Charles William King

The Gnostics and their Remains Charles William King

The Gnostics and their Remains, by English lapidarist, classicist, and writer Charles William King, was originally published in 1887. This work by King, is an attempt to collate a picture of gnosticism from the known sources of the time: early Christian writers, the Pistis Sophia, and the jumble of images and cryptic inscriptions on Roman-era gems and amulets. Despite the patchy sources, King managed to assemble a picture of the Gnostics which is still cited today as authoritative. Showing that rather than being one monolithic group, the Gnostics had diverse beliefs. Some thought Jesus was a man, others believed he was a god, and some believed that he became a god after he was baptized. Some believed in Good and Evil, others were non-dualistic. The vast majority had widely-varying complex system of mediators between the ultimate deity and humanity. Which, prima facie, looks polytheistic, but was in fact an attempt to solve the problem of how a perfect God could create an imperfect world. Many of these intermediary Aeons, later becoming the demons and angels of Medieval and Renaissance magic.