Some Basic Gnostic History

[Occult Forum Archive]

Original post: Diceman

Well, I know we already have, "What is or isn't Gnosticism?," but I thought I would post the results of some of my research.

First of all, Gnosticism began before the time of Christ. There was a form of Jewish Mysticism that is very similar to what historians would call "true Gnosticism" a few centuries before Christ's birth. In fact, it was probably a very big influence on Christ's teaching.

Now, the very first Gnostic movement that historians would call "Gnosticism" was the Gnostikoi, who lived in Athenian Greece at around 40 A.D. At the time, for whatever reason, there were a large number of baptismal cults in Greece, and the Gnostikoi were one of these baptismal cults. The Gnostikoi were neither Valentinian nor Sethian, because those movements did not appear until roughly a few hundred years later.

The Gnostikoi had a basic cosmology. There was a Father God who was ineffable and absolute, a being called Barbelo that was an emanation from the father, a group of Aeons, the Demiurge, who is roughly the Christian God, and then the Archons, who are demonic controlling forces of the fallen world, and then humans at the bottom. They believed in Sophia, and that Sophia had birthed the fallen Demiurge.

Barbelo came to the fallen world as a spiritual being, who was like Christ but not associated with him by the Gnostikoi, but was the Savior of the world. And they were huge believers in the power of baptism.

The later Valentinian and Sethian movements contained elements of the Gnostikoi's teachings, but did not use the same cosmology. The Valentinians associated Barbelo with Christ, and the Sethians view of the Savior was more like the view of Judaism than the view of either the Christians or the Gnostikoi.

All of these movements believed in the "Gnosis" which is a salvific form of knowledge that emanates from the Savior or his servants.

To clarify a little, Gnostics didn't believe in "enlightenment" and "Gnosis" to the Gnostics was not like the gnosis of Chaos Magic. There was the use of light and dark imagery, and there is a possibility that the idea of hyle and rebirth in the fallen world came from contact with Buddhism, but the biggest influence on Gnosticism was Neo-Platonism and its concept of emanationism. As a matter of fact, it is known that Plato may have well believed in rebirth, although the particular passage of the Republic that mentions it is disputed to be Neo-Platonic and not the work of Plato himself.

I hope that helps a little.