title: Binance

text: In April 2022, The Dutch central bank announced a €3.3m fine for Binance due to offering services within the Netherlands without being registered in the country. The fine was issued to the company after an official warning was issued to the company during August 2021.


title: Binance

text: In August 2022, India's Enforcement Directorate froze the assets of WazirX, an exchange owned by Binance, as part of a money laundering investigation. Following the event, CEO Zhao claimed that they never owned WazirX or owned any equity in Zanmai Labsthe operating entity of WazirXciting "a few issues" that prevented the completion of the acquisition. The co-founder of WazirX, Nischal Shetty, disputed Zhao's claims asserting that Binance had indeed acquired them.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (or simply Pinocchio) is a 2022 stop-motion animated musical fantasy film directed by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson (in his feature directorial debut) with a screenplay by del Toro and Patrick McHale from a story by del Toro and Matthew Robbins. Based on the 1883 Italian novel "The Adventures of Pinocchio" by Carlo Collodi, and strongly influenced by Gris Grimly's illustrations for a 2002 edition of the book, it reimagines the story of Pinocchio, a wooden puppet who comes to life as the son of his carver Geppetto, as "a story of love and disobedience as Pinocchio struggles to live up to his father's expectations, learning the true meaning of life" set in Fascist Italy during the interwar period and World War II. It stars the voices of Gregory Mann and David Bradley as the title character and Geppetto respectively, alongside Ewan McGregor, Burn Gorman, Ron Perlman, John Turturro, Finn Wolfhard, Cate Blanchett, Tim Blake Nelson, Christoph Waltz and Tilda Swinton.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: A long-time passion project for del Toro, who considers that no other character ever "had as deep of a personal connection to [him]" than Pinocchio, it was originally announced in 2008 aiming for a 2013 or 2014 release. However, the project went into development hell; in January 2017, McHale, creator of "Over the Garden Wall", was announced to co-write the script, but production was suspended in November 2017 as no studios were willing to provide financing. It was revived the following year after being acquired by Netflix.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: "Pinocchio" premiered at the BFI London Film Festival on October 15, 2022. It was released in select cinemas on November 9, 2022 and began streaming on Netflix on December 9. The film received critical acclaim, garnering praise for its animation, visuals, music, story, and voice performances. It received many awards and nominations, such as three nominations at the 80th Golden Globe Awards, including Best Animated Feature Film.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: In Italy during the Great War, the carpenter Geppetto loses his son, Carlo, during an inadvertent aerial bombardment by Austrian forces. Geppetto honours his memory by planting a pine cone near his grave and spends the next twenty years mourning his loss.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: An anthropomorphic cricket named Sebastian J. Cricket takes up residence in the resulting pine tree. Geppetto subsequently cuts the tree down in a fit of drunken rage in order to make a new son out of its wood. He passes out drunk, leaving the puppet unfinished, and a blue Wood Sprite brings it to life, christening him Pinocchio. The Sprite meets Sebastian and promises to grant him a wish, which he intends to use to become famous, in exchange for acting as Pinocchio's guide.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: Geppetto later discovers that Pinocchio is alive and is not willing to have him as a son. Geppetto then locks him in a closet while he goes to church, but Pinocchio follows him, frightening the villagers. The next day, Geppetto sends Pinocchio to school, but the puppet is intercepted by a man and his performing monkey, aristocrat-turned-showman Count Volpe and Spazzatura, respectively.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: Count Volpe convinces Pinocchio to join his circus and gets him to sign a contract. After Geppetto arrives to take him home, he and Volpe have a tug-of-war that results in Pinocchio being thrown to the road, where he is hit by a car. Due to this, Pinocchio is sent to the afterlife where he meets the Black Rabbits. He is then sent through the doors to meet Death, the sister of the Wood Sprite. She explains to Pinocchio that he is immortal, and that he will return to the mortal realm once an hourglass has emptied, cautioning that the time he spends in the afterlife will increase each time he returns.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: Returning to the mortal realm, Pinocchio decides to join Volpe's circus, both to earn money for Geppetto and to avoid being conscripted into the "Regio Esercito" (Italian Royal Army) during the Second World War by the strict village "Podestà". When Sebastian and Geppetto search for Pinocchio at sea, they are swallowed by a giant sea monster. During one of his performances, Pinocchio sings a disparaging parody of a patriotic song to Benito Mussolini as revenge for Volpe's abuse and is summarily executed.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: Once revived, Pinocchio finds himself taken by the "Podestà" to a training camp where other small boys are trained to fight in the war. Pinocchio befriends the "Podestà"'s son, Candlewick, who is scared of disappointing his father and being seen as weak. Per Pinocchio's advice, Candlewick stands up to his father, but the training camp gets bombed by enemy aircraft, killing the "Podestà". The blast of the bomb causes Pinocchio to be thrown into the air.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: Pinocchio manages to escape and is captured by Volpe, who tries to burn him in revenge, but is stopped by an enraged Spazzatura. They are sent over a cliff and Volpe falls to his death, while Pinocchio rescues Spazzatura. Soon after, they are swallowed by the sea monster and reunite with Geppetto and Sebastian in its stomach. Pinocchio lies to make his nose grow, thus forming a bridge leading out of the monster's blowhole. Just as they escape, the monster attempts to eat them again, causing Pinocchio to sacrifice himself by detonating a naval mine that the monster is in the process of swallowing. Upon meeting Death again, Pinocchio demands to be sent back early so that he can save Gepetto from drowning, despite the fact that this will make him mortal. After rescuing Geppetto, Pinocchio dies, prompting Sebastian to use his wish to bring Pinocchio back to life, which the Wood Sprite grants.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: Pinocchio and the others return home to live as a family. However, Pinocchio outlives all of his loved ones. Ultimately alone, Pinocchio decides to travel to parts unknown for new adventures.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: In 2008, Guillermo del Toro announced that his next project, a darker adaptation of the Italian novel "The Adventures of Pinocchio", was in development. He has called "Pinocchio" his "passion project", stating: "No art form has influenced my life and my work more than animation, and no single character in history has had as deep of a personal connection to me as Pinocchio", and "I've wanted to make this movie for as long as I can remember". When he was a child, del Toro saw and liked the classic 1940 Disney animated film adaptation in Guadalajara, Mexico, partially because he felt it like a "horror movie" in its own way due to a few intense moments it included. Since his teen years, he had longed to make his own version of the story. In 2003, del Toro discovered Gris Grimly's illustrations for the 2002 edition of Collodi's book, portraying Pinocchio as a puppet with a long, pointed nose and spindly limbs, with gestures that del Toro felt captured the energy of an unruly but otherwise goodhearted puppet. He concluded that Grimly's illustrations reflected the setting he had in mind for his own, more somber version of Carlo Collodi's tale.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: On February 17, 2011, it was announced that Grimly and Mark Gustafson would co-direct a stop-motion animated "Pinocchio" film written by del Toro and his long-time collaborator Matthew Robbins, and that it would be visually based by Grimly's designs. Del Toro would produce the film along with The Jim Henson Company and Pathé. Grimly devised Pinocchio's look for the film, depicting him as unfinished wood. Though Grimly was initially set to direct the film and del Toro was set to produce it, on May 17, 2012, del Toro took over as director. He then teamed up with Gustafson, a stop-motion veteran who had experience in similar stop-motion features like "Fantastic Mr. Fox" (2009), to assist him in achieving his ambitious vision for the project. In February 2012, del Toro released some concept art of Pinocchio, Geppetto, the Talking Cricket, Mangiafuoco, the Fox and the Cat. On July 30, 2012, it was announced that the film would be produced and animated by ShadowMachine. It was originally scheduled to be released in 2013 or 2014, but went into development hell, with no further information forthcoming about it for years.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: On January 23, 2017, "Over the Garden Wall" (2014) creator Patrick McHale was announced to co-write the script with del Toro. On August 31, 2017, del Toro told IndieWire and at the 74th Venice International Film Festival that the film would need a budget increase of $35 million or it would be cancelled. On November 8, 2017, he reported that the project was not happening because no studios were willing to finance it. At one point, Matthew Robbins considered making a 2D-animated version of the film with French artist Joann Sfar to bring the costs down, but del Toro decided that it had to be stop-motion, even if the higher budget made it harder to get it greenlit. On October 22, 2018, it was announced that the film had been revived, with Netflix acquiring it, and Pathé no longer involved.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: Almost all the years of development were spent by del Toro and Gustafson defining the designs for the principal characters, basing them on either Grimsly's designs or letting del Toro's frequent collaborator Guy Davis, who joined the project as co-production designer with "The Boxtrolls" (2014) and "Isle of Dogs" (2018) art director Curt Enderle, to design them. They then turned the animation models to England's Mackinnon & Saunders stop-motion puppet firm, which are considered by del Toro as the "best in the world", and they fabricated the designs of Pinocchio, Gepetto, Sebastian J. Cricket, Count Volpe and Spazzatura the Monkey. The antagonist Count Volpe is a combination of Mangiafuoco and the Fox from the original story. Mangiafuoco was originally supposed to appear in the movie as an antagonist, but he was removed halfway through production as del Toro disliked the character and thought he was a cliché; as a character model had already been made for Mangiafuoco, to not waste the model, Mangiafuoco's original design was used as a background character for Volpe's circus. The Cat, who was shown in a concept art, was replaced by Spazzatura, while the Land of Toys was replaced with an Italian kids training camp.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: Guillermo del Toro always found himself intrigued at the similarities between Carlo Collodi's "The Adventures of Pinocchio" and Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein": both stories tell how a "child" is thrown into the real world and are brought to life by a father who expects them to figure out by themselves essential values such as the difference between good and bad, morals, ethics, love and life; in other words, the ideas that make people humans, themes that del Toro felt that reminded him of his childhood. The "Frankenstein" comparison partly inspired del Toro to give his "Pinocchio" take a gothic direction, but the film was always crafted to be family friendly so he could connect across generations and bring them out a sense of compassion, a lesson del Toro feels that it's necessary for kids who are demanded tremendous complexity nowadays.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: In del Toro's "Pinocchio", the title character's wood is carved from a tree that grows over the grave of Carlo, Gepetto's son, leading Pinocchio to give his grief-blinded father another chance at fatherhood after Gepetto wishes for another chance to be a parent. However, Pinocchio is rowdy, exuberant and wild, in contrast to the well-behaved and docile Carlo. Another change of characterization comes from Sebastian J. Cricket, the Talking Cricket, who egotistically annoys Pinocchio with his self-importance in an attempt to be his conscience, but Pinocchio eventually makes him realize that he actually has to learn to behave himself and discover love and humility. Akin to the original book, Cricket gets killed across the film, but comes back anyway to fulfill his character arc. Along with Pinocchio and Sebastian, the Wood Sprite is one of the three magical creatures in the story, as del Toro didn't wish for magical creatures to appear in his film, not wishing for characters such as the Fox and the Cat or the donkey-transforming Land of the Toys, desiring more realism closer to real life. For the film's villains, del Toro created the character of Count Volpe as an homage and amalgation of the Fox and the Cat and Mangiafuoco as well while for the donkey transforming subplot, The Coachman is replaced by the Podestà, a Fascist official who wishes to recruit Pinocchio into Italy's armed forces to fight against their enemies and ensure a soldier like him cannot be killed. Candlewick's characterization also changes into that of a bully who eventually redeems himself.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: Instead of a fairy tale setting like most versions of the story, the film's plot takes place in Fascist Italy around the 1930s, between World War I and World War II, during the rise of the Italian fascism and Benito Mussolini's authoritarian Italian rule. Hence, Pinocchio comes to life in a political environment where citizens behave like "obedient puppets", but Pinocchio doesn't imitate everyone, given his virtue for "disobeying". This change of setting fascinated Gustafson, finding strangely alluring the notion of a creation that comes fresh and unaware of consequences to the world only to realize how it works against the backdrop of Fascist Italy, and was conceived by del Toro, who felt to be important how in a world where everyone behaves like puppets, Pinocchio is the only one who chooses to be disobedient, refusing to abide to the rules either when coming across Mussolini himself and even when meeting with the Death in limbo, enabling Pinocchio to find his own mortality, soul and humanity. In another deviation from most "Pinocchio" versions, feeling that the original book sought the domestication of a child's soul in a way that del Toro perceives as blind obedience, del Toro identified Pinocchio's virtue to be the act of disobeying, assuming that while the book seems to favor that kids should obey their parents and be good, his movie focuses more on discovering yourself and deciding what commandments given to you are acceptable or not. In del Toro's words, the film consists on numerous variations of father-son relationships, such as Gepetto initially refusing to accept Pinocchio as Carlo's replacement, feeling a bit of blame for creating the "freakish monster" the town hates.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: A common "Pinocchio" plot point in most cinematic versions of the story have Pinocchio becoming a real boy at the end, but del Toro's "Pinocchio" counters that subplot due to his essential feelings that someone just needs to behave as a human to be treated as one, never actually believing that Pinocchio would gain his father's love by becoming a flesh-and-blood boy. As a kid, del Toro couldn't accept the original story's apparent aesop that Pinocchio had to physically change to be loved by his father, hence his decision to have his Pinocchio not turn into a real boy nor being interested in becoming so, instead emphasizing Geppetto's journey of accept Pinocchio for who he is and loving him fiercely as he did with Carlo, something that reminded del Toro of his relationship with his father Federico.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: In assembling the film's cast, del Toro and Gustafson chose multiple Oscar winners and gifted performers with past creative ties with the former. On January 31, 2020, it was announced Ron Perlman, Tilda Swinton, Ewan McGregor, Christoph Waltz and David Bradley had joined the cast of the film. Daniel Radcliffe, Tom Waits and Christopher Walken were previously considered. Radcliffe would later instead remain as executive producer of the movie. Bradley was chiefly chosen due to his past collaborations with del Toro in "The Strain" and in Netflix's "". He felt his role as Geppetto was a "real emotion rollercoaster" of a part, feeling it to resemble more "King Lear" than the "Pinocchio" story he had heard as a kid.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: On August 19, 2020, Gregory Mann, Cate Blanchett, Tim Blake Nelson, Finn Wolfhard, John Turturro and Burn Gorman joined the cast of the film. For Pinocchio, del Toro sought a child actor who sounded like a normal kid instead of a cute one, which led him to cast Mann due to his phenomenal vocal range that made him sound natural yet absolutely emotional. Mann's vocal performance as the title character gave him a "silly and sunny" personality who longs to learn about the world and meet everyone, but given how he was created with the wood of the tree next to Carlo's grave, his roots are somewhat sad.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: Filming commenced in Guadalajara, Mexico and Portland, Oregon by January 31, 2020. The afterlife sequences and the end credits scene were animated by studio El Taller de Chucho in Guadalajara.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: The film's production quality was formed through the ornate detail of the sets and characters with their own textures in order to reinterpret Collodi's work in a way that differed from the Disney animated version. Del Toro told "Vanity Fair": "I have been very vocal about my admiration and my great, great love for Disney all my life, but that is an impulse that actually makes me move away from that version. I think it is a pinnacle of Disney animation. It’s done in the most beautiful, hand-drawn 2D animation". He saw as "beautiful" the idea of using puppets to create a movie about a puppet, while pushing the boundaries of stop-motion as much as possible to create a "heartfelt" movie any audience could watch. Moving Picture Company worked on the visual effects, with Bot VFX and Mist VFX.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: On January 8, 2020, Alexandre Desplat started composing the film's score and original songs. It is Desplat's and del Toro's second collaboration, after "The Shape of Water". Roeban Katz was the lyricist. On August 23, 2012, Nick Cave was attached to compose the score, but he was replaced by Desplat eight years later.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: In November 2018, Netflix set the film's release date for 2021. In January 2021, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos revealed that the release could be moved to 2022 or later, with Netflix's notion of releasing six animated films a year. In December 2021, del Toro stated it will be released in the last quarter of 2022. In January and July 2022, with the release of the film's scrapped prologue, it was announced for a December release.


