"It is not the time of the creation in itself that disturbs us, nor is it the so-called fall or the time when mankind wandered the world between light and darkness. What disturbs us is what we suspect transpired in the time before time." Magister Amarantus Sodalitas Sanctum Seth Classical Gnosticism points to a path, which is not a path, but rather a path between the paths. It is a story told at the strike of the thirteenth hour on the mystical dial of the wise; from a mental position between truth and falsehood, reality and dream, in a spiritual place that unites all things in a point without a centre. The tradition, to which this book refers is based on Biblical stories of creation, the nature of God, how man came to live on earth, and how we may recapture what humanity lost. This tradition has a systematic enquiring approach to redemption. It thus relies on our own understanding and our own experiences to grasp it. This is the path called Gnosticism; Sethian Gnosticism.

This introduction to Gnosis by Christoph Markschies combines great clarity with immense learning.In his Introduction Markschies defines the term Gnosis and its relationship to 'Gnosticism', indicating why Gnosis is preferable and sketches out the main problems. He then treats the sources, both those in the church fathers and heresiologists, and the more recent Nag Hammadi finds. He goes on to discuss early forms of 'Gnosis' in antiquity, Jewish and Christian (New Testament) and the early Gnostics; the main representatives of Gnosis, especially Valentinus and Marcion; Manichaeism as the culmination and end-point of Gnosis; ancient communities of 'Gnostics'; and finally 'Gnosis' in antiquity and the present.There is a useful chronological table and an excellent select bibliography.

The use and appreciation of Scripture by the Manichaeans is a field of research with many unanswered questions. This study offers an investigation into the role of the Bible in the writings of the important Manichaean missionary Addas Adimantus (flor. ca. 250 CE), one of Mani's first disciples. A major part of the book is dedicated to the reconstruction of the contents of his Disputationes, in which writing Adimantus attempted to demonstrate that the Old and New Testaments are absolutely irreconcilable. The most important source in this connection is Augustine, who refuted a Latin translation of Adimantus work. A thorough analysis of the contents of the Disputationes brings to the fore that Adimantus was a Marcionite prior to his going over to Mani s church.

Ritual, magic, liturgy, and theurgy were central features of Gnosticism, and yet Gnostic practices remain understudied. This anthology is meant to fill in this gap and address more fully what the ancient Gnostics were doing. While previously we have studied the Gnostics as intellectuals in pursuit of metaphysical knowledge, the essays in this book attempt to understand the Gnostics as ecstatics striving after religious experience, as prophets seeking revelation, as mystics questing after the ultimate God, as healers attempting to care for the sick and diseased. These essays demonstrate that the Gnostics were not necessarily trendy intellectuals seeking epistomological certainities. They were after religious experiences that relied on practices. The book is organized comparatively in a history-of-religions approach with sections devoted to Initiatory, Recurrent, Therapeutic, Ecstatic, and Philosophic Practices. This book celebrates the brilliant career of Birger A. Pearson.

This book offers a new understanding of Sethianism and the origins of Gnosticism by examining the mythology in and social reality behind a group of texts to which certain leaders of the early church occasionally attached the label Ophite. In the unique Ophite mythology, which rewrites the Genesis paradise story and is attested, for example, in Irenaeus "Adversus haereses" 1.30, "The Apocryphon of John" and "On the Origin of the World," the snake s advice to eat of the tree of knowledge is considered positive, the creator and his angels are turned into demonic beasts and the true Godhead is presented as an androgynous heavenly projection of Adam and Eve. It is argued that Hans-Martin Schenke s influential model of the Sethian system only reveals part of a larger whole to which the Ophite material belongs as an important and organic component.

Derived from the Greek word for "knowledge" or "insight", a Gnostic is one who seeks direct experience of Divinity. Refuting the notion that no coherent set of Gnostic beliefs exists, this introduction reveals Gnosticism as the indigenous mystical tradition of the West and considers its message to Judeo-Christianity in the 21st century.

