On the January 17, 2024 Aeon Byte podcast, host Miguel Conner presented a list of the tenets of Gnosticism, which he took from Arthur Versluis's Magic & Mysticism:
A hostile cosmos: gnostic antipathy to nature
A demiurge, or ignorant creator responsible for a botched creation and hostile to human spiritual development
Dualism: Opposition between the realm of light and the realm of matter
An elaborate mythology
Myths concerning Sophia (wisdom) and her fall and restoration
Belief in a hidden God (not the demiurge/creator)
Difficulty of spiritual progress due to the archons or other hostile powers in the cosmos; ignorance of the inherent (fallen) human condition
Existence of the ogdoad, or eight spheres (including seven planetary spheres) and possibility of their transcendence
The necessity of gnosis, or direct spiritual knowledge from the realm of light.
A revealer or redeemer figure to show the way to the realm of light.
I understand that much of this is found in the Nag Hammadi library. A very brief summary from Kurt Rudolph's Gnosis: The Nature of History of Gnosticism is that the ogdoad (point 8 above) consists of the aforementioned Demiurge and the sun, moon, and five nearest (and most visible) planets representing "archons," demonic, tyrannical gods who control our miserable fates.
In a spiritual sense, I agree with just one of the tenets (#6): Belief in a hidden God. I believe God is within us. As the 20th-century mystic Neville Goddard put it, God is "your awareness of being" and "your own wonderful human imagination." I don't believe any external "spiritual" being has any real control over us.
However, I can relate to the viewpoint that tyrants control the world as we know it. There seem to be secret or hidden puppet masters keeping the human race down.
What do I suspect the puppet masters are doing? Here are the first four things that came to my mind.
Preventing or delaying access to free energy.
Delaying or preventing desalination and clean-water technology.
Hijacking or compromising creators, especially in the technology field, and forcing them to comply with and be part of the puppet master agenda.
Keeping much of the world hungry and many nations destabilized so that developing countries won't be strong enough to challenge the status quo.
It's almost as if the puppet masters are parasites, feeding off the fears, hatreds, despair, and of course, labor of the "99%." We're not trusted with what we might do with ourselves if we were healthy, happy, and powerful.
In that sense, I agree with the Gnostics. Maybe the puppet masters are the archons or are possessed by darker spiritual energies. What if low-vibration human emotions, or energies, took on a life of their own in the spirit realm, manifested themselves as ambition and greed, and entrenched themselves in human institutions?
In any case, the "dualistic" gnostics and believers in non-dualism or "unity consciousness" such as myself have one thing in common, and it's the most important thing: they both say that the answer to your problems is within you, within the light of your consciousness.
You can bet that the people leading us in the fight or overthrow the archons are archons themselves. But if I let go of fear, hatred, and despair, the archons will lose their power over me.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we all could do that? Then the archonic energy will dissipate to near-nothingness. But I can't control the feelings of other people. Freeing ourselves from the archons or puppet masters will always be an individual work of personal reflection.
James Leroy Wilson writes The MVP Chase (subscribe) and JL Cells (subscribe) and thanks you for your subscriptions and support! You may contact James for your writing, editing, and research needs: jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.
"It's almost as if the puppet masters are parasites..."
Almost? I'd remove the first four words of that sentence: they ARE parasites.
"Freeing ourselves from the archons or puppet masters will always be an individual work of personal reflection."
Right. Therein lies both the frustration (I can't fix anybody but myself) and the liberation (I CAN explore and heal my own inner demons). No one person can overcome society's madness, but each of us can do our best to lead by example and be the best we can be in spite of others' madness.