Pistis Sophia

Pistis Sophia — G. R. S. Mead — Section 17

the chaos of Gnosticism still remains to a large extent in- tractable, refusing to submit to the ordering of even the most praiseworthy and painstaking industry. Nor is the reason of this ill-success mostly due to the paucity of material, but rather to the intrinsic difficulty of the subject itself, which is not only replete with the most involved mysticism, but also bound up with magic and mystery and occasionally sorcery of every kind. It is, therefore, not a matter of great surprise, when we remember the absolute disbelief of scholarship in magic of any kind, and the distaste of the present age for everything connected with mysticism, to find that no single writer on the subject, except perhaps King in a very feeble fashion, has really grappled with the problem. The point of view of the most liberal-minded scholars with regard to this tabooed subject may be seen from the remarks of Dr. Gaster, who would have magic trecxted after the fashion of folklore. The translator of The Sword of Moses in the second paragraph of his introduction (loc. sup. cit.) writes : " It is remarkable that we do not possess a good work, or exhaustive study, on the history and development of magic. It is true that we find allusions to it, and sometimes special chapters devoted to the charms and incantations and other super- stitious customs prevailing among various nations in books dealing with such nations. But a comprehensive study of magic is still a pious (or impious) wish." And, even were such a task attempted by some venturesome scholar, the result, we may venture to suggest, would at best be merely a guess-work compilation, and of no real value, unless the compiler in addition to his scholarship had not only a belief in but also a knowledge of the art. To treat of Gnosticism, then, in a really comprehensible manner, requires not only a writer who at least believes in the possibilities of magic, but also a mystic or at least one who is in sympathy with mysticism — a person difficult to find nowadays, when the very names of magic and mysticism evoke nothing but a smile of contempt and INTRODUCTION. XXlll