Gnosticism refers to a set of ancient religions prevalent in the Mediterranean in the third century CE. Prior to the 20th century, little was known about the various Gnostic movements, due to paucity of original material available to scholars and the public. Since the emergence of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945, and its translation into English and other modern languages in 1977, Gnosticism has undergone something of a rapid dissemination, and has as a result had observable influence on several modern figures, and upon modern Western culture in general. This article attempts to summarise those modern figures and movements that have been influenced by Gnosticism, both prior and subsequent to the Nag Hammadi discovery.

Scholars of Gnosticism and those influenced by it

There follows a list of those figures who are known to have undertaken a study of Gnosticism, and who have occasionally incorporated elements of Gnostic systems into their own work, or whose own work subsequently contains recognizably Gnostic traits. All figures and movements, as throughout the article, are organised alphabetically: individuals are organised by surname, while groups are organised by title. Thus, both "Jules Doinel" and "Ecclesia Gnostica" precede "René Guénon" in the listing. Where two or more figures are discussed (for example, in the case of co-authorship of a text), listing is based on the first surname alphabetically.

• Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, founder of Theosophy, wrote extensively on Gnostic ideas.
• Aleister Crowley's Thelema system is influenced by and thus bears major features in common with Gnosticism, especially in the requirement that adherants work to arrive at their own direct knowledge (or 'gnosis') of the divine (this is referred to in the Thelemic system as the 'Great Work'). There are several Thelemic Gnostic organizations, including Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica as an ecclesiastical body and Ordo Templi Orientis as an initiatory body.
• The philosopher Hans Jonas wrote extensively on Gnosticism, interpreting it from an existentialist viewpoint. For some time, his study The Gnostic Religion was widely held to be a pivotal work, and it is as a result of his efforts that the Syrian-Egyptian/Persian division of Gnosticism came to be widely used within the field.
• Carl Jung and his associate G.R.S. Mead worked on trying to understand and explain the Gnostic faith from a psychological standpoint. Jung's "analytical psychology" in many ways schematically mirrors ancient Gnostic mythology, particularly those of Valentinus and the 'classic' Gnostic doctrine described in most detail in the Apocryphon of John (see gnostic schools). Jung understands the emergence of the demiurge out of the original, unified monadic source of the spiritual universe by gradual stages to be analogous to (and a symbolic depiction of) the emergence of the ego from the unconscious.
  However, it is uncertain as to whether the similarities between Jung's psychological teachings and those of the gnostics are due to their sharing a "perennial philosophy", or whether Jung was unwittingly influenced by the Gnostics in the formation of his theories; although Jung's own 'gnostic hymn', the Septem Sermones ad Mortuos ('The Seven Sermons to the Dead'), would tend to imply the latter, the issue remains unresolved.
  Uncertain too are Jung's claims that the gnostics were aware of and intended psychological meaning or significance within their myths. On the other hand, what is known is that Jung and his ancient forebears disagreed on the ultimate goal of the individual: whereas the gnostics clearly sought a return to a supreme, other-worldly Godhead, Robert Segal, in a study of Jung, claimed that the eminent psychologist would have found the psychological goal of Gnosticism (that is, re-unification with the Pleroma, or the unknown God) to be psychically 'dangerous', as being a total identification with the unconscious. While Jungian individuation involves the addition of unconscious psychic tropes to consciousness in order to achieve a trans-conscious centre to the personality, this addition is not intended to take the form of a complete unconscious-identification. Thus, to contend that there is at least some disagreement between Jung and Gnosticism is at least supportable.
• Eric Voegelin identified a number of similarities between the characteristics of ancient Gnosticism and those of a number of modern political theories, particularly Communism and Nazism. He identifies the root of the Gnostic impulse as alienation, that is, a sense of disconnectedness with society and a belief that this lack of concord between the individual and the wider community is the result of the inherent disorderliness or even the evil of the world.
  This alienation has two effects. The first is the belief that the disorder of the world can be transcended by extraordinary insight, learning, or knowledge, called a 'Gnostic speculation' by Voegelin. The second is the desire to implement a policy to actualize the speculation, or, as Voegelin describes it, to "Immanentize the Eschaton": to
  
