Gnosis and gnostic teachings

In the Southern (or South-Eastern) stream of development in the Current Postatlantean epoch - see Two streams of development - the focus was on the inner nature and soul work (see Schema FMC00.476).

Gnosis can be called the body of knowledge of spiritual science of that period, and it was also what was available through traditions for humanity at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Therefore the gnosis and gnostic teachings were important in 'trying to make sense of what happened' then, even if they lacked important aspects, ao the fact that a divinity became Man was not part of the frame of reference whereby gods were gods and entities at a totally different higher level than a mere Man. The latter was precisely the affinity of the Northern stream.

Gnosis was a wisdom knowledge, a “survival of ancient wisdom derived from the old clairvoyant insight into the spiritual world. It was suppressed by dogmatic Christianity from motives of hostility to Mystery wisdom, for Gnosis declared that Christ had descended upon earth through the realms of the spiritual hierarchies and incarnated in the physical body of Jesus which had been prepared for 30 years to receive the Christ Being.” (GA173 - lectures 8 and9)

In the first centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha, the gnostic teachings were still very important, but they were "eradicated root and branch" by the Roman catholic church (see o.a. Christ Impulse - meeting of two streams#1922-07-23-GA214).

Contemporary spiritual science or "anthroposophy cannot be a revival of the Gnosis .. for the latter depended on the development of the sentient soul; while anthroposophy must evolve out of the consciousness soul, in the light of Michael's activity, a new understanding of Christ and of the world." (1925-GA026 LT161)

Aspects

gnostic knowledge framework (1923-07-15-GA225)
- the Demiurgos: the Creator of the world who sends forth other beings from himself [<-> Logos]
- Aeons: beings who had issued from the Demiurgos, ranked in successive stages, each stage being lower than the last [<-> spiritual hierarchies]
- Pleroma: the super-sensible world peopled none the less by individualised Beings [<-> the Planes or worlds of consciousness]
- Achamoth: personification of the spiritual strivings of mankind, the urge which lives in men to reach the spiritual world again
Gnosis evolved in the age of the sentient soul (from the fourth to the first millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha), afterwards it was guarded in the Mysteries but the feeling content lasted into the Middle Ages (1925-GA026 LT159-160)
- at the start of the stream of earthly spiritual wisdom (pagan upto gnostic) lies the being of Lucifer that incarnated in the third millenium BC (see Luciferic beings and their influences#the being of Lucifer)
sources
- Pistis Sophia was the main text reflecting original gnostic teachings, before the discovery of Nag Hammadi library in 1945 there were three copies available: the Bruce Codex (1769), the Askew Codex (1785), and the Berlin Codex (1896)
- the Books of Jeu
  - Rudolf Steiner quotes a poem or prayer in 1914-12-26-GA156
- famous texts:
  - the Song of the Pearl (oa in the Acts of Thomas)
destruction of gnostic teachings by the Roman Catholic Church
- Irenaeous was the "eradicator of the Gnosis", his main work was 'Adversus Haereses' (ca.179), an attack upon the Gnostics and the principal heresies.
- see also 4th century on 325 topic page: college for destruction of initiation, gnosis, spirit (more info on Christ Impulse - meeting of two streams#Aspects)
discoveries in the 1940s of gnostic Coptic manuscripts have given opportunity to learn about the teachings of this spiritual movement
- Upper Egypt (1945): the Nag Hammadi Library is a collection of thirteen ancient books (called "codices") containing over fifty texts, discovered in upper Egypt in 1945. Eleven complete books and fragments of two others, 'amounting to well over 1000 written pages', are preserved in the Coptic Museum in Cairo
  - Note: Codex I or the Jung Codex (one of the Nag Hammadi volumes which was exported illegally, and called this way because these were sent to Carl Jung because he was known to be deeply interested in Gnosticism), acquired by the Carl Gustav Jung Institute in Zurich in 1951
- the Dead Sea Scrolls (1947)
Other
- 'Lucifer' and 'Lucifer-Gnosis' was the first and only anthroposophical journal which Rudolf Steiner edited and supervised himself between 1903 and 1908 (see GA034)

Illustrations

Lecture coverage and references

Pistis Sophia

Pistis Sophia' refers to a Gnostic text discovered in 1773.

Rudolf Steiner makes many explicit references in ao:

1904-06-10-GA093 - see below,
1906-09-GA095 Q&A - see below
1916-01-02-GA165 (with an fragment that he puts in context, see Ahrimanic influence on Man#1916-01-02-GA165)
1915-12-29-GA165
in GA211 (where he makes the link with the spiritual breathing process).

Sease and Schmidt-Brabant, in 'Paths of the Christian Mysteries' expand on the importance of the Pistis Sophia for Steiner.

Excerpt from Pistis Sophia: Book I

It came to pass, when Jesus had risen from the dead, that he passed eleven years discoursing with his disciples, and instructing them only up to the regions of the First Commandment and up to the regions of the First Mystery, that within the Veil, within the First Commandment, which is the four-and-twentieth mystery without and below, those [four and twenty] which are in the second space of the first mystery which is before all mysteries, the Father in the form of a dove. And Jesus said to his disciples: “I am come forth out of that First Mystery, which is the last mystery, that is the four-and-twentieth mystery.” And his disciples have not known nor understood that anything existeth within that mystery, but they thought of that mystery, that is the head of the universe and the head of all existence, and they thought it is the completion of all completions, because Jesus had said to them concerning that mystery, that it surroundeth the First Commandment and the five Impressions and the great Light and the five Helpers and the whole Treasury of Light.

