The first time I met the Archons was playing StarCraft back in the mid-90s. They were a caste of the powerful aliens with Psionic powers known as the Protoss. The next time I met the Archons was a decade later reading the Nag Hammadi library. I had swallowed a Red Pill, and they were no longer aliens (unless you follow David Icke). The Archons, I discovered and according to the ancient Gnostics, are the ruling agents of the universe and brutal overlords of humanity.

Unlike other celestial villains, the Archons aren’t interested in eternal damnation or overthrowing some good principle. These omnipotent, thuggish beings are in charge, and that is it. Like traditional demons, they seduce humanity, but the whole mechanism of the cosmos is one big ass seduction meant to keep the holy part of humans unaware of a higher destiny.

Thus, what the Archons want the most is status quo.

How did exactly do they seduce and keep us trapped in Maya? Keep the factory going? One view is a unique but actually appropriate way any modern person can relate to—to the point of sharing it loudly in a support group. Let’s find out before they hear us.

First, who exactly are the Archons?

In a Dictionary of Gnosticism, Andrew Phillip Smith defines the Archons:

In Gnostic systems, the archons are the numerous assistance of the demiurge. They are usually responsible for the creation of the human body, and specific archons are sometimes considered to create or animate the various components (limbs, organs, etc.) of the body. Planetary archons are also thought to rule over the various spheres through which the soul may ascend. The archons have a negative role, restraining the spiritual impulses of humanity and direct human affairs for the Demiurge, being responsible for the flood the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the crucifixion of Jesus.

Although depicted as hermaphrodite creatures owning bestial faces, with an appetite for rape and brawling, the Archons are essentially a mixture of heavenly administrators and hellish union goons. Their greatest tool isn’t fear, however, but ignorance, the “Mother of All Evil” according to the Gnostic Gospel of Philip. If humans remain ignorant of their divine origins beyond the universe, the system remains constant, and all is good for the Archons.

Except the system is, according to the Gnostics, a flawed construct. As Sam Kriss wrote in The Atlantic:

The physical universe was the creation of the demiurge, Samael or Ialdaboath, sometimes figured as a snake with the head of a lion, a blind and stupid god who creates his false world in imperfect imitation of the real Creator. This world is a distorted mirror, an image; in other words, a kind of software.

In this flawed system—this software—the archons are demented brogrammers, coding our fate, precisely every negative aspect of our lives, inner and outer, that slowly broke our mental spine. They grant us the counterfeit spirit. It sucks.

The method of the Archons

All of this brings us to the specific method the Archons likely use to keep us in abject ignorance, the opposite of liberating Gnosis.

Bureaucracy. Really bad bureaucracy. The Archon nature of being the bumbling administrators of the heavens is their greatest weapon. And “as above, so below,” said the Gnostic Hermetics. While many faiths feel that a celestial bureaucracy is fantastic, from the Pythagoreans to Confucianism, the Gnostics—history’s great anarchists—contended it was quite the opposite. The faulty “software” was, ironically, the perfect mechanism to keep us trapped in, as Philip K Dick called the universe, the Black Iron Prison.

It was death by a thousand regulations, death by a thousand frustrations.

In article for Gnostic Warrior I explain the reasoning:

In fact, in the novel Good Omens, written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, a demon appropriately named Crowley proves that the Archon-way is superior in the fight against Heaven. He demonstrates that traffic jams and phone service outages are far more efficient in damning souls than such common demonic methods as possession or temptation. Death by a thousand frustrations is the best way to dim the human spirit.

Ponder this. I mean, as humans, we are basically prepared (especially if we go to church or watch enough Netflix) to deal with and overcome life’s significant challenges, from a family death to a nearby war. In a Gnostic sense, we share their essence with the Alien God, and thus infinity is part of our vibe. It’s the little shit in life that seems to get us. Imagine going through a day when:

The car won’t start.

You seem to catch every bloody red light.

You need five departments at work to sign off on your order for print cartridges.

The customer service representative of your cable company is oblivious after you spend an hour trying to connect.

Like Morpheus said in The Matrix: “It’s like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.” And these events don’t seem at all like an accident.

Between bureaucracy and a faulty system, you can feel your soul dimming, your mind numbing, and your heroic side perishing. You become forgetful and anxious, a Stockholm Syndrome victim to a passive aggressive kismet.

Think of the works of Franz Kafka. Think of Terri Gilliam’s Brazil. Think of the next time you have a good idea at work. Think of negotiating with the IRS, experiencing Microsoft updates (software!), or family holiday parties where being comfortable numb is truly the closest you feel to Heaven.

It’s not truly Heaven, but that’s the game the Archons play. Anyone can get used to fire after a billion years in Hell. Anyone can get comfortable with extinction in a Richard Dawkins paradigm. But not even Buddha can handle the local DMV.

Like Lao-Tze said:

The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be.

In an Archon-ruled universe, we are all outlaws who don’t even know it, sinking in ignorance by every Mercury retrograde and iPhone upgrade. We are the frogs in the boiling waters of Lethe.

How do we fight the Archons?

We fight the Archons like the ancient Gnostics did: with knowledge, wisdom, and detachment. To be in the world and not of it, as Jesus explains in the Gospel of John. Or as Paul says in Romans 12:

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Don’t let them control your mind like some demented Protoss.

As Nicola Denzey Lewis in her book Gnosticism, the Archons “transcend category, which in the thought-world of antiquity, was not a good thing.” She also writes that they are neither “divine nor clearly demonic.”

After arming ourselves with the right data to see beyond the software, we must beat the Archons at their game by transcending human categories, becoming neither divine nor clearly demonic, awaken the essence of the Alien God that resides within us, sometimes known as the Divine Spark.

The Gnostics utilized many rituals to achieve this, so your mileage may vary. Ultimately, it’s about breaking fate, knowing that the Archons truly own our body that we only rent at a high-interest rate and that our thoughts can become free with the right information.

I think the Archons heard us! Look busy in line at the DMV.