  
  
  create an, as it were, heaven on earth within history.
  The totalitarian impulse is derived from the alienation of the proponents of the policy from the rest of society. This leads to a desire to dominate (libido dominandi) which has its roots not just in the conviction of the imperative of the Gnostic's vision but also in his or her lack of concord with a large body of society. As a result, there is very little regard for the welfare of those in society who are impacted by the resulting politics, which may range from coercive to calamitous in nature(cf. Stalin's nostrum: "You have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet").
  This totalitarian impulse in modernism has been noted by Catholic writers, particularly in Henri de Lubac's work "The Drama of Atheist Humanism", which explores the connection between the totalitarian impulses of political Communism, Fascism and Positivism with their philosophical progenitors Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, Comte and Nietzsche. Indeed, Voegelin acknowledges his debt to this book in creating his seminal essay "Science, Politics, and Gnosticism".
  Evidence exists that later Voegelin came to regret the emphasis laid upon Gnosticism in his work, at the expense of not acknowledging other potentially negative influences on Western cultural and political development.
  Voegelin's identification of Gnosticism as being best defined as opposition to the world (what he called "the gnostic attitude") has been criticised, as it led to a tendency for him to find Gnosticism in almost anything. Thus, Voegelin saw Gnosticism as the preeminent western philosophy since the middle ages, and the greatest threat to decency on earth. In fact, it would seem that in seeing the negative influence of Gnosticism in everything, and by so urgently suggesting a return to fundamentals, Voegelin too was guilty of the "gnostic attitude," and was indeed trying to "immanentize the eschaton" himself.

There follows a list of those whose influence by Gnosticism is contested, or is otherwise as yet unproven conclusively either way; also those whose work bears a structural or thematic resemblance to Gnosticism.

• William Blake, the nineteenth century Romantic poet and artist, was according to Gilchrist, his biographer, well-versed in the doctrines of the Gnostics, and his own personal mythology contains many points of cohesion with several Gnostic mythemes (for example, the Blakean figure of Urizen bears many resemblances to the Gnostic Demiurge). However, efforts to dub Blake a "Gnostic" have been complicated by the complex nature and collosal extent of Blake's own mythology, and the variety of myths and themes that are referred to as "Gnostic"; thus, the exact relationship between Blake and the Gnostics remains a point of scholarly contention, though a comparison of the two often reveals intriguing points of correspondence.
• The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche appears to echo Gnostic ideas in his concept of the "eternal return", in which a demon condemns human subjects to live out their lives in endless repeating cycles; this appears to bear resemblance to the Gnostic Archons, which rule the world and impede the spirit's progression beyond it.

Modern gnostic 'revivals'

• Mar Didymos I of the has reinterpreted Gnosticism and the thomasine gospels from an Illuminist viewpoint. The method employed by clergy and initiates of the Thomasine Church involves the use of the scientific method and of critical thinking rather than dogmatism. Mar Didymos stresses the use of scientific theory or the use of a synthesis of well developed and verified hypotheses derived from empirical observation and deductive/indicative reasoning about factual data and tested through experimentation and peer review. The Thomasine Church describes this as antithetical in principle and method as compared to all of the existing modern Gnostic churches.
• After a series of visions and archival finds of Cathar-related documents, Jules Doinel "re-established" the Gnostic Church in the modern era. Founded on extant Cathar documents with a heavy influence of Valentinian cosmology, the church, officially established in the autumn of 1890 in Paris, France, consisted of modified Cathar rituals as sacraments, a clergy that was both male and female, and a close relationship with several esoteric initiatory orders (see for more information). The church eventually split into two opposing groups that were later reconciled under the leadership of Joanny Bricaud. Another splinter church with more occult leanings was established by Robert Ambelain around 1957, from which several other schisms have produced a multitude of distantly-related marginal groups, orientated towards the occult.
• In the United States there are several Gnostic churches with diverse lineages, one of which is the Ecclesia Gnostica, based primarily in Los Angeles, which is affiliated with the Gnostic Society, an organization dedicated to the study of Gnosticism. The current leader of both organizations is Stephan A. Hoeller who has also written extensively on Gnosticism and the occult. Parishes of the Ecclesia Gnostica and educational organizations affiliated with the Gnostic Society are active in Portland, Oregon, Seattle, West Virginia, Sedona, Arizona, Salt Lake City, Utah, and Oslo, Norway.
• The "traditionalist" René Guénon founded in 1909 the Gnostic review La Gnose. He believed in and throughout his works exposed the idea that modern thought, by its preference to the quantity more
  
