# Gnostic Sects (composite entry) · The Cult Dossier · The Atlas · The Congregation of Tomorrow

Source: https://congregationoftomorrow.org/atlas/library/cults/011-gnostic-sects-composite-entry/ · The Congregation of Tomorrow · the Atlas · language: en
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The Cult Dossier · No. 011 · Occult / Esoteric / Satanic
Gnostic Sects (composite entry)
Sethians, Valentinians, Basilideans, Carpocratians, Borborites, Ophites
c.80 – c.400 CE; Mandaeans survive · Egypt, Syria, Rome, Mesopotamia
I. ANTIQUITY — THE MYSTERY CULTS
Fully religious — competing forms of early Christianity
### Who led it
### What it worshipped and taught
### Who was in it
### How it ended, or where it stands
### The dead
### Of note
### Its timeline
- c.144 CE Marcion expelled from the church at Rome; builds a rival network with the first fixed Christian canon.
- c.180 CE Irenaeus writes Against Heresies — the main surviving description, hostile.
- c.374–377 CE EPIPHANIUS OF SALAMIS' PANARION catalogues the Borborites as THE TWENTY-SIXTH HERESY and accuses them of ritual consumption of bodily fluids — almost certainly atrocity propaganda. THE NAME ITSELF IS THE ACCUSATION. 'Borborite' is from the Greek BORBOROS, MUD OR FILTH; it means THE FILTHY ONES. IT WAS NEVER A SELF-DESIGNATION — it was bestowed by adversaries, and Epiphanius uses it precisely to equate doctrinal error with physical and moral filth. What this group called itself is not recorded. See Appendix D on the pattern.
- 4th c. CE Suppression after Nicaea; texts destroyed.
- December 1945 Nag Hammadi library found in Upper Egypt by Muhammad Ali al-Samman — 13 codices, 52 texts, including the Gospel of Thomas and the Apocryphon of John. The movement finally readable in its own words.
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