The Gnosis
or ancient wisdom in the Christian Scriptures
by William Kingsland
![[ Gnosis Cover]](../images/gnosis2.gif)
This book is of extraordinary value in unearthing the real Christian message, as understood by the Gospel writers, at a time before the
church was turned into an organ of state. It becomes clear that the scriptures are not always to be taken literally as biographies of the life
of Christ but that they also contain allegorical and symbolical meaning as well. The figure of Christ that emerges is not so much one of a
suffering saviour, pouring out his life blood for the redemption of the world, but rather of a guide to the essential gnosis that the Kingdom
of Heaven lies within.
William Kingsland was a professor of Astronomy and a prominent figure in the Theosophical Society in the early years of this century. An original and powerful thinker, he wrote many books concerning Man, Science, Religion and Mysticism. His ideas and concerns were well ahead of their time. In Scientific Idealism, which was published in 1909 he anticipated many of the concerns expressed more recently in such books as The Dancing Wu Lei Masters and The Tao of Physics. His The Great Pyramid in Fact and Theory is a monumental work of esoteric research. The present work, The Gnosis or Ancient Wisdom in the Christian Scriptures was first published posthumously in 1937 under the auspices of the Kingsland Trust. It marked a return to his earlier preoccupation with the essence of Western Mysticism, first evidenced in The esoteric basis of Christianity that was published in 1895. Writing in the 1930s at the end of a long and productive life, Kingsland could not have anticipated the tremendous archaeological finds of the 1940s at Qumran on the Dead Sea and at Nag Hammadi in Egypt. These finds have added material force to the arguments he puts forward that Christianity, in its essence, has little to do with institutionalised religion but is about individual gnosis, or enlightenment.
Extract from the Introduction
'This work is written mainly for a class of readers and students who find themselves altogether out of touch with "Christianity" in any of its current doctrinal or sacerdotal forms, but who, notwithstanding this, have some more or less clear apprehension that behind these forms, and in the Christian Scriptures themselves, there lies a deep spiritual truth, a real Gnosis (Gr. knowledge) of Man's origin, nature and destiny which has simply been materialized by the Church in the traditional interpretation of those Scriptures based upon their literal acceptation....
...It is no part of my task in this work to set forth the numerous reasons which can be given for the rejection of the traditional beliefs which have hitherto constituted what is generally known as "Christianity". That rejection is becoming more and more in evidence as knowledge increases, whilst in the Church itself — using the term Church to cover all and every Christian community — we have the greatest possible differences of opinion regarding the truth of both "facts" and doctrines which for centuries have been regarded as the very foundation of the "Faith": e.g. miracles, the virgin birth, original sin, the atonement, the resurrection, the ascension, the second coming, the nature of the Eucharist, the clauses of the Athanasian and other Creeds. Concerning each and all of these, leading authorities in the Church itself are today hopelessly at variance, whilst very few professing lay Christians are aware to what extent the commonly received conceptions as to the origins of Christianity, based on the supposed veracity of the Gospel narratives, are in question to-day by those scholars who have made the closest study of the actual historical evidences.
But although I am not dealing directly with these controversies, one cannot ignore them altogether, and some references must be made to them. Moreover the correspondence of the Bible allegories with those of the earlier Mystery Cults, such as for example those of Orpheus and of Mithra, as also those of more ancient Egyptian and Aryan sources, implies some historical connection in origins; and although this is exceedingly obscure owing to the destruction by the early Church creed-makers of every particle of evidence of this connection which they could lay their hands on, many clues still remain to which some allusion can be made...
...It is my endeavour now to show how that supreme knowledge which I am referring to as the Ancient Wisdom or Gnosis is embodied in the Christian Scriptures, albeit sadly overlaid with "the precepts and doctrines of men."
I am not using the term Gnosis as applying merely to the tenets of certain Gnostic sects which were more or less in evidence in the early centuries of the Christian era, but I am using it in connection with a definite super-knowledge which can be traced back to the remotest ages and the oldest Scriptures of which we have any literary records, and which was taught by Initiates, Adepts and Masters of the Ancient Wisdom in the inner circles of those Mysteries and Mystery Cults which are known to have existed in Egypt and elsewhere, even in remotest times. That is the sense in which the term was originally understood. It is the mystic knowledge which effects regeneration, rebirth into the full consciousness of one's divine nature and powers as a "Son of God".
The Gnostic Sects of the early Christian centuries who were so virulently attacked by some of the dogma-making Church "Fathers", derived their teachings from these Mystery Cults, but at the same time many of them claimed the Christian Scriptures — though not the afterwards recognized canonical Books only — as an authority for their teachings.
(Kingsland now quotes from Smith and Wace, Dictionary of Christian Biography, vol.III)
"However much the Gnostics may have been indebted to heathen thought, they still wished and meant to be Christians, and indeed set up a claim to possess a deeper knowledge of Christian truth that the Psychici of the Church. Like their opponents they also appealed to Scripture in proof of their peculiar doctrines. Nay, it would even seem that the Gnostics were the first to make for that purpose a profitable appeal to the Scriptures of the New Testament. And besides this they also boasted to be in possession of genuine apostolical traditions, deriving their doctrines from Paul, others from St. Peter, and others again from Judas, Thomas, Philip, and Matthew. In addition, moreover, to the secret doctrine which they professed to have received by oral tradition, they appealed also to alleged writings of the apostles themselves or their disciples."
"We have no reason to think that the earliest Gnostics intended to found sects separated from the Church and called after their own names. Their disciples were to be Christians, only elevated above the rest as acquainted with deeper mysteries, and called "gnostikoi" because possessed of a Gnosis superior to the simple faith of the multitude".' (from the Introduction)