Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times

Roelof van den Broek is Emeritus Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. He has also written The Myth of the Phoenix: According to Classical and Early Christian Traditions and Studies in Gnosticism and Alexandrian Christianity. Also at the University of Utrecht, Wouter J. Hanegraaff is a Research Fellow in the Study of Religions. He is the author of New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought.

• Preface1 Gnosticism and Hermetism in Antiquity: Two Roads to SalvationRoelofvan den Broek2 Gnostic and Hermetic EthicsJean Pierre Mahé3 Manichaeism: Its Sources and Influences on Western ChristianityJohannes van Oort4 A Christian Gnostic Text: The Gospel of TruthJan Helderman5 The Asclepius: From the Hermetic Lodge in Alexandria to the Greek Eucharist and the Roman MassGilles Quispel6 A Reading of the Discourse on the Ogdoad and the Ennead (Nag Hammadi Codex VI.6)Jean Pierre Mahé7 The Cathars: Medieval Gnostics?Roelof van den Broek8 Renaissance Hermeticism and the Concept of Western EsotericismAntoine Faivre9 Francesco Patrizi's Hermetic PhilosophyCees Leijenhorst10 Spiritual Alchemy: Interpreting Representative Texts and ImagesKaren Claire Voss11 Music and the Hermetic TraditionJoscelyn Godwin12 Hermeticism in Early RosicrucianismRoland Edighoffer13 Christian Theosophic Literature of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth CenturiesArthur Versluis14 Romanticism and the Esoteric ConnectionWouter J. Hanegraaff15 William Blake and His Gnostic MythsJos van Meurs16 Western Esoteric Schools in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth CenturiesDaniël van Egmond17 Stockhausen's Donnerstag aus Licht and GnosticismJoscelyn Godwin18 The New Age Movement and the Esoteric TraditionWouter J. HanegraaffList of ContributorsIndexes

"This collection presents in a clear and concise way a series of critical distinctions that collectively map the field: Hermetism, Gnosticism, gnosis, Manichaeism, Hermeticism, Catharism, Esotericism, Romanticism, and the New Age. These often confused and misperceived phenomena have been delineated crisply, in a way that permits this collection to serve nicely as a general introduction to the field. This book articulates a new standard of precision and clarity." — Dan Merkur, author of Gnosis: An Esoteric Tradition of Mystical Visions and Unions"This work meets the current demand for scholarly, empirico-historical research in what the editors rightly denominate the 'third current' (the others are biblical faith and Greek rationality) of Occidental thought, i.e., Western Esotericism."— Ralph Slotten, Dickinson College