>>16116387>I can't tell if Gnosticism is genuineThat was your first mistake. If you're asking this question, you've skipped another important one: the question of what Gnosticism even is. "Gnostics" didn't know themselves as such, and weren't called such until later. They were Christians at a time when the church and canon hadn't been formalized in the way they later would be, whose works and approach to religion generally had some similar concepts. Those being things like the material world being an evil imposed on spiritual beings, Christ being only spiritual because of his being wholly good, among others. Any "gnostic" text could feature some or all of the gnostic tropes. As well, the first attempt at a canon Christian Bible was undertaken by a man called Marcion, who was excommunicated and gained a large following in no small part because of his canon. Marcion believed YHWH had a physical body, and thus couldn't be wholly good. He denied the death and resurrection of Christ, because those things would require Christ to have a physical body instead of an imitation of one. He was controversial in the early church, though his canon was comprised of edited versions of the Gospel of Luke and some Pauline letters. In other words, there were a lot of other "gnostic" concepts and books not used by one of the most popular "gnostics."
>[Gnosticism] seems to have much in common with SatanismIn the case of either theistic or atheistic Satanism, there isn't a ton in common with the different Christian ideas which failed to gain traction after the early formation of the church. The questions many of these early Christians were concerned with rose from the then unclear boundary between the growing Christian movement and Judaism; is the God of Christ the same as YHWH, is the material world redeemable or something to transcend, etc. If you're looking for modern day gnostics, the only ones whose practice stems from and shares those of antiquity are the Mandaeans(picrel).