1904-06-10-GA093

You know that Jesus Christ remained on the earth for ten years after His death. The Pistis Sophia contains the profoundest theosophical teachings, it is much more profound than Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism.

1906-09-GA095 Q&A

The “Pistis Sophia”
.
This book, written in the Coptic language, contains much of the discourses of Christ at the initiation of His disciples, and many inner expositions of parables.
The thirteenth chapter is especially important.
The αιμαρμενη (Haimarmene) is the spirit world (devachan). The entire super-sensible world is divided into twelve aeons. These are the seven divisions of the astral plane and the five lowest divisions ofdevachan. Aberrated spirits can be purified from out of devachan.
The light-bearing purifier before Christ was Melchisedek. He is meant when we read of light coming from the επισχοπος (episkopos).
By αρχοντες (Archontes), the powers of evil are to be understood.

1909-02-15-GA109

The intimate history of Christian development is connected with this fact. What is ordinarily described as the history of Christian development is a sum of entirely external occurrences. Therefore, far too little consideration is given to the distinction of actual periods in Christian development. Anyone who can look more deeply into the evolutionary progress of Christianity will easily perceive that, in the early centuries of the Christian era, the manner in which Christianity was spread was entirely different from that of later centuries. In the first Christian centuries the spread of Christianity was connected with everything that could be procured from the physical plane. We need only look at the early teachers of Christianity to see how physical recollections, relationships, and relics were emphasized. Just consider the importance that Irenaeus, who contributed so much to the spread of Christian teaching in various lands in the first century, gave to the fact that his recollections extended back to those who had listened to the pupils of the Apostles. Great value was set upon being able to prove by means of such memories of physical life that Christ Himself had taught in Palestine.

