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 15, 17.
18. Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 2.4, 2.11, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (reprint, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994), 2:354, 358–59.
19. For Clement’s views on the Gnostic teachings on sexuality, see Stromateis, book 3; on their repudiation of Timothy, see Stromateis 2.11.
20. On the watering-down of Origen’s texts by his Latin translator, Rufinus, see Butterworth’s introduction to Origen, On First Principles, xxxv–xxxvi.
21. For my biographical account, I am indebted to Joseph W. Trigg, Origen (London: Routledge, 1998), chapters 1–4.
22. This discussion appears in Origen, Contra Celsum 5.28–31. The version I am using appears on www.newadvent.org/fathers/04165.htm.
23. Ibid., 5.28.
24. Ibid., 5.30.
25. Joseph Gikatilla, Gates of Light: Sha’arei Orah, trans. Avi Weinstein (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), 174–75.
26. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, 900 conclusions philosophiques, cabalistiques, théologiques, ed. Bertrand Schefer. (Paris: Éditions Allia, 1999), 104 (conclusion 402). This edition reproduces Pico’s original Latin along with a French translation. My quotations from this work are my own translations from the Latin.
27. Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “Origen and Origenism,” www.newadvent.org.
28. Origen, On First Principles, 4.4.1, quoted in Trigg, Origen, 24.
29. Origen, On First Principles, 3.5.7, Butterworth edition, 243.
30. Origen, On First Principles, 1.6.3, Butterworth edition, 57.
31. Origen, On First Principles, 3.1.1, Butterworth edition, 288.
32. Gibbon, chapter 21, 2:553. Ibid., chapter 20, 2:457.
33. René Guénon, “Christianisme et initiation,” in Aperçus sur l’ésotérisme chrétien (Paris: Éditions Traditionelles, n.d.), 27; my translation.
34. Richard Smoley, “Heroic Virtue: The Gnosis Interview with Brother David Steindl-Rast,” Gnosis 24 (Summer 1992), 38.
CHAPTER 3. THE LOST RELIGION OF LIGHT
1. Rudolph, The Nag Hammadi Library in English, 326–27.
2. For the following account of his life, I am indebted to Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silk Road: Gnostic Parables, Hymns, and Prayers from Central Asia (San Francisco: HarperSanFranciso, 1993), 1–4; and Yuri Stoyanov, The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000), 102–6.
3. Kephalaia 14.29ff, in Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silk Road, 2–3. Bracketed insertions are Klimkeit’s.
4. The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, trans. Swami Nikhilananda (New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1942), 170.
5. Plato, Cratylus 400c; cf. Gorgias 493a.
6. Plato, Phaedo 118a.
7. Mani, as quoted by the Fihrist of An-Nadim; in Jason David BeDuhn, The Manichaean Body in Discipline and Ritual (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 76.
8. Quoted in BeDuhn, The Manichaean Body, 131.
9. BeDuhn, The Manichaean Body, 147; cf. Augustine, Contra Fortunatum, 3.
10. Augustine, Contra Faustum 5.10; in BeDuhn, The Manichaean Body, 103.
11. Swami Vivekananda, Jnana Yoga (New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1955), 15, 86.
12. Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silk Road, 6.
13. See Stoyanov, The Other God, 2.
14. Gerald J. Larson, Classical Samkhya: An Interpretation of Its History and Meaning, 2d ed. (Delhi: Motilal Barnarsidass, 1979), 75, 96.
15. Samkhkyarakarika 56, in Larson, Classical Samkhya, 175.
16. See Stoyanov, The Other God, 117–19.
17. Frederic Spiegelberg, Living Religions of the World (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1956), 466–67.
18. See Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 3d ed. (New York: Schocken, 1961), 260.
CHAPTER 4. THE WAR AGAINST THE CATHARS
1. For the following account, I am chiefly indebted to Stoyanov, The Other God, chapter 3; see also Paul Tice, “Bogomils: Gnostics of Old Bulgaria,” Gnosis 31 (Spring 1994), 54–60.