title: Pinocchio (2022 animated film)

text: "Pinocchio" premiered at the BFI London Film Festival on October 15, 2022. It debuted in the United States at the 2022 AFI Fest on November 5, 2022. It was released in select cinemas on November 9, 2022, and began streaming on Netflix on December 9, 2022. One of the theatres scheduled to show the film on November 11, 2022 was the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto, Ontario.


title: Rebecca Romijn

text: Rebecca Alie O'Connell (née Romijn [ ; ], born November 6, 1972) is an American actress and former model. She is known for her role as Mystique in the original trilogy (2000–2006) of the "X-Men" film series, as Joan from "The Punisher" (2004) (both based on Marvel Comics), the dual roles of Laure Ash and Lily Watts in "Femme Fatale" (2002), and Number One on "" (2019) and "" (2022present). She has also had a recurring role as Alexis Meade on the television series "Ugly Betty". Her other major roles include Eve Baird on the TNT series "The Librarians", voicing Lois Lane in the DC Animated Movie Universe, and as the host of the reality competition show "Skin Wars".


title: Rebecca Romijn

text: Romijn was born in Berkeley, California. Her mother, Elizabeth Romijn (née Kuizenga), is a community college instructor of English as a Second Language (ESL) and textbook author. Rebecca's father, Jaap Romijn, is a custom furniture maker. Her father is a native of Barneveld, the Netherlands, while her mother is an American of Dutch and English ancestry. Her mother met Rebecca's father as a teenager while living in the Netherlands on a student exchange program. Romijn's maternal grandfather, Henry Bernard Kuizenga, was a Presbyterian minister and seminary professor.


title: Rebecca Romijn

text: On "The Ellen DeGeneres Show", when questioned about always being glamorous and beautiful, Romijn revealed that in her early teens she was an insecure "drama geek" and that, as a result of her growth spurt, she suffered from scoliosis and was in constant pain. Many sources say that she was once nicknamed the "Jolly Blonde Giant" because of her height, but she has admitted to making that up "for a laugh". While studying music (voice) at the University of California, Santa Cruz, she became involved with fashion modeling and eventually moved to Paris, where she lived for more than three years.


title: Rebecca Romijn

text: Among other jobs, Romijn started her modeling career in 1991. She has appeared on the covers of American, French, Spanish, Russian and Swedish editions of "Elle", "Marie Claire", American, Italian, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Russian, Greek, and Mexican editions of "Cosmopolitan", Allure", Glamour", "GQ", "Esquire", and "Sports Illustrated".


title: Rebecca Romijn

text: She has appeared in advertising campaigns for Escada, Christian Dior, La Perla, Tommy Hilfiger, Furla, Liz Claiborne, J. Crew, Victoria's Secret, bebe, La Senza, Dillard's, Pantene, Got Milk?, Miller Lite, and Maybelline. She has walked for Giorgio Armani, Sonia Rykiel, and Anna Molinari along with the likes of Claudia Schiffer, Stephanie Seymour, Karen Mulder, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford, Helena Christensen and Christy Turlington. She was also the host of MTV's "House of Style" from 1998 to 2000. Romijn has been featured numerous times in annual lists of the world's most beautiful women by publications such as "Maxim" (2003–2007), AskMen.com (2001–2003, 2005–2006), and "FHM" (2000–2005). She appeared as a guest in the animated talk show "Space Ghost Coast to Coast" episode "Chinatown".


title: Rebecca Romijn

text: In 2000's "X-Men", Romijn had her first major movie role as Mystique; she returned to the role in 2003's sequel "X2" and for "" (2006). In these films, her costume consisted of blue makeup and some strategically placed prosthetics on her otherwise nude body. In "X2" she shows up in a bar in one scene in her "normal" look and in "X-Men: The Last Stand", as a dark-haired "de-powered" Mystique. The role has since been recast with Jennifer Lawrence playing the younger version of the character. She had her first leading role in Brian De Palma's "Femme Fatale" (2002). She also has starred in movies such as "Rollerball", "The Punisher" playing a woman named Joan (Joan and Mystique are both characters from Marvel Comics) and "Godsend". She played the leading role in "Pepper Dennis", a short-lived TV series on The WB.


title: Rebecca Romijn

text: In January 2007, Romijn made her first appearance on the ABC series "Ugly Betty" as a full-time regular cast member. She played Alexis Meade, a transgender woman and the sister of lead character Daniel Meade. In April 2008, it was reported that Romijn would only be appearing as a recurring character in Season 3 due to a change in direction by the writing staff (aligning with Romijn's pregnancy, which would have been inconsistent with her character's storyline). In November 2007, Romijn made a guest appearance on the ABC series "Carpoolers", where she played the ex-wife of the character Laird, played by her real-life husband Jerry O'Connell.


