Gnosticism offered an egalitarian male-female cosmology marginalized by Christian orthodoxy

Evidence

A radical alternative to the hierarchical view that the female was inferior appeared in the monistic form of ancient gnosticism, based (like Shakespeare’s Cordelia) on the unity of the opposites and the equality of male-female principles. The transmission of gnostic ideas of androgyny provided an alternative view of generation and carried with it more positive implications and attitudes toward nature as female in the Renaissance. But these ideas lay outside the mainstream of Western Christian culture. Gnostic texts available in the Renaissance had been preserved through extensive quotation in the polemical writings of the early church fathers who attempted to refute the doctrine. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 114

Categorization

• XREF: The road-not-taken egalitarian cosmology maps to the ecofeminist thread of lost alternatives; a lost-continuity plot device. — connects to: Radical religious sects extended egalitarian cosmology to family and sexual relations — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 530; Christian doctrine institutionalized women’s subordination despite early egalitarian impulses — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 204; Gnostic Christianity granted women religious roles orthodox churches denied them — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 116 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing which specific radical alchemical/Gnostic texts survive and how they were transmitted.

Broader Connections

• Gnostic Christianity granted women religious roles orthodox churches denied them #expands (0.95) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 116
• Radical religious sects extended egalitarian cosmology to family and sexual relations #expands (0.88) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 530
• Christian doctrine institutionalized women’s subordination despite early egalitarian impulses #corroborates (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 204
• Male exaltation of woman as nature-mystery mirrors Gnostic Sophia and Dante’s Beatrice #complicates (0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 605