What exactly does Gnosticism mean? Here is a working definition from Ean Begg's
Myth and Today's Consciousness:
In fact the orthodox Fathers of the Church found Gnosticism extermely hard to define, as it is more an attitude and an atmosphere than a specific body or doctrine. It is not a philosophy - the use of discursive reasoning in the investigation of being, knowledge and right conduct is quite alien to the interests of the Gnostics, who were, however great lovers of Wisdom. Neither is it a religion in the exoteric sense, in so far as is is not based on belief in a hypothetical divine principle or on subscription to a set of theoretical propositions. It is , rather, based on experimental knowledge, gnosis, of the transcendental, and should be seen as what Professor Quispel has called "the mythologisation of a Self-experience". It follows from this that there is no central institution or body of homogeneous doctrine that can be called Gnostic. The great Gnostic teachers were freelance speculative theologians and spiritual directors who, unencumbered by exterior dogmatic norms, developed their ideas in the direction that their own interests, qualifications and inspirations dictated, within a loose context that was patent of Christian interpretation....(p. 64).
I seek to begin a wide-ranging discussion concerning the interplay of depth psychology and Gnosticism. As Jung himself writes in "The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man":
...It for this reason that we have of today a psychology founded on experience, and not upon articles of faith or the postulates of any philosophical system. The very fact that we have such a psychology is to me symptomatic of a profound convulsion of spiritual life...
