This work exemplifies all that is best in Mead's dedicated, scholarly, but eminently readable studies of the spiritual roots of Christian Gnosticism and, more generally, of personal religion in the Greco-Roman world. His work encompassed much more than this; Mead was equally at home with Sanskrit texts, Patristic literature, Buddhist thought, and the problems of contemporary philosophy and psychical research. He devoted his intellectual energy to the complex interplay of Gnosticism, Hellenism, Judaism, and Christianity.

This three volume set presents his insights into the formation of the Gnostic world-view and establishes him as an outstanding translator of these Hermetic books, and as the first modern scholar of Gnostic tradition.

George Robert Stow Mead (1863- 1933), was an English historian, writer, editor, translator, and an influential member of the Theosophical Society, as well as the founder of the Quest Society. His scholarly works dealt mainly with the hermetic and gnostic religions of late antiquity, and were exhaustive for the time period. The seminal Gnostic influence G.R.S. Mead had on Carl Gustav Jung has been documented by several scholars.