Gnosis

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Avanzino Nucci: Peter's confrontation with Simon Magus (1620)
Simon Magus († 65 in Rome), already mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, is considered the first historically ascertainable Gnostic and the first heretic of the Church.

Gnosis (from Greek: γνῶσις gnōsis "knowledge"), often also called Gnosticism, is a very heterogeneous syncretic, largely esoteric, unworldly spiritual current that had its heyday in the late antique world of the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD and sought to combine ancient mystery knowledge with the philosophical thinking of antiquity and in many cases also with Christian thought. Rudolf Steiner names gnosis as one of the seven world-view moods and assigns it to the sphere of Saturn.

The spiritual background of gnosis

Neoplatonism, which was widespread at the time, had a great influence on the formulation of Gnostic teachings, as did parts of Aristotelian doctrine. There were Christian, Jewish, pagan and at the same time mostly strongly Hellenistic Gnostics who called themselves knowers and often referred to their own direct spiritual experiences. Like many ancient teachers, they did not publicly disseminate the occult core of their teachings, or only rarely. In many cases, Gnostic mysticism was also understood as mathesis, because it strove for spiritual knowledge with the same clarity of thought as mathematics.

Hans Jonas very aptly characterised the basic ideas of gnosis thus:

„Out of the mist of the beginnings of our age emerges a spectacle of mythical figures whose vast, superhuman outlines could populate the walls and ceiling of a second Sistine Chapel. Their countenances and gestures, the roles they occupy, the drama they enact would bring to light images different from the biblical ones with which the viewer's imagination has grown up, and yet they would be strangely familiar and disturbingly moving. The stage would be the same, the subject equally transcendent - the creation of the world, man's destiny, fall and redemption, the first things and the last. But how much more numerous would be the cast, how much more bizarre the symbolism and how much more extravagant the sentiments! Almost the entire plot would take place on a higher plane, in the divine realm or in that of angels or demons - a drama of pre-cosmic persons in the world of the supernatural, to which the drama of man in the natural world is but a distant echo. And yet that transcendent drama before all time, which finds its representation in the actions and passions of human-like figures, would be full of human appeal: Seduced divinity, restlessness stirring the blessed aeons, God's erring wisdom, Sophia becoming the victim of her own folly, straying into the emptiness and darkness of her own making, endlessly seeking, lamenting, suffering, repenting, birthing her passion into matter, her longing into the soul; a blind, haughty creator who thinks himself supreme and waves his sceptre over creation which, like himself, is a product of lack and ignorance; the soul trapped and lost in the labyrinth of the world, trying to escape but shrinking from the guards of the cosmic prison, the terrible archons; a saviour from the light beyond who ventures into the lower world, illuminates the darkness, opens a way and heals the divine injury: A story of light and darkness, knowledge and ignorance, serenity and passion, imagination and mercy - not on a human scale, but on that of eternal beings who are not immune to suffering and error.“

– Hans Jonas: Gnosis. The Message of the Alien God, p. 11f

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.

References

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