Fragments of a Faith Forgotten

Editorial Summary

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten (1900) is G. R. S. Mead's study of Gnosticism, presenting and analyzing surviving Gnostic texts and traditions, including their elaborate cosmologies of angelic and semi-divine intermediary beings — aeons and archons — standing between the divine and the material world.

Why This Book Is in the Directory

Mead's study of Gnosticism directly extends this directory's angelology coverage into Gnostic cosmology's aeons and archons — a direct-scope entry anchored to his own verified 1900 first edition.

Historical Context

Published in 1900 by the Theosophical Publishing Society in London, the book appeared as Theosophist scholars were engaging seriously with Gnostic and Hermetic texts, treating them as a legitimate subject of historical study rather than only as heretical curiosities.

What the Author Presents

Mead surveys a wide range of Gnostic sources, translating and summarizing key texts and framing them within their historical and religious context. His approach is sympathetic to the Gnostic material's spiritual seriousness while working from the more limited body of primary sources available before the twentieth-century manuscript discoveries that later transformed the field.

Intended Reader

Best suited for readers interested in the history of Gnosticism, early Christian-era religious diversity, and angelology and cosmology outside the biblical mainstream. Less suitable for readers seeking a treatment incorporating the Nag Hammadi texts discovered decades later.

Strengths and Limitations

An early, influential English-language study that helped establish Gnosticism as a serious subject of historical study. Because it predates the Nag Hammadi discoveries and most modern Gnostic-studies scholarship, individual claims should be checked against current research. Its continued value lies in its historical role and its accessible survey of the primary sources available at the time.

Gnostic studies has advanced substantially since 1900, particularly following the mid-twentieth- century discovery of the Nag Hammadi library; some of Mead's specific textual judgments have been revised by later scholarship.

Edition Disclosure

This directory entry is anchored to Mead's 1900 first edition (Theosophical Publishing Society, London). The Amazon purchase links lead to modern editions — including paperback and electronic formats — not an original 1900 physical copy.

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Book Facts

Topics

Related Works

• None currently linked.

Sources

• Internet Archive — digitized 1906 second edition (reprints the 1900 first-edition preface)
• Wikipedia — G. R. S. Mead