The Gnostics believed in an incredible variety of spiritual beings. Most Gnostics taught that the material world is unreal and the body is unreal or evil. There is a recent parallel to Gnosticism in Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science and a very contemporary parallel in the New Age movement. Obviously, I could say more, and indeed have done so in Heresies. But the important thing about these “heresies” is the fact that they are not just permissible variations, options, or choices, but by their very