1. A group of ancient heresies, stressing escape from this world through the acquisition of esoteric knowledge.
2. A religious orientation advocating gnosis as the way to release a person's spiritual element; considered heresy by Christian churches.

The doctrines of certain pre-Christian pagan, Jewish, and early Christian sects that valued the revealed knowledge of God and of the origin and end of the human race as a means to attain redemption for the spiritual element in humans and that distinguished the Demiurge from the unknowable Divine Being.