The Mysteries of Gnosticism

Ancient Gnosticism encompasses a wide array of Mystical, Occult, & Early Christian Systems of QUITE Diverse Spiritual Philosophy, Cosmology, & beliefs dating back into the Pre-Christian Era and the Pagan Mystery Schools. A couple of Gnostic Systems still exist today having survived into the 21st Century and are to a degree thriving in select regions, with their continued existence being totally against all odds. Most Gnostic systems were utterly destroyed, their temples torn down, and almost the entirety of their recorded works burned by roaming Mobs of Christian fanatics. Theodosius the 2nd, one of the last Western Emperors of Ancient Rome, issued a set of decrees around 387AD effectively outlawing all forms of Gnosticism, Mithraism, and all non-Christian (Pagan) forms of worship. 

They were reclassified as illegal and further empowered fanatical Christians to root out non-believers, destroy the temples, & even to engage in essentially acts of mass murder or Gnostic genocide. Nearly all traces of these once robust and spiritually significant traditions were obliterated over the following centuries.  Many History Scholars today chronologically place the start of the Dark Ages at 415 AD, when a Prominent Alexandrian Gnostic Scholar named Hypatia was literally torn limb from limb and her bones obliterated to dust by a large fanatical mob of Christian peasants, incited to violence by Peter the Mad and Hypatia's rival Bishop Cyril of Alexandria. Thus began the long centuries of the Dark Ages during which most of the Gnostics and Initiates of mystery schools were hunted down and summarily executed. Much of their unique esoteric knowledge died out with them, though not all of it. Some initiates escaped carrying the Secret Flame of Occult Knowledge with them into the Far East where it resided hidden & guarded by Adepts for 15 centuries.