The North American College of Gnostic Bishops

L'Eglise Gnostique Catholique Apostolique Catholicate de la Croix de Rose

As the name implies we are a Gnostic Church of the lineages of the French Gnostic Tradition of Jules Doinel, coupled with all the extant Apostolic lineages of the Independent Catholic/Orthodox movement. Our approach to Gnosticism does not dogmatically match the known "Gnostic" movements of the first centuries such as the Valentinian or Basilidean, but we do hold to the basic idea of Gnosis, as the Greek term gnostikoi, or "knower." What we teach is that every one of us can experience an aspect of divinity, to the point where we ourselves can become divine. This experience is how one becomes a gnostikoi, or "one who knows,"- experientially, their place in the universe and how much they are a part of the grand scheme of things and the Ground of Being that underlies the entire universe.

We recognize two approaches to this experience, each incomplete without the other. The first approach is the "public" form or expression as given by the seven Sacraments; the second is the study and application of an esoteric or inner form of Christianity, the Hesychast tradition, thus our Eastern Rite approach.

We are an Eastern Rite, Oriental Church. The two most obvious reasons is that the Eastern Rite forms of work and worship still retain a theurgic quality lacking in the Western Rite and the Eastern Rite still teaches the doctrine of Theosis. Theosis is what Gnosticism is all about. It is defined by the early Greek Fathers as the "Divinization of Man" and the "Acquisition of the Holy Spirit." John Chirban, in his "Developmental Stages in Eastern Orthodox Christianity" in Transformations of Consciousness, (Shambhala, 1986), states:

Theosis, deification, or the acquisition of the Holy Spirit, constitutes the aim of the Orthodox Christian life. The life of Jesus Christ serves as the model for Theosis. St. Athanasius says, like St. Iranaeus before him, "God became man so that man might become God." It is said that Christ inaugurates the Kingdom of God on earth which is yet to be fulfilled, fully realized. Theosis, however, is not an eschatological potentiality or mere promise but, rather, it is the intense ascent of one who struggles and who is graced to find the Kingdom in this present life. Theosis is a par excellence example of theological and spiritual doctrine that is demonstrated in the alert, arduous spiritual aklesis (exercise or development of the Christian as he or she yearns to achieve union with God.

There are degrees of the experience we call Gnosis, or Theosis. In our tradition we have these four levels of experience:
Hylics - those who are self identified with the body, represented by the element Earth. Symbol of all outside the Church.
Psychic - those identified by their personality or soul, ("psychic" in this case is from the Greek for "soul" and does not reference Extra Sensory Perception, or the like.) Symbolized by the position of Deacon.
Pneumatic - the initiate who is identified with the Spirit, Essential Self or higher self, spiritual identification. Symbolized by the Priest.
Gnostic - identified with the Universal Daemon, Gnosis in its entirety, the Mystical identification. Symbolized by the Bishop. This is not to say that the people who hold these positions in any church have reached that point in their experience of the divine, but we are all on the path and this is how the tradition has come down to us in its symbology.

These match the four types of people as presented by Louis Claude de St Martin, (as presented in the French schools):
L'Homme du Torrent: Man of the Torrent. Men without will-power and of little individuality, who follow the way of life in a given epoch without bothering about anything except their elementary needs.
L'Homme de Désir: Man of Desire. These are consciously and ardently seeking perfection and absolute Truth on the way of contemplation, entering their own hearts and learning the sources of the Tradition.
Le Nouvel Homme: the New Man. Men who have reached a certain degree of astral development and who, in their judgments about neighbors and themselves, do not commit those errors which the Men of Desire are capable of making.

L'Homme Esprit: Man-Spirit. This last category, according to St Martin's theory concerns men who are utterly separated from all interests and troubles, as well as attachments of the physical plane. By this fact they are free from the slavery of the animalistic nature, and on the other hand, from imperfect knowledge about their high origin in the sphere of Emanated Life. (From Moni Sadhu's Tarot).

These again match the Fourth Way and the Christian Tradition as expounded by Boris Mouravieff:
Man of Type 1: "is he whose mental centre of gravity abides in the motor centre;" (stomach).
Man of Type 2: "is he whose centre of gravity resides in the emotional centre;" (heart).
Man of Type 3: "is he whose centre of gravity resides in the intellectual centre," (head).
Man of Type 4: Christ, the one who has returned to the heart bringing with him the Ogdoad (the eighth "lamp" located above the head, the doorway to the ninth.)

We also style our Catholicate as "de la Croix de Rose" or Rosicrucian, as we hold that the doctrine of Theosis, though driven underground by the Catholic Church, and later Protestant churches, still survived in the Western Mystery Tradition. We also hold that this underground current had many roots from the East by way of the Knights Templars, who brought it back from the Crusades. One definition by the Greek Fathers of Theosis was re-integration into God, and the term re-integration had become the raison d'etre, of these movements, as it is with ours.