1915-12-27-GA165

Let us bear in mind that at the time—but this in a wider meaning—at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place, there existed in certain circles a profound wisdom in connect-ion with spiritual matters. This deep wisdom which existed at that time is called Gnosis.
[eradication of gnosis]
In the external world, when considering the course of Europe’s spiritual culture, we may say: This Gnosis, this deeply spiritual science which existed in connection with the mysteries of the spiritual world, vanished from the cultural life of Europe, as far as the outer world is concerned,—and in the spiritual life of the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th centuries, etc., there existed only a very dim idea of what was contained in this science.
Those who knew something (I mean, those who knew what could be known by a Christian priest, a Christian scientist), those who had the knowledge which could be acquired in those days, were only aware of the existence of the Gnosis, because people had opposed it in the early Christian centuries, because opponents had fought against the Gnosis. Imagine the situation if to-day all the books and lecture-cycles which constitute our anthroposophical literature were to be suppressed and burned, so that nothing remained - if the only writings on anthroposophy available to posterity were books written by opponents! Imagine the situation that in centuries to come, people were to get hold of these books written by antagonists, acquiring from these their conception of the truths contained in our writings! This is what happened to the Gnosis.
[Irenaeus]
An outstanding writer of the early Church was Irenaeus, the pupil of Bishop Polycarp of Asia Minor, who had been a disciple of the Apostles. But Irenaeus wrote as an opponent of the Gnosis. In the course of the centuries, the teachings of the Gnostics were gathered by reading what Irenaeus had written as a refutation of the Gnosis. In regard to this ancient wisdom, we must reckon with everything brought about by the circumstance that these teachings were trans-mitted by an opponent.
This shows you that the whole development of the Occident is really based on the fact that something handed down from past ages was blotted out, stamped out completely.
[new beginning]
Outwardly we see how new was the beginning brought by the Mystery of Golgotha, what an entirely new impulse it brought to the culture of the West. In reality it began everywhere with an entirely new impulse. Indeed, I might use the following comparison: The ancient writings lay deeply buried underground, like some ancient-city covered by the Earth; deeply buried, when we consider the writings of Ambrose and Augustine, old Fathers of the Church, to Scotus, and so forth. A new beginning, a new element arose like a new city over apparently new ground, under which an ancient city lies buried, whose aspect is unknown. This is what took place in the course of the development of European culture.
[gnosis is not the future]
If there is to be a spiritual deepening in the present age, it is therefore evident that this must be drawn out of Man’s own forces and that human beings themselves must discover truths which cannot be handed on to them traditionally from outside, at least not in the course of the spiritual development of Europe.
And it is out of the question (I cannot deal with this today, for it would lead us too far away from our subject), it is out of the question to draw in Oriental documents as a substitute for the external documents which have been lost in the spiritual life of the Occident. This is impossible for the simple reason that the Oriental documents convey something which is far more primitive than that which developed in the world by spreading from Asia Minor to North Africa, Southern Europe, and even as far as Central Europe. Spiritual knowledge was blotted out completely in the early Christian centuries; it reached posterity only through the writings of opponents.
[loss]
The Gnostic writings which have been destroyed, do not only contain a knowledge of the spiritual worlds, the spiritual knowledge of these worlds—apart from the truths relating to Christ—but also the whole encompassing spiritual wisdom of ancient times in connection with the Mystery of Christ Jesus. The loss of these documents implies the loss of all this knowledge. The Gnostics (—if we wish to give them this name—) tried to grasp in their own way the course of the Earth’s development and the true nature of Christ.
In those days it was not yet possible to grasp these things as they can be grasped now, by drawing down from the spiritual worlds truths which need not be recorded in writing, because they exist in an immediately living form in the spiritual world. In those days the truths relating to the real being of Christ-Jesus could not be drawn down in this way. But certain truths relating to Christ-Jesus were known in an older form of wisdom which has been lost.
[Book of Jeu]
Quite recently, a few scant remains of a book entitled "Pistis-Sophia" were discovered, and of another one entitled "The Mystery of Jeû". Also in an external way, they draw, as it were, attention to the fact that the truths relating to Christ, which we should now strive to attain with the aid of anthroposophical methods, are not as foolish as the opponents of our movement wish to make them appear. Only a small fragment, in Coptic writing, has been preserved of the "Book of Jeû"; nevertheless it calls attention to the fact that what we read in the Gospels is not the only wisdom which lived in the thoughts of men during the first centuries of Christian development.
The "Book of Jeû" describes how, after His Resurrection, Christ spoke to those who were at that time able to understand Him, to those who had become His disciples. The strange thing about this "Book of Jeû" (I mean, the small existing fragment of this book) is that it clearly speaks of Christ and of His true being in a way which differs completely from the Gospel of St. John. There is one thing which recurs again and again in this book, which clearly shows that it seeks to attract our attention to something quite definitive. This thing to which it draws attention over and over again, may, in other words, be explained as follows:
Suppose that in those days someone had wished to explain why Christ Jesus had entered the evolution of the Earth; he would have had to do it in the following way. To those who were able to understand him, he would have said:
"Behold, a new age is dawning, in which Man will enter the future epoch of the development of the Consciousness-Soul. An age is approaching when the world will have to be grasped through Man’s external physical organs, through organs which are essentially connected with the physical body. This age is approaching.
The age in which revelations could be obtained through an originally primitive clairvoyance has gone by. Past is the age when knowledge could be gathered, not only by using the physical body with its instruments, but by using the etheric body independently of the physical body. This age has gone by; henceforth people will have to use as their only instrument the physical body.
