Gnosticism

1. Judaic occultism originating in the pre-Christian period, influenced by Zoroastrian religion on its practical side, e.g. knowledge of the angelic worlds, and by neo-Platonic speculation on its theoretic side, e.g. number mysticism. Jewish gnosticism was closely allied with magic and with a Shamanistic technique for ascending through the heavenly palaces (Lekaloth).

2. Christian heterodoxies, primarily of the first three centuries, which claimed reception of the inner teachings (the esoteric tradition) of Jesus. Although externally the Christian Gnostics showed considerable borrowings from Hellenistic Judaism and Jewish gnosticism, there are untraceable essential teachings (e.g. Valentinian, Marcosian) whose origin lies most likely in Jesus himself, or in the circles around John the Baptist (cf. the Mandaeans). The Gnostic thesis that knowledge is salvation is echoed in the 'gnostic' Fourth Gospels of the New Testament.

3. A broad variety of religious and philosophical teachings that have purported to offer knowledge of the otherwise hidden truth of total reality as the indispensable key to man's salvation. The highly syncretistic origins of such teachings (including Jewish, Iranian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and other oriental material) masked a highly original inner unity of thought distinct from all the disparate historical elements employed in its representation. In a sense gnosticism culminated in Mani or in Islamic mysticism (Sufism).