Gnostics are conventionally called representatives of early Christian sects common in the Hellenized territories. The Gnostics were in opposition to orthodox Christianity and gave birth to a number of original teachings.
What is the essence of Gnosticism
Unlike official Christianity, where salvation was associated with belonging to the correct church, the Gnostics believed that salvation comes as a result of communion with gnosis - a secret knowledge accessible only to initiates. Basically, the Gnostics used ordinary sacred texts, giving them their deep spiritual meaning. The main idea of Gnosticism is that the world is not the creation of a good god, but an evil demiurge who, with the help of his servants - archons, keeps souls in material slavery. With the help of prayers and ascetic practice, as well as studying holy books and studying with a mentor, the Gnostic acquires sacred knowledge - gnosis and is freed from the bondage of matter.
Different sects of the Gnostics understood the path of liberation in their own way. Some were strict ascetics, led a closed and chaste lifestyle, while others, on the contrary, indulged in wine drinking and ritual sex.
From the very beginning, the Gnostics were persecuted by the imperial, and then by the ecclesiastical authorities, since the doctrine of enslavement by matter and the path of liberation they proposed implied a struggle against the authorities as the spokesmen for the will of the archons. The teachings of the Gnostics are known mainly from the polemical works of the holy fathers who fought against this phenomenon.
Currents and Prophets of Gnosticism
The Gnostics considered their ancestor Simon the sorcerer, who is mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, where he is characterized as a negative character and a sorcerer - a rival of the Apostle Peter. The most famous teachers of early Gnosticism are considered to be Valentine and Basilides. They developed the doctrine of nature, demiurge and archons. Gnostics considered Christ the son of the true God, who came to show people the way to salvation from material bondage. During the reign of the church, the Gnostics already had their own religion - Manichaeism, which spread across the east and west in the form of all kinds of sects.
Almost nothing remained of the sacred books of the Gnostics themselves, since the church authorities destroyed and burned them, but some texts survived in the form of apocryphal - non-canonical sacred books.
All of them reflected the idea of material slavery of the spirit and denied the church authorities as servants and exponents of the will of the archons. Governments fought brutally against the Gnostics and exterminated them as Manicheans, Paulicians, Bogomils and Cathars. The Gnostics were burned and put to cruel executions. But the doctrine in a modified form formed the basis of the ideology of the Rosicrucians, serving the development of Freemasonry.