Gnosis - The hidden religion of history
By Orlando Fedeli - Gnosis presents itself as a religion sometimes hidden, sometimes public, but maintaining unity and continuity in the course of history
Note from the translator: Image and headings are an addition to the original article made by this site.
With the fall of Marxism — what was already manifested here and there — spread (itself) throughout our skeptical twentieth century :a great explosion of mysticism.
(People were) only talking about horoscopes, tarot, Hinduism, homeopathy, alchemy, occultism, esotericism and all kinds of superstition (were) spreading. And even Marxist atheists began to display the slogan "I believe in elves" on their cars.
The phenomenon was so pervasive that the famous international magazine “30 Giorni” began to publish repeated articles on heretical mysticism and on Gnosis. And what was a scholarly affair became a widely publicized and universally admitted subject1.
It becomes very clear that Simone de Pètrement was right to conclude — while analyzing literature starting from Romanticism that is, starting from the French Revolution — “judging by our literature, we have entered a Gnostic age”2.
By saying gnostic movements we mean to refer to movements such as progressivism, positivism, marxism, psychoanalysis, communism, fascism and National Socialism (Nazism) 3
There is no lack of people who see in modern science itself reflections of ancient gnosis. For example, Jacques Lacarrière calls Einstein, Planck and Heisemberg “ces gnostiques de notre temps” 4.
Without implying that we endorse the conclusions of the work, it is interesting, however, to remember Fritjoff Capra's best seller — “The Tao of Physics” —, which intends to link all modern physics to Gnosticism.
We could cite many other authors. For the limits of an article, however, the facts, these scholars and the magazines of cultural dissemination are enough.
Distinguishing Gnosticism and Pantheism
When studying gnosis, one enters a labyrinth full of mists, trying to discover secrets that will lead to a mystery. It is not surprising that the subject lends itself to confusion.
It is therefore necessary to make distinctions. And a first is between pantheism and gnosis. The Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique by A. Vacant and E. Mangenot 5 cites pantheistic and gnostic doctrines without distinguishing between them. In its cast are from the Hindu religions, from Egypt, China and Chaldea, passing through Heraclitus and Parmenides together, by the Sufi Ibn Arabi, Campanela to Diderot, Kant, Novalis and the Romantics.
Now, pantheism is the doctrine that considers everything — including matter — is God. Gnosis, on the contrary, in almost all its systems condemns matter as an malign work.
Simplifying the problem, the intricacies of which cannot be examined within the limits of this article, it can be said that pantheism represents an optimistic current, while gnosis is pessimistic6 .
Pantheism is naturalistic, monistic and tends towards rationalism.
Gnosis is dualistic, anti-cosmic and anti-rationalist. But this is a distinction that should, in some cases, be nuanced, because some Gnostic systems are ambivalent, with respect to the material world, which is dialectically loved and hated at the same time7. On the other hand, there are pantheistic systems that admit the transformation of matter into spirit at the end of evolution8 .
For example, in Plotinus pantheistic system there is a clear tendency towards gnosis, although this Neoplatonic author even wrote a work against the Gnostics of his time.
It would also be convenient to say that pantheism is an anti-chamber for gnosis, a system reserved for spirits more inclined to proud mysticism than to sensualism.
Conceptualization of Gnosticism
To conceptualize gnosis, we could say that it intends to be "the knowledge of the unknowable".
Evidently, this conceptualization reveals a contradiction that is typical of gnosis. Knowing the unknowable is a conceptual and logical contradiction. But it so happens that gnosis repels intelligence and logic as deceitful. True knowledge would be intuitive, immediate and not discursive and logical.
Knowing the unknowable, in fact, means giving man the knowledge of God and evil, things that are impossible to understand. In fact, we cannot understand or know the very essence of God, which is an infinite and transcendent being, impossible to be grasped by our intellect. Nor can we understand evil and sin: evil as a being does not exist, and moral evil has no reason to justify it.
Thus, gnosis intends to offer man a natural knowledge that would put him in a position to understand — and therefore overcome — God, to understand evil, and, moreover, to know his most intimate nature, which would be divine.
Gnosis is then the religion that offers man the knowledge of good and evil.
Now, it is known that the tree of the forbidden fruit of Eden was exactly the tree of knowledge or knowledge of good and evil (Gen. II, 10). Thus, gnosis would have been Adam's temptation. Indeed, the serpent promised our first parents that if they ate the forbidden fruit, "they would be like gods, knowing good and evil" (Gen., III, 5). Adam and Eve's temptation was to become gods. This is the great temptation of man, who, driven by pride, like Lucifer, does not admit his finitude, does not accept his contingency.