Scholars are divided on the number of gospels to which fragmentary Jewish-Christian gospel traditions should be attributed. In this book Gregory attributes them to two gospels: the Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Ebionites, with no need for any postulated Gospel of the Nazoraeans. As two distinct texts, each gospel is treated on its own terms, with its own introduction, followed by a text, translation and commentary on each fragment, and further discussion about what we may conclude about the overall character of the text on the basis of the fragments that survive. Yet they share certain common features that warrant them being treated together in one volume with an introduction that discusses certain critical issues that are relevant to them both. One common factor is the partial and indirect way in which these texts have been preserved. No independent manuscript tradition survives for either text, so they have been transmitted only to the extent that they were quoted or discussed by a number of early Christian authors, none of whom claims to be the author of the text from which he appears to quote or to which he appears to refer. This raises a number of questions of a literary nature about how excerpts from these texts may be interpreted. Another common factor is that these gospel traditions are usually referred to as Jewish-Christian, which may raise questions about their historical origins and theological outlook. Any judgment about the historical origins or theological nature of these gospels must rest upon prior examination of what may be reconstructed of their texts, and Gregory is careful to distinguish between what we may conclude from these gospels as texts and how they might contribute to our knowledge of early Christian history. The book also includes a number of appendices in which he discusses issues that have been prominent in the history of scholarship on these texts, but which he argues are not relevant to these two gospels as he presents them. These include claims about an original Hebrew gospel of Matthew, the postulated Gospel of the Nazoraeans and the so-called 'Jewish gospel', as well as what may be known about the Nazoraeans and the Ebionites.

Jeg baerer pa en hemmelighet. En fryktelig hemmelighet, som har rykket meg ut av meg selv. En grufull hemmelighet, som har isolert meg fra menneskene rundt meg. En forferdelig hemmelighet, som skal vederfares alt folket Jeg har levd mitt liv sa stilltiende som mulig, for ikke a vekke ham. Jeg har bestrebet meg pa et sa normalt liv som mulig, for ikke a terge ham. For sa lenge han sover, kan jeg leve i fred. Sa lenge han ikke vekkes, kan vi alle leve videre. Dog folger hennes stemme meg stadig, paminnende om min kunnskap. Hun sier det er min plikt a huske hans dunkle hemmelighet, for at ikke mennesket skal ga til grunne; for hans sovn vil ikke vare til evig tid. Hun er min muse, hun er erindringens stemme. Hun ber meg nedtegne den store beretning om Guds sanne natur..

"Kom til oss, du som torster etter virkelighetens vesen. Kom du, som lengter etter deg selv. Kom, bristens brodre og sonderbrutte sostre. Kom, dere som ingen hvile kan finne, og som ingen fred kan fa" Slik lyder invitasjonen fra 'Speculus' bok', en invitasjon til den gnostiske pilegrim pa uttrettelig vandring gjennom livet. I Porten presenteres et utvalg tekster fra den sethianske tekstsamlingen Charaxio. Dette utvalget gir et bredt innsyn i en rik og levende gnostisk tradisjon, bade for den som soker nye eksistensielle perspektiver, samt dem som soker en andelig erkjennelsesvei. Denne boken er et speil. I seg selv er den bare tekst, men din bakgrunn, dine meninger og erfaringer vil avgjore hva du finner mellom permene. For mens du leser, leser ogsa boken deg.

A long-awaited new edition of the seminal text on the spiritual system that is a convergence of Gnosticism and Haitian voodoo, The Voudon Gnostic Workbook is a singular sacred work that is comprehensive in scope -- from "how to be a lucky Hoodoo" to how magick and voodoo intersect energetically, to esoteric time travel. Complete with charts and graphs and instructive interdimensional physics, The Voudon Gnostic Workbook is an "object of desire" among students of the occult. Weiser's long-anticipated republication of this rare text will be an event in the annals of esoteric publishing, as the book itself is somewhat of an "unholy grail." There are listservers devoted to it and much discussion of the mysteries held within its pages. While The Voudon Gnostic Workbook has remained a controversial book considered important for masters of metaphysics, it recently came into popular culture and renewed popularity when Grant Morrison revealed it had been the inspiration for his cult comics The Invisibles, using the cribbed time travel from Bertiaux' s masterwork. Voodoo is not an evil religion and is much misunderstood. It derives from the Dahomean Gods called the "Loa." Esoteric voodoo is actually a highly practical procedure for leading us into making contact with the deepest levels of our being and most ancient modes of consciousness. Michael Bertiaux's Voudon Gnostic Workbook is the most comprehensive and illuminating contemporary book on the subject. Launched out of a correspondence course and series of classes for students and followers of Voudon Gnosticism and the OTO, this seminal text is at once one of the most mysterious and magnificent of all esoteric books.