Gnosticism is too complex and dreary a topic to sum up justly in a phrase, therefore let me sum it up unjustly: Gnosticism is the conceit that Thou Art God, and all of life is a trap to escape or a test to pass, so that you, by yourself, by your own unaided powers, will shed the falsehoods of material life and return to splendor in the Pleroma, the heaven beyond the utmost sphere.