by John Lash

November 2004

from MetaHistory Website
 

In all the "high strangeness" of the Gnostic materials, the strangest of all things is certainly the presence of the Archons. Here we confront a genuine enigma.

• Where do we situate these weird entities in the narrative of the Gaia Mythos?

• Are they to be regarded as real entities, a species in their own right, albeit a non-terrestrial one?

• What is their relation to Gaia, the intelligence of the biosphere?

• And how do the Archons in turn relate to humanity?

Non-Ordinary Reason

Gnostics explored these questions in a sober and consistent way, but to follow in their tracks we must first observe a caveat: Do not expect the inquiry into the Archons to be rational. At least not in the ordinary sense of rationality.

Aristotle observed that the mark of a mature mind is to entertain an idea without accepting it — without "buying" it , as we say today. I am not insisting that anyone buy the Archon theory of Gnosticism. I propose that we examine and sample it, that's all. Equanimity is essential when it comes to the enigma of the Archons.

This inquiry calls for application of a special faculty that might be called non-ordinary reason. What this is can be illustrated by a Woody Allen joke (from the film Manhattan):

A man comes to a psychiatrist in behalf of his brother who suffers the affliction of believing he is a chicken, and behaving accordingly.

 

"It's terrible to see, Doctor. The way he goes around clucking and scratching. The family is going through hell with this. What can you do? Can psychiatry help my brother?"

 

The doctor responds that certainly it can.

 

"Even in advanced delusions like this, therapy can often bring the patient back to reality," the doctor assures him. "I am willing to work with your brother, to do whatever it takes. It will be a long haul, though."

 

Assuming that the man is encouraged, the psychiatrist consults his agenda. "When can you bring your brother in for the first session?" he asks.

 

Suddenly the man furrows his brow. "Sorry, Doc. I'd like to, but I can't do that. I really can't. We need the eggs."

The man's response is entirely rational within the context of his imagination. When Trekkies (devotees of the cult TV series, Star Trek) avidly discuss characters and events in the series, they are using non-ordinary reason. The Pokeman card-trading phenomena triggered an explosion of non-ordinary reason in which children had to recite in rigorous detail the behaviors and traits specific to over a hundred different entities.

In Internet MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) players assume fictional identities that must behave in consistent way, exhibiting a kind of virtual rationality. The reasoning involved in such role-playing is rigorous, for players cannot cause their "avatars" to do anything they like. The avatars must have specific codes of behavior. Developing and maintaining such codes involves non-ordinary reason.

In effect, non-ordinary reason is just like ordinary reason, except that its subject matter is imagined rather than perceived.

Gnostic seers had to be skilled in non-ordinary reason to interpret the experiences they underwent in states of heightened perception. Not everything in the cosmos or in the human psyche can be reduced to rational terms, of course, and that in any case is not the point of non-ordinary reasoning. The point is, to bring sane and sober understanding to aspects of human experience that lie beyond the limits of ordinary sense perception.

This essay treats the Archons in the context of the imaginal exercise proposed in Coco De Mer - Our Participation in Gaia's Dreaming. What we learn about these entities, and ourselves in relation to them, will involve non-ordinary reason, but it will not be irrational nonsense. Contemplating the Archons is not an exercise in fantasy or a game of make-believe.

Far from it.

If the Gnostics were right, it is primarily by detecting how the Archons work that we can know our own minds work, and claim the sovereign power of intelligence endowed in us by Sophia.

 

Fractal Visions

The Archons may be regarded as progeny of Sophia, but not in the same sense as species born and sustained in Gaia's womb, the terrestrial biosphere. In fact, they are called Archons (from the Greek archai, "primordial, first, antecedent in time") because they arise in the planetary system before Earth was formed into a habitat for life.

Sophia's unilateral Dreaming produced a power surge from the cosmic center, and the Goddess, shooting forth like a torrential current, impacted the inert fields of primordial matter in an unusual way.

Gnostic texts use the term "aborted fetus" to describe the results of this impact..

A veil exists between the world above, and the realms that are below; and shadow came into being beneath the veil. Some of the shadow became matter, and was projected apart. And what Sophia created became a product in the matter, like an aborted fetus.
(The Hypostasis of the Archons, 94: 5 - 15)

To the Coco de Mer icon we can now add a graphic variation to suggest how the Archons emerge from Sophia's Dreaming, like a leak from a placenta. As explained in the preceding essay of this trilogy, the Coco de Mer with cosmic detailing represents the "trimorphic protennoia," the original three-body world of Sophia's Dreaming.