title: Rebecca Romijn

text: Romijn starred in the ABC series "Eastwick", reuniting her with her former "Pepper Dennis" co-star, Lindsay Price, before ABC canceled the show on November 9, 2009. She appears in an uncredited cameo in the 2011 feature film "", appearing as an older version of the character played by Jennifer Lawrence. Romijn appeared as lab worker Jessie on the Adult Swim live-action show "" for two seasons.


title: Rebecca Romijn

text: Between June and September 2013, she starred in TNT's series "King & Maxwell" as Michelle Maxwell, a former Secret Service agent who works as a private investigator.


title: Rebecca Romijn

text: In addition to her film ventures, Romijn has also recorded music, performing a cover of Prince's "Darling Nikki" for the 2005 album "Electro Goth Tribute to Prince". She was also featured on the song "Color Me Love" for RuPaul's eighth studio album "Realness" in 2015.


title: Rebecca Romijn

text: She starred as Eve Baird, the guardian of the eponymous group in "The Librarians", a direct spin-off of "The Librarian" film series. She also hosted GSN's original series and reality show "Skin Wars". In 2018 she voiced Lois Lane in the DC Universe Animated Original Movie, an adaptation of "The Death of Superman", and recurred in the role until "". In 2019, she was a recurring guest in the second season of "", playing the character of Number One, first officer of the USS "Enterprise". She reprised the role in the spin-off series "", which was released in 2022. She and husband O’Connell are set to host "The Real Love Boat", premiering October 5, 2022 on CBS.


title: Rebecca Romijn

text: Romijn began dating actor John Stamos in 1994 after they met at a Victoria's Secret fashion show where she was modeling. They became engaged on Christmas Eve 1997, and married on September 19, 1998 at the Beverly Hills Hotel. During the marriage, she used the name Rebecca Romijn-Stamos personally and professionally. They announced their separation in April 2004. Stamos filed for divorce in August 2004, and it became final on March 1, 2005.


title: Rebecca Romijn

text: Romijn resumed using her maiden name, but revealed in an August 2013 interview on "Conan" that she had never legally changed her name back from Romijn-Stamos after a "Conan" staff member noticed "Romijn-Stamos" on her driver's license.


title: Rebecca Romijn

text: In 2004, Romijn started dating actor Jerry O'Connell. They became engaged in September 2005, and married at their home in Calabasas, California on July 14, 2007. They have twin daughters, born in 2008.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: Samuel Benjamin Bankman-Fried (born March 6, 1992), also known by his initials SBF, is an American entrepreneur, investor, and former billionaire. Bankman-Fried was the founder and CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and cryptocurrency trading firm Alameda Research. FTX experienced a crisis in late 2022, which led to a collapse in FTX's native cryptocurrency, FTT. Amid the crisis, Bankman-Fried announced he would wind down operations at Alameda Research and resigned as CEO of FTX, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: Bankman-Fried's net worth peaked at $26 billion. In October 2022, he had an estimated net worth of $10.5 billion. However, on November 8, 2022, amid FTX's solvency crisis, his net worth was estimated to have dropped 94 percent in a day to $991.5 million, according to the "Bloomberg Billionaires Index", the largest one-day drop in the index's history. By November 11, 2022, the "Bloomberg Billionaires Index" considered Bankman-Fried to have no material wealth.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: Before Bankman-Fried's wealth disappeared in November 2022, Bankman-Fried was a major donor to Democratic Party candidates.<ref name="Fox News, Catennaci/Schoffstall, Nov. 11, 2022"></ref> He donated $40 million, mostly to Democratic candidates, during the 2022 U.S. midterm elections.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: On December 12, 2022, Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas, pending potential extradition to the United States. An indictment of him before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York was unsealed on December 13, revealing a range of charges for offenses, including wire fraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, and campaign finance law violations. Bankman-Fried faces up to 115 years in prison if convicted on all eight counts.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: Bankman-Fried was born in 1992 on the campus of Stanford University into a Jewish family. He is the son of Barbara Fried and Joseph Bankman, both professors at Stanford Law School. His aunt Linda P. Fried is the dean of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. His brother, Gabriel Bankman-Fried, is a former Wall Street trader and the former director of the non-profit Guarding Against Pandemics and its associated political action committee.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: Bankman-Fried attended Canada/USA Mathcamp, a summer program for mathematically talented high-school students. He attended high school at Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough, California. From 2010 to 2014, Bankman-Fried attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There, he lived in a coeducational group house called Epsilon Theta. In 2014, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics and a minor in mathematics.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: In the summer of 2013, Bankman-Fried worked as an intern at Jane Street Capital, a proprietary trading firm, trading international ETFs. He returned to work there full-time after graduation from MIT.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: In September 2017, Bankman-Fried left Jane Street and moved to Berkeley, where he worked briefly at the Centre for Effective Altruism as director of development from October to November 2017. In November 2017, he co-founded Alameda Research, a quantitative trading firm, with Tara Mac Aulay from the Centre of Effective Altruism. As of 2021, Bankman-Fried owned approximately 90 percent of Alameda Research. In January 2018, Bankman-Fried organized an arbitrage trade, moving up to $25 million per day, to take advantage of the higher price of bitcoin in Japan compared to the United States. After attending a late 2018 cryptocurrency conference in Macau, he moved to Hong Kong.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: Bankman-Fried founded FTX, a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange, in April 2019; it opened for business the following month. On December 8, 2021, Bankman-Fried, along with other industry executives, testified before the Committee on Financial Services about regulating the cryptocurrency industry. On May 12, 2022, it was disclosed that Emergent Fidelity Technologies Ltd., which is majority owned by Bankman-Fried, had bought 7.6 percent of Robinhood Markets Inc. stock.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: In September 2022, it was reported that Bankman-Fried's advisors had offered on his behalf to help fund Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter. According to messages released as part of the lawsuit between Twitter and Musk during the latter's acquisition of Twitter, on April 25, 2022, investment banker Michael Grimes wrote that Bankman-Fried would be willing to commit up to $5 billion. Bankman-Fried invested more than $500 million in venture capital firms, including $200 million in Sequoia Capital. Sequoia published a "glowing" profile of Bankman-Fried which it subsequently removed after the solvency crisis at FTX was revealed.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: Bankman-Fried publicly supported effective altruism and contended that he was pursuing earning to give as an altruistic career. He is a member of Giving What We Can and claimed that he planned to donate the great majority of his wealth to effective charities over the course of his life. He founded the FTX Future Fund for this purpose, which included William MacAskill, one of the founders of the effective altruism movement. After the collapse of FTX, the entire team resigned. Future Fund had committed $160 million in charitable grants and investments by September 1, 2022. In November 2022, Bankman-Fried stated that the altruistic appearance he and his company displayed was not sincere, and was a "dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shiboleths ["sic"] and so everyone likes us".


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: In November 2022, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao revealed on Twitter that his firm intended to sell its holdings of FTT, FTX's token. Binance received $529 million worth of FTT as part of a sale of its equity in FTX in 2021. Zhao published his tweet soon after a report from CoinDesk stating that the bulk of the holdings of Alameda, Bankman-Fried's trading firm, were in FTT. Bloomberg and TechCrunch reported that any sale by Binance would likely have an outsize impact on FTT's price due to the token's low trading volume. The announcement by Zhao of the pending sale and disputes between Zhao and Bankman-Fried on Twitter led to a decline in the price of FTT and other cryptocurrencies. Shortly before, Zhao had criticized Bankman-Fried's lobbying efforts.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: On November 8, Zhao announced that Binance had entered into a non-binding agreement to purchase FTX due to a liquidity crisis at FTX. Zhao stated that Binance would complete due diligence soon and that all crypto exchanges should avoid using tokens as collateral. He also wrote that he expected FTT to be "highly volatile in the coming days as things develop". On the day of the announcement, FTT lost 80 percent of its value. On November 9, the "Wall Street Journal" reported that Binance had decided not to acquire FTX. Binance cited reports of FTX's mishandling of customer funds and pending investigations of FTX as the reasons the firm would not pursue the deal. Amid the crisis, Bankman-Fried was no longer a billionaire, according to the "Bloomberg Billionaires Index". The very next day, Bloomberg reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission were investigating FTX and the nature of its connections to Bankman-Fried's other holdings.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: Anonymous sources cited by Reuters stated that Bankman-Fried had transferred at least $4 billion from FTX to Alameda Research, without any disclosure to insiders or the public, earlier in 2022. The sources said that the money transferred had included customer funds, and that it was backed by FTT and shares in Robinhood. An anonymous source cited by the "Wall Street Journal" stated that Bankman-Fried had disclosed that Alameda owed FTX about $10 billion which was secured through customer funds held by FTX when FTX had, at the time, $16 billion in customer assets. According to anonymous sources cited by the "Wall Street Journal", the Chief Executive of Alameda Research Caroline Ellison told employees that Bankman-Fried was aware that FTX had lent its customers’ money to Alameda to help it meet its liabilities.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO of FTX on November 11 and was replaced by John J. Ray III, who has experience helping creditors recoup losses at other companies, including Enron. FTX and related entities filed for bankruptcy in Delaware on the same day. One day after FTX declared bankruptcy, on November 12, Bankman-Fried was interviewed by the Royal Bahamas Police Force. On November 17, Ray III, the CEO brought in as a liquidator, stated in a sworn declaration submitted in bankruptcy court that according to the firm's records, Alameda Research had lent $1 billion to Bankman-Fried.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: On December 12, 2022, Bankman-Fried was arrested shortly after 6 p.m. in his apartment complex in the Bahamas by the Royal Bahamas Police Force with the expectation that he would be extradited to the United States to face trial. Earlier that day, the Southern District of New York had charged Bankman-Fried with "wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and money laundering". Philip Davis, the Prime Minister of the Bahamas, commented on the arrest that "the Bahamas and the United States have a shared interest in holding accountable all individuals associated with FTX who may have betrayed the public trust and broken the law ... while the United States is pursuing criminal charges against SBF individually, the Bahamas will continue its own regulatory and criminal investigations into the collapse of FTX".


