The Gnostics

In this brilliant and challenging book Jacques Lacarrière reconstructs the world of the Gnostics, known hitherto only from the partisan accounts of their enemies, the Christian Church Fathers.

A group of strange, courageous men and women who flourished on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean in the first centuries AD, the Gnostics saw God as the enemy of man, and life, thought, human and planetary destiny as part of a failed work, a structure flawed in all is parts, the creation of an evil and false god. This radical censure of all creation was accompanied, however, by an equally radical conviction that there exists in man a fire, a spark of consciousness, which can enable him to regain the higher and more perfect world of the true God. It was to this task that the Gnostics devoted themselves, choosing unorthodox paths that greatly scandalized their contemporaries.

With great insight, and in a style that is rich and stimulating, the author discusses their complex beliefs about the universe and its creation, describing the various sects, their masters and initiates, and the methods they chose–ranging from complete asceticism to total sexual licence–to escape man's alienation and the falsity of all his systems and institutions. Finally, he stresses the relevance of Gnostic beliefs for modern readers. As Lawrence Durrell remarks in his Preface: 'This essay is of a burning topicality to a world which is playing at Gnosticism. (...) Lacarrière has given us a Cuvier-like reconstruction of the great Gnostic refusal of the lie, and their refusal to share the world of that lie with its religious leaders. The courage of this despair is poetic in the highest degree and this splendid poem renders it full justice.'

Text: English, French (translation)