Our world, the terrestrial biosphere coupled with the sun and the moon, is the manifestation of this Dreaming.

With the arising of the Archons, another Dreaming comes into play outside our threefold world order. I propose to call this the Alien Dreaming. (This choice of language will become self-evident as we proceed.)

This other Dreaming is a spin-off of Sophia's power of emanation, an exotic spill, yet it does not impede or arrest Her original Dreaming.

The Gaia Mythos describes how the impact of the Aeon Sophia upon the density of atomic matter produced a massive fracture, like the shatter pattern on an ice pond. The pattern has a center where Sophia is located (identified by the Mandelbrot Set), and a spider-web extension of fracture lines that run in all directions (the frozen sea of fractal waves).

Episode 9 describes how Sophia, situated in the center of the impact zone, sees around Her something like a sea of tensile waves, and riding the waves, or actually composing the waves they appear to ride, are self-repeating forms that resemble seahorses. These seahorses are similar to the forms that appear at high reiteration of the equation for the Mandelbrot Set. These forms correspond to the anatomical type spontaneously generated from formless atomic matter by Sophia's impact, a type called the "shadow body," haibes in Coptic.

A word on fractals: although fractal-like patterns appear in nature (in ferns, for instance: the disposition of the leaves on a stem is repeated in the form of the stemmed branches), the self-similar forms produced by high iteration are not natural, strictly speaking. Fractals such as those pictured here result from feeding a mathematical formula into a computer and having the formula reprocess itself, over and over again.

However, the forms so produced do resemble the famous "paisley" seen by many people who took LSD in the 1960s. I would argue, first, that fractals are consistently seen in altered states, and second, that the patterns thus seen may also represent real, though supernatural processes in the cosmos at large.

The fractal formations described in the Gaia Mythos (Episodes 9 - 10) are actual physical phenomena that occur spontaneously when an Aeon (a mass-free, high-porosity current of stellar plasma) pours into the dense fields of elementary matter. At first these "fractal seahorses" seem to be inanimate structures, rigid and almost crystalline in nature, but by the very fact that Sophia beholds them, they become animated.

In the second stage of the unfoldment described in Trimorphic Protennoia, the Aeon Sophia,

"descends to empower her fallen members by giving them spirit or breath." (NHLE 1996, p. 511)

Thus the tensile forms morph from semi-rigid seahorses into rounded fetal forms with tails, but the tails, it seems, keep falling off and turning into other embryos. By this bizarre process of self-repeating generation, the neonate horde of the Archons emerges.
 

The Lord Archon

The Hypostasis of the Archons describes a further development that follows the initial emergence of the fetal Archontic entities. In the passage cited here, I apply some concepts drawn from modern astronomy to develop a more vivid picture of events presumably observed by Gnostic seers in the cosmos at large:

A veil exists between the world above [in the galactic core], and the realms that are below [exterior, in the galactic limbs]; and shadow came into being beneath the veil. Some of the shadow [dark mass] became [atomic] matter, and was projected apart [partially formed into elementary arrays, the dema].

 

And what Sophia created [by her impact] became a product in the matter [the dema], [a neonate form] like an aborted fetus. And [once formed] it assumed a plastic shape molded out of shadow, and became an arrogant beast resembling a lion. It was androgynous, because it was from [neutral, inorganic] matter that it derived.
(The Hypostasis of the Archons, II, 4, 93:30 ff, with my glosses in brackets.)

A close reading reveals a crucial detail: after the initial formation of the embryonic Archon types, a second variant of "shadow body" arises, with distinct characteristics of its own. The Hypostasis of the Archons describes it as "an arrogant beast resembling a lion," but this creature is also described (in another cosmological text, the Apocryphon of John 10: 5) as "a serpentine body (drakon) with a lion-like face."

Thus there are two distinct types of Archons:

1. a fetal or embryonic type

2. a drakonic or reptilian type

In The Hypostasis of the Archons (93: 30 - 94:5), a supplicant asks the great angel Eleleth,

"Teach me about the faculty of the Archons, how did they come into being, and by what kind of genesis, of what material, and who created them and produced their force."

