Gnosis · knowledge as rescue

Not information, and not faith. Gnosis is knowledge of the kind that changes what you are by being known — recognition rather than instruction, closer to waking up and knowing where you are than to learning a fact. Its classic definition survives in Theodotus, quoted by Clement: liberation is the knowledge of who we were, what we have become; where we were, whereinto we have been thrown; whither we hasten, from what we are redeemed; what birth is, and what rebirth. Six questions, and the answers are the salvation. The Hebrew for this kind of knowing is da'at — the word Genesis uses for Adam knowing Eve, never abstract, always the knowledge that joins the knower to the known. The Tree gives it its own place on the middle pillar, in the throat, between the flash and the structure: the knowledge that is not information. Two traditions, one insistence — and then a hard parting, because for the Kabbalah da'at joins you to the world and for the Gnostic gnosis releases you from it.