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: Bankman-Fried faces a maximum of 115 years in prison if convicted on all eight counts and sentenced to serve each charge consecutively. Braden Perry, a former senior trial lawyer at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, stated that a conviction on any of the charges may result in a prison sentence of years or decades.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: The arrest took place the day before Bankman-Fried was scheduled to appear before the House Financial Services Committee.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: Bankman-Fried's only campaign finance activity prior to 2019 was a $1,000 contribution in 2010 to Michael Bennet. In the 2020 US election cycle, he contributed $5.2 million to two super PACs that supported the Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign. Bankman-Fried was the second-largest individual donor to Biden in the 2020 election cycle, after Michael Bloomberg.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: In 2022, Bankman-Fried provided initial financial support for Protect Our Future PAC. Protect Our Future was launched as a Democratic political action committee with $10 million in initial funding aiming to support "lawmakers who play the long game on policymaking in areas like pandemic preparedness and planning", according to "Politico". Bankman-Fried donated $27 million in total to this PAC.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: Donations to Republican campaigns in the 2021–22 cycle have been estimated at $262,200, including donations to senators Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Ben Sasse of Nebraska. Journalist Matthew Kassel notes that Bankman-Fried had often donated to politicians who cultivate good Israel–US relations, but concluded: "it is unclear if his backing of pro-Israel candidates was coincidental or motivated by any personal interest in Middle East policy."


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: Bankman-Fried has claimed he also donated large amounts of money to Republicans through dark money channels.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: Bankman-Fried was the second-largest individual donor to Democratic causes in the 2021–2022 election cycle, with total donations of $39.8 million, only behind George Soros, of which $27 million was given to the Protect Our Future PAC. Bankman-Fried said in February 2022 that his political contributions were not aimed at influencing his policy goals for the cryptocurrency ecosystem; however, FTX was circulating a list of suggestions to policymakers at the time. He said in an interview that he would prefer the Commodity Futures Trading Commission take a larger role in regulating and guiding the crypto industry. According to the "New York Times", The CFTC has a reputation for favoring relatively relaxed regulations for the industry when contrasted with other regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: Bankman-Fried pushed for regulations via the proposed Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act (DCCPA) by extensively lobbying Congress, which was perceived as being favorable to FTX but harmful to the broader industry, especially its decentralized finance competitors. In May 2022, Bankman-Fried stated that he planned to spend "north of $100 million" in the 2024 presidential election with a "soft ceiling" of $1 billion. In October 2022, he walked back his pledged spending, calling it a "dumb quote on my part".


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: In the aftermath of the FTX scandal, recipients of Bankman-Fried's and other FTX executives' political campaign contributions have been donating equal amounts to charitable organizations. Elected officials doing so include Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Representatives Chuy García and Kevin Hern. A spokesperson for former Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke said that his campaign had received a $1 million donation from Bankman-Fried in October 2022, but returned the funds in early November, prior to the election.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: Bankman-Fried and his younger brother, Gabe, made large contributions toward pandemic prevention initiatives, according to an investigative report by "The Washington Post". FTX donated $18 million to support the TOGETHER Trial global expansion, announced on the same day that trial investigators received the Trial of the Year Award from the Society for Clinical Trials for their work on COVID-19 treatments.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: Bankman-Fried is vegan. As of mid-2021, he lived in a five-bedroom penthouse in the Bahamas with approximately ten roommates. After the collapse of FTX, the penthouse was put up for sale for close to $40 million.


title: Sam Bankman-Fried

text: According to former employees of FTX and Alameda, Bankman-Fried was romantically involved with co-worker Caroline Ellison, the CEO at Alameda Research.


title: Gnosticism

text: Gnosticism (from , , 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems which coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized personal spiritual knowledge ("gnosis") above the orthodox teachings, traditions, and authority of religious institutions. Gnostic cosmogony generally presents a distinction between a supreme, hidden God and a malevolent lesser divinity (sometimes associated with the Yahweh of the Old Testament) who is responsible for creating the material universe. Consequently, Gnostics considered material existence flawed or evil, and held the principal element of salvation to be direct knowledge of the hidden divinity, attained via mystical or esoteric insight. Many Gnostic texts deal not in concepts of sin and repentance, but with illusion and enlightenment.


title: Gnosticism

text: Gnostic writings flourished among certain Christian groups in the Mediterranean world around the second century, when the Fathers of the early Church denounced them as heresy. Efforts to destroy these texts proved largely successful, resulting in the survival of very little writing by Gnostic theologians. Nonetheless, early Gnostic teachers such as Valentinus saw their beliefs as aligned with Christianity. In the Gnostic Christian tradition, Christ is seen as a divine being which has taken human form in order to lead humanity back to recognition of its own divine nature. However, Gnosticism is not a single standardized system, and the emphasis on direct experience allows for a wide variety of teachings, including distinct currents such as Valentinianism and Sethianism. In the Persian Empire, Gnostic ideas spread as far as China via the related movement Manichaeism, while Mandaeism, which is one of the only two surviving Gnostic religions from antiquity, is found in Iraq, Iran and diaspora communities. Jorunn Buckley posits that the early Mandaeans may have been among the first to formulate what would go on to become Gnosticism within the early Jesus movement.


title: Gnosticism

text: For centuries, most scholarly knowledge about Gnosticism was limited to the anti-heretical writings of orthodox Christian figures such as Irenaeus of Lyons and Hippolytus of Rome. There was a renewed interest in Gnosticism after the 1945 discovery of Egypt's Nag Hammadi library, a collection of rare early Christian and Gnostic texts, including the Gospel of Thomas and the Apocryphon of John. Elaine Pagels has noted the influence of sources from Hellenistic Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Platonism on the Nag Hammadi texts. Since the 1990s, the category of Gnosticism has come under increasing scrutiny from scholars. One such issue is whether Gnosticism ought to be considered one form of early Christianity, an interreligious phenomenon, or an independent religion. Going further than this, other contemporary scholars such as Michael Allen Williams and David G. Robertson contest whether "Gnosticism" is still a valid or useful historical category at all, or if instead it was simply a term of art of proto-orthodox heresiologists for a disparate group of contemporaneous Christian groups.


title: Gnosticism

text: "Gnosis" refers to knowledge based on personal experience or perception. In a religious context, "gnosis" is mystical or esoteric knowledge based on direct participation with the divine. In most Gnostic systems, the sufficient cause of salvation is this "knowledge of" ("acquaintance with") the divine. It is an inward "knowing", comparable to that encouraged by Plotinus (neoplatonism), and differs from proto-orthodox Christian views. Gnostics are "those who are oriented toward knowledge and understanding – or perception and learning – as a particular modality for living". The usual meaning of "gnostikos" in Classical Greek texts is "learned" or "intellectual", such as used by Plato in the comparison of "practical" ("praktikos") and "intellectual" ("gnostikos"). Plato's use of "learned" is fairly typical of Classical texts.


title: Gnosticism

text: By the Hellenistic period, it began also to be associated with Greco-Roman mysteries, becoming synonymous with the Greek term "musterion". The adjective is not used in the New Testament, but Clement of Alexandria speaks of the "learned" ("gnostikos") Christian in complimentary terms. The use of "gnostikos" in relation to heresy originates with interpreters of Irenaeus. Some scholars consider that Irenaeus sometimes uses "gnostikos" to simply mean "intellectual", whereas his mention of "the intellectual sect" is a specific designation. The term "Gnosticism" does not appear in ancient sources, and was first coined in the 17th century by Henry More in a commentary on the seven letters of the Book of Revelation, where More used the term "Gnosticisme" to describe the heresy in Thyatira. The term "Gnosticism" was derived from the use of the Greek adjective "gnostikos" (Greek γνωστικός, "learned", "intellectual") by St. Irenaeus (c. 185 AD) to describe the school of Valentinus as "he legomene gnostike haeresis" "the heresy called Learned (gnostic)."


title: Gnosticism

text: The origins of Gnosticism are obscure and still disputed. The proto-orthodox Christian groups called Gnostics a heresy of Christianity, but according to the modern scholars the theology's origin is closely related to Jewish sectarian milieus and early Christian sects. Scholars debate Gnosticism's origins as having roots in Neoplatonism and Buddhism, due to similarities in beliefs, but ultimately, its origins are currently unknown. As Christianity developed and became more popular, so did Gnosticism, with both proto-orthodox Christian and Gnostic Christian groups often existing in the same places. The Gnostic belief was widespread within Christianity until the proto-orthodox Christian communities expelled the group in the second and third centuries (AD). Gnosticism became the first group to be declared heretical.


title: Gnosticism

text: Some scholars prefer to speak of "gnosis" when referring to first-century ideas that later developed into Gnosticism, and to reserve the term "Gnosticism" for the synthesis of these ideas into a coherent movement in the second century. According to James M. Robinson, no gnostic texts clearly pre-date Christianity, and "pre-Christian Gnosticism as such is hardly attested in a way to settle the debate once and for all."


title: Gnosticism

text: Contemporary scholarship largely agrees that Gnosticism has Jewish Christian origins, originating in the late first century AD in nonrabbinical Jewish sects and early Christian sects. Ethel S. Drower adds "heterodox Judaism in Galilee and Samaria appears to have taken shape in the form we now call Gnostic, and it may well have existed some time before the Christian era."


title: Gnosticism

text: Many heads of gnostic schools were identified as Jewish Christians by Church Fathers, and Hebrew words and names of God were applied in some gnostic systems. The cosmogonic speculations among Christian Gnostics had partial origins in Maaseh Bereshit and "Maaseh Merkabah". This thesis is most notably put forward by Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) and Gilles Quispel (1916–2006). Scholem detected Jewish "gnosis" in the imagery of the merkavah, which can also be found in certain Gnostic documents. Quispel sees Gnosticism as an independent Jewish development, tracing its origins to Alexandrian Jews, to which group Valentinus was also connected.


title: Gnosticism

text: Many of the Nag Hammadi texts make reference to Judaism, in some cases with a violent rejection of the Jewish God. Gershom Scholem once described Gnosticism as "the Greatest case of metaphysical anti-Semitism". Professor Steven Bayme said gnosticism would be better characterized as anti-Judaism. Recent research into the origins of Gnosticism shows a strong Jewish influence, particularly from Hekhalot literature.


title: Gnosticism

text: Within early Christianity, the teachings of Paul and John may have been a starting point for Gnostic ideas, with a growing emphasis on the opposition between flesh and spirit, the value of charisma, and the disqualification of the Jewish law. The mortal body belonged to the world of inferior, worldly powers (the "archons"), and only the spirit or soul could be saved. The term "gnostikos" may have acquired a deeper significance here.


title: Gnosticism

text: Alexandria was of central importance for the birth of Gnosticism. The Christian "ecclesia" (i. e. congregation, church) was of Jewish–Christian origin, but also attracted Greek members, and various strands of thought were available, such as "Judaic apocalypticism, speculation on divine wisdom, Greek philosophy, and Hellenistic mystery religions."