 

The teachings given in response to this question were precise and detailed. Two distinct variants of the Archon type are indicated, and their behaviors are also specified. Another cosmological treatise, The Tripartite Tractate, states that "the two orders [of Archons] assaulted one another, fighting for command because of their manner of being."

(84: 5-15)

Due to the two distinct stages of their generation, the Archons are invested with an aggressive and divisive nature, fighting among their own ranks.

The problem is provisionally resolved, however, when the reptilian type assumes dominance over the massive horde of neonates, and, indeed, over the entire realm of the dema affected by Sophia's plunge:

Opening his eyes, he [the drakonic Archon] saw a vast quantity of matter without limit [spread through the galactic limbs], and he became arrogant, saying "It is I who am God [the sole deity of these regions], and there is no other apart from me."

(Hyp Arch, 94:20)

While the neonate Archons are inert, their forms arrested at a premature stage of development, the reptilian leader is aggressive, territorial, and charged with demonic powers.

For one thing, he is a formidable shapeshifter:

Ialdabaoth had a multitude of faces more than all of them, so that he could put a face before all of them, according to his desire... He shared his fire with them, therefore he became lord over them. Because of power of the glory he possessed of his mother's light, he called himself God. And he did not obey the place from which he came.

(The Apocryphon of John, 11:35 - 12:10)

The declaration of the chief Archon that he is the only god in the cosmos is, needless to say, a defining moment in Gnostic cosmology — if not in human evolution as well. All the cosmological texts describe this event, with slight variations. Gnostics were insistent on the identification of Yaldabaoth with Yahweh or Jehovah, the tribal god of the Hebrews. This deity is not only blind, but witless and insane (Hypostasis of the Archons 89: 24-25).

To Gnostics insanity is not so much unsoundness of mind as the consequence of failure to correct mental errors. The mentality of the Archons "cannot be rectified," and, what's worse, "the archontic nature is not capable of development." (Gilhus, The Nature of the Archons, p. 40) Due to the manner of their generation, Archons have no ennoia, no innate intentionality.

Theirs is an Alien Dreaming, set apart from the biosphere, the intelligent life-field of Gaia.

The concept of a god who is both void of will power and insane is apparently unique to Gnosticism. Needless to say, when Gnostics expressed their views on the identity of Jehovah to devout Jews and to Christians who also revered the Jewish Father God, they were not well received.

The Apocryphon of John adds crucial details to the Archon scenario. For one thing, it presents a rare instance where Sophia is actually called the mother of the Archons. It also says of the chief Archon that "he did not obey the place from which he came." This is a telling detail. The fact that the chief Archon moves away from the places where he arose indicates a key concern of Gnostics: the boundary-violating tendencies of the Archons. From the outset they are an invasive species.

The drakonic Archon is said to be blind (Coptic bille), so he does not see either the Pleroma or Sophia. "Blindness of the spiritual world characterizes the Archons." (Gilhus, p. 17). He is called Samael and Saklas. Samael is Hebrew and Saklas is Aramaic for "blind one."

Understanding the blindness of the Archons is crucially important to our detection of how they can affect humanity.


Alias Jehovah

The chief of the Archons is also called the Lord Archon. He is also given the bizarre name, Yaldabaoth (pronounced Yall-DAH-buy-OT). Scholars disagree on what this name might mean, and how it was derived. By one translation it means "the child who crosses space." By another, it means "chief of the horde." (Jarl Egil Fossum, The Name of God and the Angel of the Lord, p. 332-6.)

Thus it seems to slur together allusions to both types of Archons. In the Old Testament the title yhwh seba'ot, Yahweh Sebaoth, occurs 276 times as the title of the father god. (Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, p. 155) Gershom Scholem, pre-eminent scholar of the Cabala and Jewish mysticism, explained Ialdabaoth as "a compound of the Aramaic active participle yaled (i.e., 'to beget') and the name Abaoth, which represents an abridged form of the name Sabaoth. Thus, Ialdabaoth means 'the begetter of Sabaoth'." (Nathaniel Deutsch, The Gnostic Imagination, p. 55)

And there are half a dozen more interpretations.

