Why these two together
Two bodies of writing from the Roman Empire of the second to the fifth centuries stand behind much of later esoteric and mystical thought. The Gnostic texts are religious scriptures, most of them Christian in some sense, that promise salvation through gnosis, a revealed knowledge of the soul's divine origin. The Neoplatonic texts are works of philosophy in the school of Plato that describe the procession of all things from the One and the return of the soul to it.
The two were rivals. Plotinus wrote a treatise against the Gnostics. We treat them in one guide because later readers so often met them together, and because both are shelved in the same corner of the room.
Where to begin
For the Gnostics, read the Gospel of Thomas and the Hymn of the Pearl, then the Secret Book of John. For the Platonists, read Sallustius, On the Gods and the World, which is a pamphlet, and then the treatise On Beauty from the Enneads of Plotinus.
Gnostic texts known before 1945
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Against Heresies Irenaeus of Lyons. Greek, surviving complete only in Latin. About 180 CE. D 2
A bishop's refutation of "knowledge falsely so called", and until 1945 the main source for what the Gnostic teachers taught. Hostile, and often accurate, as the Nag Hammadi finds showed.
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Pistis Sophia Coptic. Manuscript of about the fourth century, known in Europe since the eighteenth. D 2
A long dialogue in which the risen Jesus instructs the disciples, with Mary Magdalene the chief questioner, on the fall and redemption of the heavenly being Sophia. G. R. S. Mead's English version of 1896 made it the best-known Gnostic text for half a century.
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The Hymn of the Pearl Syriac. Preserved in the Acts of Thomas. Second or third century CE. D 2
A prince is sent to Egypt to fetch a pearl guarded by a serpent, forgets who he is, and is awakened by a letter from home. The most beautiful short telling of the Gnostic story of the soul.
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The Gospel of Mary Coptic, from a Greek original of the second century. Found in a codex acquired in 1896 and published in 1955. D 2
Mary Magdalene comforts the disciples and relates a vision of the soul's ascent past hostile powers. Peter doubts that the Savior would have taught such things to a woman.
The Nag Hammadi library
In 1945 farmers digging near the town of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt found a sealed jar containing thirteen papyrus books, copied in Coptic about 350 CE. They hold some fifty-two tractates, most of them previously unknown. A complete English translation appeared in 1977. The find transformed the study of early Christianity and of Gnosticism, which could at last be read in its own words.
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The Gospel of Thomas Coptic, from a Greek original of the first or second century. D 2
One hundred and fourteen sayings of Jesus with almost no narrative. Some are familiar from the New Testament, and some are startlingly different.
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The Secret Book (Apocryphon) of John Coptic, from a Greek original of the second century. Four copies survive. D 2
The classic Gnostic myth: the unknowable Father, the unfolding of the divine realm, the error of Sophia, the ignorant creator Yaldabaoth who fashions the material world, and the awakening of the divine spark in humanity.
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The Gospel of Truth Coptic. Second century. Possibly by the Christian teacher Valentinus. D 2
A meditation, not a narrative. Ignorance of the Father is a nightmare from which the good news awakens the sleeper.
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Thunder, Perfect Mind Coptic. Date uncertain. D 2
A poem in the voice of a divine feminine power who names herself in paradoxes: first and last, honored and scorned, wife and virgin.
Studies of Gnosticism
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Fragments of a Faith Forgotten G. R. S. Mead. 1900. D 2
A sympathetic survey of everything then known, drawn from the heresiologists and the few Coptic texts available. Superseded as scholarship, valuable as a record of what readers knew before Nag Hammadi.
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The Gnostic Religion Hans Jonas. 1958. D 2
A philosophical portrait of Gnosticism as a religion of cosmic alienation. Written before the Nag Hammadi texts were generally available, and still the most compelling introduction to the Gnostic mood.
Plotinus and Porphyry
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The Enneads Plotinus. Greek. Written about 253 to 270 CE and arranged by Porphyry in six groups of nine. E 1
Fifty-four treatises on the One, the Intellect, the Soul, matter, evil, beauty, and the return of the soul to its source. Stephen MacKenna's English translation of 1917 to 1930 is a work of literature in its own right.
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The Life of Plotinus Porphyry. Greek. About 301 CE. E 1
Tells how Plotinus lived and wrote, and reports that he attained union with the One four times in the years Porphyry knew him.
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On the Cave of the Nymphs Porphyry. Greek. Later third century CE. E 1
Reads eleven lines of the Odyssey as an image of the soul's descent into birth and its return. A model of how the Platonists read myth.
Iamblichus and theurgy
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The Chaldean Oracles Greek hexameters. Second century CE. Fragments only. E 1
Verses said to have been delivered by the gods to Julian the Theurgist. The later Platonists revered them as revelation. What survives is a few hundred lines quoted by other writers, on the Father, the Paternal Intellect, Hecate as the World Soul, and the fiery ascent of the soul.
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On the Mysteries (De mysteriis) Iamblichus. Greek. About 300 CE. E 1
A reply, in the person of an Egyptian priest, to Porphyry's skeptical questions about ritual. It defends theurgy, "divine work": the gods are reached not by thinking alone but through rites that they themselves have given. The foundation of all later philosophical defenses of ritual. The familiar title was supplied by Marsilio Ficino.
The later Platonists
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On the Gods and the World Sallustius. Greek. About 362 CE. E 1
A brief catechism of late Pagan Platonism: what the gods are, why myths are told, what sacrifice does, and what becomes of souls. An ideal first text.
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Hymn to King Helios and Hymn to the Mother of the Gods The emperor Julian. Greek. 362 CE. E 1
Prose hymns by the last Pagan emperor of Rome, each written in a matter of nights, expounding the Sun and Cybele in the terms of Iamblichus.
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The Elements of Theology Proclus. Greek. Fifth century CE. E 1
Two hundred and eleven propositions, each with its proof, deriving the whole structure of reality from the One. The edition of E. R. Dodds, published in 1933, remains the standard.
Reception
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The Mystical Theology Attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite. Greek. About 500 CE. E 2
A Christian author writing under the name of Saint Paul's Athenian convert recast the system of Proclus as a theology of angels, sacraments, and divine darkness. Through him Neoplatonism entered Christian mysticism.
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The translations of Thomas Taylor English. 1780s to 1830s. E 1
Taylor, "the English Platonist", put Plato, Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, and the Orphic hymns into English, most of them for the first time, as a declared Pagan. His versions were read by the Romantic poets and later by Emerson.
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The Greeks and the Irrational E. R. Dodds. 1951. E 1
Lectures on the non-rational in Greek religion, with a famous appendix on theurgy.
Things to watch for
- "Gnosticism" is a modern word. It was coined in the seventeenth century. The ancient groups did not share one name or one doctrine, and scholars now debate whether the category should be used at all.
- Translations of translations. The Nag Hammadi texts are Coptic versions of lost Greek originals. Every English version is at two removes.
- "Neoplatonism" too. Plotinus and his successors called themselves Platonists. The prefix was added by modern historians.
- Theurgy is not sorcery. For Iamblichus it was a form of worship. Christian critics, and some modern writers, blur the difference.
On the shelves
Gnostic literature is shelved at the North Gate in class D 2, and the Platonists at the East Gate in class E 1. Related guides: Hermetic Literature and Mystical Classics.