“As we have already shown, it is only Epiphanius whom we find giving such minute details as to the Masonic “grips” and other signs of recognition among the Gnostics. He had once belonged to their number, and therefore it was easy for him to furnish particulars. Only how far the worthy Bishop is to be relied upon is a very grave question. One need to fathom human nature but very superficially to find that that there seldom was yet a traitor, a renegade, who, in a moment of danger turned “State’s evidence”, who would not lie as remorselessly as he betrayed. Men never forgive or relent toward those whom they injure. We hate our victims in proportion to the harm we do them. This is a truth as old as the world.
On the other hand, it is preposterous to believe that such persons as the Gnostics, who, according to Gibbon were the wealthiest, proudest, most polite, as well as the most learned “of the Christian name”, were guilty of the disgusting, libidinous actions of which Epiphanius delights to accuse them. Were they even like that “set of tatterdemalions, almost naked, with fierce looks”, that Lucian describes as Paul’s followers, we would hesitate to believe such an infamous story. How much less probable then that men who were Platonists, as well as Christians, should have ever been guilty of such preposterous rites.
Payne Knight seems never to suspect the testimony of Epiphanius. He argues that “if we make allowance for the willing exaggerations of religious hatred, and consequent popular prejudice, the general conviction that these sectarians had rites and practices of a licentious character appears too strong to be entirely disregarded.” If he draws an honest line of demarcation between the Gnostics of the first three centuries and those mediaeval sects whose doctrines “rather closely resembled modern communism”, we have nothing to say.
Only, we would beg every critic to remember that if the Templars were accused of that most “abominable crime” of applying the “holy kiss” to the root of Baphomet’s tail, St. Augustine is also suspected, and on very good grounds too, of having allowed his community to go somewhat astray from the primitive way of administering the “holy kiss” at the feast of the Eucharist. The holy Bishop seems quite too anxious as to certain details of the ladies’ toilet for the ”kiss” to be of a strictly orthodox nature. Wherever there lurks a true and sincere religious feeling, there is no room for worldly details.
Considering the extraordinary dislike exhibited from the first by Christians to all manner of cleanliness, we cannot enough wonder at such a strange solicitude on the part of the holy Bishop for his female parishioners, unless, indeed, we have to excuse it on the ground of a lingering reminiscence of Manichean rites! It would be hard, indeed, to blame any writer for entertaining such suspicions of immorality as those above noticed, when the records of many historians are at hand to help us to make an impartial investigation.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 