It is likely that the name Ialdabaoth is simply a variant of Jehovah, the paternal father god of the Hebrews. Gnostics identified Jehovah with the Lord Archon and rejected the OT and the entire Judaic plan for salvation as a subterfuge of the Archons. It makes sense that they would have used the same term used by Jews to expose the true nature of the Jewish deity.

When it came to knowledge that they considered crucial to human survival, and to humanity's co-evolution with Sophia, Gnostics could be confrontational, and totally unconcerned about whom they might offend.

Their uncompromising and sometimes scornful attitude, combined with their failure to anticipate the high degree of physical violence that would be triggered by their challenge to Judeo-Christian beliefs, undoubtedly fuelled the vicious fanatisicm that destroyed the Mysteries.

Magnification of the fractal Archon generation presents a graphic image that seems to fit the scenario described by Gnostic seers.

The embryonic type, or neonate Archon, is clearly defined, but so is another entity: the reptilian Archon with its avaricious jaw and long spermatic tail. This "arrogant beast" seems to lunge at the entrails of the embryonic type. Right at the point where the embryonic Archon would have a nurturing umbilicus, the reptilians move in invasively. The neonate Archon remains passive, apparently sucking its finger or thumb!

Something odd is happening in the lower part of the neonate's body, for its seahorse-tail is precariously jointed to the torso. The embryonic type remains self-absorbed, but reacts to the aggression of the other type by dropping its tail, as frightened reptiles do. We wonder if the disjointed tail will form another neonate, or another reptilian. The reptilian form does appear to be fractally repeated in the tail-structure of the embryonic type, as if the tail broke off and became an entity of its own, rather than another embryo.

The element of fear figures largely in the behavior of the Archons and their effect on humanity. In the Old Testament, fear of God is held to be one of the primary marks of religious experience. The possibility that human fear is a kind of nutriment for certain invasive extraterrestrials has been widely argued in the ET/UFO debate. The Second Treatise of the Great Seth says that the agenda of the Archons is "fear and slavery." The Archons wish to keep humankind under "the contraint of fear and worry." (NHLE 1990, p. 367) Other passages also warn against the Archons' use of fear as a psychological weapon.

In another striking detail, the reptilian type seems to be holding a sphere in its jaws, recalling the mythical image of a serpent who offers forbidden fruit: for instance, the Serpent in the Garden of Hyperborea with the golden apple in its mouth. Is the neonate eating from this rounded fruit? Gnostics had their own version of what transpired in the Garden of Eden, events in which the Archons were deeply involved, and so it is perhaps not surprizing to see hints of the Paradise scenario at this primal stage of cosmic activity.

All this activity in the fractal generation of the Archons is imaginal, but it is not imaginary, i.e., not purely made up in our minds. Recreating what Gnostic seers observed is a sober use of imagination, not a flight into make-believe.

It takes non-ordinary reason to describe what is happening here, but the scenario so developed is entirely reasonable and coherent on its own terms.
 

Fetal Conflict

However the Gnostic seers of the Mysteries came to imagine the generation of the Archons, the high-iteration fractals around the Mandelbrot Set fit their scenario in an uncanny manner. And they do more as well, for the fractal embryos and reptilians also mimic features of human gestation (or vice versa). In human conception, the embryonic sac consists of two parts: the yolk sac (4 in the illustration below), and the foetal mass attached to it (1), suspended in amniotic fluid (2).

At the moment the developing embryo gains initial anatomical definition, it is fish-like (a fact that medical science likes to use to remind us of our pre-human origins). It has a distinct head, and a tail, and a third feature, the umbilicus that connects it to the yolk sac through which it is fed.

The fractal generation of the Archons exhibits all these features in a clear and precise manner.

As the embryo grows, the yolk sac (4 in above image) contracts, and there is at the same time a secondary development. Also connected to the umbilicus is the allontois (5), a vesicle that fills the interspace between the amnion (3) and the chorion (7), the outermost boundary of the entire placental sac. A kind of morphological tension plays between these evolving structures: for the allontois to grow, it must contract or press back (repress) the yolk sac that feeds the growing fetus.

