All the traffic Google has been sending me about archons has gotten me into looking for information on gnostic principles from a more introductory basic standpoint. Oddly, there is not very much. A few sites here and there have some really great things, but in general, much of the discussion (including mine) tends to be more high-level and draws from a wide array of areas. In other words, it’s probably confusing as shit to people without a lot of background.

Toward that end, I want to try and put together a variety of simpler introductory pieces on various aspects of gnosticism. Starting with the Demiurge. Probably the best place to start for a lot of people will be the Matrix movies. While I’m a little rusty on the details, and don’t completely buy their interpretation vis-a-vis gnosticism its still a worthwhile starting point.

In these movies, there is a real world and a fake world. The fake world is the Matrix, the world we normally experience. The Matrix is basically an irreal computer simulation, designed to lull people asleep, imprison them, and sap their divine power. The Architect in these movies is the Colonel Sanders-looking dude who sat in that room with the tv’s and told Neo how he created the Matrix.

In gnosticism, the architect basically corresponds to the Demiurge. The Demiurge is a sort of false or sub-god who is responsible for the creation/administration of the temporal-material world - which is sometimes called the Materia, or Philip K. Dick’s Black Iron Prison. Many gnostics equated the Judeo-Christian Yahweh with the Demiurge, thus declaring him to be a false or secondary god.

The gnostics suggested that behind the world of the Demiurge, and his archon-agents, was another “more real” spiritual world - the Pleroma. This is similar to Plato’s allegory of the cave, with the cave & shadow being the Matrix/Materia, and the outside “real” world being the Pleroma. According to gnostic thought humans come from the Pleroma, as we are essentially sparks from the divine true god beyond the Matrix. However, we are trapped here until we achieve gnosis, or essentially recall and recover our divine nature, and our origin in the Pleroma.

This is sort of where the Matrix movie symbolism starts to break down for me though. I thought the whole thing sort of folded back in on itself and ended up retracting a lot of what originally made it a gnostic tale by the time you got finished with the third movie. But you’re welcome to figure this all out for yourself, which is part of the beauty of gnosticism. Anyway, here are some general links on the Demiurge:

1. Catholic Encyclopedia on the Demiurge
2. Wikipedia on the Demiurge
3. Yahweh on Encyclopedia Mythica

And here are some things that I’ve written that deal with different facets of this topic:

1. Fakes, Greys, Aliens, Archons, Agents, Demons, Ecthroi & Organic Portals
2. Demiurge & Ego
3. Satan, Terrorist of the Demiurge
4. He killed somebody because he loves us
5. Sophia, Gnosis, Reason & Philosophy
6. Bush’s Dark Overlord
7. Philip K. Dick on the Demiurge and its purpose
8. Gnostic cosmology and the Fall