Forbidden Faith: The Gnostic Legacy from the Gospels to The Da Vinci Code - Richard Smoley [epub]

Richard Smoley, an expert in esoteric Christianity, traces the Gnostic legacy from its ancient roots in the Gospel of Thomas, discovered in Egypt; early 2nd-century Gnostic communities of the Roman Empire and the Manichaeans of Central Asia. He tracks how the Gnostic impulse was publicly repressed but survived underground in various forms of Christianity, surfacing again in the Middle Ages with the Cathars, a mysterious group of heretics who inspired the medieval tradition of courtly love but were then wiped out by the Inquisition. Since then, the Gnostic legacy has survived into the modern era with the help of Kabbalists, the Freemasonry of the founding fathers, William Blake's poetry, the intuitive insights of 19th-century Theosophists and the psychological work of C.G. Jung.

Throughout most of Christian history, Gnosticism was the "forbidden faith," and such condemnation by the Catholic Church might actually have served to endow the movement with glamour. But that explanation goes only so far. For the Gnostics to have such lasting appeal, it seems logical that they must offer solutions to some problems, solutions overlooked by mainstream religion. Forbidden Faith provides the enduring story and continuing legacy of those errant faithful who have had direct experiences of the divine that can't be explained by the official beliefs of the Church.