The other evening, one Laura Jane and myself were “electronically discussing” the concept of a Monotheistic Mind, ruled by the Ego, who is easily identified with the angry, jealous, capricious god called Yahweh. Who says, something to the effect of “You can’t have any other gods” or something. Anyway, we were postulating, that since theres a lot more to the mind than the ego, then probably the natural state of the mind is polytheistic. This is something I sort of came to of my own accord, but certainly did not invent. Psychologist James Hillman is noted as being a big proponent of this idea. His angle of attack, is that the idea of a single unified Self, which is the apex of traditional Jungian thought is unnatural at best, very damaging at worst. Something something…

Oh right, so I was reading my book “The History of Hell” tonight, making dutiful notes in my little sketchbook, in preparation for some writing and drawing that I am going to be doing soon. And I come to the chapter on Gnosticism, where they start talking about like the Demiurge, and all this stuff. The first time I read that book, my mind was in a totally different place, and I hadn’t encountered a lot of the ideas that I really love and chase mercilessly after nowadays.

So, for people who don’t know, the basic Gnostic cosmology is that you have like this big huge impersonal unknowable God before everything else. Then you have Sophia, who is later identified with Wisdom or something… I’m a little sketchy on the details. But anyway, so Sophia is all into this unknowable God, and from what I understand, wants to be with “him” and worship him, but doesn’t realize that its kind of a bigtime blunder to do that, so she falls, and in falling, gives birth to an aborted God, which is the Demiurge. The Demiurge, then proceeds to create the universe as we know and inhabit it. Basically, the Demiurge thinks he’s the real god, cause he doesn’t know about the other one.

Anyway, so after my mangled account of Gnostic cosmology… Oh right, some of the Gnostics identified the Demiurge with the Old Testament Hebrew god Yahweh. So… where was I, what’s my point. Oh right, right. Yeah, so the ego, right, is you’re sitting there, trying to equate the ego with Yahweh, and want to blame the ego for certain bad things that have happened in the landscape of the human mind, then you’re in luck if you want to talk about the gnostics. Because the basic Gnostic principal, if read in this light then, is that the Ego is not God, but it is a false god which assumes itself to be much greater and more powerful than it really is. It is blind to its own origins.

Which is neat, I think.

Armed with these ideas, I sat down at my trusty computer, typed in “yahweh demiurge ego” into my much-love Google toolbar, and ended up coming across an essay by one Erik Davis called “Remains of the Deities,” which I now realize I may have read a few months ago before leaving Baltimore. I think its where I learned about James Hillman actually, and at the time, I don’t think i fully realized what he was getting at with his connecting of yahweh-demiurge-ego. But now I do, and hooray for me!

So anyway, this essay is good, for the most part. There’s something about Erik Davis that I never liked, and can’t place my finger on, but he’s got a lot of good things to say. I think, as far as what I’m interested in and talking about right this second, the article veers off after just a few paragraphs into kind of a justification for the NeoPagan Revival, which I can’t say that I love, but I’m man enough to recognize my dislike for it is sort of contradictory to my actual practical standpoint on all this stuff.

Also, check out this quote from an essay on Gnostic cosmology, in which Yaldabaoth is another name for the Demiurge:

“Monotheism is the fixation of Yaldabaoth on his illusional ego, and this illusion infects all those who adopt him as the supreme being.”

And for an expanded and updated look at this topic, check out my article, Theories about the Monotheistic & Polytheistic Minds.