2. See David Lorimer, Prophet for Our Times: The Life and Teachings of Peter Deunov (Rockport, Mass.: Element Books, 1996); and Georg Feuerstein, The Mystery of Light: The Life and Teaching of Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov (Sandy, Utah: Passage Press, 1994).
3. Nita de Pierrefeu, “Montségur et le symbole du Graal,” Cahiers d’études Cathares, series 2, no. 92 (Winter 1981), 60.
4. Stoyanov, The Other God, 184–85.
5. Ibid., 189.
6. Ibid., 201.
7. Euthymius of Peribleptos, quoted in ibid., 170.
8. For the following account, I am relying upon Déodat Roché, Études manichéennes et cathares (Arques, France: Éditions des Cahiers d’Étude Cathares, 1952), 15–18. Although the consolamentum was given to both men and women, for brevity’s sake I am characterizing the candidate using the masculine gender.
9. Ibid., 19; English translations of this and other passages from Roché are my own.
10. Quoted in ibid., 19.
11. Ibid., 17.
12. J. Guiraud, quoted in ibid., 19.
13. For further discussion of this topic, see my Inner Christianity: A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition (Boston: Shambhala, 2002), chapter 4.
14. Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World, trans. Montgomery Belgion, rev. ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983), 83.
15. Quoted in ibid., 34.
16. Quoted in Jean Markale, Courtly Love: The Path of Sexual Initiation, trans. Jon Graham (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2000), 86. The bracketed addition is Markale’s.
17. Ibid., 209.
18. In ibid., 38.
19. Spiegelberg, Living Religions of the World, 466.
20. In de Rougemont, Love in the Western World, 88.
21. Dante, La Vita Nuova, trans. Barbara Reynolds (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), II: 29–30.
22. Dante, La Vita Nuova, XI: 41.
23. De Rougemont, Love in the Western World, 243.
24. Lynda Harris, The Secret Heresy of Hieronymus Bosch (Edinburgh: Floris, 1995).
25. Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity (New York: Atheneum, 1987), 191–92.
CHAPTER 5. GNOSIS IN THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH
1. See Enoch 6–8; in R.H. Charles, The Apocrpha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1913), 191–92. According to Charles, different parts of the text of Enoch date to different eras. This section is no later than the early second century B.C.
2. Dionysius the Areopagite, The Celestial Hierarchy, chs. 8, 9; on www.esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeII/CelestialHierarchy.html.
3. Dante, Paradiso, XXVIII: 127–29. My translation.
4. John Carey, “Looking for Celtic Christianity,” Gnosis 45 (Fall 1997), 44.
5. John Carey, “The Sun’s Night Journey: A Pharaonic Image in Medieval Ireland,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 57 (1994), 14–34; and personal correspondence.
6. Ian Bradley, Celtic Christianity: Making Myths and Chasing Dreams (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 25.
7. Carey, “Looking for Celtic Christianity,” 43.
8. Athanasius, Life of Antony, §5–9; in Athanasius, Select Works and Letters, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 4, series 2, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, available at www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/vita-antony.html.
9. The Philokalia: The Complete Text Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth, trans. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware (London: Faber & Faber, 1979–), 1:362.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., 1:62.
12. Ibid., 1:271.
13. Ibid., 1:75.
14. For recent views on this subject, see Thomas Lewis et al., A General Theory of Love (New York: Vintage, 2001); and Helen Fisher, Why We Love (New York: Henry Holt, 2004).
15. Philokalia, 4: 418–25.
16. For this account I am indebted to David Vermette’s introduction to Gregory Palamas, The Triads: Book One, trans. Robin Amis (South Brent, Devon, UK: Praxis, 2002), 19–23. See also Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1976), 76–77.
17. See Unseen Warfare, Being the Spiritual Combat and Path to Paradise of Lorenzo Scupoli, as Edited by Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain and Revised by Theophan the Recluse, trans. E. Kadloubovsky and G. E. H. Palmer (London: Faber & Faber, 1952), introduction, 22.