Unless the allontois grows in this manner, the protective placenta cannot be fully matured. A similar tension pertains between the embryonic Archons and the reptilians. Just as embryonic development in humans is divided between the growth of the fetus fed from the yolk sac, and the repression of the yolk sac to produce the full-grown placenta from the allontois membrane, the power of the Archons is divided by the nature of their generation ("because of their manner of being," cited above)

This conflict is partially resolved when the reptilian type assumes dominance over the massive horde of neonates.

Gnostics certainly knew what an aborted fetus looks like. Morally opposed to biological procreation by humans, they were known to practice birth control, and must have assisted others to do so. They would have known from direct observation that the fetus aborted at an advanced stage of gestation does not resemble a half-baked omelet; it has the vestiges of anatomical form.

Their choice of this bizarre metaphor must have been intentional, reflecting the occult perception that Archon anatomy mimics the neonate form of humans. Such a metaphor is extremely valuable, not only because it allows us to visualize what Gnostic seers detected by extrasensory perception, but also because it establishes a close tie between the human species on earth and the pre-terrestrial Archons.

For more on this tie, see the closing passage, "Cosmic Cousins."



The Serpent Power

The description of a "lion-headed serpent" for the Ialdabaoth is arresting. For Gnostics the lion represented the blind force of procreation (an association that probably stems from Egyptian Mystery schools, not to mention observation of the force and noise of lions mating in the desert), so the sperm-like body of the lion-headed reptilians is even more appropriate.

This drakonic type of Archon appears on Gnostic germs, not because the Gnostics worshipped the reptilians— far from it— but because they viewed the image as a magical antidote to Archontic influence. Rather in the way a skull on a label indicates a poisonous liquid, thus preventing us from mistaking it for a liquid that is safe to drink, the lion-serpent image was represented on Gnostic amulets to ward off Archontic intrusion.

The lion-headed serpent of the Gnostics is called by magical names such as Ophis, Knuphis, and Abrasax.

In the occult anatomy of Asian mysticism and Yoga, this reptile is known as Kundalini, the serpent power. Gnostics who practiced Kundalini yoga were called Ophites, from the Greek ophis, "snake." This cult was condemned by early Christians as pagan "snake-worshippers."

To the mundane and uninitiated mind, the Kundalini serpent can only be conceived by crude literalization. To Gnostics, the lion-headed serpent crowned with solar rays was not only the image of the Lord Archon, but also of the source of spiritual power that allows human beings to resist that entity.

Experts who do not look outside Gnosticism to understand it never mention Kundalini, but unorthodox and esoteric scholars such as G. R. S. Mead, Helena Blavatsky, and C. W. King (Gnostics and Their Remains) make the connection routinely, as do comparative mythologists such as Joseph Campbell and Alain Danielou.

In The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, Campbell shows how the image of Kundalini, the "serpent power," appears in world art from the Indus Valley circa 2300 BCE and continues right across the spectrum of ancient cultures, well down into the Common Era. As late at the 16th century, golden thalers in Germany (Campbell, Fig. 8) showed the Crucifixion on one face and a serpent draped over the cross on the other.

At that late date, Christ would have been identified with Kundalini — without an inkling of why, however — but to Gnostics the snake on the cross was a cancellation of the saving power attributed to crucifixion (i.e., the glorification of suffering as a redemptive force). Arousal of Kundalini produces ecstacy, triggers superconsciousness, opens the occult faculties, and releases waves of healing energy that flush physiological and hormonal secretions through the body.

As the mythical serpent guarding the Tree of Knowledge in Genesis, Kundalini was "the messenger of salvation" for Gnostics. In a complete reversal of the usual reading of the Fall, Gnostics regarded the serpent as a spiritual ally to primal humanity,

"the first to attempt to release mankind from bondage to an unknowing god who had identified himself with the Absolute and thus blocked the way to the tree of eternal life."

(Campbell , p. 78)

The "unknowing god" who falsely identified himself with the Absolute is of course Yaldabaoth, alias Jehovah.

Gnostics taught that nous, the spiritual intelligence endowed in humanity, could be blocked by the Archons. This occurs through Archontic intrusion (subject of the forthcoming companion essay, How We Are Deviated), involving a kind of subliminal invasion at the level of thought and language (i.e., mental syntax). But nous could be reinforced through accessing the power of Kundalini, an ecstatic current that normally rests dormant in the human body.

