Part 2: Archons
“It is I who am god. No other one exists apart from me…If anything has existed before me, let it appear, so that we may see its light.”—Yaltabaoth
Archon, like demon, can mean lots of different things. It means “ruler” in Greek and sometimes was a title given to certain leaders. To the Gnostics, an archon is a sinister being bent on steering us away from learning the truth about our divine aspect, sort of like a demon, but with a major twist: the chief archon is God…sort of.
The Gnostic writings about the archons come mostly from the collection of books referred to as The Nag Hammadi Library (NHL), almost certainly because they were discovered near the town of Nag Hammadi, Egypt. Most of the archon-alien connection theory comes from the texts entitled The Hypostasis of the Archons and The Apocryphon of John. It’s all very complicated and not exactly what I would call light reading, let alone a real page turner, so I’ll simplify it as best as I can.
According to the Gnostic Christians, the Apocryphon of John is what Jesus told John after his resurrection. What Jesus told him was that an entity called the Demiurge (the original archon), who was named Yaltabaoth, aka Samael (blind one), aka Saklas (stupid one),* was created by Sophia (Wisdom) without permission from the Monad (God), and so he didn’t turn out so well as a result. He is described as being “a lion-faced serpent.” Not a good lookin’ kid. So Sophia tried to hide him, which almost always just makes things worse, as was the case in this instance. Anyway, since the Demiurge was hidden away from everything, he was unaware that anything else existed, so he decided that he was the only thing that existed and so he created the universe. After that, he created another 365 archons, basically his version of angels. (Yes, I think that there must be some connection between that number and the number of days in a year, but it’s never mentioned in the text.) Now since the Demiurge is fundamentally flawed, so are his archons and the universe. None of these guys are actually evil per se, but they’re hardly the cream of the celestial crop. Mostly, they’re just delusional about how important and smart and holy they are. Also, they have the morals of a frat boy on meth. Maybe those last two sentences are redundant.
So one day the archons happen to see a reflection of the true God in the water and decide to make a creature based on that reflection, which of course is Adam. Once they’ve finished building him, some of the higher powers trick Yaltabaoth into breathing some of his spirit into Adam, which brings him to life. Then the archons get all pissed off because they can see that this guy is better than them and so they cast him down into matter. I’m not sure why any of this made Adam better than them, it just did. So God takes pity on Adam and sends the divine feminine principal (Epinoia) down into Adam and she teaches him the knowledge of good and evil. So Yaltabaoth decides to pull Epinoia out of Adam via a rib, but what he gets is only some aspect of her, which is where Eve came from.
Some of the information in that last paragraph may not be exactly right, but it’s pretty close. That whole section of the book is so confusing and poorly written that sometimes it’s hard to tell what the author was trying to say. Maybe it just doesn’t translate well. That’s also not the only version of the story in the NHL, but it’s the one the “aliens are archons” crowd seem to like the best. There is another version where the Demiurge becomes aware of his true nature and is a much kinder, more humble and sympathetic character. That’s the version I like best. Anyway…
So then there’s more stuff about Yaltabaoth trying to destroy humanity with a flood and archons having children with women (another variation on the whole “sons of God thought the daughters of men were hot” theme of the Nephilim in Genesis). The bottom line is that the archons are still around and they don’t like us and want to lead us astray because they are jealous that we have a divine aspect to us and so we’re better and smarter than they are.
The problem that I have with this – at least one of them, for there are many – is that if Yaltabaoth created the universe, then clearly we are not smarter than he is. I’m sure that the universe seemed like a much simpler place 2000 years ago, but the Gnostics didn’t know anything about modern physics or genetics or Gödel’s proof. Regardless of whoever or whatever processes created this place, we’re still trying to figure out how it all works.
Now here’s the part that rubs a lot of people the wrong way, just in case you haven’t figured it out for yourself yet: Since the Demiurge created our physical reality, he not only thinks that he’s God, he is the god of the Old Testament, at least as far as the Gnostics are concerned. (I didn’t make this stuff up, so don’t shoot the messenger.) He created the Earth and humans and everything else and then wanted to keep us living in ignorance, which was something that I never understood about the whole Garden of Eden story to begin with. Even as a kid, I wondered why God wouldn’t want us to know the difference between right and wrong. To the Gnostics, it was because he was a false god who was jealous of us, which does seem to me to make more sense.
Incidentally, not all Gnostics were/are Christians. The pagan Gnostics considered Jesus to be just another attempt by Yaltabaoth to lead them astray. So all Gnostic beliefs are horribly offensive to Jews and Muslims, and the pagan Gnostics were also arch-heretics to the early Christians as well. No wonder there aren’t many of them around anymore.
So what does this have to do with UFOs? This is where The Hypostasis of the Archons comes in. Same basic gist: Sophia tries to create something without permission from the Big Guy. According to the “aliens and archons are the same thing” guys, what she got was one of the now iconic little gray aliens that looks like a fetus with big black eyes, and also one of the reptilians of the borderline paranoid-schizophrenic conspiracy theorists. He is the now familiar Demiurge called Yaltabaoth. How did she get two creatures from her one creation? I was initially confused by that as well. Read on.
