Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and Theosophy

G.R.S. Mead

1863 – 1933

George Robert Stowe Mead was an English scholar, Theosophist, and translator who served as private secretary to H.P. Blavatsky and as editor of the Theosophical journal Lucifer before breaking with the Theosophical Society in 1909 to found his own Quest Society. His meticulous translations and studies of Gnostic, Hermetic, and Neoplatonic texts — including Pistis Sophia, the Corpus Hermeticum (Thrice-Greatest Hermes, 1906), and Fragments of a Faith Forgotten (1900) — brought the primary sources of late antique esotericism to a wide English-reading audience for the first time. Mead's scholarship remains foundational for the academic study of Gnosticism and Hermeticism, and his synthesis of rigorous philology with spiritual sympathy made him uniquely influential in both academic and esoteric circles.