The Mead Collection

Collection Index

Brief Introduction 

Echoes from Gnosis

The Gnosis of the Mind

The Hymn of Jesus

The Hymn of the Robe of Glory

The Hymns of Hermes

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The G. R. S. Mead Collection

GEORGE ROBERT STOW MEAD (1863-1933) was born at Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. He came from a military family—his father was a Colonel in the Royal Army Ordinance Corps—but he chose to follow an academic career instead. From King’s School, Rochester, he went up to St. John’s College, Cambridge, to study mathematics but changed to Classics, in which he graduated with a B.A. degree in 1884. In that same year, he joined the Theosophical Society and determined to devote his life to the cause of Theosophy.

During his vacations, Mead worked as a volunteer at the London headquarters of the Theosophical Society, and on one of his visits, in May 1887, he first met H. P. Blavatsky. He was at once captivated, and two years later H.P.B. repaid his devotion by giving him her absolute trust and appointing him her private secretary. In addition to handling H.P.B.’s correspondence, Mead also edited most of her later published works and acted, without acknowledgment, as assistant editor of her magazine, Lucifer, for which he had written anonymously since the first volume.

While working closely with the Theosophical Society, Mead also published many of his own works: The World Mystery (1895), Plotinus (1895), Orpheus (1896), and Pistis Sophia (1896).  After over a century, his edition of Pistis Sophia remains one of the best translations and commentary available on this important Gnostic text.  Not long after, Mead published two more major works, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten (1900) and Thrice Greatest Hermes (1906). Both exemplify all that is best in his dedicated, scholarly, but eminently readable studies of the spiritual roots of Christian Gnosticism and, more generally, of personal religion in the Greco-Roman world. But  his work encompassed much more than this, Mead was equally at home with Sanskrit texts, Patristic literature, Buddhist thought, and the problems of contemporary philosophy and psychical research. He devoted his intellectual energy to the complex interplay of Gnosticism, Hellenism, Judaism, and Christianity.   

In 1906 Mead also began publication of a series of monographs under the title Echoes from the Gnosis (recently republished in a centennial edition) summarizing his insights into the formation of the Gnostic world-view.  By this time Mead had published eight works on various aspects of the early Christian world and on “The Theosophy of the Greeks.”  Together with his outstanding translations of the Hermetic books, these works established his reputation as one of the foremost English scholars in his broadly chosen fields.  Mead was the first modern scholar of Gnostic tradition. A century later, the corpus of his work remains unequaled in breadth and  insight.

Resources and commentary compiled by Lance S. Owens

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Collection Index

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George Robert Stow Mead (1863-1933)

Brief Biographical Introduction  by Stephan A. Hoeller

Volumes in the series Echoes from the Gnosis

The Gnosis of the Mind

The Hymn of Jesus

The Hymn of the Robe of Glory

The Hymns of Hermes

The Mysteries of Mithra

The Vision of Aridaeus

The Chaldaen Oracles

Books by G.R.S. Mead

Pistis Sophia

Thrice-Greatest Hermes

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten

Apollonius of Tyana

Simon Magus

Gnostic John the Baptizer:
Selections from the Mandæan John-Book

Did Jesus Live 100 BC?

Essays and Selections

Commentary on the Pymander

Introduction to Marcion

Concerning H.P.B.

The Outer Evidence as to
the Authorship and Authority of the Gospels

The Present Position of the Synoptical Problem

The Fourth-Gospel Problem

Above and Below

Audio Lecture about Theosophy and Blavatsky

Theosophy and Theosophists
 -- Ten lecture series (available at bcrecordings.net)

H. P. Blavatsky's Timeless Message
 -- Seven lecture series (available at bcrecordings.net)

Books Available in Print by G. R. S. Mead

Visit the G.R.S. Mead Collection Bookstore

 

 

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