Pocket Essentials used to be fairly tatty little paperbacks; now they’re very smart little hardbacks – probably a shrewd marketing decision. Sean Martin has written books in the same series on alchemy and alchemists, the Cathars, the Knights Templar and the Black Death.

This is an excellent introduction to the Gnostics and Gnosticism. A brief Prologue on the discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices is followed by the historical relationship between Early Christianity and Gnosticism, and then concise examinations of Gnostic beliefs and myths, teachers and traditions, the various Gnostic religions and the Gnostic texts. The final chapter looks at the legacy of Gnosticism – not just the Cathars of the 12th- to 13th-century Languedoc, but right up to date with 19th-century Occultism, the novels of Philip K Dick and the Matrix films.

The book is generally well researched and written, though the author’s bias against what became mainstream Christianity is too visible; at least four times in the first 50 pages he prefaces a (usually justifiable) negative statement about the nascent Church with the unnecessary comment “Needless to say…”

There are a few errors as well. “Demiurge” does not mean “half-maker” but “craftsman, artisan” (literally “public worker”); “demi” comes from the Greek demos, the people, not from the Latin demi, half. In a footnote Martin says “The word ‘maniac’ derives from a derogatory term for Manichæan”; not in my dictionaries! He also states that the Christian canon was decided at the Council of Nicea; a more understandable error is saying that the Nicene Creed came from the Council of Nicea in AD 325; it was 56 years later.

Despite these errors, this is a readable and generally sound discussion of Gnosticism. It would be interesting to read more from this author on esoteric religious history.