title: Gnosticism

text: The Shepherd of Hermas is a Christian literary work considered as canonical scripture by some of the early Church fathers such as Irenaeus. Jesus is identified with angel Christology in parable 5, when the author mentions a Son of God, as a virtuous man filled with a Holy "pre-existent spirit".


title: Gnosticism

text: In the 1880s Gnostic connections with neo-Platonism were proposed. Ugo Bianchi, who organised the Congress of Messina of 1966 on the origins of Gnosticism, also argued for Orphic and Platonic origins. Gnostics borrowed significant ideas and terms from Platonism, using Greek philosophical concepts throughout their text, including such concepts as hypostasis (reality, existence), "ousia" (essence, substance, being), and demiurge (creator God). Both Sethian Gnostics and Valentinian Gnostics seem to have been influenced by Plato, Middle Platonism, and Neo-Pythagoreanism academies or schools of thought. Both schools attempted "an effort towards conciliation, even affiliation" with late antique philosophy, and were rebuffed by some Neoplatonists, including Plotinus.


title: Gnosticism

text: Early research into the origins of Gnosticism proposed Persian origins or influences, spreading to Europe and incorporating Jewish elements. According to Wilhelm Bousset (1865–1920), Gnosticism was a form of Iranian and Mesopotamian syncretism, and Richard August Reitzenstein (1861–1931) situated the origins of Gnosticism in Persia.


title: Gnosticism

text: Carsten Colpe (b. 1929) has analyzed and criticised the Iranian hypothesis of Reitzenstein, showing that many of his hypotheses are untenable. Nevertheless, Geo Widengren (1907–1996) argued for the origin of Mandaean Gnosticism in Mazdean (Zoroastrianism) Zurvanism, in conjunction with ideas from the Aramaic Mesopotamian world.


title: Gnosticism

text: However, scholars specializing in Mandaeism such as Kurt Rudolph, Mark Lidzbarski, Rudolf Macúch, Ethel S. Drower, James F. McGrath, Charles G. Häberl, Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, and Şinasi Gündüz argue for a Palestinian origin. The majority of these scholars believe that the Mandaeans likely have a historical connection with John the Baptist's inner circle of disciples. Charles Häberl, who is also a linguist specializing in Mandaic, finds Palestinian and Samaritan Aramaic influence on Mandaic and accepts Mandaeans having a "shared Palestinian history with Jews".


title: Gnosticism

text: In 1966, at the Congress of Median, Buddhologist Edward Conze noted phenomenological commonalities between Mahayana Buddhism and Gnosticism, in his paper "Buddhism and Gnosis", following an early suggestion put forward by Isaac Jacob Schmidt. The influence of Buddhism in any sense on either the "gnostikos" Valentinus (c.170) or the Nag Hammadi texts (3rd century) is not supported by modern scholarship, although Elaine Pagels (1979) called it a "possibility".


title: Gnosticism

text: The Syrian–Egyptian traditions postulate a remote, supreme Godhead, the Monad. From this highest divinity emanate lower divine beings, known as Aeons. The Demiurge, one of those Aeons, creates the physical world. Divine elements "fall" into the material realm, and are locked within human beings. This divine element returns to the divine realm when Gnosis, esoteric or intuitive knowledge of the divine element within, is obtained.


title: Gnosticism

text: Gnostic systems postulate a dualism between God and the world, varying from the "radical dualist" systems of Manichaeism to the "mitigated dualism" of classic gnostic movements. Radical dualism, or absolute dualism, posits two co-equal divine forces, while in "mitigated dualism" one of the two principles is in some way inferior to the other. In "qualified monism" the second entity may be divine or semi-divine. Valentinian Gnosticism is a form of monism, expressed in terms previously used in a dualistic manner.


title: Gnosticism

text: Gnostics tended toward asceticism, especially in their sexual and dietary practice. In other areas of morality, Gnostics were less rigorously ascetic, and took a more moderate approach to correct behaviour. In normative early Christianity the Church administered and prescribed the correct behaviour for Christians, while in Gnosticism it was the internalised motivation that was important. Ritualistic behaviour was not important unless it was based on a personal, internal motivation. Ptolemy's "Epistle to Flora" describes a general asceticism, based on the moral inclination of the individual.


title: Gnosticism

text: In many Gnostic systems, God is known as the "Monad", the One. God is the high source of the pleroma, the region of light. The various emanations of God are called æons. According to Hippolytus, this view was inspired by the Pythagoreans, who called the first thing that came into existence the "Monad", which begat the dyad, which begat the numbers, which begat the point, begetting lines, etc.


title: Gnosticism

text: "Pleroma" (Greek πλήρωμα, "fullness") refers to the totality of God's powers. The heavenly pleroma is the center of divine life, a region of light "above" (the term is not to be understood spatially) our world, occupied by spiritual beings such as aeons (eternal beings) and sometimes archons. Jesus is interpreted as an intermediary aeon who was sent from the pleroma, with whose aid humanity can recover the lost knowledge of the divine origins of humanity. The term is thus a central element of Gnostic cosmology.


title: Gnosticism

text: Pleroma is also used in the general Greek language, and is used by the Greek Orthodox church in this general form, since the word appears in the Epistle to the Colossians. Proponents of the view that Paul was actually a gnostic, such as Elaine Pagels, view the reference in Colossians as a term that has to be interpreted in a gnostic sense.


title: Gnosticism

text: The Supreme Light or Consciousness descends through a series of stages, gradations, worlds, or hypostases, becoming progressively more material and embodied. In time it will turn around to return to the One (epistrophe), retracing its steps through spiritual knowledge and contemplation.


title: Gnosticism

text: In many Gnostic systems, the aeons are the various emanations of the superior God or Monad. Beginning in certain Gnostic texts with the hermaphroditic aeon Barbelo, the first emanated being, various interactions with the Monad occur which result in the emanation of successive pairs of aeons, often in male–female pairings called "syzygies". The numbers of these pairings varied from text to text, though some identify their number as being thirty. The aeons as a totality constitute the "pleroma", the "region of light". The lowest regions of the pleroma are closest to the darkness; that is, the physical world.


title: Gnosticism

text: Two of the most commonly paired æons were Christ and "Sophia" (Greek: "Wisdom"); the latter refers to Christ as her "consort" in "A Valentinian Exposition".


title: Gnosticism

text: In Gnostic tradition, the term "Sophia" (Σοφία, Greek for "wisdom") refers to the final and lowest emanation of God, and is identified with the "anima mundi" or world-soul. In most, if not all, versions of the gnostic myth, Sophia births the demiurge, who in turn brings about the creation of materiality. The positive or negative depiction of materiality thus resides a great deal on mythic depictions of Sophia's actions. She is occasionally referred to by the Hebrew equivalent of "Achamoth" (this is a feature of Ptolemy's version of the Valentinian gnostic myth). Jewish Gnosticism with a focus on Sophia was active by 90 AD.


title: Gnosticism

text: "Sophia", emanating without her partner, resulted in the production of the "Demiurge" (Greek: lit. "public builder"), who is also referred to as "Yaldabaoth" and variations thereof in some Gnostic texts. This creature is concealed outside the pleroma; in isolation, and thinking itself alone, it creates materiality and a host of co-actors, referred to as archons. The demiurge is responsible for the creation of humankind; trapping elements of the pleroma stolen from Sophia inside human bodies. In response, the Godhead emanates two savior aeons, "Christ" and "the Holy Spirit"; Christ then embodies itself in the form of Jesus, in order to be able to teach humans how to achieve gnosis, by which they may return to the pleroma.


title: Gnosticism

text: The term "demiurge" derives from the Latinized form of the Greek term "dēmiourgos", δημιουργός, literally "public or skilled worker". This figure is also called "Yaldabaoth", Samael (Aramaic: "sæmʻa-ʼel", "blind god"), or "Saklas" (Syriac: "sækla", "the foolish one"), who is sometimes ignorant of the superior god, and sometimes opposed to it; thus in the latter case he is correspondingly malevolent. Other names or identifications are Ahriman, El, Satan, and Yahweh.


title: Gnosticism

text: The demiurge creates the physical universe and the physical aspect of humanity. The demiurge typically creates a group of co-actors named archons who preside over the material realm and, in some cases, present obstacles to the soul seeking ascent from it. The inferiority of the demiurge's creation may be compared to the technical inferiority of a work of art, painting, sculpture, etc. to the thing the art represents. In other cases it takes on a more ascetic tendency to view material existence negatively, which then becomes more extreme when materiality, including the human body, is perceived as evil and constrictive, a deliberate prison for its inhabitants.


title: Gnosticism

text: Moral judgements of the demiurge vary from group to group within the broad category of Gnosticism, viewing materiality as being inherently evil, or as merely flawed and as good as its passive constituent matter allows.


title: Gnosticism

text: In late antiquity some variants of Gnosticism used the term archon to refer to several servants of the demiurge.


title: Gnosticism

text: According to Origen's "Contra Celsum", a sect called the Ophites posited the existence of seven archons, beginning with Iadabaoth or Ialdabaoth, who created the six that follow: Iao, Sabaoth, Adonaios, Elaios, Astaphanos, and Horaios. Ialdabaoth had a head of a lion.


title: Gnosticism

text: Jesus is identified by some Gnostics as an embodiment of the supreme being who became incarnate to bring "gnōsis" to the earth, while others adamantly denied that the supreme being came in the flesh, claiming Jesus to be merely a human who attained enlightenment through gnosis and taught his disciples to do the same. Others believed Jesus was divine, although did not have a physical body, reflected in the later Docetist movement. Among the Mandaeans, Jesus was considered a "mšiha kdaba" or "false messiah" who perverted the teachings entrusted to him by John the Baptist. Still other traditions identify Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, and Seth, third son of Adam and Eve, as salvific figures.


title: Gnosticism

text: The movement spread in areas controlled by the Roman Empire and Arian Goths, and the Persian Empire. It continued to develop in the Mediterranean and Middle East before and during the 2nd and 3rd centuries, but decline also set in during the third century, due to a growing aversion from the Nicene Church, and the economic and cultural deterioration of the Roman Empire. Conversion to Islam, and the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229), greatly reduced the remaining number of Gnostics throughout the Middle Ages, though Mandaean communities still exist in Iraq, Iran and diaspora communities. Gnostic and pseudo-gnostic ideas became influential in some of the philosophies of various esoteric mystical movements of the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe and North America, including some that explicitly identify themselves as revivals or even continuations of earlier gnostic groups.