  
  
  than to the quality, is the root of all evil aspects of modernity. The whole scientific enterprise would just be the beheaded relic of a lost Sacred Science. Modern technology and its realizations, worshipped by his contemporaries, would have been just a latter epiphany of the Kali Yuga (alias Dark Age), in a Cyclical Conception of Time.
• Mar Iohannes of the Apostolic Johannite Church is president of the North American College of Gnostic Bishops, a group dedicated to working together to promote Gnostic growth, while avoiding the production of dogma. The Apostolic Johannite Church is a bridge-building organisation with traditionally-styled rites, understood via a Gnostic interpretation.
• Samael Aun Weor commented extensively on the Pistis Sophia in his book The Pistis Sophia Unveiled, and founded International Gnostic Movement, one of the Occultist movements that claimed inheritance from ancient Gnosticism. A number of schisms in Samael Aun Weor's movement ensued shortly after his death; see the Gnostic Movement.

Gnosticism in popular culture

Gnosticism has seen something of a resurgence in popular culture in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This may be related, certainly, to the sudden availability of Gnostic texts to the reading public, following the emergence of the Nag Hammadi library.

Literature

• Harold Bloom explores Gnosticism in his novel The Flight to Lucifer: A Gnostic Fantasy, and, with William Golding, traces Gnosticism in American beliefs in The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation. Another work of Bloom's - Genius, in which he reviews one hundred literary figures and identifies their own peculiar genius - makes introductory reference to Gnosticism as "the religion of literature".
• Novelists Jorge Luis Borges and Emile Cioran both make reference to Gnosticism in their work.
• Dan Brown's bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code draws on Gnostic scriptures and modern re-interpretations of those works as well as a pseudohistory of Christian faiths along the lines of that presented in Holy Blood, Holy Grail.
• Several works of science fiction author Philip K. Dick draw on various Gnostic notions, especially his novels Valis and The Divine Invasion.
• The author and philospher Umberto Eco repeatedly indicates Gnostic influence, this being particularly apparent in two novels: Foucault's Pendulum and Baudolino. In the latter, one character describes the Gnostic creation myth at length.
• Anatole France's novel The Revolt of the Angels (La Revolte des Anges) weaves the story of an unhappy guardian angel and the doctrine of Yaldabaoth, to satiric effect.
• Gnosticism figures heavily in the Jesus Mysteries Thesis of Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy.
• Allen Ginsberg uses several Gnostic terms in his poem Plutonian Ode.
• In her book "The Secret Magdalene", the writer Ki Longfellow explores the birth of gnosticism in her novel treatment of the life of Mary Magdalene, as well as in the life of Jesus.
• Robert Charles Wilson's work has gnostic themes to it, particularly overt in his 1994 novel Mysterium.

Comics and illustrated narratives

• The universe detailed in Neil Gaiman's Sandman series is broadly gnostic in cosmological structure, detailing the existences of seven archetypal figures that, at various times, control human action (their designated areas of power are reflected in their titles): Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair, Delirium (who, at an unknown time in the past, was called Delight). These figures are likened to gods yet, being representative of human abstracts, ones that are not worshipped nor which are subject to the ebb and flow of belief; indeed, gods and goddesses from a wide variety of pantheons are acknowledged as their inferiors and, in some senses, subordinates. However, at the same time it is implied that the seven figures are intermediaries, acting on the behalf and at the behest of another, superior agency; though the exact identity of the figure that presides over them is ultimately unknown, it is implied that it is a primal creative force or God.
• In the Marvel Comics universe, the origins of Earth are described using gnostic mythemes, including the notion of a subordinate creator of the universe. This view of the creation of the earth was expounded in the back-up features of the 1989 annual editions of their comics, all part of the Atlantis Attacks crossover.
• Alan Moore, acclaimed writer of From Hell, Watchmen, V for Vendetta, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Promethea, converted to Gnosticism in the late 1990s. His work, typically of Gnostic interests, demonstrates a keen engagement with the often-ambivalent relationship between subject and reality, consciousness (especially altered and enlightened states of consciousness) and revolt against constrictive systems of control. In Watchmen, Moore appears to explore (or at least evoke) the concept of Voegelin's 'Immanentization of the Eschaton' through a central character in the series, who hatches a monstrous plot to save the world through the fabrication of an alien invasion. Promethea explores Gnostic issues even more directly, though the vehicle of Kabbalistic, alchemical and other esoteric framing devices.
• Grant Morrison's comic series The Invisibles draws on Gnostic mythemes (particularly those of Manicheanism), both in terms of overall structure and also through occasional direct reference. Morrison's other works, such as Animal Man and The Filth, also possess frequent moments of structural cohesion with Gnostic worldviews, though these make no direct reference.