Imagine my disappointment when I couldn’t find any reference to little gray aliens anywhere in the Nag Hammadi books. Supposedly, it says somewhere that this type of archon had the appearance of a fetus with gray skin and dark, unmoving eyes. A word search of a pdf version of the NHL edited by James M. Robinson revealed that the words “gray” or “grey,” and “unmoving” do not appear in any part of the writings at all. The word “eyes” appears a number of times, but I looked at the text surrounding all of them and there is only one that has anything to do with archons, and that one only says that there was lighting coming from the eyes of Yaltabaoth. Furthermore, Yaltabaoth is described as being a serpent – a snake – with a lion’s head in The Apocryphon of John, and that is how he is generally depicted in Gnostic renderings. That hardly matches the very few descriptions of people who claim encounters with reptilian aliens. So where did this archon-alien connection come from? As near as I can tell, it comes from two sources: Jay Weidner and John Lash. Weidner is flashier and gets more press, most likely due to his “prophet of doom” shtick, but I’m guessing that he picked up this alleged connection from Lash, who is far more intellectual and interesting, although still something of a conspiracy nut, like most believers in reptilians. In case you want to read the passage from The Hypostasis of the Archons that convinces Mr. Lash that the grays are really archons for yourself, here it is.
And what she had created became a product in the matter, like an aborted fetus. And it assumed a plastic form molded out of shadow, and became an arrogant beast resembling a lion. It was androgynous, as I have already said, because it was from matter that it derived.
From this, Lash concludes that there are two types of archons: the fetal type grays, and the reptilians mentioned in the Apocryphon of John.
I don’t know about you, but what I take away from this is that what Sophia created started off having a form like a fetus and then became a creature resembling a lion. I don’t take this as indicating that there are two types of archons. Further, Lash and Weidner assert that the fetal type archons were overpowered by the reptilians and became subservient to them. Again, I can find no reference to there being two types of archons mentioned in The Nag Hammadi Library, let alone one of them resembling a fetus with big black eyes. It seems to me that these guys are playing fast and loose with their interpretations of the actual writings to make them fit their alien conspiracy theory, which is too bad because some of Lash’s thoughts about the nature of the archons are quite interesting. I just think he’s reaching when he posits a connection between what the Gnostic texts actually say and the physical descriptions of entities being reported by UFO contactees.
Lash also finds a connection between the archons and the fractal pattern of the Mandelbrot set. A fractal is basically a mathematical set that creates a self-replicating pattern, and the Mandelbrot set is possibly the most well known. However, Lash and I must have different translations of the NHL, because once again I can find nothing that appears to be a reference to anything like a fractal in the texts. Even if I’m wrong, what he sees in the above image as being a fetal alien head with a reptilian tail being attacked by another kind of reptilian is really reaching for it in my opinion. These segments are generally referred to as “the seahorses,” and that’s pretty much what they look like to me – at least more than any sort of reported alien. Once again, I think that Lash is overreaching and finding a connection where none exists, like how ice cream sales affect the homicide rate. It seems to me that he’s being needlessly esoteric to make the data fit his theory to the point that I’m not really sure what the hell he’s talking about or where he’s getting his information or interpretations from much of the time. Some of it seems to come from a story that I believe he wrote himself.
So what, according to the actual Gnostics, is the archon agenda? Basically, they are deceivers who want to lead us away from the will of God. Other than the very different Gnostic versions of the traditional stories of Genesis, there’s really not much information about them that I can find. There is no one final authority on Gnostic beliefs. Much like other collections of religious writings, the Gnostic texts are not in universal agreement and sometimes contradict each other. Mostly, archons are just the bad guys, and almost all religions have some of those in one form or another.
So how did the Gnostics know all of this anyway? Basically, remote viewing. Their seers would enter a trance state, possibly with the aid of hallucinogenic substances, and receive visions of these revelations. Now far be it from me to completely crap on remote viewing. If the CIA thought it was worth doing for a number of years, there just might be something to it. Those guys aren’t exactly known for their whimsical proclivities. My problem is that when people with all manner of accessing information through non-ordinary means start poking around in the esoteric realms, most of what they come up with is absurd and unverifiable at best and verifiably untrue much of the time. I can’t even remember how many times the world was supposed to have ended just in my lifetime because someone with access to higher knowledge (real or imagined) said so. When it comes to using these sorts of methods for trying to ascertain the nature of existence, it would seem that the whole matter gets transferred over to the jurisdiction of the Trickster, and we all know what a prick he can be.
So why bother bringing any of this up? Because there are people out there promoting an “aliens are archons” agenda and claiming a bunch of similarities between the two that I can find no evidence for in the Gnostic texts. I have no idea where these people are getting their information from or if they’re just making it all up. It all sounds very intriguing until you start looking at the actual writings and discover that these guys are just a bunch of serpent oil salesmen who make me wonder just who exactly is trying to lead us astray and why?
As for the people who practice Gnosticism today, they certainly acknowledge the existence of the Demiurge and archons, but they aren’t nearly as obsessed with them as the conspiracy theorists. They seem about as concerned with archons as most mainstream Christian denominations are with demons. Whether or not that’s a good thing or a bad one I leave up to the individual to decide. I’m just trying to find the truth.
Yeah, good luck with all that.
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*It’s interesting to note that in H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, he describes the creator of the universe as being the “blind idiot god Azathoth, Lord of All Things.” I think it’s interesting because Lovecraft come up with this concept of a blind idiot creator more than two decades before the Nag Hammadi Library was discovered.
