Lew, after reading the above concise article interested LRC readers should delve into the excellent  authoritative text, Gnostic America: A Reading of Contemporary American Culture & Religion according to Christianity’s Oldest Heresy, by Peter M. Burfeind. The subject of gnosticism is one of the most important and impactful areas of study in world history, with tremendous consequences both ancient and modern few non-initiates can fathom. It has fascinated a wide range of dedicated scholars such as Eric Vogelin, James Billington, Michael Burleigh, Murray Rothbard, Norman Cohn, Henri de Lubac, Thomas Molnar,  John Gray, Terry Melanson, and F. A. Hayek who have documented the emergence of ersatz gnostic political religions and this elitist scientism as outgrowths of the Enlightenment. There is a dark side of the Enlightenment and its social engineering progeny that many libertarians, (particularly those enamored by the militant atheism of Ayn Rand) do not acknowledge. They continue to blindly hold to the secular mythology that the Enlightenment was entirely about bringing truth, reason, tolerance, and light to the miserable masses held in thrall, bondage and superstitious oppression by Throne and Altar. First a stridency emerged from clandestine Free Masonic enclaves such as the Parisian La Loge des Neuf Soeurs, the Grand Orient and in Adam Weishaupt’s Illuminism, which influenced the savage course of anti-clerical genocide in the French Revolution — and later in Comtian Positivism and Marxist dialectical materialism — all of which saw Christianity, particularly Roman Catholicism, as its sworn deadly enemy.

Gnosticism: The Enduring Heresy and Menace to Western Civilization, by Charles Burris

Utopian Nightmares and Gnostic Political Religions (Amazon book list)

The Best of Charles Burris