title: Gnosticism

text: The Christian heresiologists, most notably Irenaeus, regarded Gnosticism as a Christian heresy. Modern scholarship notes that early Christianity was diverse, and Christian orthodoxy only settled in the 4thcentury, when the Roman Empire declined and Gnosticism lost its influence. Gnostics and proto-orthodox Christians shared some terminology. Initially, they were hard to distinguish from each other.


title: Gnosticism

text: According to Walter Bauer, "heresies" may well have been the original form of Christianity in many regions. This theme was further developed by Elaine Pagels, who argues that "the proto-orthodox church found itself in debates with gnostic Christians that helped them to stabilize their own beliefs." According to Gilles Quispel, Catholicism arose in response to Gnosticism, establishing safeguards in the form of the monarchic episcopate, the creed, and the canon of holy books.


title: Gnosticism

text: The Gnostic movements may contain information about the historical Jesus, since some texts preserve sayings which show similarities with canonical sayings. Especially the Gospel of Thomas has a significant amount of parallel sayings. Yet, a striking difference is that the canonical sayings center on the coming endtime, while the Thomas-sayings center on a kingdom of heaven that is already here, and not a future event. According to Helmut Koester, this is because the Thomas-sayings are older, implying that in the earliest forms of Christianity Jesus was regarded as a wisdom-teacher. An alternative hypothesis states that the Thomas authors wrote in the second century, changing existing sayings and eliminating the apocalyptic concerns. According to April DeConick, such a change occurred when the end time did not come, and the Thomasine tradition turned toward a "new theology of mysticism" and a "theological commitment to a fully-present kingdom of heaven here and now, where their church had attained Adam and Eve's divine status before the Fall."


title: Gnosticism

text: The prologue of the Gospel of John describes the incarnated Logos, the light that came to earth, in the person of Jesus. The "Apocryphon of John" contains a scheme of three descendants from the heavenly realm, the third one being Jesus, just as in the Gospel of John. The similarities probably point to a relationship between gnostic ideas and the Johannine community. According to Raymond Brown, the Gospel of John shows "the development of certain gnostic ideas, especially Christ as heavenly revealer, the emphasis on light versus darkness, and anti-Jewish animus." The Johannine material reveals debates about the redeemer myth. The Johannine letters show that there were different interpretations of the gospel story, and the Johannine images may have contributed to second-century Gnostic ideas about Jesus as a redeemer who descended from heaven. According to DeConick, the Gospel of John shows a "transitional system from early Christianity to gnostic beliefs in a God who transcends our world." According to DeConick, "John" may show a bifurcation of the idea of the Jewish God into Jesus' Father in Heaven and the Jews' father, "the Father of the Devil" (most translations say "of [your] father the Devil"), which may have developed into the gnostic idea of the Monad and the Demiurge.


title: Gnosticism

text: Tertullian calls Paul "the apostle of the heretics", because Paul's writings were attractive to gnostics, and interpreted in a gnostic way, while Jewish Christians found him to stray from the Jewish roots of Christianity. In I Corinthians Paul refers to some church members as "having knowledge" (, "ton echonta gnosin"). James Dunn claims that in some cases, Paul affirmed views that were closer to gnosticism than to proto-orthodox Christianity.


title: Gnosticism

text: According to Clement of Alexandria, the disciples of Valentinus said that Valentinus was a student of a certain Theudas, who was a student of Paul, and Elaine Pagels notes that Paul's epistles were interpreted by Valentinus in a gnostic way, and Paul could be considered a proto-gnostic as well as a proto-Catholic. Many Nag Hammadi texts, including, for example, the "Prayer of Paul" and the Coptic "Apocalypse of Paul", consider Paul to be "the great apostle". The fact that he claimed to have received his gospel directly by revelation from God appealed to the gnostics, who claimed "gnosis" from the risen Christ. The Naassenes, Cainites, and Valentinians referred to Paul's epistles. Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy have expanded upon this idea of Paul as a gnostic teacher; although their premise that Jesus was invented by early Christians based on an alleged Greco-Roman mystery cult has been dismissed by scholars. However, his revelation was different from the gnostic revelations.


title: Gnosticism

text: Although Elkesaites and Mandaeans were found mainly in Mesopotamia in the first few centuries of the common era, their origins appear be to Judean / Israelite in the Jordan valley.


title: Gnosticism

text: The Elkesaites were a Judeo-Christian baptismal sect that originated in the Transjordan and were active between 100 to 400 CE. The members of this sect performed frequent baptisms for purification and had a Gnostic disposition. The sect is named after its leader "Elkesai".


title: Gnosticism

text: According to Joseph Lightfoot, the Church Father Epiphanius (writing in the 4th century CE) seems to make a distinction between two main groups within the Essenes: "Of those that came before his [Elxai (Elkesai), an Ossaean prophet] time and during it, the Ossaeans and the Nasaraeans."


title: Gnosticism

text: Mandaeism is a Gnostic, monotheistic and ethnic religion. The Mandaeans are an ethnoreligious group that speak a dialect of Eastern Aramaic known as Mandaic. They are the only surviving Gnostics from antiquity. Their religion has been practiced primarily around the lower Karun, Euphrates and Tigris and the rivers that surround the Shatt-al-Arab waterway, part of southern Iraq and Khuzestan Province in Iran. Mandaeism is still practiced in small numbers, in parts of southern Iraq and the Iranian province of Khuzestan, and there are thought to be between 60,000 and 70,000 Mandaeans worldwide.


title: Gnosticism

text: The name 'Mandaean' comes from the Aramaic "manda" meaning knowledge. John the Baptist is a key figure in the religion, as an emphasis on baptism is part of their core beliefs. According to Nathaniel Deutsch, "Mandaean anthropogony echoes both rabbinic and gnostic accounts." Mandaeans revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enos, Noah, Shem, Aram, and especially John the Baptist. Significant amounts of original Mandaean Scripture, written in Mandaean Aramaic, survive in the modern era. The most important holy scripture is known as the Ginza Rabba and has portions identified by some scholars as being copied as early as the 2nd–3rd centuries, while others such as S. F. Dunlap place it in the 1st century. There is also the Qolastā, or Canonical Book of Prayer and the Mandaean Book of John (Sidra ḏ'Yahia) and other scriptures.


title: Gnosticism

text: Mandaeans believe that there is a constant battle or conflict between the forces of good and evil. The forces of good are represented by "Nhura" (Light) and "Maia Hayyi" (Living Water) and those of evil are represented by "Hshuka" (Darkness) and "Maia Tahmi" (dead or rancid water). The two waters are mixed in all things in order to achieve a balance. Mandaeans also believe in an afterlife or heaven called "Alma d-Nhura" (World of Light).


title: Gnosticism

text: In Mandaeism, the World of Light is ruled by a Supreme God, known as Hayyi Rabbi ('The Great Life' or 'The Great Living God'). God is so great, vast, and incomprehensible that no words can fully depict how awesome God is. It is believed that an innumerable number of Uthras (angels or guardians), manifested from the light, surround and perform acts of worship to praise and honor God. They inhabit worlds separate from the lightworld and some are commonly referred to as emanations and are subservient beings to the Supreme God who is also known as 'The First Life'. Their names include Second, Third, and Fourth Life (i.e. Yōšamin, Abathur, and Ptahil).


title: Gnosticism

text: The Lord of Darkness (Krun) is the ruler of the World of Darkness formed from dark waters representing chaos. A main defender of the darkworld is a giant monster, or dragon, with the name Ur, and an evil, female ruler also inhabits the darkworld, known as Ruha. The Mandaeans believe these malevolent rulers created demonic offspring who consider themselves the owners of the seven planets and twelve zodiac constellations.


title: Gnosticism

text: According to Mandaean beliefs, the material world is a mixture of light and dark created by Ptahil, who fills the role of the demiurge, with help from dark powers, such as Ruha the Seven, and the Twelve. Adam's body (believed to be the first human created by God in Abrahamic tradition) was fashioned by these dark beings, however his soul (or mind) was a direct creation from the Light. Therefore, Mandaeans believe the human soul is capable of salvation because it originates from the World of Light. The soul, sometimes referred to as the 'inner Adam' or Adam kasia, is in dire need of being rescued from the dark, so it may ascend into the heavenly realm of the World of Light. Baptisms are a central theme in Mandaeism, believed to be necessary for the redemption of the soul. Mandaeans do not perform a single baptism, as in religions such as Christianity; rather, they view baptisms as a ritual act capable of bringing the soul closer to salvation. Therefore, Mandaeans are baptized repeatedly during their lives. Mandaeans consider John the Baptist to have been a Nasoraean Mandaean. John is referred to as their greatest and final teacher.


title: Gnosticism

text: Jorunn J. Buckley and other scholars specializing in Mandaeism believe that the Mandaeans originated about two thousand years ago in the Palestine-Israel region and moved east due to persecution. Others claim a southwestern Mesopotamia origin. However, some scholars take the view that Mandaeism is older and dates from pre-Christian times. Mandaeans assert that their religion predates Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as a monotheistic faith. Mandaeans believe that they descend directly from Shem, Noah's son, and also from John the Baptist's original disciples.


title: Gnosticism

text: Due to paraphrases and word-for-word translations from the Mandaean originals found in the "Psalms of Thomas", it is now believed that the pre-Manichaean presence of the Mandaean religion is more than likely. The Valentinians embraced a Mandaean baptismal formula in their rituals in the 2nd century CE. Birger A. Pearson compares the "Five Seals" of Sethianism, which he believes is a reference to quintuple ritual immersion in water, to Mandaean "masbuta". According to Jorunn J. Buckley (2010), "Sethian Gnostic literature ... is related, perhaps as a younger sibling, to Mandaean baptism ideology."


title: Gnosticism

text: According to Magris, Samaritan Baptist sects were an offshoot of John the Baptist. One offshoot was in turn headed by Dositheus, Simon Magus, and Menander. It was in this milieu that the idea emerged that the world was created by ignorant angels. Their baptismal ritual removed the consequences of sin, and led to a regeneration by which natural death, which was caused by these angels, was overcome. The Samaritan leaders were viewed as "the embodiment of God's power, spirit, or wisdom, and as the redeemer and revealer of 'true knowledge.


title: Gnosticism

text: The Simonians were centered on Simon Magus, the magician baptised by Philip and rebuked by Peter in Acts 8, who became in early Christianity the archetypal false teacher. The ascription by Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and others of a connection between schools in their time and the individual in Acts 8 may be as legendary as the stories attached to him in various apocryphal books. Justin Martyr identifies Menander of Antioch as Simon Magus' pupil. According to Hippolytus, Simonianism is an earlier form of the Valentinian doctrine.


