Who is G.R.S. Mead?

Selected Writings by G. R. S. Mead on Online but Off Site

 The Corpus Hermeticum
Gnostic John the Baptizer

Apollonius of Tyana

The Fourth-Gospel Problem.

Online Theosophist Writings Canada: See Mead

The Corpus Hermeticum

Gnosis of the Mind



George Robert Stowe Mead (G. R. S. Mead), wrote the first English translation of the Pistis Sophia, the most influential of all Gnostic studies before the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library.

He was a prolific writer contributing much to the study of hermetics, christianity, gnosticism and world religions. A Hermeticist and scholar was one of the truly great researchers into arcane wisdom. At a time when the esoteric tended to mean little more than table tapping and mysterious phenomena, he was translating into English the gems of Neoplatonic and Egyptian philosophy. In works such as Thrice Greatest Hermes, The Doctrine of the Subtle Body, Orpheus, and Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, he almost single handedly reassembled the lost esoteric tradition of classical Athens and Alexandria and Gnosticism in general. Mead was at one time the European General Secretary of the Theosophical Society.

A young George Robert Stowe Mead is pictured on the far right. He is accompanied by James Pryse. The two men are escorting the famous Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Mead became a member of Blavatsky's Theosophical Society in 1884. He abandonded his teaching profession 1889 to be Blavatsky's private secretary. He served in this position for almost three years until Blavatsky's death in 1891. He worked as an assistant editor to Blavatsky's monthy magazine, Lucifer, which Mead renamed The Theosophical Review after taking over as its editor. Mead was appointed General Secretary of the European division of the society but resigned from the position in 1897. He was also offered the presidency following the death of the co-founder of the society. Mead turned this position down as well because he felt the need to pursue his own studies.



Echoes from the Gnosis
George Robert Stow Mead (Author), John Algeo (Editor), Robert Gilbert (Introduction), Stephan A. Hoeller (Commentary)



Paul Tice version: Pistis Sophia: A Gnostic Gospel by G.R.S.Mead, Paul Tice
Book Tree (September 1, 2003)

About: Paul Tice is an author, publisher, world traveler and Gnostic minister. He has published books for people like Zecharia Sitchin, Neil Freer, R.A. Boulay and others through an organization called The Book Tree. He has traveled and investigated ancient mysteries in places like Egypt, Turkey, Israel and the Yucatan in Mexico.

He also has a strong belief in the preservation of knowledge and has recently opened The Book Tree archives to republish hundreds of rare and important titles on ancient mysteries, religious controversy and spiritual truth.

Paul Tice has written a number of smaller booklets on ancient history, UFOs and religion. These shorter works include "The Origins of Dragon Mythology," "A Booklet of Meaningful Quotes," "Jumpin' Jehovah: Exposing the Atrocities of the Old Testament God," and "UFOs: From Earth or Outer Space? - An Investigation into UFOs and Their Occupants Concerning Their Possible Inter-Dimensional, Earthly Origins." Tice has been published in magazines like Gnosis, Fate, and New Perspectives. He is just completing his first book called "Triumph of the Human Spirit: Exploring the Greatest Achievements of the Human Soul and How Its Power can Change Your Life." He has appeared on many radio programs and is an avid researcher. He can be contacted at paultice@cts.com.

See Kessinger below for more info. I am not familiar with the Paul Tice edition (above) although I have ordered it for review. I have the reprint copy listed next. It is complete. Jessika

P.S. Pistis Sophia from Kessinger most certainly read by Father Paul.


Exact reprint of the Original Version of G.R.S. Mead's
Pistis Sophia from Kessinger

Some of the Contents: Documents & General Literature of Gnosticism; Probable History of the Treatise; Jesus Hitherto Instructeth His Disciples Only up to the Region of the First Mystery; Treasure of Light; Confusion of the Powers & the Great Earthquake; Dismay of the Disciples; Jesus Addresseth Them; That John Was Elias in a Former Birth; Mystery of the Five Words on the Vesture; Sophia & Her Fellow-Powers Behold the Light.

The Pistis Sophia is preserved in the Codex Askewianus and has been known to scholars for nearly two centuries. Jack Finegan writes (Hidden Records of the Life of Jesus, p. 298), "The text of Codex Askewianus is divided into four sections."

