G. R. S. Mead and the Gnostic Quest

G. R. S. Mead and the Gnostic Quest
Author: Clare Goodrick-Clarke
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2005-08-10
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 9781556435720

George Robert Stowe Mead (1863-1933) was a major translator, editor, and commentator on Gnostic and hermetic literature and thus a pivotal figure linking the late 19th-century esoteric revival to 20th-century art, literature, and psychology. As a young convert to the new movement of theosophy, he served as private secretary to its co-founder, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and after founding the European section of the Theosophical Society edited its London journal, Lucifer, for many years. Mead's initial interest in theosophy and Hinduism soon blossomed into a lifelong and wide-ranging engagement with the texts of Gnosticism, neo-Platonism, and hermeticism. His editions and commentaries on previously inaccessible sources became standard works before the First World War and an important source of inspiration to such figures as Jung, Ezra Pound, Yeats, and Robert Duncan. A new entry in the Western Masters Series of concise biographies noting key figures in the Western esoteric tradition, G.R.S. Mead and the Gnostic Quest introduces Mead's life, works, and influences, combining a substantial biography with a collection of his most important writings.

Simon Magus

Simon Magus
Author: George Robert Stow Mead
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2020-09-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1465516387

Thrice-Greatest Hermes

Thrice-Greatest Hermes
Author: G. R. S. Mead
Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
Total Pages: 468
Release: 1906
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3849674819

This is the edition including all three books. The so-called Hermetic writings have been known to Christian writers for many centuries. The early church Fathers (Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria) quote them in defense of Christianity. Stobaeus collected fragments of them. The Humanists knew and valued them. They were studied in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in modern times have again been diligently examined by many scholars. G. R. S. Mead has issued a translation of the whole body of extant literature, with extended prolegomena, commentary, etc. There is a wide difference of opinion as to the date at which this literature was produced. Mead believes that some of the extant portions of it are at least as early as the earliest Christian writings, while von Christ assigns them to the third Christian century, and thinks that they show the influence of neo-Platonism. To affirm that they influenced New Testament usage would be hazardous, but they perhaps throw some light on the direction in which thought was moving in New Testament times.

A Mithriac Ritual

A Mithriac Ritual
Author: George Robert Stow Mead
Publisher:
Total Pages: 88
Release: 1907
Genre: Gnostic literature
ISBN:

Orpheus

Orpheus
Author: George Robert Stow Mead
Publisher:
Total Pages: 336
Release: 1896
Genre: Cults
ISBN:

The Search for Roots: C. G. Jung and the Tradition of Gnosis

The Search for Roots: C. G. Jung and the Tradition of Gnosis
Author: Alfred Ribi
Publisher: Gnosis Archive Books
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2013-07-31
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0615850626

The publication in 2009 of C. G. Jung's The Red Book: Liber Novus has initiated a broad reassessment of Jung’s place in cultural history. Among many revelations, the visionary events recorded in the Red Book reveal the foundation of Jung’s complex association with the Western tradition of Gnosis. In The Search for Roots, Alfred Ribi closely examines Jung’s life-long association with Gnostic tradition. Dr. Ribi knows C. G. Jung and his tradition from the ground up. He began his analytical training with Marie-Louise von Franz in 1963, and continued working closely with Dr. von Franz for the next 30 years. For over four decades he has been an analyst, lecturer and examiner of the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, where he also served as the Director of Studies. But even more importantly, early in his studies Dr. Ribi noted Jung’s underlying roots in Gnostic tradition, and he carefully followed those roots to their source. Alfred Ribi is unique in the Jungian analytical community for the careful scholarship and intellectual rigor he has brought to the study Gnosticism. In The Search for Roots, Ribi shows how a dialogue between Jungian and Gnostic studies can open new perspectives on the experiential nature of Gnosis, both ancient and modern. Creative engagement with Gnostic tradition broadens the imaginative scope of modern depth psychology and adds an essential context for understanding the voice of the soul emerging in our modern age. A Foreword by Lance Owens supplements this volume with a discussion of Jung's encounter with Gnostic tradition while composing his Red Book (Liber Novus). Dr. Owens delivers a fascinating and historically well-documented account of how Gnostic mythology entered into Jung's personal mythology in the Red Book. Gnostic mythology thereafter became for Jung a prototypical image of his individuation. Owens offers this conclusion: “In 1916 Jung had seemingly found the root of his myth and it was the myth of Gnosis. I see no evidence that this ever changed. Over the next forty years, he would proceed to construct an interpretive reading of the Gnostic tradition’s occult course across the Christian aeon: in Hermeticism, alchemy, Kabbalah, and Christian mysticism. In this vast hermeneutic enterprise, Jung was building a bridge across time, leading back to the foundation stone of classical Gnosticism. The bridge that led forward toward a new and coming aeon was footed on the stone rejected by the builders two thousand years ago.” Alfred Ribi's examination of Jung’s relationship with Gnostic tradition comes at an important time. Initially authored prior to the publication of Jung's Red Book, current release of this English edition offers a bridge between the past and the forthcoming understanding of Jung’s Gnostic roots.