The Serpent's Gift

preface: Digging Up My Library

acknowledgments

introduction: The Serpent’s Gift

Faith, Reason, and Gnosis

The Premodern, the Modern, and the Postmodern

Toward a Gnostic (Post)Modernity

Medi(t)ations

Writing as Hissing

Autobiographical and Pedagogical Contexts

The Essays

1 The Apocryphon of the Beloved

Invocation

The Quest for the Heretical Jesus

“One Will Know Them by Their Roots”

From the Womb . . .

Sexual Healings: Dispelling the Demons of Abuse

Sexual Teachings

The Man Jesus Loved

The Woman Jesus Loved

The Secret

2 Restoring the Adam of Light

The Adam of Light Awakened by Her

The Fiery Brook

The Sacrilegious Secret of Christian Theology

Implications of the Method

The Historical and Intellectual Contexts

“Man Is God to Man”: The Virtues of Pluralism and Polytheism

Completing the Incarnation of Love (and Sex): Embodiment in Feedback’s Thought

The Sexuality of Numbers

The Cancer and the Cure

Toward a Mystical Humanism: A Gnostic Rereading

3 Comparative Mystics

The Rebuke of the Gnostic and the Oriental Renaissance

Comparative Mystics

Ramakrishna: Colonialism, Universalism, Mysticism

Doctrinal and Historical-Critical Analysis

Ramakrishna and the Comparativist

The Critical Study of Religion as a Modern Mystical Tradition

The Scandal of Comparison

Professional Heresy: The Gnostic Study of Religion

interlude: Logoi Mystikoi; or, How to Think like a Gnostic

4 Mutant Marvels

Educational and Sexual Allegory

On Puberty and Powers

Denying the Demiurge

Toward a More Radical Empiricism

Dissociation and the Release of Nonordinary Energies

On Death as Dissociation

Real X-Men

On X-clusions and X-ceptions

Political Allegory; or, How (Not) to Be an X-Man

conclusion: Return to the Garden

The Other Tree

The Forbidden Fruit

“When He Becomes Troubled, He Will Be Astonished”

The Flaming Sword and the Bridal Chamber

notes

The Fruit of the Tree; or, My Gnostic Library before I Have to Bury It (Again)

index