Description: Gnosticism like mysticism pursues the inner way; its authority is not external but internal-a living personal experience-but without denying the outer world. Under the guise of Basilides, a second-century AD Gnostic sage, Jung wrote in 1916 the Seven Sermons to the Dead after he had received intense psychic experiences.The author has made his own translation of the sermons and sets forth a lengthy explanation and far-ranging commentary on Jung, Gnosticism, and the present condition of the Western individual. ---Choice Review
Brief description: Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller is the author of The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, Freedom: Alchemy for a Voluntary Society, and The Royal Read: A Manual of Kabbalistic Meditations on the Tarot. He is associate professor of comparative religions at the College of Oriental Studies in Los Angeles, an organization interested in Jungian psychology, the Kabbalah, Tarot, classical Gnosticism, myth, and literature. Born in Hungary, he graduated from the University of Innsbruck in Austria. He resides in Hollywood, California.