But also in future it will be possible to know things which in the past could only be known through the etheric body. In the external world, there will only exist a knowledge connected with the physical body, which is subjected to death. But a knowledge of the spiritual world cannot be gained through the instruments linked with the physical body. A helper must come who kindles the etheric element in Man, a helper connected with the living essence, with everything in Man’s earthly life which does not pertain to the Earth. A helper must come, who tears out of the indolent, lifeless, physical body an understanding which is able to grasp the spiritual world, an understanding which lives in Man and is connected with heaven; that understanding which cannot be crucified by the world, because it belongs to heaven, the understanding which crucifies the world, that is to say, which overcomes the world."
We should imagine that in earlier epochs, when people could not yet see Christ in his true being, as he passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, they still felt connected with the spiritual world through the etheric body. When the physical body hardened more and more, thus becoming the instrument it is now, it was necessary that one should come, Christ, in order to draw a living essence out of the indolent instrument of the physical body. This is what we should imagine.
But let us now consider this "Book of Jeû". After having passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, Christ spoke to those who had learned to lean on him and on the wisdom contained in his words: he said,
"I loved you, and I wished to give you Life."
In the words, "and I wished to give you Life", we hear that he wished to draw the indolent physical body out of its indolence, by giving it something which only the etheric body can give.
"Jesus, the Living One, is the Knowledge of Truth."
The Living One - that is, he who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha - speaks in such a way as to appear as the Representative of Life. The text then continues:
"This is the Book dealing with the knowledge of the Invisible God through the hidden Mysteries", that is to say, of Mysteries which lie concealed in Man—"which indicate the path to Man’s chosen being, leading in silence to the life of the Father of the World, in the arrival of the Redeemer, the Saviour of the souls who receive within them the Word of Life, higher than every other life—, in the knowledge of Jesus, the Living One, who through the Father came out of the Aeon of Light into the All-ness of the Pleroma" - (i.e. of the other aeons, of all the spiritual beings) - "in the teaching, which cannot be matched by any other, the teaching given by Jesus, the Living One, to his apostles, when he said: This is the teaching in which the whole knowledge reposes."
We should thus imagine the Risen One Who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha speaking to His Disciples, who had learned to listen to Him.
Jesus, the Living One, began to speak to His Apostles as follows:
"Blessed is he who crucified the world and who did not let the world crucify him"
(he who can grasp that part in Man which cannot be conquered by matter, by external physical matter).
The Apostles replied unanimously by saying:
"Teach us, O Lord, this way of crucifying the world, that the world may not crucify us, and we may not perish and lose our life."
Jesus, the Living One, answered and spoke:
"He who has crucified the world is one who has found my Word and fulfils it in accordance with the will of Him who sent me."
And the Apostles replied by saying:
"Speak to us, O Lord, that we may hear you! We followed you with all our heart, we left father and mother, vineyards and fields, we left estates and the glory of the external king and we followed you, that you might teach us the Life of your Father, who sent you."
And Christ, the Living One, met this appeal of His apostles by revealing to them what He had to say. Christ, the Living One answered and spoke:
"The Life of my Father is this: that out of the human essence of that understanding you receive your soul, which is not of this Earth …"
What the Living One expects, is this: That those who are his disciples should grasp that in Man lives an understanding of spiritual things which may tear itself away from the physical body, an understanding that is not of this Earth. If they call to life within them this understanding, they will in truth have grasped His Word.
… "this essence of every soul, may be grasped through what I reveal to you in the progress of my Word. And that you may fulfil it, and this before the Archon" (—i.e. before the essence of this Aeon, this age—), "his snares" (the Ahrimanic-Lucifer Being) "and his traps, which have no end,—that you may be saved from these.
But you, my disciples, hasten to receive my Word with greatest care, so that you may recognise it, and that the Archon of this Aeon" (i.e. the Ahrimanic-Luciferic) "may not be at strife with you, because he cannot find any of his commands in me" (—he therefore finds his commands outside the One who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha): "that you yourselves, O! my Apostles, may fulfil it in regard to myself, and that I myself may free you, and you be hallowed by that freedom which has no blemish. Even as the Spirit of the Holy Ghost is holy, so will you become holy through the freedom of the Spirit, of the Holy Spirit."
Unanimously the Apostles - Matthew and John, Philip, Bartholomew and James - replied by saying:
"O! Jesus, Living One, whose goodness is spread out over those who have found your wisdom and your form in the Illumination, O! Light, burning in the Light you have kindled in our hearts, when we received the Light of Life, O veritable Logos, that through the Gnosis, has become for us true knowledge of what the Living One has taught!"
Jesus, the Living One, answered and spoke:
"Blessed is he who recognises this and leads heaven down to the Earth."
(i.e. who is conscious of the fact that there is something in him which is not dependent on his earthly body, but on the beings of heaven, and who leads into the earthly events that part in him which is connected with heaven.)
"Blessed is he who recognises this and leads heaven downwards, who carries the Earth and sends it up to heaven"
(who connects the earthly part in him with the heavenly, so that when he passes through the portal of death with the fruits of his earthly life, he may lead the earth back to heaven).
The Apostles replied by saying:
"Jesus, Living One, explain to us how we may bring down heaven to Earth. For we have followed you, in order that you might teach us the true Light."
And Jesus, the Living One, answered and spoke:
"The Word that lives in heaven"
(He means, the wisdom or knowledge which may be gained independently of man’s physical being)
… the Word lived in heaven before the Earth, which is called world, came into being. But if you know my Word, you will lead heaven down to Earth and the Word will dwell in you. Heaven is the invisible Word of the Father.
If you know this, you will lead heaven down to the Earth. I will teach you how the Earth may be sent up to heaven, that you may know: To send the Earth up to heaven, is to listen to the Word of Knowledge, that is no longer mere knowledge of an earthly human being, but knowledge of a heavenly human being …"
(—one who has severed his understanding from the external physical body, who has ceased to be an earthly human being and has become a heavenly human being. His understanding has ceased to be earthly: it has become heavenly).
"You will instead be saved from the Archon of this Aeon"
(from the Ahrimanic-Luciferic Being).
Here, therefore, is a fragment which has been preserved and has been found again, a fragment which calls attention to the infinitely profound knowledge which once, during the first centuries of the Christian era, connected Man with the secret of the Mystery of Golgotha.

