G. R. S. Mead

George Robert Stow Mead (London, 1863 – London, 1933) was an English writer, translator and editor, and an influential figure in the Theosophical Society who later founded the Quest Society. His work focused on Gnostic, Hermetic and Neoplatonic texts, and his translations and writings remain a reference point for the study of Western esoteric traditions.

He began with mathematics at St John's College, Cambridge, before turning to the classics and graduating in 1884, the year he joined the Theosophical Society, drawn in by Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism. After becoming Helena Blavatsky's private secretary in 1889, he worked on the magazine Lucifer, later renamed The Theosophical Review. In 1909 he left the Society in protest at Annie Besant's reinstatement of Leadbeater, and that same year he founded the Quest Society and its journal The Quest, which he edited until 1930.

His most lasting contribution lies in his study of Gnostic and Hermetic writings, including his translation of Pistis Sophia, the first into English, and Thrice Greatest Hermes. Mead favoured a comparative, undogmatic approach to religion and philosophy, and his popularisation of the idea of gnosis influenced writers such as Ezra Pound, W. B. Yeats and Hermann Hesse, and, according to some scholars, Carl Gustav Jung.