title: Gnosticism

text: The Quqites were a group who followed a Samaritan, Iranian type of Gnosticism in 2nd-century AD Erbil and in the vicinity of what is today northern Iraq. The sect was named after their founder Quq, known as "the potter". The Quqite ideology arose in Edessa, Syria, in the 2nd century. The Quqites stressed the Hebrew Bible, made changes in the New Testament, associated twelve prophets with twelve apostles, and held that the latter corresponded to the same number of gospels. Their beliefs seem to have been eclectic, with elements of Judaism, Christianity, paganism, astrology, and Gnosticism.


title: Gnosticism

text: Syrian-Egyptian Gnosticism includes Sethianism, Valentinianism, Basilideans, Thomasine traditions, and Serpent Gnostics, as well as a number of other minor groups and writers. Hermeticism is also a western Gnostic tradition, though it differs in some respects from these other groups. The Syrian–Egyptian school derives much of its outlook from Platonist influences. It depicts creation in a series of emanations from a primal monadic source, finally resulting in the creation of the material universe. These schools tend to view evil in terms of matter that is markedly inferior to goodness and lacking spiritual insight and goodness rather than as an equal force.


title: Gnosticism

text: Many of these movements used texts related to Christianity, with some identifying themselves as specifically Christian, though quite different from the Orthodox or Roman Catholic forms. Jesus and several of his apostles, such as Thomas the Apostle, claimed as the founder of the Thomasine form of Gnosticism, figure in many Gnostic texts. Mary Magdalene is respected as a Gnostic leader, and is considered superior to the twelve apostles by some gnostic texts, such as the Gospel of Mary. John the Evangelist is claimed as a Gnostic by some Gnostic interpreters, as is even St. Paul. Most of the literature from this category is known to us through the Nag Hammadi Library.


title: Gnosticism

text: Sethianism was one of the main currents of Gnosticism during the 2nd to 3rd centuries, and the prototype of Gnosticism as condemned by Irenaeus. Sethianism attributed its "gnosis" to Seth, third son of Adam and Eve and "Norea", wife of Noah, who also plays a role in Mandeanism and Manicheanism. Their main text is the "Apocryphon of John", which does not contain Christian elements, and is an amalgam of two earlier myths. Earlier texts such as Apocalypse of Adam show signs of being pre-Christian and focus on the Seth, third son of Adam and Eve. Later Sethian texts continue to interact with Platonism. Sethian texts such as Zostrianos and Allogenes draw on the imagery of older Sethian texts, but utilize "a large fund of philosophical conceptuality derived from contemporary Platonism, (that is, late middle Platonism) with no traces of Christian content."


title: Gnosticism

text: According to John D. Turner, German and American scholarship views Sethianism as "a distinctly inner-Jewish, albeit syncretistic and heterodox, phenomenon", while British and French scholarship tends to see Sethianism as "a form of heterodox Christian speculation". Roelof vandenBroek notes that "Sethianism" may never have been a separate religious movement, and that the term refers rather to a set of mythological themes which occur in various texts.


title: Gnosticism

text: According to Smith, Sethianism may have begun as a pre-Christian tradition, possibly a syncretic cult that incorporated elements of Christianity and Platonism as it grew. According to Temporini, Vogt, and Haase, early Sethians may be identical to or related to the Nazarenes (sect), the Ophites, or the sectarian group called heretics by Philo.


title: Gnosticism

text: According to Turner, Sethianism was influenced by Christianity and Middle Platonism, and originated in the second century as a fusion of a Jewish baptizing group of possibly priestly lineage, the so-called "Barbeloites", named after Barbelo, the first emanation of the Highest God, and a group of Biblical exegetes, the "Sethites", the "seed of Seth". At the end of the second century, Sethianism grew apart from the developing Christian orthodoxy, which rejected the docetian view of the Sethians on Christ. In the early third century, Sethianism was fully rejected by Christian heresiologists, as Sethianism shifted toward the contemplative practices of Platonism while losing interest in their primal origins. In the late third century, Sethianism was attacked by neo-Platonists like Plotinus, and Sethianism became alienated from Platonism. In the early- to mid-fourth century, Sethianism fragmented into various sectarian Gnostic groups such as the Archontics, Audians, Borborites, and Phibionites, and perhaps Stratiotici, and Secundians. Some of these groups existed into the Middle Ages.


title: Gnosticism

text: Valentinianism was named after its founder Valentinus (c. 100180), who was a candidate for bishop of Rome but started his own group when another was chosen. Valentinianism flourished after mid-second century. The school was popular, spreading to Northwest Africa and Egypt, and through to Asia Minor and Syria in the east, and Valentinus is specifically named as "gnostikos" by Irenaeus. It was an intellectually vibrant tradition, with an elaborate and philosophically "dense" form of Gnosticism. Valentinus' students elaborated on his teachings and materials, and several varieties of their central myth are known.


title: Gnosticism

text: Valentinian Gnosticism may have been monistic rather than dualistic. In the Valentinian myths, the creation of a flawed materiality is not due to any moral failing on the part of the Demiurge, but due to the fact that he is less perfect than the superior entities from which he emanated. Valentinians treat physical reality with less contempt than other Gnostic groups, and conceive of materiality not as a separate substance from the divine, but as attributable to an "error of perception" which becomes symbolized mythopoetically as the act of material creation.


title: Gnosticism

text: The followers of Valentinus attempted to systematically decode the Epistles, claiming that most Christians made the mistake of reading the Epistles literally rather than allegorically. Valentinians understood the conflict between "Jews" and "Gentiles" in Romans to be a coded reference to the differences between "Psychics" (people who are partly spiritual but have not yet achieved separation from carnality) and "Pneumatics" (totally spiritual people). The Valentinians argued that such codes were intrinsic in gnosticism, secrecy being important to ensuring proper progression to true inner understanding.


title: Gnosticism

text: According to Bentley Layton "Classical Gnosticism" and "The School of Thomas" antedated and influenced the development of Valentinus, whom Layton called "the great [Gnostic] reformer" and "the focal point" of Gnostic development. While in Alexandria, where he was born, Valentinus probably would have had contact with the Gnostic teacher Basilides, and may have been influenced by him. Simone Petrement, while arguing for a Christian origin of Gnosticism, places Valentinus after Basilides, but before the Sethians. According to Petrement, Valentinus represented a moderation of the anti-Judaism of the earlier Hellenized teachers; the demiurge, widely regarded as a mythological depiction of the Old Testament God of the Hebrews (i.e. Jehova), is depicted as more ignorant than evil.


title: Gnosticism

text: The Basilidians or Basilideans were founded by Basilides of Alexandria in the second century. Basilides claimed to have been taught his doctrines by Glaucus, a disciple of St. Peter, but could also have been a pupil of Menander. Basilidianism survived until the end of the 4thcentury as Epiphanius knew of Basilidians living in the Nile Delta. It was, however, almost exclusively limited to Egypt, though according to Sulpicius Severus it seems to have found an entrance into Spain through a certain Mark from Memphis. St. Jerome states that the Priscillianists were infected with it.


title: Gnosticism

text: The "Thomasine Traditions" refers to a group of texts which are attributed to the apostle Thomas. Karen L. King notes that "Thomasine Gnosticism" as a separate category is being criticised, and may "not stand the test of scholarly scrutiny".


title: Gnosticism

text: Marcion was a Church leader from Sinope (present-day Turkey), who preached in Rome around 150CE, but was expelled and started his own congregation, which spread throughout the Mediterranean. He rejected the Old Testament, and followed a limited Christian canon, which included only a redacted version of Luke, and ten edited letters of Paul. Some scholars do not consider him to be a gnostic, but his teachings clearly resemble some Gnostic teachings. He preached a radical difference between the God of the Old Testament, the Demiurge, the "evil creator of the material universe", and the highest God, the "loving, spiritual God who is the father of Jesus", who had sent Jesus to the earth to free mankind from the tyranny of the Jewish Law. Like the Gnostics, Marcion argued that Jesus was essentially a divine spirit appearing to men in the shape of a human form, and not someone in a true physical body. Marcion held that the heavenly Father (the father of Jesus Christ) was an utterly alien god; he had no part in making the world, nor any connection with it.


title: Gnosticism

text: The Persian Schools, which appeared in the western Persian province of Babylonia (in particular, within the Sassanid province of Asuristan), and whose writings were originally produced in the Aramaic dialects spoken in Babylonia at the time, are representative of what is believed to be among the oldest of the Gnostic thought forms. These movements are considered by most to be religions in their own right, and are not emanations from Christianity or Judaism.


title: Gnosticism

text: Manichaeism was founded by the Prophet Mani (216–276). Mani's father was a member of the Jewish-Christian sect of the Elcesaites, a subgroup of the Gnostic Ebionites. At ages 12 and 24, Mani had visionary experiences of a "heavenly twin" of his, calling him to leave his father's sect and preach the true message of Christ. In 240–41, Mani travelled to the Indo-Greek Kingdom of the Sakas in modern-day Afghanistan, where he studied Hinduism and its various extant philosophies. Returning in 242, he joined the court of Shapur I, to whom he dedicated his only work written in Persian, known as the "Shabuhragan". The original writings were written in Syriac Aramaic, in a unique Manichaean script.


title: Gnosticism

text: Manichaeism conceives of two coexistent realms of light and darkness that become embroiled in conflict. Certain elements of the light became entrapped within darkness, and the purpose of material creation is to engage in the slow process of extraction of these individual elements. In the end, the kingdom of light will prevail over darkness. Manicheanism inherits this dualistic mythology from Zurvanist Zoroastrianism, in which the eternal spirit Ahura Mazda is opposed by his antithesis, Angra Mainyu. This dualistic teaching embodied an elaborate cosmological myth that included the defeat of a primal man by the powers of darkness that devoured and imprisoned the particles of light.


title: Gnosticism

text: According to Kurt Rudolph, the decline of Manichaeism that occurred in Persia in the 5th century was too late to prevent the spread of the movement into the east and the west. In the west, the teachings of the school moved into Syria, Northern Arabia, Egypt and North Africa. There is evidence for Manicheans in Rome and Dalmatia in the 4th century, and also in Gaul and Spain. From Syria it progressed still farther, into Palestine, Asia Minor and Armenia. The influence of Manicheanism was attacked by imperial elects and polemical writings, but the religion remained prevalent until the 6th century, and still exerted influence in the emergence of the Paulicians, Bogomils and Cathari in the Middle Ages, until it was ultimately stamped out by the Catholic Church.


