How and when the Gnostic movement began is not known. Some
trace its origin to the Jews, others to the Christians and still others to the
Oriental or Hellenistic paganism.
Agnostics were numerous. Hans Jonas separated them into two basic
groups: the Iranian and the Syrian Egyptians.
The Iranians taught that darkness and divine light were co-existent
from Creation.
The Syrian Egyptians taught that the divine light existed
alone in the beginning and that evil somehow emerged from it.
The Gnostics taught that God is unknown and Unknowable; the
creator of this world being the chief of arching Jehovah, the God of the Old
Testament.
After the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as the state
religion, Gnosticism was kept alive by sects which were necessarily
characterized as heretical. One such sect was that if the Chatars (from the
Greek cathartic meaning "the pure"). They taught that Jehovah was
Satan, that procreation was sinful, and preferable sexual would not lead to
conception.
Please, Innocentius
III ordered an armed crusade against the Tartars.
Source
Magic in the Space Age The rise of Neo Paganism by Valiant Thor