Film and television

• Such films as Dark City, Pleasantville, The Matrix, Thirteenth Floor, The Truman Show, Twelve Monkeys, Groundhog Day and Vanilla Sky can be compared to Gnostic cosmological myth in the presentation of a world that is illusory, that is created with the intention to deceive or restrict its inhabitants, and that is not configured to humanity's benefit save through the illuminating realization of its falsehood. Ultimately, the key to unravelling the illusion and perceiving reality without obscuration resides in a form of self-knowledge or enlightenment (often this perception is concurrent to a 'return' to a material or extended reality that persists beyond the illusion).
• Hedwig and the Angry Inch makes reference to a pseudo-gnostic myth throughout; therein, the Gnostic reverence for the androgyne as symbolic of superior spiritual realities is contrasted with the protagonist's sexual and gender difficulties. Additionally, one of the main characters in the film is named 'Tommy Gnosis'.
• In the anime (movie and series) and manga Revolutionary Girl Utena, there are Gnostic themes and visual symbolism. Much focus of the film's focus is directed to the dichotomy between light and dark and the interplay between the two though, at its heart, it is a passionately post-modern fairy tale. The operation of the colour scheme and drives of the individual characters harkens towards the search for a "true will" similar to that presented in Aleister Crowley's Thelema doctrine.
• The popular science fiction show Stargate SG1 arguably demonstrated Gnostic elements in its later seasons, including the classical gnostic notion of evading or circumventing the constrictive material self in order to ascend to a higher state of existence. The parallels increased during the ninth season, with the introduction of the Ori, a race of ascended beings that, in order to prevent such an ascension, deceive and oppressing humanity; thus they fulfill much the same role as the archons, also present in much Gnostic doctrine.

Music

• In her book "Piece By Piece", the musician Tori Amos explores the influences and experiences in her life that have shaped her musical compositions. In the first two chapters she explores the Gnostic belief that Mary Magdalene wrote the fourth Gospel of the apostles; this research would have a profound impact on her subsequent 2005 album The Beekeeper.
• Musician Bill Nelson was interested in Gnosticism in the mid-1980s and his album Chance Encounters in the Garden of Lights includes songs with titles evocative of Gnostic concepts. The dedication of the album reads 'I offer this work to my fellow initiates as a testament to the Gnosis and a confirmation of The World Within'.
• The pop group The Police recorded a hit song in the 1980s which touched on the Gnostic concept 'Spirits in a Material World'.

Art

• The art of William Blake is arguably expressive of a world-view that finds several parallels with gnosticism. Though it would be incorrect to state that Blake consciously sought to depict gnostic themes, several of his mythic figures, such as Urizen (as he is presented in the famous Ancient of Days) find correspondents in Gnostic myth; one might also note Blake's distrust of materialism, as expressed in such paintings as his portrait of Newton and, less overtly, his illustrations to Dante's Divine Comedy. Of note is also his illustrations to the Book of Job.
• Artist Alex Grey frequently references Gnosticism in his work; he has, for example, painted a portrait of Sophia, a recurrent Gnostic figure, as part of his Sacred Mirrors series.

Computer, console and 'tabletop' games

• The computer role-playing games Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy X, Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, and Xenogears by Squaresoft as well as the Xenosaga series (now in the hands of an ex-Square team known as Monolith Soft) contain subtle Gnostic themes, if not outright , references to Gnostic myth (as in the case of Xenosaga).
• The MTV animated science fiction television series, Æon Flux, contains many Gnostic ideas.
• The Legacy of Kain series of games has many Gnostic elements, particularly in the character of the Elder God, as revealed in the most recent game in the series, Defiance.
• The role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons makes references to gnostic concepts in its supplemental books, such as the Book of Exalted Deeds, which details Pistis Sophia, an archon and a patron of the game's martial-arts-wielding monks. The same is also true of the alternate role-playing system Kult.
• The video game series Silent Hill presents several Gnostic mythemes, including the concept of the material world as Hell, in contrast to a superior, paradisial plane of existence.

Gnosticism in popular culture

• Emerson, John , a series of articles discussing the Gnostic influences upon the writings of Philip K. Dick.
• Flannery-Dailey, Frances & Rachel Wagner, , an essay on Gnostic and Buddhist influences on The Matrix.
• Klock, Geoff, , an essay discussing Gnostic influences on The X-Men