Gnosis - Direct Knowledge
Spiritual knowledge as direct experience rather than belief.
Hermetic gnosis is not intellectual understanding but direct experiential knowledge of divine realities. It transforms the knower, making them one with what is known. This gnosis is the goal of Hermetic practice.
If you do not make yourself equal to God, you cannot understand God.
Hermetic gnosis requires becoming rather than merely learning.
Corpus Hermeticum
Written about in
- What Hermeticism says about reverence
Gnosis is meant as direct knowledge rather than belief or theory, and the stated requirement is steep: make yourself like God or you will not understand God.