18. Palamas, The Triads, 70.
19. Ibid., 69.
20. Ibid., 71. Italics are the translator’s. This three-part characterization of the human structure can be traced back to Plato, who sets it out in the Republic.
21. For the following biographical sketch, I am relying upon the introduction to Raymond B. Blakney, Meister Eckhart (New York: Harper & Row, 1941), xvi–xxiv. Prof. John Connolly of Smith College has made a number of helpful corrections and additions.
22. Quoted in ibid., xviii.
23. Meister Eckhart, The Defense, §39, in ibid., 297.
24. Meister Eckhart, “Justice Is Even,” in ibid., 181.
CHAPTER 6. THE SAGES OF THE RENAISSANCE
1. A recent English edition is Sepher Rezial Hamelech: The Book of the Angel Rezial, ed. Steve Savedow (York Beach, Maine: Weiser, 2000).
2. See Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi, The Way of Kabbalah (London: Rider, 1976), 16–17.
3. Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 3d ed. (New York: Schocken, 1961), 35.
4. Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York: Dorset, 1987 [1974]), 45.
5. Ibid., 50.
6. This account relies upon Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989),
7. Pico della Mirandola, 900 conclusions.
8. Ibid., 195.
9. Quoted in Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism, 126.
10. Pico della Mirandola, Heptaplus, or Discourse on the Seven Days of Creation, trans. Jessie Brewer McGraw (New York: Philosophical Library, 1977), 17.
11. Ibid., 18; cf. Dionysius, Celestial Hierarchy, §2.
12. Pico della Mirandola, Heptaplus, 16.
13. For a fuller discussion of Kabbalistic doctrine, see Richard Smoley and Jay Kinney, Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions (New York: Penguin Arkana, 1999), chapter 4.
14. Pico della Mirandola, Heptaplus, 22.
15. Pico differs from most Kabbalists in seeing the fourth world not as the divine realm, but in terms of man as a microcosm; cf. Heptaplus, 25, 26.
16. Quoted in Gershom Scholem, “The Beginnings of the Christian Kabbalah,” in Joseph Dan, ed., The Christian Kabbalah: Jewish Mystical Books and Their Christian Interpreters (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard College Library, 1997), 19.
17. See Smoley and Kinney, Hidden Wisdom, 196–98.
18. Scholem, Kabbalah, 198.
19. Moshe Idel, introduction to Johann Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah (De arte cabalistica), trans. Martin and Sarah Goodman (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), xix. Both “W” and “V” are used to transliterate the Hebrew letter waw, or vav.
20. Ira Robinson, Moses Cordovero’s Introduction to Kabbalah: An Annotated Translation of His Or Ne’erav (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1994), 113. Bracketed words are Robinson’s.
21. Aryeh Kaplan, Meditation and Kabbalah (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1982), 185.
22. Joseph Dan, “The Kabbalah of Johannes Reuchlin and Its Historical Significance,” in The Christian Kabbalah, 56.
23. The Key of Solomon the King (Clavicula Salomonis), ed. and trans. S. L. MacGregor Mathers (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 2000 [1888]), 71.
24. For the following account, I am chiefly indebted to Donald Tyson’s “Life of Agrippa,” in Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, trans. James Freake, ed. Donald Tyson (St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn, 1993), xv–xxxvii.
25. There is a so-called fourth book to this work, which consists of several treatises on magic written by Agrippa and others. See Stephen Skinner, ed., The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy (Boston: Weiser, 2005).
26. For my account of Dee I am relying chiefly on Frances A. Yates, The Occult Philosophy in Elizabethan England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), 79–94; and Cherry Gilchrist, “Dr. Dee and the Spirits,” Gnosis 36 (Summer 1995), 32–39.
27. Quoted in Yates, Occult Philosophy, 87.
28. For my treatment of this fascinating but ambiguous character, see my book The Essential Nostradamus (New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2006).
29. For my account of Bruno, I am chiefly relying on Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964).
CHAPTER 7. ROSICRUCIANISM AND THE GREAT LODGES
1. Fama Fraternitatis, trans. Thomas Vaughan; in Frances A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London: Ark, 1987), 240.
