Mani

Born in Mesopotamia to a Jewish-Christian baptising sect, he broke with it at twenty-four, declared himself the seal of the prophets, and founded the only Gnostic religion that became a world religion — carried from Roman Africa to the Uyghur steppe and into China, where a Manichaean temple still stands. He died in chains under Bahram I.

His cosmos of light-particles imprisoned in matter and released by human action is the single closest ancient parallel to Lurianic nitzotzot in kelipot — and there is no demonstrated channel between them.