title: Gnosticism

text: In the east, Rudolph relates, Manicheanism was able to bloom, because the religious monopoly position previously held by Christianity and Zoroastrianism had been broken by nascent Islam. In the early years of the Arab conquest, Manicheanism again found followers in Persia (mostly amongst educated circles), but flourished most in Central Asia, to which it had spread through Iran. Here, in 762, Manicheanism became the state religion of the Uyghur Empire.


title: Gnosticism

text: After its decline in the Mediterranean world, Gnosticism lived on in the periphery of the Byzantine Empire, and resurfaced in the western world. The Paulicians, an Adoptionist group which flourished between 650 and 872 in Armenia and the Eastern Themes of the Byzantine Empire, were accused by orthodox medieval sources of being Gnostic and quasi Manichaean Christian. The Bogomils, emerged in Bulgaria between 927 and 970 and spread throughout Europe. It was as synthesis of Armenian Paulicianism and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church reform movement.


title: Gnosticism

text: The Cathars (Cathari, Albigenses or Albigensians) were also accused by their enemies of the traits of Gnosticism; though whether or not the Cathari possessed direct historical influence from ancient Gnosticism is disputed. If their critics are reliable the basic conceptions of Gnostic cosmology are to be found in Cathar beliefs (most distinctly in their notion of a lesser, Satanic, creator god), though they did not apparently place any special relevance upon knowledge ("gnosis") as an effective salvific force.


title: Gnosticism

text: The Quran, like Gnostic cosmology, makes a sharp distinction between this world and the afterlife. God is commonly thought of as being beyond human comprehension. In some Islamic schools of thought, somehow identifiable with the Gnostic Monad. However, according to Islam and unlike most Gnostic sects, not rejection of this world but performing good deeds leads to Paradise. And according to the Islamic belief in strict monotheism, there was no room for a lower deity, such as the demiurge. According to Islam, both good and evil come from one God, a position especially opposed by the Manichaeans. Ibn al-Muqaffa, a Manichaean apologist who later converted to Islam, depicted the Abrahamic God as a demonic entity who "fights with humans and boasts about His victories" and "sitting on a throne, from which He can descend". It would be impossible that both light and darkness were created from one source, since they were regarded as two different eternal principles. Muslim theologists countered this accusation by the example of a repeating sinner, who says: "I laid, and I repent"; this would prove that good can also result out of evil.


title: Gnosticism

text: Islam also integrated traces of an entity given authority over the lower world in some early writings: Iblis is regarded by some Sufis as the owner of this world, and humans must avoid the treasures of this world, since they would belong to him. In the Isma'ili Shia work "Umm al Kitab", Azazil's role resembles whose of the Gnostic demiurge. Like the demiurge, he is endowed with the ability to create his own world and seeks to imprison humans in the material world, but here, his power is limited and depends on the higher God. Such Gnostic anthropogenic can be found frequently among Isma'ili traditions. In fact, Ismailism has been often criticised as non-Islamic. Ghazali characterized them as a group who are outwardly Shias but were actually adherence of a dualistic and philosophical religion. Further traces of Gnostic ideas can be found in Sufi anthropogenic. Like the gnostic conception of human beings imprisoned in matter, Sufi traditions acknowledge that the human soul is an accomplice of the material world and subject to bodily desires similar to the way archontic spheres envelop the pneuma. The pneuma (spirit) must therefore gain victory over the lower and material-bound psyche (soul or anima), to overcome its animal nature. A human being captured by its animal desires, mistakenly claims autonomy and independence from the "higher God", thus resembling the lower deity in classical gnostic traditions. However, since the goal is not to abandon the created world, but just to free oneself from ones own lower desires, it can be disputed whether this can still be Gnostic, but rather a completion of the message of Muhammad. It seems that Gnostic ideas were an influential part of early Islamic development but later lost its influence. However the Gnostic light metaphorics and the idea of unity of existence still prevailed in later Islamic thought.


title: Gnosticism

text: Gershom Scholem, a historian of Jewish philosophy, claimed that several core Gnostic ideas reappear in medieval Kabbalah, where they are used to reinterpret earlier Jewish sources. In these cases, according to Scholem, texts such as the Zohar adapted Gnostic precepts for the interpretation of the Torah, while not utilizing the language of Gnosticism. Scholem further postulated that there was originally a "Jewish Gnosticism", which influenced the early origins of Christian Gnosticism.


title: Gnosticism

text: Given that some of the earliest dated Kabbalistic texts emerged in medieval Provence, at which time Cathar movements were also supposed to have been active, Scholem and other mid-20th century scholars argued that there was mutual influence between the two groups. According to Dan Joseph, this claim has not been substantiated by any extant texts.


title: Gnosticism

text: Found today in Iraq, Iran and diaspora communities, the Mandaeans are an ancient Gnostic ethnoreligious group that follow John the Baptist and have survived from antiquity. Their name comes from the Aramaic "manda" meaning knowledge or gnosis. There are thought to be 60,000 to 70,000 Mandaeans worldwide. A number of modern gnostic ecclesiastical bodies have been set up or re-founded since the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library, including the Ecclesia Gnostica, Apostolic Johannite Church, Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, the Gnostic Church of France, the Thomasine Church, the Alexandrian Gnostic Church, the North American College of Gnostic Bishops, and the Universal Gnosticism of Samael Aun Weor. A number of 19th-century thinkers such as Arthur Schopenhauer, Albert Pike and Madame Blavatsky studied Gnostic thought extensively and were influenced by it, and even figures like Herman Melville and W. B. Yeats were more tangentially influenced. Jules Doinel "re-established" a Gnostic church in France in 1890, which altered its form as it passed through various direct successors (Fabre des Essarts as "Tau Synésius" and Joanny Bricaud as "Tau Jean II" most notably), and, though small, is still active today.


title: Gnosticism

text: Early 20th-century thinkers who heavily studied and were influenced by Gnosticism include Carl Jung (who supported Gnosticism), Eric Voegelin (who opposed it), Jorge Luis Borges (who included it in many of his short stories), and Aleister Crowley, with figures such as Hermann Hesse being more moderately influenced. René Guénon founded the gnostic review, "La Gnose" in 1909, before moving to a more Perennialist position, and founding his Traditionalist School. Gnostic Thelemite organizations, such as Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica and Ordo Templi Orientis, trace themselves to Crowley's thought. The discovery and translation of the Nag Hammadi library after 1945 has had a huge effect on Gnosticism since World War II. Intellectuals who were heavily influenced by Gnosticism in this period include Lawrence Durrell, Hans Jonas, Philip K. Dick and Harold Bloom, with Albert Camus and Allen Ginsberg being more moderately influenced. Celia Green has written on Gnostic Christianity in relation to her own philosophy. Alfred North Whitehead was aware of the existence of the newly discovered Gnostic scrolls. Accordingly, Michel Weber has proposed a Gnostic interpretation of his late metaphysics.


title: Gnosticism

text: Prior to the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945 Gnosticism was known primarily through the works of heresiologists, Church Fathers who opposed those movements. These writings had an antagonistic bias towards gnostic teachings, and were incomplete. Several heresiological writers, such as Hippolytus, made little effort to exactly record the nature of the sects they reported on, or transcribe their sacred texts. Reconstructions of incomplete Gnostic texts were attempted in modern times, but research on Gnosticism was coloured by the orthodox views of those heresiologists.


title: Gnosticism

text: Justin Martyr (c. 100/114 – c. 162/168) wrote the "First Apology", addressed to Roman emperor Antoninus Pius, which criticised Simon Magus, Menander and Marcion. Since then, both Simon and Menander have been considered as 'proto-Gnostic'. Irenaeus (died c. 202) wrote "Against Heresies" (c. 180–185), which identifies Simon Magus from Flavia Neapolis in Samaria as the inceptor of Gnosticism. From Samaria he charted an apparent spread of the teachings of Simon through the ancient "knowers" into the teachings of Valentinus and other, contemporary Gnostic sects. Hippolytus (170–235) wrote the ten-volume "Refutation Against all Heresies", of which eight have been unearthed. It also focuses on the connection between pre-Socratic (and therefore Pre-Incantation of Christ) ideas and the false beliefs of early gnostic leaders. Thirty-three of the groups he reported on are considered Gnostic by modern scholars, including 'the foreigners' and 'the Seth people'. Hippolytus further presents individual teachers such as Simon, Valentinus, Secundus, Ptolemy, Heracleon, Marcus and Colorbasus. Tertullian (c. 155–230) from Carthage wrote "Adversus Valentinianos" ('Against the Valentinians'), c.206, as well as five books around 207–208 chronicling and refuting the teachings of Marcion.


title: Gnosticism

text: Prior to the discovery at Nag Hammadi, a limited number of texts were available to students of Gnosticism. Reconstructions were attempted from the records of the heresiologists, but these were necessarily coloured by the motivation behind the source accounts. The Nag Hammadi library is a collection of Gnostic texts discovered in 1945 near Nag Hammadi, Upper Egypt. Twelve leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by a local farmer named Muhammed al-Samman. The writings in these codices comprised fifty-two mostly Gnostic treatises, but they also include three works belonging to the "Corpus Hermeticum" and a partial translation/alteration of Plato's "Republic". These codices may have belonged to a nearby Pachomian monastery, and buried after Bishop Athanasius condemned the use of non-canonical books in his Festal Letter of 367. Though the original language of composition was probably Greek, the various codices contained in the collection were written in Coptic. A 1st- or 2nd-century date of composition for the lost Greek originals has been proposed, though this is disputed; the manuscripts themselves date from the 3rd and 4th centuries. The Nag Hammadi texts demonstrated the fluidity of early Christian scripture and early Christianity itself.


title: Gnosticism

text: Prior to the discovery of Nag Hammadi, the Gnostic movements were largely perceived through the lens of the early church heresiologists. Johann Lorenz von Mosheim (1694–1755) proposed that Gnosticism developed on its own in Greece and Mesopotamia, spreading to the west and incorporating Jewish elements. According to Mosheim, Jewish thought took Gnostic elements and used them against Greek philosophy. J.Horn and Ernest Anton Lewald proposed Persian and Zoroastrian origins, while Jacques Matter described Gnosticism as an intrusion of eastern cosmological and theosophical speculation into Christianity.