mysticism associated with medieval alchemy and with poets such as Thomas Traherne, Goethe, and the truly Gnostic William Blake, who, though he could only have had the slightest exposure to Gnostic ideas, could come up with a genuinely Gnostic system on his own.

    A unique survival are the Mandaeans, the sole surviving Gnostic religion, who may be traced back to the first century, and are now threatened as a side-effect of the current war in Iraq. Their scriptures contain full-blown Gnostic myths, their baptism rituals derive from first- and second-century Jewish baptisms, and they have survived for nearly two millennia as minority peoples, weathering the vicissitudes of religious and political change. They are the last of the ancient Gnostics, and even they may not survive as a people beyond the end of this century unless they receive support.

    The reemergence of Gnostic texts beginning at the end of the eighteenth century led to a revival of Gnosticism, and many modern Gnostic churches date themselves to the late nineteenth century—the “Gnostic Revival.” The advent of Theosophy in the second half of