Intro to Gnosticism

Gnostics believed that Sophia (wisdom) created a divine being that was malformed, and placed it in a lower realm so it could not be seen. This lower god created the world and everything in it, but was evil and ignorant of the true God. The Gnostics believe that the true God did not create the material world and is good, and seeks to liberate humans from the entrapment of this world. The world is evil, including our physical bodies, so Gnostics practiced asceticism because they believed that indulging their body would be accepting the evil of the material god. Only some people have this divine spark to realize that they have been ignorant of the true God, and those people have supernatural knowledge that will allow them to enter back into the Divine and real world that they belong.