Lust for Power: The Demiurge and His Archons as Symbols of the Bishop of Rome and the Clergy

**Lust for Power: The Demiurge and His Archons as Symbols of the Bishop of Rome and the Clergy**

In the esoteric cosmology of Valentinian Gnosticism, the myth of the Demiurge and his Archons was never merely a fantastical explanation of creation. Rather, it was a theological and social commentary, a coded critique of real-world power structures—particularly the rising institutional authority of the early Catholic Church. Scholars such as Elaine Pagels and Celene Lillie have illuminated how this mythological framework served as a polemic against the Bishop of Rome and the clerical elite. The Demiurge becomes not only the ignorant creator of the cosmos but also a symbolic representation of those who claim divine authority while ruling through fear, hierarchy, and deception.

One of the clearest examples of this political-symbolic reading appears in *The Tripartite Tractate*, a Valentinian text from the Nag Hammadi library. In it, the system of cosmic powers is described not simply in metaphysical terms, but in language that clearly echoes human institutions:

> “There are kings, there are lords and those who give commands, some for administering punishment, others for administering justice, still others for giving rest and healing, others for teaching, others for guarding.” (*Tripartite Tractate*, NHC I,5)

This stratified hierarchy reflects not only the imagined celestial order but the ecclesiastical order of the Roman Church. The presence of "kings" and "lords" within a supposedly spiritual realm reveals how power, in the Valentinian view, has become thoroughly corrupted—even in heaven. The Gnostics saw the same lust for domination among the Archons that they witnessed among bishops and priests, who claimed to guide the faithful but in fact sought to control them.

The Demiurge himself, described as the highest Archon, is not merely mistaken but prideful, thinking himself self-begotten and self-authorizing. The Tractate continues:

> “Over all the archons he appointed an Archon with no one commanding him. He is the lord of all of them, that is, the countenance which the Logos brought forth in his thought as a representation of the Father of the Totalities... For he too is called ‘father’ and ‘god’ and ‘demiurge’ and ‘king’ and ‘judge’ and ‘place’ and ‘dwelling’ and ‘law.’” (*Tripartite Tractate*)

These exalted titles—father, god, king, judge—are precisely the terms adopted by ecclesiastical authorities in Rome. By placing them in the mouth of the Demiurge, the Valentinians turn these honorifics into masks of delusion. The Demiurge does not realize that he is a puppet moved by another force: “He was pleased and rejoiced, as if he himself in his own thought had been the one to say them and do them, not knowing that the movement within him is from the spirit who moves him.” This depiction mirrors the clergy’s self-delusion—thinking themselves divine representatives while acting as agents of fear, not of wisdom.

The lust for power is not an incidental trait but a defining characteristic of the Archontic order:

> “There is no knowledge for those who have come forth from them with arrogance and lust for power and disobedience and falsehood.” (*Tripartite Tractate*)

This condemnation is sweeping. The Archons are not merely ignorant—they are morally corrupt, driven by ambition and arrogance. In Gnostic eyes, so too were the bishops who exalted their office above others, enforcing uniformity, punishing deviation, and silencing spiritual insight. The claim to be the only true Church mirrors the Demiurge’s boast: “I am God and there is no other beside me.”

The hierarchy is organized to maintain this illusion. Each Archon, like each bishop, is given a domain:

> “He gave to each one the appropriate rank… As a result, there are commanders and subordinates in positions of domination and subjection among the angels and archangels.” (*Tripartite Tractate*)

This organizational model is disturbingly familiar. It reflects the emerging Church’s structure of dioceses, with bishops, presbyters, and deacons arranged in vertical authority. The Tractate’s account shows this was no accident—it was a perversion of divine order, a system built on fear, not truth.

Indeed, the tools of the Archons are not love or enlightenment, but confusion and coercion:

> “The law\... consists in fear and perplexity and forgetfulness and astonishment and ignorance... These things, too, which were in fact lowly, are given the exalted names.” (*Tripartite Tractate*)

This is a devastating critique. The Church had taken things that were in reality "lowly"—ignorance, fear, forgetfulness—and exalted them as law, tradition, and sacred authority. The sacraments and doctrines were, in this view, merely veils for spiritual darkness. The Valentinians saw through the masquerade and named it: the bishop is an Archon in clerical robes.

The Tractate does not merely describe a system; it condemns it as a product of evil impulses:

> “The whole establishment of matter is divided into three... those (powers) which these produced by their lust for power, he set in the middle area... that they might exercise dominion and give commands with compulsion and force.” (*Tripartite Tractate*)

The middle realm—neither heavenly nor earthly—is the place of clerical dominion. It is the realm of ambitious rulers, exercising "compulsion and force" under the illusion of serving the divine. Here, the clergy stands as the middle power between laity and heaven, barring the way rather than opening it.

The tragedy of this system is that it masks the truth and obscures the path to healing:

> “They might rather see their sickness in which they suffer, so that they might beget love and continuous searching after the one who is able to heal them of the inferiority.” (*Tripartite Tractate*)

The sickness is spiritual ignorance, and the cure is not ecclesiastical obedience but a deep inner longing for the true Father, unknown to the Archons and their representatives on earth.

In the end, the Valentinian vision is profoundly subversive. It names the church hierarchy not as a vessel of salvation but as a counterfeit order ruled by lust for power. The Demiurge and his Archons are not ancient myths—they are living realities, embodied in miters and thrones. True liberation, the Valentinians taught, comes not through submission, but through gnosis.