– The Tree of Gnosis: Gnostic Mythology from Early Christianity to Modern Nihilism (1992)
Then what is gnostic mythology?
Scholars of Gnosticism have a background in biblical philology and theology yet hardly know how anthropologists define myth and how they analyze it. Therefore, anytime the merely “dualistic” roots of gnostic myth are brought to their attention, they dismiss the matter by proudly asserting that, even if it may be true that gnostics “borrowed” some popular stories of creation, they made of them something quite superior and semiphilosophical. Yet one more question arises, which theologians tend to interpret rather naively in a perspective fortunately abandoned by anthropology: If something is “borrowed,” one must find a precise source. In other words, if gnostic myth is “borrowed” from “popular religion,” wherever and whenever this transmission may occur has to be precisely documented. Anthropologists, by contrast, recognized long ago that myth exists in innumerable variants that are transformations of one another and may originate quite indepedently in the operations of human minds in any setting. To this extent gnostic myth is a particular transformation that belongs to a vast series of myths known as “dualistic” (see chapter 1). The perennial and frustrating quest for establishing unequivocally the “origins” of gnostic myth is thus dismissed as redundant, since any transformation of myth has by definition a cognitive origin. A radical shift of emphasis from the “origins” of Western dualism to the system of Gnosis in itself has become necessary, and this book intends to effect it.
This perspective will help us understand that the first link in the chain of Western dualism, Gnosticism, is not a monolithic doctrine but simply a set of transformations belonging to a multidimensional, variable system that allows room for illimitable variation. This system is based on different inherited assumptions, stable though interpretable, of which the myth of the Book of Genesis seems to be the most common. (Clearly, as Birger Pearson noticed, this explains why Gnosticism shares so much with Judaism: the basic data come from the Torah, but the type of exegesis they are submitted to often runs contrary to the major assumptions of the Torah.)
But gnostics do not establish a real tradition, based on hermeneutical continuity, to the extent that they could be defined by “invariants.” As a matter of fact, any definition of Gnosticism by invariants is bound to be wrong, as based only on incomplete inference contradicted by whole sectors of data in our possession. Thus not all gnostics were anticosmic, encratite, or docetist; not all of them be]ieved in the Demiurge of this world or even that this world was evil, and not all of them believed in metensomatosis or reincarnation of the preexistent soul.
Yet if gnostics were free to believe everything and its contrary, why do we still maintain the existence of a phenomenon called Gnosticism? This book will show that the system of Western dualism starts from certain premises and has an undeniable existence in its logical dimension. I define as gnostic slices through this system, which are transformations of one another to the extent that the system itself allows them.
On a more general level, though, we have two good criteria that allow us to understand why, and to what extent, Gnosticism was revolutionary in its cultural setting. At this stage the selection of these criteria may seem arbitrary; later on, it will become quite apparent that they are central to the concerns of any culture. One is the criterion of ecosystemic intelligence-that is, the degree to which the universe in which we live can be attributed to an intelligent and good cause. The other one is the anthropic principle-that is, the affirmation of the commensurability and mutual link between human beings and the universe.
If we examine the most important cultural proposals present for consumption at the outset of the Christian era-Platonism, Judaism, and Christianity-we come to the conclusion that they share both the principle of ecosystemic intelligence (this universe is created by a good and highly intelligent cause and is basically good) and the anthropic princi ple, the proper fit of the universe to its human occupants. Yet Gnosticism rejects both of these principles: even when the gnostic Demiurge is fairly good, he remains inferior and ignorant, while human beings do not belong to this world. This position has been traditionally defined as pessimistic, yet it obviously represents an exceedingly radical form of acosmic optimism, for human beings belong to a higher and better world than this one. Hans Jonas seemed to point this out when he compared Gnosticism and existentialist philosophy, the latter being a rather naively excessive transformation of pessimism in so far as it does reject the anthropic principle but posits no consanguinity between humans and a better world. (According to existentialism, you are simply lost in a world where you do not belong; according to Gnosticism, you are lost in a lower realm as long as you ignore that you belong to a higher one.)
Compared with the major trends that define culture, Gnosticism is certainly a phenomenon of counterculture, and the situation remains more or less the same for all Western dualistic trends that will be analyzed here.
Pp. XIV-XV