This temptation is, in fact, an anti-metaphysical revolt. Now, this is another way of conceptualizing gnosis: an anti-metaphysical revolt.
The Recurrence of Gnosticism in History
If we admit this interpretation of the Adamic temptation, we will have to conclude that there is a continuity of gnosis in history. And this is what scholars observe: gnosis really presents itself as a religion sometimes hidden, sometimes public, but maintaining unity and continuity in the course of history.
Ladislao Mittner, when studying Protestant Pietism, a mystical and Gnostic sect originating from Jacob Boehme's treatises and founded by Spenner, links this sect to a single great Gnostic current existing in History.
To represent the unity of the Gnostic religious phenomenon, Mittner uses the very own and very cogent image of the karst river.
In the Carso, limestone region of the former Yugoslavia, there are rivers that suddenly disappear in the extremely permeable limestone soil and start to run underground, reappearing on the surface many kilometers further. Karst river is the one that appears and disappears, becoming visible or hidden in its course.
Mittner says that "it is almost impossible to distinguish Pietism from many other religious sects of the time. Single veins of the movement present karst phenomena: they appear, disappear, and then suddenly reappear beyond, without the identity of the vein being properly demonstrated." 9
Such is gnosis: in history, it is a religious phenomenon of the karst type.
This historical unity of gnosis through times and civilizations is confirmed by many authors. Dennis de Rougemont, for example, writes:
Closer to us than Plato and the Druids, a kind of mystical unity of the Indo-European world is drawn like a filigree in the background of the heresies of the Middle Ages. If we embrace the geographical and historical domain that goes from India to Britain , we see that a religion spread there, to be clear, in an underground way, since the third century of our era, syncretizing the whole of the myths of Day and Night as they had been elaborated initially in Persia, later in the secrets Gnostic and Orphic and it is the Manichean faith10
In turn, H. I. Marrou attests:
(...) in fact, gnosis and its pessimistic dualism express one of the deepest tendencies of the human spirit, one of the two or three fundamental options between which man must finally choose. Claude Tresmontant has well shown the permanence of the Gnostic temptation , constantly reappearing in different forms in Western thought in the course of its history in the Bogomils and Cathars of the Middle Ages, in Spinoza, Leibnitz, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel. One could continue this story beyond German Romanticism and into the present day: Simone Weil's fate is particularly significant; It was her neo-Gnosticism that finally stopped her on the threshold of the Church and her heritage was found in the historical work of her friend and disciple Simone de Pétrement 11
The theme, in addition to being fascinating and mysterious, is very current. We will return to it in order to inform our reader friends about the mists that enveloped our time after Vatican II and the end of Marxism.
Orlando Fedeli
cf. 30 Giorni Year VII, Feb. 1992, pag.54, article “Luther? Manichean Delusion” year V no.2, Feb. 1990, page 3. In this magazine, Cardinal de Lubac is quoted, for whom the spiritualist, mystical and gnostic current of Freemasonry prevails in today's culture.
Simone de Pètrement, “Le dualisme dans l'histoire de la philosophie et des religions: introduction a l'etude du dualisme platonicien, du gnosticisme et du manicheisme (la montagne sainte-genevieve)”, PUF, Paris, 1947, pg.347
Erich Voegelin, “II mito del Mondo Nuovo”, Rasconi Mildo, 1976, pag. 16
“Those gnostics of our times“… Jacques Lacarrière, “Les Gnostiques”, Gallimard, Paris, 1973, pág.78
Paris, Lib. Letourzey et Assé, 1932, verbete Pantheisme
cfr. R.P. Festugère, La Revèlation d’Hermes Trimegiste, Lib. Lecoffre J. Gabalda, Paris, 1954, 4 vols., especialmente o vol. III Les doctrines de l’âme pag. 73/83
cfr. Robert M. Grant, La gnose et les origines chretiènnes, Seuil, Paris, 1964, p.17
cfr. H.C. Puech, Position spirituelle et signification de Plotin, in En quête de la gnose, 2vol., Gallimard, Paris, p. 74/75
L. Mittner, Storia della Letteratura Tedesca - Dall Pietismo al Romanticismo, Einandi, Milão, 1964, p.40
Dennis de Rougemont, L’amour et I’Occident, Plon, Paris, 1939, p. 47
H. I. Marrou, preface of R.M. Grant, La gnose et les origines chretiènnes, Seuil, Paris, 1964, p.8.