Refers to a belief that humans are divine souls trapped in a material world created by an imperfect god
The Imperfect God is frequently associated with the Abrahamic God Yahweh/Jahveh, the true name of God is the Tetragrammaton
This God “demiurge” can be depicted as an embodiment of evil, or as imperfect/benevolent as its inadequacies permit
“Demiurge” exists alongside another supreme being that embodies good
To free the divine soul from the inferiority of the material world, one must have esoteric spiritual knowledge that is available through direct experience or knowledge (gnosis) of God
In Gnostic circles, Jesus of Nazareth is identified with the supreme being who has incarnated on earth to bring the esoteric knowledge to humanity
Gnosticism was popular throughout the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions through the second and third centuries
It is believed/claimed that gnosticism was suppressed and became popular as early as the first century
With the conversion to Islam, gnosticism was greatly reduced throughout the middle ages, however few isolated communities continue to exist to this present day.
The main features of Gnosticism are outlined below
- The notion of a remote, supreme monadic divinity – this figure is known under a variety of names, including ‘Pleroma’ and ‘Bythos’ (Greek ‘deep’);
- The introduction by emanation of further divine beings, which are nevertheless identifiable as aspects of the God from which they proceeded; the progressive emanations are often conceived metaphorically as a gradual and progressive distancing from the ultimate source, which brings about an instability in the fabric of the divine nature;
- The subsequent identification of the Fall of Man as an occurrence with its ultimate foundations within divinity itself, rather than as occurring either entirely or indeed partially through human agency; this stage in the divine emanation is usually enacted through the recurrent Gnostic figure of Sophia (Greek ‘Wisdom’), whose presence in a wide variety of Gnostic texts is indicative of her central importance;
- The introduction of a distinct creator god, who is named as in the Platonist tradition demiurgos.
Evidence exists that the conception of the demiurge has derivation from figures in Plato’s Timaeus and Republic. In the former, the demiurge is the benevolent creator of the universe from pre-existent matter, to whose limitations he is enthralled in creating the cosmos; in the latter, the description of the leontomorphic ‘desire’ in Socrates’ model of the psyche bears a strong resemblance to descriptions of the demiurge as being in the shape of the lion.
Elsewhere this figure is called ‘Ialdabaoth’, ‘Samael’ (Aramaic sæm?a-?el, ‘blind god’) or ‘Saklas’ (Syriac sækla, ‘the foolish one’), who is sometimes ignorant of the superior God, and sometimes opposed to it; thus in the latter case he is correspondingly malevolent.
The demiurge typically creates a group of coactors named ‘Archons’, who preside over the material realm and, in some cases, present obstacles to the soul seeking ascent from it; - The estimation of the world, owing to the above, as flawed or a production of ‘error’ but nevertheless as good as its constituent material might allow. This world is typically an inferior simulacrum of a higher-level reality or consciousness. The inferiority may be compared to the technical inferiority of a painting, sculpture, or other handicraft to the thing(s) of which those crafts are supposed to be a representation. In certain other cases it is also perceived as evil and constrictive, a deliberate prison for its inhabitants;
- The explanation of this state through the use of a complex mythological-cosmological drama in which a divine element ‘falls’ into the material realm and lodges itself within certain human beings; from here, it may be returned to the divine realm through a process of awakening (leading towards salvation). The salvation of the individual thus mirrors a concurrent restoration of the divine nature; a central Gnostic innovation was to elevate individual redemption to the level of a cosmically significant event;
- Knowledge of a specific kind as a central factor in this process of restoration, achieved through the mediation of a redeemer figure (Christ, or, in other cases, Seth or Sophia).