1915-12-28-GA165

is a lecture called 'The Problem of Jesus & Christ in earlier times' and describes the difficulties after the MoG to try and connect the god Christ and the man Jesus from a theological and spiritual scientific perspective (oa Origenes, Clemens of Alexandria)

quote A

When we go through the entire ancient Gnosis, we find a peculiar trait. If, for example, I were to outline it in the form of a diagram, I might say something like this:
The Gnosis conceives, in evolution, the existence of a human “person” as proceeding from the Father — from the primal Father, the so-called Stillness, or primal Spirit. These ancient Gnostics indicated thirty different stages, and named them “Aeons,” and now I could name thirty of these.

And then comes the second current, or stream. Whereas the first stream is spiritual, they also spoke of a second stream that belongs to the realm of soul. Within these streams they saw the Christ and the Sophia as the two principal Aeons, and as the source of all being. Then there were numerous other Aeons besides.

Moreover, the Gnostics indicated yet a third stream — that of the Demiurge and matter.

These all united and formed humankind. It is possible to form such an outline out of the way those Gnostics thought. Such concepts as theirs are not entirely unreal, because human beings are complicated. In a lecture once, I explained how many groups, or stages, containing seven parts make up the human being, our friends were very surprised to hear that so many differentiations must be looked for in the human being. Yet it is just these differentiations that remind us of what the Gnostics, from their perspective, knew already.
On the other hand, we always find, when we approach the Gnosis, one particular point that impresses us — that the concept of time plays a very minor role. Gnostic ideas may be expressed spatially; the role of time as an idea is unimportant. Or we could say that Gnostic understanding is not capable of understanding it completely.
And to this extent we may indeed call it progress from the Gnosis to Clemens of Alexandria. Although the whole encompassing fullness of spiritual wisdom had been lost, it was nevertheless a step forward that led to Clemens of Alexandria, since he brought the concept of time into the evolution of the Christ. He taught that the Christ had already existed earlier — that he had previously revealed himself through angels and later on as the Son; this was his evolutionary course.
Thus, the concept of development, or evolution, was introduced. This, you can see, is the significant point. Indeed, we cannot emphasize too often that the development of civilization in the West occurred in order to bring an understanding of the concept of time to the human worldview in the right way. This is what is so important, so radically important — to view the course of evolution and to realize that the Christ was first able to manifest only through angels, and that afterward, when he passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, he is able to manifest as the Son. Through the angels, he is the messenger of something outside the world. It is true that it permeates the world completely, but to understand it correctly, we must nevertheless recognize that it comes from outside the world, as the messenger. Later, however, he appears as Son; he imbues all things.

quote B see also: Daskalos#incarnations, Origen being a previous incarnation of Daskalos

Thus, during the very first centuries of the Christian era, we find great spirits arising, such as Clemens of Alexandria, for example, and Origenes - very lofty spirits, both of them. If we want to describe them from one perspective—Clemens, as well as Origenes, who came after the Gnostics when Gnosis itself was already waning - we must say that they did in fact strive for this knowledge.
They asked themselves: What is the truth behind the Mystery of Golgotha?
On the one hand, we are concerned with the Christ (they still knew this, of course); the Christ can be understood only as a spiritual being connected with spiritual and suprasensory impulses. This Christ descends from cosmic spiritual spheres. They could no longer comprehend how the ancient Gnosis had been able to understand the Christ, but they knew that he could be understood, as a spiritual being, only through spiritual faculties. This was what they knew about the Christ.

1916-12-21-GA173

longer extract on: Christ Impulse - meeting of two streams#1916-12-21-GA173, small excerpt copied below as an introductory quote:

[Gnosis - wisdom of the Christ]
As the time approached when human evolution was to take into itself the Christ-Being there came about a possibility, like an inheritance from the ancient days of clairvoyant wisdom, of gaining a picture, an idea of the whole lofty stature of the Christ-Being. There existed at this time a wisdom about which people often speak today in what could be called a sacrilegious way, though they have scarcely any idea of what it represented. It was something which has now been eliminated from human evolution by certain streams which are opposed to more profound Christian revelation. This was Gnosis, a wisdom into which much of the knowledge revealed to mankind by ancient, atavistic clairvoyance had flowed. Every last fragment of Gnosis, both verbal and written, had been rooted out by western dogmatic Christianity, but not until Gnosis had also endeavoured to find an answer to the question: Who is Christ?
... Gnosis was something powerful, something great, ... time nineteen centuries ago when it endeavoured to give some kind of an answer to the question: Who is Christ?
The spiritual eye of the Gnostic saw the spiritual worlds. He thought of the spiritual hierarchies arranged in a wonderful way, rank upon rank. He also saw how Christ strode down through the world of the spiritual hierarchies in order to enter into the enveloping bodies of a mortal human being. All this was revealed to the soul of the Gnostic. And this soul strove to gain a picture of how Christ came down from spiritual heights and was received on earth. You can gain an idea of the scale of these events if you imagine that everything that has come into the world since the elimination of Gnosis has been small and petty in comparison with the mighty Christ-picture of the Gnostics. The Mystery-wisdom that lies behind the Gospels is infinitely great, greater than anything that subsequent theology has been capable of finding in them.
...
... The Gnostics were the last stragglers of those bearers of that wisdom which was extensive and intensive enough to understand something of Christ out of man's ancient, atavistic earth-wisdom. That is one side of the relationship between Christ and Jesus. At that time the Christ-Being could have been comprehended by Gnosis. But this was not part of the plan of evolution, although in what had been Gnosis there had been contained the full wisdom of the Christ.

1917-03-27-GA175

1917-04-24-GA175

sketches the confrontation of streams in the centuries after MoG, with the spiritual gnostic stream with pagan origins trying to grasp the esoteric christianity and the role played by the Roman Catholic Church with an 'earthly' agenda to come up with an acceptable mainstream religion which later evolved further away from true esoteric christianity

quote A

Now Julian's avowed object was to discover how the Eleusinian Mysteries into which he had been initiated were related to the Mysteries of the Third post-Atlantean epoch. What could he learn from these Mysteries? On this subject history tells us little. If we were to embark upon a serious study of how men such as Clement of Alexandria, his pupil Origen, Tertullian and even Irenaeus, to say nothing of the still earlier Fathers, derive in part from the pagan principle of initiation and came to Christianity in their own way, if we were to enter into the minds of these great souls, we should find that their concepts and ideas were informed by an inner vitality peculiar to them alone, that an entirely different spirit dwelt in them from that which was later reflected in the Church. If we wish to understand the Mystery of Golgotha we must catch something of the spirit of these early Fathers.

quote B see longer extract on: 325#1917-04-24-GA175

... equally radically concealed because it is in the interest of the Church to conceal it. For this reason it has been possible to keep the faithful (today) in ignorance of what took place in the first centuries of the Christian era.
Today, for example, there is no clear and reliable evidence, even from leading scholars, of how the Gnosis came to be suppressed.
...
Now the early Church Fathers sought to experience the Christ after the fashion of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Whether we call them Gnostics or not, the true Gnostics were rejected by the Church, though Clement of Alexandria could justifiably be called a Gnostic, they had a totally different relation to Christ than later times.