2. Fama Fraternitatis, quoted in Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 243. For further discussion of these principles, see my Inner Christianity, 233–35.
3. Confessio in Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 251–52.
4. Fama; in Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 249.
5. For the following account I am chiefly indebted to Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment, chapter 2.
6. Frederick V to the Duc de Bouillon, quoted in Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 19.
7. Confessio, in Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 257.
8. Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 103.
9. Fama, in Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 238. The original seventeenth-century English translation has “Porphyry” for “Popery,” but this is a mistake: the German original reads “the pope.”
10. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. “Bacon, Francis.”
11. Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 119. For her views, Yates cites Paolo Rossi, Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science, London, 1968.
12. René Descartes, Discourse on Method, chapter 1, in Discourses on Method and the Meditations, trans. E. F. Sutcliffe (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), 33.
13. Ibid., 33.
14. Ibid., 35.
15. Quoted in Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 116.
16. Quoted in Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 115.
17. Paul Foster Case, The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1985), 5.
18. Tobias Churton, The Golden Builders: Alchemists, Rosicrucians, and the First Freemasons (Boston: Weiser, 2005), 133.
19. For the following account, I am chiefly relying on Pierre Deghaye, “Jacob Boehme and His Followers,” in Antoine Faivre and Jacob Needleman, eds., Modern Esoteric Spirituality (New York: Crossroad, 1995); Cynthia Bourgeault, “Boehme for Beginners,” Gnosis 45 (fall 1997), 28–35; and Arthur Versluis, Wisdom’s Children: A Christian Esoteric Tradition (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999), chapter 1.
20. Jacob Boehme, The Three Principles of the Divine Essence, preface, quoted in Versluis, Wisdom’s Children, 11.
21. Ibid., 6.
22. In this sense, theosophy as a common noun differs from Theosophy as formulated by H. P. Blavatsky in the nineteenth century, which I discuss in chapter 8. To prevent confusion, in this book I capitalize references to the latter.
23. Deghaye, “Jacob Boehme and His Followers,” 212.
24. Jacob Boehme, Clavis, trans. John Sparrow (reprint, Kila, Mont.: Kessinger, n.d.), 46.
25. Deghaye, “Jacob Boehme and His Followers,” 230; Versluis, Wisdom’s Children, 220–21.
26. Churton, The Golden Builders, 122.
27. Versluis, Wisdom’s Children, 220.
28. Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Butler’s note to part 1, canto 1, 527–44.
29. Case, The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order, 152.
30. Douglas Knoop et al., eds., The Two Earliest Masonic Mss. (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1938).
31. Ibid., 162, 168–70.
32. For further discussion of the symbolism of the Master Mason ritual, see Smoley and Kinney, Hidden Wisdom, 261–62; see also my “Masonic Civilization,” Gnosis 44 (Summer 1997), 12–16, reprinted in Jay Kinney, ed., The Inner West: An Introduction to the Hidden Wisdom of the West (New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2004), 206–18.
33. In my own previous treatments, I gave this theory more credence than I probably should have. Smoley and Kinney, Hidden Wisdom, 261–62; see also my “Masonic Civilization.”
34. David Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland’s Century, 1590–1710 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 49.
35. Quoted in Stevenson, Origins of Freemasonry, 126.
36. For a detailed comparison of Freemasonry and Kabbalah, see W. Kirk MacNulty, Freemasonry: A Journey through Ritual and Symbol (London: Thames & Hudson, 1991).
37. In Stevenson, Origins of Freemasonry, 139.
38. Ibid., 163.
39. For this account, I am relying on Christopher McIntosh, “The Rosicrucian Legacy,” in Ralph White, ed., The Rosicrucian Enlightenment Revisited (Hudson, N.Y.: Lindisfarne, 1999).
40. For this account of the Illuminati, I am relying on J. M. Roberts, The Mythology of Secret Societies (London: Secker & Warburg, 1972), 118–30.
41. Stefan Lovgren, “National Treasure: Freemasons, Fact, and Fiction,” National Geographic News, Nov. 19, 2004; http://news.nationalgeographic.com.
