This book is an attempt to demonstrate the existence and explore the character, theology, liturgy and cultic beliefs and practices of the Gnostic movement. This is a fascinating study into the past to identify the Gnostics as a cult movement originating in the late first century and arising out of Christianity.

Logan explores the Gnostics' own sense of identity against the Catholics, seeks to reconstruct the unique Gnostic rite of initiation from Nag Hammadi and related texts and, finally, argues that the early third certury Hypogeum of the Aurelii in Rome, with its remarkable series of paintings, represents a cult centre of Gnostics, where they recalled their initiation and theology and buried their dead.