The word was adapted by modern scholars to refer to the sects of the "Late Antiquities" that shared a similar cosmology and soteriology. More recently the definition has been widened in some circles to mean any form of mysticism or esotericism. Gnostic scenarios both differ, and are alike in the cosmic reasoning for the creation, making them "creation myths". Gnostic texts use different names for the characters of the creation stories for characters from the Palermo. Gnostics all believe that man, through learning the perspectives of his psyche, earthly, and pleromic self can attain life after death in a corporeal state by bonding with the higher entities. The "Light", " Sophia", (Wisdom). (See also; "The Five Gospels", by Funk, Hoover, Harpper-Collins, 1993, p. 544.)