The Gnosis Archive
Gnosticism is the teaching based on
Gnosis, the knowledge of transcendence arrived at
by way of interior, intuitive means. Although
Gnosticism thus rests on personal religious
experience, it is a mistake to assume all such
experience results in Gnostic recognitions. It is
nearer the truth to say that Gnosticism expresses
a specific religious experience, an experience
that does not lend itself to the language of
theology or philosophy, but which is instead
closely affinitized to, and expresses itself
through, the medium of myth. Indeed, one finds
that most Gnostic scriptures take the forms of
myths. The term “myth” should not here
be taken to mean “stories that are not
true”, but rather, that the truths embodied
in these myths are of a different order from the
dogmas of theology or the statements of
philosophy. http://www.webcom.com/~gnosis/welcome.html
