This is by far the most comprehensive compilation of gnostic texts ever published. Dating from the first to the thirteenth centuries, these gnostic texts represent Jewish, Christian, Hermetic, Mandaean, Manichaean, Islamic, and Cathar forms of of gnostic spirituality. The texts show that gnosticism was a world religion that sought truths in a wide variety of religious traditions and expressed those truths in powerful and provocative mystical poetry and prose.