Stephan Hoeller’s lectures have followed me around the past ten years or so now… I studiously borrowed the dear cassettes from my friend Jan Valentin Saether, since I had such a long bus rides home everytime I had business in the big city. I live about an hour’s drive north of Oslo, so I usually got to listen to a lecture each visit on my Walkman. Times are changing and I remember the topic was dicussed that perhaps it would be more rational to create archives of the specific lecture series, in for example CD-RW or CD-Rom format, so that it would be all in one place and also accessible through more than one medium. Cherished as the old cassette players where, it was fading out.

I now notice that Bruce Campbell at BC recordings have decided to make a compromise that at least some people will find useful. BC Recordings is digitizing and making mp3 versions of Stephan Hoeller’s lectures. This may help preserve both the existing collection as well as the new additions for the future.

In addition to the free Real Audio format lectures that Lance Owens in Utah has formatted and published on the Gnosis Archive, – you can now find a growing assortment of more recent lectures held by Stephan Hoeller at the Gnostic Society, Philosophical Research Society &c, which you may purchase through their new online store.

I for one has paid attention to the Friday lecture schedule for years thinking it is a damn shame I live so far away, like for instance, last month he held a series on the Apocryphon of John, a Gnostic scripture I think is quite unique among the remains after the Alexandrian school of Christian Gnosticism because it contains a complete account of the Gnostic myth as well as an extensive soteriology. I’ll be checking out BC Recordings store occasionally to see if some of the semi-old lectures (the Gnostic Library in Oslo has a few hundred cassettes which spans the late 80’s and onwards to the late 90’s or somesuch, along with lectures by Roger Weir, modern renaissance man and hermetic philosopher.. who I feel complement Stephan Hoeller’s work quite brilliantly.) from 2000 and onwards is available for purchase.

I’d like to see John Goeltz, Lance Owens, Jan Valentin Saether and others who have guest lectured at the Gnostic Society represented as well, but thats another issue.

This might not mean much to people who are not familiar with the work of Stephan Hoeller, who is the Director of Studies at the Gnostic Society as well as a respected Bishop in the English Gnostic lineage.

I recommend checking out the lecture section of the Gnosis Archive which is the official homepage for the Gnostic Society.