Archon
The word archon is a Greek word meaning ruler, chief, magistrate, lord, prince, or authority. It is the present participle of the verb archo, or arché, meaning to be first (in political rank or power), reign, or rule over. The prefix of the word archangel is also derived from arché. An archangel is 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.
Gnostic beliefs
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.[1]
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....[2]
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.”[3]
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.
We can see, then, that this understanding of formulas begins to translate to us the many prayers, the invocations, the divine decrees that were held by the Essenes, by the disciples of Jesus, by those who kept that inner circle and have transmitted it to us again today by the dictations of the ascended masters.
The secret names of the Archons have to be known, for this is an indispensable means of overcoming them.[4]
Thus when Jesus went to cast out devils he said, "What is thy name?" and the devils answered him and said, “Our name is Legion: for we are many.”[5]
Thus we name the names of the discarnate entities that the ascended masters have given to us. We name the names of the fallen angels as we find them in the Book of Enoch. And therefore when we give our judgment calls we may name the names of the fallen ones or of the conditions and the type of enslavement they cause, demanding in the name of the Christ that they be cast out.
This practice, then, of naming the spirits who were to be exorcised goes right to the heart of Jesus and what he taught us in his inner circle in the Upper Room and what the Gnostics kept.
Epiphanius read in a gnostic Gospel of Philip:
The Lord revealed to me what the soul must say when ascending to heaven, and how she must answer each of the upper powers: “I have come to know myself, and I have collected myself from everywhere,...”[6]
This is a teaching that Jesus gave us long ago that the soul can be fragmented and divided. We may leave parts of our souls here and there as we have gone after the forces of darkness or they have tempted us. The soul must be collected from everywhere and the self-knowledge of the soul must be gained by study.
“... and I have not sown children to the Archon [in other words, I have not borne the seed of the fallen angels] but have uprooted his roots and have collected the dispersed members, and I know thee who thou art: for I am of those from above.” And thus she is released.[7]
The soul is released by the archons because they fear the soul who is in contact with God, for they know that that God and that hierarchy of light will defeat them.
What then is the interest of the Archons in opposing the exodus of the soul from the world? The gnostic answer is thus recounted by Epiphanius:
They say that 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.[8]
When the fallen angels were cast out of heaven into the earth for their misuse of the light of God, for their taking that light and turning it to the darkness of Antichrist, they were literally cut off from God, from the fountain of his light and from his heart. They therefore had to go on what they had left of the light they had stolen, what they had left of their high estate. And when this would run out they had to figure out ways and means to siphon the light of the children of God who still held the tie to the I AM Presence.
And thus the Archons and powers must enslave souls. They must have them that they might vampirize their light. When the people of this earth withdraw their power from the fallen angels in embodiment they will have no power, for they have none other.
When she has become imbued with knowledge ... she ascends to heaven ...
This knowledge in its fullest manifestation is the causal body itself. When she has become imbued with her own causal body, with her own I AM Presence, she ascends to heaven
... and gives a defense before each power and thus mounts beyond them to the upper Mother and Father of the All whence she came down into this world.[9]
It is because of the fallen angels that we must have guardian angels to come and take us at night to etheric octaves, to the retreats of the Brotherhood. The fallen angels are attempting to control those realms and to keep the people of light out of the etheric retreats.
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.[10]
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.[11]
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.[12]
For more information
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.
Sources
Elizabeth Clare Prophet, “Teachings of the Mother: Souls Who Have Forgotten Why They Are Here,” July 2, 1989.
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.
- ↑ Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, 2d ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), pp. 42–43.
- ↑ Ibid., pp. 43, 167.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 168.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Mark 5:9; Luke 8:30.
- ↑ Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, p. 168.
- ↑ Ephiph. Haer. 26.13; Ibid., p. 168.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 169.
- ↑ Ephiph. Haer. 40.2; Ibid.
- ↑ John 12:31.
- ↑ Eph. 6:12.
- ↑ Eph. 2:2.