In his monograph on the Archons, I. S. Gilhus notes that,

"the erotic strategy is the most important means used by the pneumatics to save the lost light."

(p. 51)

Pneumatics is the Gnostic terms for humans who pursue the path of psychosomatic illumination, the key method of Gnostic religion. Pneuma, "spiritual force," is developed by cultvation of nous, "higher intelligence." But the Archons present a blind field of resistance to this process: in short, they rely on humans remaining ignorant of their inherent spiritual potential.

When Kundalini is raised from its dormant state, higher intelligence blossoms, and there are other effects as well. Gnostic sects such as the Ophites practiced the communal raising of Kundalini to produce an protective envelope against Archontic intrusion. In effect, they held Kundalini, the sexual-spiritual energy locked in the body structure, to be the main instrument of defense against the Archons.

The Dialogue of the Savior, NHC III, 5 (85), contains this exchange:

Judas said, "Behold, The authorities (Archons) dwell above us, so it is they who will rule over us."
The savior said, "It is you who will rule over them. But only when you rid yourselves of jealousy, and take on the protection of the Light, and enter the nymphion (bridal chamber)."

The savior-teacher is emphatic that we have power over the Archons, but he also makes it clear that some human failings impede the use of our power. The Greek word phthonos may be translated as "jealousy" or "envy." Gnostics considered envy to be the signature of the Archons, as well as the key human failing that makes us vulnerable to their intrusion.

"The protection of the Light" comes through activated Kundalini, often described as a lightning-like tide of electrified light that pours through the body. "Nymphion" is a code word for the ambient cell of psychophysical protection generated by high levels of Kundalini.

Sir John Woodruffe, the great transmitter of Hindu Tantric wisdom to the West, directly identified the practice of Kundalini yoga (raising the serpent power through the channels of the spine) with Gnostic rites of "serpent worship." (Shakti and Shakta, p. 191 ff.)

Buddhist scholars such as E. A. Evans-Wentz, J. M. Reynolds, and H. V. Guenther have made similar observations, but Gnostic scholars have not reciprocated because they do not look outside their genre to understand the theory and practice of Gnosis.

The lion-serpent image is displayed over and over in hieroglyphic form on the walls of the Temple of Horus at Edfu, forty miles south of Nag Hammadi. In the cult of Hathor celebrated there, the lion-serpent represented the "royal seed" of the pharaoh. The royal child Horus is often depicted in a finger-sucking gesture that vividly recalls the posture of the embryonic Archons.

Did Egyptian priests who directed the breeding of the dynastic families have intimate knowledge of Kundalini, as well as the Archons?

The Kundalini serpent is displayed in Egyptian sacred art by a standing cobra, or a pair of cobras, sometimes wound on a staff, and by the uraeus, the cobra headress of divine empowerment. The ceremonial braid on the side of Horus' head was yet another indication of the serpent power. The pharaonic braid, traditionally worn on the right side of the head, visually repeats the form of the spermatic cobras of Edfu. The sacred iconography carries explicit, but highly occult knowledge: Horus is the child who right-brain cerebral functions are heightened by the serpent power.

The "esoteric" imagery of the serpent power operates at several levels at once. We shall see that the complex biological symbolism of Gnostic myth has much to teach us about the nature of the Archons, as well as how we can resist them.



The Rape of Eve

Ialdabaoth is also called the Archigenetor, "the master breeder." (Apoc John II, 12, 25)

Gnostics, to whom ethics must be consistent with cosmology, regarded biological procreation, insofar as it is an involuntary act, as a mindless mechanism that makes humans accessory to the head Archon. How Ialdabaoth breeds his own type, and controls the breeding of the embryo-types, and may even be involved in interbreeding with humans — are some of the more baffling elements in the Sophia mythos.

Several texts in the NHC describe the Archons' attempt to "rape Eve": i.e., inseminate the human species. The texts make it clear, however, that they do not succeed in their aims.

The Hypostasis of the Archons describes this episode:

Then the Archons approached Adam. and when they saw his female counterpart speaking with him, they became greatly agitated and in arousal for her. They said to one another, "Come let us sow our seed in her," and they pursued her.

 

And she, the mother of the living, laughed at them for their witlessness and blindness; and in their clutches she turned into a tree, and left before them her shadowy reflection resembling herself.