42. Roberts, Mythology of Secret Societies, 154.
43. Ibid., 68–70.
44. Quoted in Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 238.
45. See Robin Waterfield, Hidden Depths: The Story of Hypnosis (New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2003), chapters 3–4.
46. Gary Lachman, A Dark Muse: A History of the Occult (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2003), 28–29.
47. For a short account of his life and work, see Timothy O’Neill, “Cagliostro: The Grand Copt,” Gnosis 24 (Summer 1992), 23–29.
48. See my article “The Inner Journey of Emanuel Swedenborg,” in Jonathan Rose, ed., Emanuel Swedenborg: Essays on His Life and Impact (West Chester, Pa.: Swedenborg Foundation, 2005).
49. Quoted in Kathleen Raine, Blake and Tradition (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968), 1:3.
50. Quoted on the Antiques Digest Web site, http://www.oldandsold.com/articles22/honore-de-balzac-8.shtml.
CHAPTER 8. THE GNOSTIC REVIVAL
1. MacDermot, The Fall of Sophia, introduction, 22–23. MacDermot’s book contains an abridged translation of the Pistis Sophia from the original Coptic along with an extensive commentary. Mead’s version (a secondhand translation from the Latin) has been reprinted often since it first appeared: one recent edition, a photocopy of the original edition, has been published by Kessinger Publishing Company, Kila, Montana.
2. On this point see Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture, 382.
3. Rudolph, Gnosis, 52.
4. Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture, 382.
5. Christopher Bamford, introduction to C. G. Harrison, The Transcendental Universe: Six Lectures on Occult Science, Theosophy, and the Catholic Faith (Hudson, N.Y.: Lindisfarne, 1993), 8.
6. Countess Constance Wachtmeister et al., Reminiscences of H. P. Blavatsky and the Secret Doctrine (Wheaton, Ill.: Quest, 1976), 44.
7. H. P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled: Secrets of the Ancient Wisdom Tradition, abridged edition, ed. Michael Gomes (Wheaton, Ill.: Quest, 1997), 136.
8. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 140.
9. H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, 3d Point Loma ed. (Point Loma, Calif.: Aryan Theosophical Press, 1926), 2:389.
10. Blavatsky, Secret Doctrine, 2:96. Emphasis here and below Blavatsky’s.
11. Blavatsky, Secret Doctrine, 2:389.
12. For a succinct treatment of this theory, see Edward Abdill, The Secret Gateway: Modern Theosophy and the Ancient Wisdom Tradition (Wheaton, Ill.: Quest, 2005), chapters 4–5.
13. For this quotation and Blavatsky’s specific correlation of the two systems, see The Secret Doctrine, 2:604–5.
14. Harrison, The Transcendental Universe, 89.
15. Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture, 454–55.
16. Richard Noll, The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 69. The reference to “a steppingstone to higher things” is taken from Mead’s own description of the Echoes of the Gnosis series. See Noll, The Jung Cult, 327.
17. C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Vintage, 1989), 190–91.
18. Noll, The Jung Cult, 242–43; C. G. Jung, 1917 letter to Alphonse Maeder, quoted in Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
19. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 192.
20. C. G. Jung, Collected Works, vol. 5: Symbols of Transformation, 2d ed., trans. R. F. C. Hull (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967), 100–101, 157–58. Noll, The Jung Cult, 180–86, takes issue with many details in Jung’s story (which changed in key details over the years as Jung retold it). Despite these discrepancies, the weight of plausibility still lies on Jung’s side: it is comparatively unlikely that a schizophrenic patient with only a basic education would have been familiar with an obscure Mithraic text.
21. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 200–201.
22. C. G. Jung, Psychology and Religion, Collected Works, vol. 11, 2d ed., trans. R. F. C. Hull (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969), 74.
23. Jung, Psychology and Religion, 313.
24. Quoted in Robert A. Segal, ed., The Gnostic Jung (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), 113.
25. C. G. Jung, foreword to Gilles Quispel, Tragic Christianity, quoted in Segal, The Gnostic Jung, 105.
26. Quoted in Segal, The Gnostic Jung, 43.
27. Quoted in Segal, The Gnostic Jung, 52.
28. See The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v., “Essence and Existence,” “Existentialism.”
29. Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 327.
30. Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 62–64.
31. Quoted in Clement of Alexandria, Excerpta ex Theodoto, 78.2; Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 334, 335.
32. Tau Malachi, The Gnostic Gospel of St. Thomas: Meditations on the Mystical Teachings (St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn, 2004), xii.
33. Malachi, The Gnostic Gospel of St. Thomas, xi–xv.
34. Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, 6.
35. See Smoley and Kinney, Hidden Wisdom, chapter 12.
36. David Van Biema et al., “The Lost Gospels,” Time, Dec. 22, 2003, 56–61.
37. La Asociación Gnóstica Web site, http://gnosis.webcindario.com/aboutsamael.htm; http://www.gnosis.org.br/_sawpage/palestra/ingles/imov_gno.htm.
38. Stephan A. Hoeller, “Wandering Bishops: Not All Roads Lead to Rome,” Gnosis 12 (Summer 1989), 20–25. See also Hoeller’s Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing (Wheaton, Ill.: Quest, 2002), 176–78.
39. See Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, ed. Wouter J. Hanegraaff et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2005), s.v. “Gnostic Church.”
40. For a summary of Hoeller’s views, see his Gnosticism.
CHAPTER 9. GNOSIS AND MODERNITY
1. Segal, The Gnostic Jung, 4–7.
2. Charles Baudelaire, Les fleurs du mal, no. 119. My translation.
3. On the relation between Blake’s political and metaphysical themes, see Robert Rix, “William Blake and the Radical Swedenborgians,” www.esoteric.msu.edu.
4. Quoted in Raine, Blake and Tradition, 2:13.
5. William Blake, “The Tyger,” in The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. David V. Erdman, rev. ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 24–25.
6. Raine, Blake and Tradition, 2:30.
7. Blake, The Book of Urizen, 1.1, in Complete Poetry and Prose, 70.
8. See William Blake, The Book of Urizen, ed. Kay Parkhurst Easson and Roger R. Easson (Boulder, Colo.: Shambhala/Random House, 1978), commentary, 71–72.
9. Quoted in Raine, Blake and Tradition, 1:364.
10. Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in Complete Poetry and Prose, 34–35.
11. Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in Complete Poetry and Prose, 43.
12. Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, s.v. “Carpocratians.”
13. Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in Complete Poetry and Prose, 43.
14. William Blake, America: A Prophecy, 16.7, in Complete Poetry and Prose, 57.
15. Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), 164.
16. Voegelin, New Science of Politics, 112.
17. Voegelin, New Science of Politics, 132.
18. James Joyce, Ulysses (New York: Random House, 1961) 34.
19. Voegelin, New Science of Politics, 144.
20. Harold Bloom, Omens of Millennium (New York: Riverhead, 1996), 23.
21. Harold Bloom, The American Religion (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 22.
22. Bloom, The American Religion, 32.
23. Herman Melville, Moby Dick, chapter 36.
24. Bloom, The American Religion, 67.
25. Quoted in Jay Kinney, “The Mysterious Revelations of Philip K. Dick,” Gnosis 1 (Fall/Winter 1985), 7.
26. “Cosmogony and Cosmology,” in The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings, ed. Lawrence Sutin (New York: Pantheon, 1995), 281–313.
27. The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick, 308.
28. The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick, 288.
29. The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick, 330. Bracketed material has been inserted by the editor of the volume.
30. Quoted in Kinney, “The Mysterious Revelations of Philip K. Dick,” 7.
31. Ibid.
32. Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert, The Psychedelic Experience (reprint, New York: Citadel Underground, 1995), 61.
33. See William Irwin, ed., The Matrix and Philosophy (Chicago: Open Court, 2002).
34. See Frances Flannery Dailey and Rachel Wagner, “Wake Up! Gnosticism and Buddhism in The Matrix,” Journal of Religion and Film 5, no. 2 (Oct. 2001). See also Matrix Virtual Theatre, Wachowski Brothers Transcript, Nov. 6, 1999; www.warnervideo.com/matrixevents/wachowski.html.
