# Gnosis And Maya "Gnosis" in Gnosticism & Hermeticism, "Moksha" in Hinduism, and "Nirvana" in Buddhism are almost the same concepts. The more I study Hermeticism, the more I realize that it is much closer to Hinduism & Buddhism than Christianity & Islam. It was originally a Hellenistic religion after all. In fact, that is not hard to realize. In Gnosticism & Hermeticism, people reincarnate rather than going to the heaven & hell. "Maya" means literally illusion. Or perceptions. It is "what it looks like". Thus fake. If you know Gnosticism, you would instantly know that it's the Gnostic sense of the material world. And the Demiurge has made it. A goal in Hinduism & Buddhism is realizing that Maya is fake. Have you read Demian by Hermann Hesse? That's exactly a novelized version of it. Though the actual reality is different in each religion. In Gnosticism, the goal is escaping the material world and going back to Pleroma with Gnosis. However, Hermeticism is somewhat special. In Hermeticism, there is an eternity in the material world. Gold. Therefore we can be saved by transforming materials into gold. Of course not necessarily the literal sense. It's rather symbolic. Though that's a later addition. In fact, Hermeticism in antiquity and Hermeticism in medieval & Renaissance are quite different. But it is all just Hermeticism. Similar to why we don't say that early Christianity and modern Christianity are different religions. Hence I think that Gnosticism is a western variant of Hinduism. Or I could say "Hinduism with Logos". And I think Hermeticism is a "fixed" version of Gnosticism. Similar to how Nietzsche is a "fixed" version of Schopenhauer.