(89: 15-25)

This passage demonstrates the imaginal sophistication of Gnostic vision. Gnostics seers discerned the Archons attempt to inseminate Eve — to interfere in the genetics of the human species, if you will — but they also observed that the attempt was a failure. The metamorphosis of Eve into a tree recalls the Greek myth of Daphne who turned into a laurel.

(This parallel shows that Gnostic cosmo-mythology was not a fluke, but a system of visionary knowledge deeply rooted in the indigenous mind of pre-Christian Europe.)

For Gnostics, the visions they beheld in altered states were empirically true and could be tested. By doing so, they were able to develop extraordinary insight into the superhuman worlds, the activities of the gods, the relation of humanity to alien species, and the long-term experience of the human species.

The above scenario describes how the Archons fail to capture Eve, yet they somehow engage her shadow, a mere reflection. This implies that although the Archons cannot access our genetic structure, they may affect or distort our image of woman, of the Feminine, and in that sense they really can succeed in defiling Eve. They may distort our sense of our own genetic make-up.

As it so often does, Gnostic insight into cosmic order challenges us to understand what is happening in our own minds. Is there some way in which we humans have defiled the image of woman? For instance, by imposing on women an artificial notion of identity, a falsification of their true nature? If so, we would be regarded by Gnostics as accessory to the rape of Eve by the Archons.

Is there evidence in the world today that we have a distorted view of genetics?

If so, this distortion, and the actions that proceed from it, would fully merit being regarded as consequences of the Archons' deviating effect on human behavior.

 

Enter The Anunnaki

The above passage from The Hypostasis of the Archons calls to mind current scenarios of alien intervention in human genetics. Most theories of the ET breeding program assume that whatever the aliens (usually, the embryonic Grey types are suspect) might choose to do, they can do. But Gnostic seers who applied non-ordinary reasoning to their observations of the Archons reached a different conclusion. In the Gnostic view, it would be a huge error to assume the Archons are doing things they cannot do, for that would give them power over us.

Gnostics taught that the main danger we face with the Archons lies less in what they can actually do than in what we falsely believe they can do. Their trump card is deceit (apaton and plane in Greek), especially deceit about the nature and extent of their powers.

"For their delight is bitter, and their beauty is depraved. Their pleasure is in deception."

(The Apocryphon of John BG 56, 3-7)

Strange as they are, certain elements in the Gnostic mythos of our species may now begin to look familiar. The theme of alien insemination of the human race also occurs in archaic narratives from ancient Sumeria, dating to the third millennium BCE, and it is rampant in contemporary ET/UFO lore. Sumerian accounts describe an alien species called the Anunnaki, who are credited with producing the human species by genetic engineering, and also with inaugurating civilization.

These narratives are found on cuneiform tablets dating to circa 1800 BCE, but they preserve late redactions of much earlier versions. Apparently, the story about alien intervention is one of the oldest scripts of our species. Many people who follow the ET/UFO debate are aware of the Sumerian accounts of the Anunnaki, who are easily equated with modern-day ETs, but there is a total absence of reference to the Gnostic scenario of the Archons in the controversy so far.

The Gnostic account of Archon/Anunnaki activities differs on many significant points from what is found in the Sumerian accounts. For one thing, Gnostics did not regard Archons as superior beings who jump-start civilization. Nor did they consider the Archons capable of accessing the human genome (called by them the Anthropos), although they did grant some role for Archontic activity in our physical evolution.

This point is extremely difficult to clarify, however... By far the most striking difference between the Sumerian and Gnostic accounts is that the former contain no inkling of the Sophia mythos and no explanation of how the Archons, alias Anunnaki, originated. This is a considerable lacuna, to say the least.

In his elaborate reworking of the Sumerian materials, Zecharia Sitchin describes the Anunnaki as a highly advanced non-human species who inhabit the planet Nibiru, an outrider of the solar system with a period of 3600 years. In Sitchin's version of prehistory, the Anunnaki came to earth in quest of gold for manufacturing a colloidal suspension needed to stabilize their atmosphere. (For a full account, see Sitchin's last book, The Lost Book of Enki.)

