Gnosticism takes its name from the Greek word gnosis or knowledge. The religious system identifies ignorance as the source of evil and knowledge of the nature of the world and of humanity's place in it as the source and even reality of salvation. Through this knowledge, generally hidden and kept secret because it can be attained only by revelation and retained only by a disciplined life, the gnostic has the opportunity to escape from the evil of the present world and come to beatitude.
Gnostic religion is built upon a certain way of experiencing and understanding the world.
First, the gnostic experiences the world, particularly the material world, as alien and antagonistic to spiritual projects and desires of human beings. To some extent this is an experience of opposition between the body and the soul, between idealistic sets of desires and the inability of the spirit to reach either harmony with or domination of the body. It also involves a social form, one in which it proves impossible to realize the ideals of peace and prosperity through cooperation among persons and control of the material and social universe. Taken alone this experience of alienation from the material world would lead only to nihilism and despair. A second experience, that of being loved and called to union with a higher being which is beyond the material world, is essential to gnostic religion.