1921-10-03A-GA343

lecture: Gnostics and Montanists

synopsis includes: The opposite poles of Gnosis (Basilides) und Montanism (Montanus). Striving of the Gnostics for knowledge (macrocosmic) and visions of the Montanists (microcosmic surrender). Dangers of straying to both sides. Christ conception of the Gnostics and Montanists. Writer of John's Gospel between Gnosticism and Montanism.

Quote A - On John's gospel

You see, in the course of both these viewpoints ..
one on the side the Gnosis which only came up to the Nous, and

on the other side Montanism, which remained stuck in a materialistic conception,

you see, how in these contrasts present during the first Christian century, the writer of the St John Gospel was situated.
He looked on one side to the Gnosis, which he recognised from his view as an error, because it said: In the primordial beginnings was the Nous and the Nous was with God, and God was the Nous, and the Nous became flesh and lived among us; and Simon of Cyrene took the cross from Christ and thus accomplished a human image of what happened on Golgotha, after Christ only went up to carrying the cross and then disappeared from the earthly plane. For the gaze of the Gnostic Christ disappeared the moment Simon of Cyrene took over the cross. That was a mistake.
Where do you arrive if you succumb to all thought being human and having nothing to do with the spirit? No, this is not the way the writer of John's Gospel experienced it. It was not the Nous which was at the primordial beginnings, not the Nous with God and a veil covering everything which is related to the Christian Mystery, but: In the primordial beginnings was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and a God was the Logos and the Logos became flesh and lived among us. So the first actions are connected to the final actions: a unity comes about when we understand it with the spirit. We wish for something which doesn't lift us above human heights, to where we must find the Nous, because that is only one perspective of the spiritual.
Just as much spirit is needed for the spiritual orientation to let people form the idea that Jesus and the Christ God is one, so much spirituality exists in the Logos. When we hold on to the Nous, we only reach Christ; when we hold on to a Montanistic vision we only reach Jesus who in an unbelievable way returns as Christ, but then again only as a physical Jesus. No, we should not turn ourselves to the Nous coming from humanity, we must turn to the Logos, in which the Christ became man and walked among us.
The origin of the St John Gospel has really come about through an immense spiritual time context. I can't do otherwise, my dear friends, than to make a personal remark here, that I need to experience it as the greatest tragedy of our time, that theologians do not experience the majesty of the John Gospel at all, that out of a deep struggle preceding it, out of a struggle, the big question arose:
How can mankind manage to, on the one hand, find a way to his soul-spiritual in the spiritual-supersensible where his own soul-spiritual nature originated from? On the other hand, how can mankind reach an understanding for how his soul is within the physical-bodily nature?

On the one hand the question could be answered by the Gnosis, and

on the other hand it could be answered by an imagination towards the Pistis, which then came to Montanism in a visionary manner.

The writer of the St John's Gospel was continuously placed in the middle, between these two, and we feel every word, every sentence only intimately if we do it in such a way as it flowed out of the course of the times, and in such a way that you feel the course of time during the Mystery of Golgotha as if it can be experienced forever in the human soul. With an anthroposophic gaze we can look back at the turning point in time, to the most important turning point in the earth, when one wanted to have this experience of adoration of the St John's Gospel.
The day before yesterday I said to you, one has, and must, have an experience when one reads the Gospels with an anthroposophical approach, by reading them time and time again. This admiration of the reader is always renewed with each reading by the conviction that one can never learn everything from the Gospels because they go into immeasurable depths.

In Gnosis, my dear friends, you can learn everything because it adheres to outer nature and cosmic symbols.

In Montanism one can learn all about it because everyone who is familiar with such things knows what a tremendous suggestive persuasiveness all this has, that can be experienced through microcosmic visions, stronger than any outer impression.

