Gnosticism Quotes

“Gnosticism is a system of thought based on interior, psychospiritual experience. This being the case, it is not surprising that Gnosticism emphasizes states of mind and regards actions as secondary in nature and importance. Gnostics have always held that consciousness, rather than external action, is the true indicator of moral worth.”
― Stephan A. Hoeller, Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing

“Gnostics (and Buddhists) have often been labeled pessimists and world haters because of their willingness to look the dark face of the world in the eye. Yet, both of these traditions affirm that there is a way out of suffering and ignorance, and that this way out involves an essential, salvific change in consciousness.”
― Stephan A. Hoeller, Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing

“Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons, a fierce opponent of the Gnostics, attacked them for their spiritual and literary creativity, accusing them of producing a new gospel every day. Implicit in his statements was the view that where such a wealth of diverse imagery, myth, and teaching exists there can be no coherent doctrine equivalent to the dogma and canon of the mainstream Christian church. What critics from Irenaeus to contemporary scholars lose sight of is that Gnostic teaching is the direct result of the experience of gnosis.”
― Stephan A. Hoeller, Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing

“Among philosophical tendencies, existentialism owes much to Gnosticism, and today an increasing number of folk in many walks of life profess to being Gnostic.”
― Stephan A. Hoeller, Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing

“Gnosticism has always been difficult to define, largely because it is a system of thought based upon and frequently amended by experiences of nonordinary states of consciousness, and thus it is resistant to theological rigidity.”
― Stephan A. Hoeller, Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing

“One of the towering figures of the age of Enlightenment was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, known to this day in German-speaking lands as the poet of princes and prince of poets. Unlike Voltaire, he openly practiced esoteric disciplines, particularly alchemy. He wrote a famous verse about the Cathars, which translated says: “There were those who knew the Father. What became of them? Oh, they took them and burned them!” Goethe's chief work, of course, is his Faust. As noted in chapter 8, the figure of Faust was inspired by the image of the early Gnostic teacher Simon Magus, one of whose honorific names was Faustus. While in Christopher Marlowe's sixteenth-century play,”
― Stephan A. Hoeller, Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing

“man sows good wheat seed in his field, but later finds that an enemy has sown weeds among the wheat. When the workers ask if they should pull the weeds out, the farmer tells them to allow both wheat and weeds to grow until the time of the harvest, when the two can be more easily separated.”
― Stephan A. Hoeller, Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing

“According to Gnostic teaching, the world is a mixture of the seeds of light and of darkness. Though it is impossible to distinguish between them now, in the fullness of time they will separate naturally, as ordained.”
― Stephan A. Hoeller, Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing

“long as a person will not raise his or her consciousness beyond the physical world to higher, spiritual realities, the soul's enslavement in darkness—whether darkness in the outer, physical world or in”
― Stephan A. Hoeller, Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing

“Since the Gnostics—rather reasonably, it seems—could not believe that an erring pair of human ancestors could have brought about the innumerable evils and unpleasantries of the world, they were left with only one culprit: the Creator, God himself. The world did not fall, the Gnostics said; rather, it was imperfect from the start.”
― Stephan A. Hoeller, Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing

“In all instances, there occurs a significant altering of consciousness that transports the knower beyond the limitations of personal consciousness and, indeed, beyond the limitations of the very world we live in. Bloom aptly characterizes the principal disclosures of the experience of gnosis as (1) acquaintance with a God who is unknown to and remote from the world, a God in exile from a false creation and (2) recognition that one's deeper nature was no part of creation (or the Fall) but was and still is part of the fullness that is God. This God is more human and also more divine than any worshipped in the world.”
― Stephan A. Hoeller, Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing

“Marcion did not accept Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John as trustworthy, for he saw many corruptions, interpolations, and falsifications in them. And if Marcion was critical of the New Testament, he was downright hostile toward the Old Testament, even suggesting that it should not be included in the canon of the Christian church.”
― Stephan A. Hoeller, Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing

“To sum up, salvation to the Gnostic means not reconciliation with an angry God by way of the death of his son, but rather liberation from the stupor induced by earthly existence and an awakening by way of gnosis.”
― Stephan A. Hoeller, Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing

“The created world, including a major portion of the human mind, is seen as evil by the Gnostic primarily because it distracts consciousness away from knowledge of the Divine.”
― Stephan A. Hoeller, Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing

“implications of gnosis: What makes us free is the gnosis of who we were of what we have become of where we were of wherein we have been cast of whereto we are hastening of what we are being freed of what birth really is of what rebirth really is. (Excerpta de Theodoto)”
― Stephan A. Hoeller, Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing

“Historically and geographically speaking, Gnosticism developed at the same time and in the same places as early Christianity, with which it was, and remained, entwined—Palestine, Syria, Samaria, and Anatolia, and later, Ptolemaic Egypt.”
― Stephan A. Hoeller, Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing

“suggested that Gnosticism expressed a specific religious experience, which was frequently turned into a myth. . . . It seems clear that at least some of the major Gnostic systems were inspired by vivid emotions and personal experience. And it is now generally accepted that Gnosticism was not a philosophy, or even a Christian heresy, but a religion with its own specific views about God, the world, and man. (“Gnosticism,” in Cavendish, Man, Myth, and Magic 1115) And, we might add, Gnosticism is a religion replete with sacraments that liberate the soul.”
― Stephan A. Hoeller, Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing

“Gnostic teachings speak of the reality and power of evil and its fundamental presence throughout manifest existence. They declare that while we may not be able to rid the world or ourselves of evil, we may, and indeed will, rise above it through gnosis.”
― Stephan A. Hoeller, Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing