Arcons, the godly entities that keep humanity mired in ignorance
and the bondage of the average.
Yoko
Yoko appears in the Secret Book of
John. She is known as the Archon of Desire. Does anyone else find this darkly
ironic? Do you see how perhaps human relationships have been so fragile all
these millennia?
Authades
This cat might be the scariest Archon ever. Why is
that? Authades is a bloody Aeon (the personified capacities of the One or
ultimate god). This means Authades is infinitely more powerful than any Archon!
He appears in the Pistis Sophia, holding a slightly higher position than
Sophia. What more, he hates Sophia because of her obsession with understanding
the One instead of keeping the Aeon realm running smoothly. In the account,
Authades tricks Sophia into falling out of the Aeonic Realm by creating a false
light in the chaos that seduces her.
As April DeConick writes in The Gnostic New Age, the
Pistis Sophia is a later Gnostic gospel from sectarians that didn’t
particularly like the Sethians. Thus, the idealized world of the Aeons is
presented as more like a domain of gods instead of an ultimate reality. Like
other deities of the time, the Aeons tend to fall into human ways.
Fate
It’s no roll of the dice to know that the Gnostics
contended we lived in a deterministic universe with little choice. Only Gnosis
liberated us from the Chinese finger trap that is destiny. In the Secret Book
of John, fate is portrayed as an Archon mysteriously called Fate. She is the
youngest but perhaps most powerful Archon. She is created when each of
Yaldaboth’s Archons fornicates with Sophia (a metaphor for usurping her power).
Then Fate is tasked with the ultimate mission: keeping humanity trapped in the
material domains. As the Secret Book of John says:
Fate changes unpredictably
It is of different sorts
just as the demons are of different sorts.
Fate is hard.
Fate is stronger than
The gods, the authorities,
the demons, the generations of people
Who are caught up in it.
Out of fate emerged
Sinfulness, violence, blasphemy,
forgetfulness, ignorance,
Weighty commandments
Heavy sins
Terrible fear.
In this way all of creation
became blind,
Ignorant of God above
everything.
Because of imprisonment in
forgetfulness
They are unaware of their
sins,
They are bound into periods
of time and seasons
By fate who is lord of it
all.
Sabaoth
In the Reality of the Archons, Sabaoth is depicted as
one of Yaldabaoth’s sons, working alongside daddy in the early stages of the
universe’s creation. At one point, the Demiurge brags that he’s the ultimate
god. Sophia, his mother, is not amused from her perch in the higher heavens and
scolds him. She sends an angel that binds Yaldabaoth and throws him into
Tartarus for a time out. Sabaoth, her grandchild, is impressed with Sophia’s
chutzpah and changes his stripes. As the Reality of Archons says:
Now when his offspring Sabaoth saw the force of that
angel, he repented and condemned his father and his mother, matter. He loathed
her, but he sang songs of praise up to Sophia and her daughter Zoe. And Sophia
and Zoe caught him up and gave him charge of the seventh heaven, below the veil
between above and below. And he is called ‘God of the forces, Sabaoth’, since
he is up above the forces of chaos, for Sophia established him.
This immigration by Sophia might not have been a good
idea, though. When Yaldabaoth finds out his son is not only a turncoat but has
been elevated, he gets really envious and then “envy engendered death; and
death engendered his offspring and gave each of them charge of its heaven; and
all the heavens of chaos became full of their multitudes.”
So what’s the deal with Sabaoth? As Birger Pearson
writes in Ancient Gnosticism, Sabaoth might have been written in to divide the
Demiurge in two characters, Yaldabaoth and Sabaoth, in order to have a good god
to appease Jewish Christians. After all, Sabaoth is one of the names of God in
the Old Testament.
Why is he a dangerous Archon if he’s been redeemed? I
smell a sleeper cell with Yaldabaoth holding a Sabaoth pee-pee tape somewhere.
Ruha
The Gnostics were the lords of deconstruction, as I
say in my podcast, and they enjoyed making biblical villains into heroes, like
Cain or the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, and vice versa in some case.
What’s more, later Gnostics sects would then turn previous Gnostic heroes into
villains. This is the case with the Mandaeans, who vilified Jesus in some
texts, as well as Sophia, calling her Ruha. Andrew Phillip Smith in John the
Baptist and the Last Gnostics explains:
Into this darkness falls the evil spirit Ruha, who
gives birth to a dragon or monster known as Ur. In the realm of darkness,
monsters emerge and evil angels are born as Ruha mates with her offspring Ur,
and the malign astrological influences are felt of the Seven (the planets) and
the Twelve (the zodiac). Ruha means ‘spirit’ and she is the intermediate entity
who has fallen from grace and the light.
Unlike earlier Gnostic texts who redeem the fallen
Sophia, Ruha remains a divine seductress and antagonist of both humans and good gods, the ultimate cosmic
femme fatale.
But Archons are still reptilian space lords, right?
They are never depicted as reptilian in Classic
Gnostic texts, except for perhaps having a lizard-face like the Archon Yao in
the Secret Book of John. They are portrayed as hermaphrodite creatures owning
different bestial faces, with an appetite for rape and brawling. They are a
mixture of heavenly administrators and hellish union goons. Borrowing from
William James and his take on God, they are omnipotent to the extent they can
do what is possible, omniscient to the extent they can know what is known.
That’s why they’re no match for those who have Gnosis
– those who can do what’s impossible and have come to know the unknown.
by Miguel Conner · February 7, 2017
5
LVX
05/02/2020
Comentarios
Publicar un comentario