You must first learn, my dear friends, in order to be able to talk someone out of a vision, you first need to learn how to do it. You could, if you want to convince a person religiously, rather talk him out of what he has experienced with his outer senses, than anything he has experienced as visions, as atavistic clairvoyance, because atavistic visions are far deeper in a person. By allowing atavistic visions into a person, he is far more connected to them than to his sense impressions. It is far easier to determine an error in sense impressions than an error related to visions. Visions are deeply imbedded in the microcosm. Out of such depths everything originated which the writer of John's Gospel saw from the other side, the side of the Montanists.
Montanism was the side of the Charybdis while the Gnosis was the side of the Scylla. He had to get past them both. I feel it at once, as our current tragedy, that our time has been forced — really out of the very superficial honesty, which prevail in such areas — that the Gospel of St John has been completely eliminated and only the Synoptics accepted. If you experience the Gospels through ever greater wonderment at each renewed reading, and when you manage to delve ever deeper and deeper into the Gospels, then it gives you a harmony of the Gospels. You only reach the harmony of the Gospels when you have penetrated St John's Gospel because all together, they don't form a threefold but a fourfold harmony. You won't accomplish, my dear friends, what you have chosen to do in these meetings for the renewal of religion in present time, if you haven't managed to experience the entire depths, the immeasurable depths of the St John's Gospel. Out of the harmony of John's Gospel with the so-called synoptic Gospels something else must come about as had been established by theology. What can really be experienced inwardly as a harmony in the four Gospels must come about in a living way, as the living truth and therefore just life itself. Out of the experience, out of every experience which is deepened and warmed by the history of the origin of Christianity, out of this experience must flow the religious renewal.

It can't be a result out of the intellect, nor theoretical exchanges about belief and knowledge, but only from the deepening of the felt, sensed, content which is able to be deepened in such a way as it was able to truly live in the souls of the first Christians.

1922-07-23-GA214

tells the story of the 'college for destruction of initiation, gnosis, spirit', it is worthwhile to read this as history knows nothing about it, but Rudolf Steiner's description is quite powerful

see quote: Christ Impulse - meeting of two streams#1922-07-23-GA214

1923-07-15-GA225

lecture called: 'Gnostic doctrines and supersensible influences in Europe'. It is also known as: 'Mysteries of the Pleroma: the corruption of their influence in Europe and Asia today'

In times when the Old Testament became the authoritative record, it was proper to regard the creation of Man by Jehovah as the dawn of world-evolution. But in still earlier times the intervention of Jehovah was regarded not as the incipient but as a much later episode in the evolutionary process. It was said that another, more purely spiritual phase of evolution had preceded the creation of the world by Jehovah as it is described in the Bible and as it is ordinarily understood. In other words, it was held that the intervention of Jehovah had been preceded by that of other Beings, that the creation of man had occurred after the passage of an earlier phase of the evolutionary process.
Those men in Greece who meditated upon the earliest stages of world-evolution spoke of a primordial Being for the understanding of whose nature a much more highly spiritual mode of knowledge is required than for an understanding of the events described in the Old Testament. These men spoke of the Being whom they held to be the actual Creator of the world — the Demiurgos.
The Demiurgos was a Being dwelling in spheres of lofty spirituality, in a world devoid of every element of that material existence with which in the Bible story the humanity created by Jehovah is naturally associated.
We must therefore think of the Demiurgos as a sublime Being, as the Creator of the world who sends forth other beings from himself. The beings sent forth by the Demiurgos were ranked in successive stages, each stage being lower than the last. (Such expressions are, of course, quite inadequate, but no other words are available.) The life of these beings, however, was held to be entirely free from the conditions of earthly birth and earthly death.
In Greece they were known as Aeons — of the first rank, the second rank and so on. The Aeons were beings who had issued from the Demiurgos. Among these Aeons, Jahve or Jehovah was a Being of a relatively subordinate rank. And this brings us to a consideration of the teachings of the Gnostics, as they were called, in the early centuries of Christendom. It was said that Jehovah united with matter and that from this union man came into existence.
According to this Gnostic conception, therefore, Jehovah was a somewhat lower descendant of the more lofty Aeons who had proceeded from the Demiurgos, and as the outcome of Jehovah's union with matter, man was created.
Pleroma was the name given to a world which transcends, although it has its basis in the phenomena of the world of sense. This conception was thoroughly intelligible to the ancients although it was utterly beyond the grasp of a later humanity. The Pleroma was a world at a higher level than the physical world but peopled none the less by individualised beings. And at the lowest level, at the lowest stage of the pleroma, the human being created by Jehovah comes into existence. At this same stage, another being appears, a being incorporate not in the individual Man nor yet in a nation, but rather in humanity taken as one whole, a being who remembers its descent from the Demiurgos and strives again to reach the spiritual world. The name of this Being was Achamoth and in Greece, Achamoth was a personification of the spiritual strivings of mankind. The urge which lives in men to reach the spiritual world again was therefore said to be due to Achamoth.
Another conception was then added to this world of ideas, namely, that in order to reward the strivings of Achamoth, the Demiurgos sent down an Aeon of a very high rank. This Aeon — so it was said — united with the man Jesus in order that the strivings of Achamoth might be fulfilled. The Gnostic teaching was that in the man Jesus there had dwelt a Being belonging to the ranks of the Aeons, a Being of a far more highly spiritual order than Jahve or Jehovah.
And so, among those in whom these ideas lived during the early Christian centuries — and the hearts of many men in those times were turned with the deepest fervour and reverence to the Mystery of Golgotha — there grew up the conception of the great mystery connected with the man Jesus in whom a holy Aeon had come to dwell.