H.-C. Puech, revised by Beate Blatz, writes (New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 1, p. 362): "following the analysis of K.R. Köstlin, the results of which were adopted and more precisely stated by C. Schmidt, it is today almost unanimously agreed that the four sections of the manuscript must be divided into two distinct groups.

The first three sections correspond to the three books of one and the same work, probably composed between 250 and 300: the first book (pp. 1-81 of the Schmidt-Till translation) has neither superscription nor colophon; the second (pp. 82-162) has at the beginning the title (added later) '

The second book (tomos) of the Pistis Sophia', but is designated at the end as 'A part (meros) of the books (or rolls: teuche) of the Saviour (soter)'; the third (pp. 164.20-231.9), separated from the second by an independent fragment, the end of a lost book, is likewise entitled in the colophon 'A part (meros) of the books (or rolls: teuche) of the Saviour (soter)'. On the other hand the fourth section (232.1-254.8), which has no title, is in reality a distinct work, composed in the first half of the 3rd century and thus older than those which precede it.

Accordingly only the work contained in the first three books merits the name 'Pistis Sophia'."

G. R. S. Mead writes (Pistis Sophia, pp. xxxvii-xxxix):

The earlier view ascribed the P.S. to Valentinus, who died probably about the middle of the 2nd century, or a decade later, or alternatively to an adherent of the Valentinian school. We may call it the 2nd-century theory. A succession of scholars were of tihs opinion, among whom may be mentioned Woide, Jablonski, La Croze, Dulaurier, Schwartze, Renan, Révillout, Usener and Amélineau. This earlier view can hardly be said to have been supported by any great show of detailed argument, except by the French Egyptologist and Coptic scholar Amélineau, who was its most stalwart supporter. Seven years prior to his translation of P.S. in 1895, Amélineau devoted 156 pp. of a voluminous essay (Bib. 19), in which he sought to prove the Egyptian origins of Gnosticism—a general thesis which can hardly be maintained in the light of more recent research,—to a comparison of the system of Valentinus with that of the P.S...

From Archive Notes Gnostis.Org : The following introductory comments are extracted from G.R.S. Mead, Pistis Sophia: A Gnostic Gospel, pp. xxxix - l. It should be remember that this introduction was written in 1921, decades before the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, and at a time when the Pistis Sophia was one of the most important and largest collections of Gnostic material available to scholars.


An Excerpt from the Introduction to Pistis Sophia by G.R.S. Mead

"We have in the contents of the Askew, Bruce and Berlin Codices a rich material which hands on to us valuable direct information concerning what I have called 'The Gnosis according to its Friends,' in distinction from what previously used to be our only sources, the polemical writings of the heresiological Fathers, which set forth 'The Gnosis according to its Foes.' We have thus at last a new standpoint from which to review the subject, and therewith the opportunity of revising our impressions in a number of respects; a considerably different angle of vision must needs change the perspective of no little in the picture.... " For more go here: Archive Notes Gnostis.Org



Fragments of a Faith Forgotten
by G.R.S. Mead, G.R. Mead

Some short sketches among the Gnostics, mainly of the first two centuries-a contribution to the study of Christian Origins based on the most recently discovered materials. "I have written so that the man of one language only may read from the first to the last page, without being forced to regret his ignorance of other tongues; for I believe that the subject is of profoundly human interest, and not one of merely academical importance...my main object has been to hand on what the earliest Christian philosophers and teachers wrote and thought. They seem to me to have written many beautiful things, and I, for my part, have learned through them to sense the work of the Great Master in a totally new light." Contents: Prolegomena; Some Rough Outlines of the Background of the Gnosis; General And Gnostic Christianity; The Gnosis According to Its Foes; Some Gnostic Fragments Recovered from the Polemical Writings of the Church Fathers; Some Traces of the Gnosis in the Uncanonical Acts; The Gnosis According to Its Friends; Bibliographies.

I highly recommend this one Fragments of a Faith Forgotten . An extensive bibliography of the period and a glimpse of Mead's world is worth the price alone. Surely this work was a foundation for the further search of others. Jessika



Theosophical Glossary by H. P. Blavatsky, G. R. S. Mead

1918. This glossary's purpose is to give information on the principal Sanskrit, Pahlavi, Tibetan, Pali, Chaldean, Persian, Scandinavian, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Kabalistic and Gnostic words, and occult terms generally used in theosophical literature.