Although Sitchin appears to be a legitimate Sumerologist with a profound grasp of ancient languages, no orthodox scholar endorses his scenario for the Anunnaki. At worst, it is dismissed as an "ancient astronauts" fantasy dressed up in scholarly robes. I am unable to say whether Sitchin's account of the Anunnaki on Nibiru is an accurate rendition of cunieform texts or a fantasy extrapolated in his mind.

Significantly, Sitchin never describes the physical appearance of the Anunnaki of either type. One of the great benefits of the Gnostic Archon scenario is that it does provide vivid descriptions of these entities.

• Is it a coincidence that the embryonic and serpentine Archons described in Gnostic texts present an identical match to the two kinds of ETs most frequently reported in modern times, the Greys and the Reptilians?

• If the Gnostics got this part of the intervention scenario right, what else did they get right?

Cosmic Cousins

The same manifestations that created our religious beliefs,
created our UFO beliefs. A serious look at the Phenomenon
would cause a revision of our way of looking at religion.
John Keel

UFO: Operation Trojan Horse

It is startling to find vivid and detailed descriptions of predatory aliens in obscure texts dating from the 4th century CE, but the revelations of Gnosis are nothing if not startling. Some ancient reports of "UFO sightings" do exist, but Gnostic material on the Archons does not merely present "reports."

It explains their origins in the cosmic order, their nature (inorganic, imitative, without intentionality), their appearance and tactics, their attitude toward humanity, and more. A more clear and coherent solution to "the Phenomenon" (the ET/UFO enigma) could hardly be imagined.

The "high strangeness" of the Gnostic Archon material poses a credibility issue, of course. We are faced with the choice of believing that these texts represent an accurate account of what Gnostic seers observed in states of non-ordinary reality — that is, a reliable report of genuine parapsychological research achieved by remote viewing, lucid dreaming, clairvoyant observation, and then carefully assessed by non-ordinary reason — or believing that Gnostics were mere fantasists, mystics deluded by their visions, wacko cult weirdoes, or worse.

How, then, can we determine if the Gnostic account of the Archons was delusional or if it presents reliable knowledge of alien intervention?

In Sources of the Gaia Mythos, I discussed the indigenous concept of the Dreamtime, the timeless play of creative awareness in the Eternal Now, and its variant, Dreaming:

When the Dreamtime comes to expression in particular knowledge and behavior, the Aborigines refer to the Dreaming of the creature who embodies that knowledge and exhibits that behavior. For instance, the Kangaroo Dreaming is the summation of the innate knowledge and instinctual behavior of all kangaroos, going back to the Dreamtime ancestors. One could say, in biological terms, it is the enactment of the genome of the Kangaroo species.

All creatures, organic and inorganic, human and non-human, live and die by the Dreamings that play through them. In the Aboriginal worldview the unique gift of humans to create culture stems from our capacity to remember and retell the Dreaming, not only of our own species, but of others as well. The indigenous belief that the role of humanity is to remember the events of the Dreaming for all creatures accords with the suggestion presented in Sharing the Gaia Mythos: the human species enables a memory-circuit for Gaia.

To apply these ideas to the problem of the Archons, let's recall that we, the human species, are involved in a special way in Gaia's Dreaming, which originates from the trimorphic protennoia, the threefold primal intention of the Aeon Sophia. Our proper boundaries are defined by the earth-moon-sun trinity, and our wisdom endowment unfolds, given by Sophia, unfolds within the unique conditions of the biosphere, the womb of Gaia. However, there is another Dreaming that leaks into the Earth Dreaming, rather like a wireless message that bleeds through into a conversation in progress on another frequency.

Something extremely weird is happening on Earth due to a fissure in the human mind, and this fissure in turn arises from an anomaly in the cosmic order.

"The world system we inhabit came about by a mistake."

(The Gospel of Philip, NHC II, 3, 75.1)

The magical journey of awareness in which we co-evolve with Gaia's Dreaming is deviated or distorted by an alien influence, so the Gnostics taught. On this recondite point they seem to have agreed with the old Yaqui sorcerer, Don Juan, who said to Carlos Castañeda,

"Human beings are on a journey of awareness, which has been momentarily interrupted by extraneous forces."

In the companion essay, How We Are Deviated, we will look more closely at how Gnostics described the intrusion of these extraneous forces, the alien entities who are also our cosmic cousins.

Everything we learn about the Archons teaches us something crucial about ourselves.