1925-GA026 LT159-161

Gnosis and Anthroposophy, Letter 21 from GA026 'The Michael Mystery'

Leading thoughts LT159-161,
159. The Gnosis in its proper form evolved in the age of the sentient soul (from the fourth to the first millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha). It was an age when the divine was made manifest to Man as a spiritual content in his inner being; whereas in the preceding age (the age of the sentient body) it had revealed itself directly in his sense-impressions of the outer world.
160. In the age of the intellectual soul, Man could only experience in paler cast the spiritual content of the divine. The Gnosis was strictly guarded in hidden Mysteries. And when human beings could no longer preserve it, because they could no longer kindle the sentient soul to life, spiritual beings carried over — not indeed the knowledge-content — but the feeling-content of the Gnosis into the Middle Ages.
(The Legend of the Holy Grail contains an indication of this fact.)
Meanwhile the exoteric Gnosis, which penetrated into the intellectual soul, was ruthlessly exterminated.
161. Anthroposophy cannot be a revival of the Gnosis.
For the latter depended on the development of the sentient soul; while anthroposophy must evolve out of the consciousness soul, in the light of Michael's activity, a new understanding of Christ and of the world.
Gnosis was the way of knowledge preserved from ancient time — which, at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place, was best able to bring home this Mystery to human understanding.

Discussion

Note 1 - Pistis Sophia

Introduction

Pistis Sophia is an important Gnostic text, possibly from around 2nd century, written in Sahidic Coptic, the dialect of Upper Egypt. The work may be a translation and copy or original texts in Syriac or Greek. The work was first translated into English by the theosophist, G.R.S. Mead.

See source A (ISTA) or source B (internet archive PDF), many versions to be find online

Five remaining copies exist, which scholars place in the 5th or 6th centuries. The best-known of the five manuscripts is the Askew Codex purchased by the British Museum (now Library) in 1795 from collector Dr. Askew who discovered it in 1733. The Askew codex is made of parchment and contains 178 leaves [356 pages] and is largely intact in a state of excellent preservation, and with only 8 pages appearing to be missing from the text as a whole. Until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945, the Askew Codex was one of three codices that contained almost all of the gnostic writings that had survived the suppression of such literature, the other two codices being the Bruce Codex and the Berlin Codex.

The complex structures and hierarchies of heaven familiar in Gnostic teachings are revealed. It starts with an allegory paralleling the death and resurrection of Jesus, and describing the descent and ascent of the soul. After that it proceeds to describe important figures within the gnostic cosmology, and then finally lists 32 carnal desires to overcome before salvation is possible, overcoming all 32 constituting salvation.

The work is presented in a form of dialogues between Jesus and his disciples, mirroring a dialogue between the Divine Redeemer [Jesus] and the lost soul, sunk in sin and trapped in a material world [the disciples].

Through this dialogue, Pistis Sophia, a feminine entity cries for succour and release from her spiritual poverty, and her supplications are responded to by the Saviour. The female divinity of gnosticism is Sophia, a being with many aspects and names. She is sometimes identified with the Holy Spirit itself but, according to her various capacities, is also the Universal Mother, the Mother of the Living, the Holy Dove of the Spirit.

Her fall is explained through her having attained the knowledge and wisdom of sin, from an existence removed from the divine and within the world of matter, created by a materialist god, named by the Gnostics the “Demiurge.” Again this idea of a soul in torment, and a condemned material world of matter created by a foolish, lesser god are recurrent themes throughout Gnostic theology.

The teachings of Jesus through his dialogues following his resurrection are to explain how the soul might find salvation. The text itself is full of metaphors and ideology that will seem alien to the contemporary reader or audience rather than that for whom which it was originally conducted. Even taken together with existing knowledge of Gnosticism which still remains limited, and with more extensive knowledge and source material since the various discoveries made in the twentieth century, the tome continues to be a complicated and confusing theological work.

Literature on gnosticism

Aside from these primary sources, everything written about Gnosticism (before the Nag Hammadi library became available) is based on quotes, characterizations, and caricatures in the writings of the enemies of Gnosticism. They were highly condemning of Gnostic thought and teachings and presented an extraordinarily adverse portrait of the Gnostics, their teachers and their works, dismissing them as absurd, bizarre, and self-serving, an aberrant heresy from a proto-orthodox and orthodox Christian standpoint.

Related pages

References and further reading

C. W. King: 'The Gnostics and their remains, ancient and mediaeval' (1887)
George R.S. Mead: 'Pistis Sophia' (1896)
Jean Doresse (1917-2007)
- The Secret Book of the Egyptian Gnostics (1960 in EN)
- The Discovery of the Nag Hammadi Texts: A Firsthand Account of the Expedition That Shook the Foundations of Christianity (2005)
Hans Jonas: 'The Gnostic Religion' (1963)
Elaine Pagels: 'The Gnostic Gospels' (1989)

The Nag Hammadi Scriptures (The Revised and Updated Translation of Sacred Gnostic Texts Complete in One Volume) (2009)
Willis Barnstone, Marvin Meyer (editors): The Gnostic Bible: Revised and Expanded Edition (2009)
Alan Jacobs, Vrej Nersessian: The Gnostic Gospels (2016)

Internet links

more info on wikipedia:
- List of Gnostic texts
- Pistis Sophia
see also: echoesfromthegnosis.blogspot.com