THE INNER LIGHT OF
GNOSIS: A HISTORICAL
MEDITATION
WILLIS BARNSTONE1 he specific origin of gnosticism is unknown—and may be un-- knowable. It is unknown not because gnosticism sprang from
JL. nowhere and nothing. Indeed, we know approximately when and
where this dualistic movement of a god of light spirit and a god of dark mat-
ter began in antiquity, and also the names of the possible sources. But there
are deeply conflicting theses, ancient and modern, about the relevance of
these sources to the origin of the widespread and enduring global sect. The
story of the origin of most of the world's spiritual movements—Daoism,
Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism—is blurred in possibil-
ity, and reaches us more as legend than history. Even highly documented
early Christianity, born of two essential Jewish scriptures, the Old and New
Testaments, is steeped in the legends of the New Testament gospels, its core
source, that disguise rather than reveal historical probability. So the word is
still out on gnosticism. It has backers who speak of elements of Jewish, Chris-
tian, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, platonic, Alexandrian neoplatonic, and Egyptian
hermetic ancestry.
Is there one or are there multiple progenitors of gnosticism? While many
favor a multiple-source thesis, the diverse appearances of gnostic thought in
the Near East and Alexandria have enough commonality to suggest a unifying
spirit in the air, transcending sect, language, and geography. Two singular
ideas separate the dualistic gnostics from the old Greco-Roman theologies, Ju-
daism, and emerging Christianity: (1) an assumption of two divinities finding
their way into us—one of spirit and eternal light, the other of darkness and