rather as a ramification of secret societies, is open to question. M. Matter, quoting a number of third-century writers, shows the possibility that they had mysteries and initiations; the Church Fathers definitely asserted this to be the case. According to Tertullian, the Valentinians continued, or rather perverted, the mysteries of Eleusis, out of which they made a "sanctuary of prostitution."
The Valentinians are known to have divided their members into three classes--the Pneumatics, the Psychics, and the Hylics (i.e. materialists); the Basilideans are also said to have possessed secret doctrines known to hardly one in a thousand of the sect. From all this M. Matter concludes that:
- The Gnostics professed to hold by means of tradition a secret doctrine superior to that contained in the public writings of the apostles.
- That they did not communicate this doctrine to everyone....
- That they communicated it by means of emblems and symbols, as the Diagram of the Ophites proves.
- That in these communications they imitated the rites and trials of the mysteries of Eleusis.121
This claim to the possession of a secret oral tradition, whether known under the name of γνῶσις or