Gnosticism

by Martin Seymour-Smith

Gnosticism, the school of spiritual philosophy that flourished throughout the Roman world in the first two centuries after Christ, was Christianity's earliest rival. It focused not on belief, good deeds and contrition, but on the attainment of gnosis (knowledge, or an intuition of the truth) which brings salvation from ignorance. Gnostic rites were practiced in secret, particularly after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. The radical dualism of the Gnostic universe, in which good and evil are co-eternal, was anathema to the early Church, which persecuted it relentlessly for over a thousand years. However, the symbolic and psychological truths of Gnosticism continued to be recognized down the centuries, and had a profound influence on many of the great creative writers and thinkers of Western culture. Gnosticism poses burning questions, the answers to which are very relevant to our day. It resonates with the idea of the psyche, with Jung's concept of the coll