My Experience at a Gnostic Christian Mass

By Aerik Vondenburg

A couple months ago, I had the pleasure of attending a Gnostic Christian mass. (The Queen of Heaven Gnostic Church, a parish of the Ecclesia Gnostica) ( http://www.gnosis.org/ecclesia/ecclesia.htm )
It was held in a living room of a house that had been converted into a chapel. The liturgy seemed heavily influenced by catholic mass, although with more references to the "wisdom of Sophia," "innefable mysteries," and the "divine pleroma."

The subject of the sermon was the Knights Templar.

The Gnostics were some of the earliest Christians. Not much was known about them because of persecution by Paul's Roman Christian sect, who saw them as heretics.

The word 'Gnosticism' is a modern construction, though based on an antiquated linguistic expression: it comes from the Greek word meaning 'knowledge', gnosis (γνῶσις). However, gnosis itself refers to a very specialised form of knowledge, deriving both from the exact meaning of the original Greek term and its usage in Platonist philosophy. This term was used to differentiate themselves from the Pauline sect, who they felt did not understand the true teachings of the Savior.

Gnosticism was a group of ancient religions that combined different elements from Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism (especially Zurvanism), Neoplatonism, and eventually Buddhism.

The following is from their website: ( http://www.gnosis.org/portland/ )


The Queen of Heaven Gnostic Church is a parish of the Ecclesia Gnostica, a Christian Gnostic sacramental church with its headquarters in Los Angeles, California. As a sacramental, liturgical church we employ chant, candles, incense, bells, vestments and other accoutrements for the purpose of elevating consciousness out of the ordinary and commonplace. The structure and content of our liturgies are age-old and inspired by the practices and metaphorical writings of the early Gnostics of the First through Fourth centuries.

What is our purpose?
The primary mission of our Church is to provide the ancient wisdom and redeeming power of the Gnosis, our means of spiritual liberation, within the living context of traditional Christian ritual and sacrament. By working with the literature of various Gnostic traditions in a sacramental setting, the words of the early Gnostics begin to awaken in us and subtly bring to us mystical insights into the existential meaning of the material world and the spiritual realities which transcend it. We begin to know what they knew. By this means we can recognize the true divine core of our being as a spark of the divine light. We begin to find out from whence we have come and whither we shall return in the journey of the soul, the journey by which each individual spark of the Light returns to its home in the Fullness, the Pleroma, the Place of Light.

What do we offer?
Although we practice an Independent Catholic tradition with similarities to mainstream Christianity, we have the additional interpretation and approach of the ancient Gnostics to more deeply participate in the divine mysteries of the sacramental life. As a community, we bring together a broad range of spiritual interests and backgrounds to amplify, deepen and expand our understanding of our Gnostic readings, rites and symbols. What we share as a community is an attraction to the sacramental mysteries of the early Church as a means for connecting us with this wide-reaching spirit of the ancient Gnostics. Although the Valentinian Gnosticism that we most closely resemble died out soon after the 4th Century, we retain an unbroken lineage to the early Apostolic Church of which it was a part, and have a direct succession from its Gnostic revivals in France and England.