Archon

The word archon [from the Greek archo, meaning to be first (in political rank or power), reign or rule over] means ruler, chief, magistrate, lord, prince, or authority. The prefix of the word archangel is also the same Greek word. An archangel is therefore a “chief angel.”

In Christian Gnostic writings, the archons are the terrible spiritual powers who rule the world and attempt to prevent the soul from returning to her divine source.

Hans Jonas, author and eminent scholar of Gnosticism, summarizes the Gnostic beliefs on the Archons.

The world is the work of lowly powers which though they may mediately be descended from Him do not know the true God and obstruct the knowledge of Him in the cosmos over which they rule....

The universe, the domain of the Archons, is like a vast prison whose innermost dungeon is the earth, the scene of man’s life. Around and above it the cosmic spheres are ranged like concentric enclosing shells.... The spheres are the seats of the Archons.... The Archons collectively rule over the world....

They occupy the physical plane, the astral plane, and the mental plane.

As guardian of his sphere, each Archon bars the passage to the souls that seek to ascend after death, in order to prevent their escape from the world and their return to God.... It is with anxiety and dread that the soul anticipates its future encounter with the terrible Archons of this world bent on preventing its escape.

In this case, the gnosis has two tasks: on the one hand to confer a magical quality upon the soul by which it becomes impregnable and possibly even invisible to the watchful Archons....

This magical quality is enlightenment. It is the aura of light itself enhanced by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, this through gnosis. The seven sacraments of the Church performed in this life may secure this magical quality. The Gnostics knew that these sacraments and others which they performed would give them the key to their protection and the sealing of their seven chakras. This is why it is so necessary that these be a part of every church and every path that one walks.

on the other hand by way of instruction to put man in possession of the names and the potent formulas by which the passage can be forced, and this “knowledge” is one meaning of the term gnosis.

Therefore Gnosticism and gnosis itself is self-knowledge, but it is also the knowledge of the fallen angels and the knowledge of how to make the proper invocations that they might be bound that they may not be able to intrude upon us as we nightly go to the etheric octaves to study and even at the hour of the change called death.

According to Church Father Epiphanius, the Gnostics believed that the archons opposed the exodus of the soul from the world because “the soul is the food of the Archons and Powers, without which they cannot live because she is of the dew from above and gives them strength.”

In the New Testament

The word archon is used by Jesus as recorded in the Book of John:

Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince [the archon] of this world be cast out.

At the conclusion of the Last Supper Jesus tells the disciples:

Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the prince [the archon] of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.

The Apostle Paul also wrote about the Archons:

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Principalities here is the word arché.

Paul wrote to the Ephesians:

Wherein in the time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince, [the archon] of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

Sources

Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, 2d ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), pp. 42–46, 130–36, 165–69, 200–226.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, lecture on the Secret Book of James, August 13, 1991.

Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 32, no. 47.

Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 38, no. 40.