Throughout recorded history, human beings have claimed to make contact with supernatural powers from beyond this world. In the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions these beings are known as angels. Angels play an enormously important role in these traditions. They help create the first human beings. They reveal sacred scriptures and help found…[Read more]

This article examines the impact of academic discourses on Neo-Gnosticism.

Social scientist of religion Peter Homans has demonstrated that symbolic loss, cultural memory, and modernization are tightly intertwined. As a consequence of modernization, Western culture has lost a shared relationship to the symbols of its Christian past, leading to religious mourning. This article demonstrates that the category gnosticism…[Read more]

Overview of the major trends and approaches to the study of ‘Gnosticism’ after the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Codices.

This article analyzes the reception of the ancient Gnostic archons, or rulers, in contemporary conspiracy theories. In the classical Gnostic myth these nefarious beings rule the cosmos, mold primordial matter into a prison for Adam and Eve, and blind the Elect to their divine nature. These archons send cataclysms to earth and serve as celestial…[Read more]