There is also an earlier version with no names listed as author. I recommend this one here by Blavatsky and Mead. Jessika


THRICE GREATEST HERMES
by G. R. S. Mead
This complete and unabridged edition of Thrice Greatest Hermes, containing translations of extant sermons and fragments of Trismegistic (Hermetic) literature, with Prolegomena, commentaries, and notes, will be of great value to anyone studying Hellenistic theosophy or the historic, mythic, and mystic origins of Christianity. It was first published in three volumes in London in 1906 and is considered the definitive masterpiece of G. R. S. Mead, Gnosticism's greatest scholar.



Thrice Greatest Hermes: Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis Being a Translation of the Extant Sermons and Fragments of the Trismegistic Lite
by G.R.S. Mead: Reprint of the 1906 Orginal:

Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis Being a Transaction of the Extant Sermons and Fragments of the Trismegistic Literature with Prolegomena, Commentaries, and Notes; All three volumes are combined into one book. These volumes might be described as the preparation of materials to serve for the historic, mythic, and mystic consideration of the Origins of Christianity.
Christendom. Partial Contents: Vol. 1: Remains of the Trismegistic Literature; History of the Evolution of Opinion; Thoth the Master of Wisdom; Popular Theurgic Hermes-Cult; Main Source of the Trismegistic Literature; An Egyptian Prototype of the Main Features of the Poemandres Cosmogony; Myth of Man in the Mysteries; Philo of Alexandria; Plutarch: Concerning the Mysteries of Isis and Osiris; Hermas and Hermes ; Concerning the on-Doctrine; Seven Zones and their Characteristics; Plato: Concerning Metempsychosis; Disciples of Thrice-Greatest Hermes. Vol. 2: Poemandres, the Shepherd of Men; General Sermon; Sacred Sermon; Cup or Monad; In God Alone is Good; Greatest Ill Among Men is Ignorance of God; But Men in Error Speak of Their Changes as Destructions and as Deaths; On Thought and Sense; The Key; Mind Unto Hermes; About the Common Mind; Secret Sermon on the Mountain. Vol. 3: Excerpts by Stob us; Of Piety and True Philosophy; Ineffability of God; Of Truth; God, Nature and the Gods; Of Matter & Time; Energy and Feeling; Justice; Providence and Fate; Of Soul; Power of Choice; Of Isis to Horus; From Aphrodite ; References and Fragments in the Fathers; Justin Martyr; Clement of Alexandria; Tertullian; Cyprian; Augustine; Cyril of Alexandria; References and Fragments in the Philosophers; Zosimus; Jamblichus; Julian the Emperor; Fulgentius the Mythographer.


Hymn of Jesus: Echoes from the Gnosis (Quest Miniature)
by G. R. S. Mead, G.R.S. Mead

The mystical dance of Christ and his disciples.

Mead wrote: "Ceretius, one of the bishops presumably, had sent Augustine some of the books of these Gnostics; he himself seems to have been inclined to approve them. Augustine, in his answer, picks out for detailed criticism one document only--our Hymn. Concerning this he writes:

"As for the Hymn which they say is that of our Lord Jesus Christ, and which has so greatly aroused your veneration, it is usually found in apocryphal writings, not peculiar to the Priscillianists but used by other heretics."

Augustine adds a quotation from the introduction of the Gnostic M.S. of the Hymn, which runs:

"The Hymn of the Lord which He sang in secret to the holy Apostles, His disciples, for it is said in the Gospel: 'And after singing a hymn He ascended the mount.' This Hymn is not put in the canon, because of those who think according to themselves, and not according to the Spirit and Truth of God, and that it is written: 'It is good to hide the sacrament of the King; but it is honourable to reveal the works of God.'"

The Gospel referred to cannot be either Matthew (xxvi.31) or Mark (xiv.26), both of which read: "And after singing a hymn they went out to the Mount of Olives." The second quotation I am unable to trace.

An important point which will concern us later on is that Ceretius found the Hymn by itself and not in its context in the Acts; it was in all probability extracted for liturgical purposes.

It is, moreover, evident from what Augustine writes in the first passage we have quoted that the Hymn was well-known in Gnostic circles.




A Mithraic Ritual by G. R. S. Mead The primary ritual of the Mithraica and meant as the solitary rite of initiation into the Mysteries.


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