35. Anonymous, “The Matrix and Gnosticism: Is The Matrix a Gnostic Film?” www.atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/religion/blrel_matrix_gnos.htm.
36. Quoted in Martin Danahay and David Rieder, “The Matrix, Marx, and the Coppertop’s Life,” in Irwin, The Matrix and Philosophy, 217. Emphasis added.
37. Epiphanius, Against the Heresies, 40.2, quoted in Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 169.
38. See his Way of the Shaman (New York: Bantam, 1982), 5–9.
39. For Gurdjieff’s views on the moon, see P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of a Forgotten Teaching (New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1949), 25, 85.
40. Descartes, First Meditation, in Discourses on Method and the Meditations, 100.
41. A Course in Miracles (Tiburon, Calif.: Foundation for Inner Peace, 1975), Workbook, 237.
42. A Course in Miracles, Text, 544.
43. A Course in Miracles, Text, 364–65.
44. Apocryphon of John, 11, in The Nag Hammadi Library, 105.
45. Michelle Cracken, “Dan Brown: The Novel that Ate the World,” Time; quoted in www.danbrown.com/media/morenews/time041505.htm.
46. See the Opus Dei Web site, www.opusdei.org.
47. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 231.
48. Brown, The Da Vinci Code, 248–49.
49. Robert Richardson, “The Priory of Sion Hoax,” Gnosis 51 (Spring 1999), 49–55. See also Massimo Introvigne, “Beyond The Da Vinci Code: What Is the Priory of Sion?” available at www.cesnur.org/2004/mi_davinci_en.htm.
50. Richardson, “The Priory of Sion Hoax,” 54.
51. “A Mary for All,” Economist, Dec. 20, 2003, 25.
52. For further discussion of this issue, see my Inner Christianity, 149–51.
53. Brown, The Da Vinci Code, 309–10.
54. Jerome, Contra Jovin, 1; available at www.newadvent.org/summa/315408.htm. Jerome is quoting a philosopher named Sixtus the Pythagorean.
55. Brown, The Da Vinci Code, 444. Ellipsis is in the original.
56. Brown, The Da Vinci Code, 454. Ellipses are in the original.
CHAPTER 10. THE FUTURE OF GNOSIS
1. The best recent study of this group is Edmondo Lupieri, The Mandaeans: The Last Gnostics, trans. Charles Hindley (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002).
2. On the draining of the southern Mesopotamian marshes, see Christopher Reed, “Paradise Lost,” Harvard Magazine, Jan.–Feb. 2005, 30–37.
3. See Lupieri, The Mandaeans, 38–52.
4. Michael Allen Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Rethinking a Dubious Category (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 264–65.
5. Karen L. King, What Is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), 226. Emphasis King’s.
6. Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Jesus Christ, the Bearer of the Water of Life: A Christian Reflection on the “New Age,” available at www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_in-terelg_doc_20030203_new-age_en.html. The passages I have quoted are in §1.4.
7. For descriptions of this system, see Helen Palmer, The Enneagram (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988); Sandra Maitri, The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagam (New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 2000); Smoley and Kinney, Hidden Wisdom, 226–33.
8. King, What Is Gnosticism? 227.
9. Marvin Meyer, The Gnostic Gospels of Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), xii.
10. Werner Heisenberg, The Physicist’s Conception of Nature, trans. A. Pomerans (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958), 28–29.
11. For Eckhart’s views, see his essay “On Disinterest,” in Blakney, Meister Eckhart, 82ff. Blakney translates the German Abgescheidenheit as “disinterest,” although he concedes that “detachment” is the better term (see ibid., 315). In quotations here I have changed “disinterest” and “disinterested” to “detachment” and “detached.”
12. Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture, 519–20. Hanegraaff is quoting an earlier article of his entitled “A Dynamic Typological Approach to the Problem of ‘Post-Gnostic’ Gnosticism.”