Archons and the Origin of Heimarmene

As we have already discussed, the Gnostic myth describes the manifested world as a “prison” that shackles the mind and hinders its development. Gnostics called this limiting property of reality “heimarmene” (Universal fate), and they called these forces “Archons,” or the “rulers” of the universe.

Different Gnostic schools gave the Archons different names and varied in number; however, the overall structure and origin of this hierarchy can be traced quite easily in all such descriptions.

The Archons are viewed as forces, manifestations, or emanations of a common First Principle, the Protoarchon, which represents the root cause of the world’s limitation — “ignorance” (agnosis,  αγνώσις), or “blindness,” that is, an active refusal to “know,” to see one’s deep nature.

Indeed, since the Gnostics considered the basis of everything to be a potential, “aeonic” reality, devoid of any definiteness, manifestations, and interactions, it is clear that the emergence of any regularity, limitation, tangibility inevitably is a “refusal” to perceive this aeonic reality. In other words, any final choice of reality is “closing one’s eyes” to all other probabilities; any actuality is a limitation of knowledge; and therefore existence and ignorance are, in a certain sense, synonyms.

Therefore, the creator of actual reality is inevitably “blind”: he “does not see” the potential’s totipotency, choosing only certain possibilities and probabilities for realization. His “ignorance” does not lie in simply creating reality, but in proclaiming “his” reality as the only reality.

At the same time, this “blindness” can be “relative,” when the very fact of its presence (as well as its necessity) is acknowledged and understood, and “absolute,” when it is declared to be “true” and “complete” vision.

In this sense, the Gnostics distinguished an “ideal creator,” whom they called Ariel or Abraxas, and a “darkened creator” — Yaldabaoth (among the Mandaeans — Ptahil). Not being, strictly speaking, either a creator or even a demiurge, Yaldabaoth fulfills the role of a “primary observer,” whose presence singles out from the world’s potentiality those features he perceives and thus creates a shaped, “physical” reality.

At the level of mind, Yaldabaoth personifies ignorance as the “root” of all obscurations and limitations; and at the level of being — the transition from quantum uncertainty to “classical” physics. Thus, the Protoarchon himself belongs simultaneously to both potential and manifested reality, expressing at once the Emptiness of the Abyss and its Fertility. One could say that Yaldabaoth is “wisdom” (Sophia, Σοφία) that has fallen into the “abyss,” that is, having lost support from higher principles.

At the level of manifestation, Yaldabaoth expresses himself in the hypostasis of the “First Archon,” whom the text “Pistis Sophia” calls “Madness” (Paraplyx). Properly speaking, Paraplyx is precisely that “ignorance” which is known as a property of the psyche: the absence of cognitive activity, the absence of aspiration to know oneself and the world. Speaking in poetic language, Sophia, striving to manifest herself in the “real” world, cannot withstand its definiteness and “breaks down” into the Abyss (Achamoth), from where she “emerges” in the form of Paraplyx. In later Hermetic terminology, this was described as the “descent” of Wisdom — Chokhmah into the Abyss of Daath with the birth of the “Dark Binah” — Nahema.

Next, Madness manifests itself through four other distortions: Wrath, Envy, Greed, and Inequality, personified by the mythological images Ariuph, Hecate, Typhon, and Yachfanabas. Obviously, these are distortions of the basic activities of mind that arise as a result of being “poisoned” by agnosis.

Thus appears the “five dark creators” — the Archons that impart to the world its characteristic properties: limitation, egoism, struggle for existence, and selective survival. On the physical level, ignorance means entropy; wrath — the force of repulsion; greed — attraction; envy — circumventing obstacles; and inequality — hierarchical chains (or, respectively, electromagnetism, gravitation, the strong and weak interactions).

These five “creating Archons,” in turn, generate (or manifest themselves) in the “Hebdomad” ( ἑβδομάς) — the Seven of “planetary” or “causal” forces: fertilization, governance, mastery, castration, lulling to sleep, merging and adaptation.

These forces, “poisoned” by ignorance, also manifest in the form of the “seven Archons” (or the “Olympian spirits”), which, for example, the “Apocryphon of John” lists as:

• Atot, personifying goodness, with the face of a sheep,
• Eloai, personifying prudence, with the face of a donkey,
• Astaphai, personifying divinity, with the face of a hyena,
• Iao, personifying dominion, with the face of a seven-headed serpent,
• Sabaoth, representing kingship, with the face of a serpent,
• Adonin, personifying jealousy, with the face of a monkey,
• Sabbatei, representing understanding, with the face of blazing fire.

The Hebdomad thus generates “secondary causes” that shape the manifested world and establish the laws of its existence.

Often, Gnostic texts continue examining the Archontic forces, singling out even more particular manifestations of them and bringing their number to (most often) 365.

It is important to understand that the Archons do not “govern” the laws of nature; this is the function of another hierarchy — the gods. The Rulers create the preconditions for the manifestation of these laws, establish their very possibility, and also impart to them the quality of inevitability, finality. It is also necessary to remember that, being manifestations of Yaldabaoth, the Archons are the “children of Ignorance,” limited and “blind,” which is what manifests as the destructive features of the universe.

When they say that “Nature knows no mercy,” “Force is blind,” and similar “sayings,” they often fail to consider that all this is not an absolute given, but the result of the “fall of Sophia,” and therefore the correction of mind also means the harmonization of matter, which is expressed in the Gnostic notion: “Gnosis is liberation” (cf.: “You shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free” — John 8:32).

Thus, Gnostic notions about the Archons are not just a description, or an account of the origin of the world and mind; it is also an indication of the path of liberation, the path of Enlightenment and escape from the shackles of heimarmene.