Who rules this world?

This post offers a sober and intuitive exploration of the Gnostic belief that our world was created by a Demiurgic god, as well as the symbolic dichotomy between Christ and Satan. My aim is not to provoke distress - this is a sensitive subject for many, and I have no intention of spreading negativity through this writing. With that in mind, I welcome you to another article on this Patreon.

To begin, I will briefly discuss the Epicurean paradox - an argument that may already be familiar to Christians who have engaged with Greek philosophy or explored logic-based critiques of their faith.

The paradox proposes that an all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing God would not wish to create evil; after all, if he had the power to, he would've created an ideal world free of evil. And if he knew how to destroy evil, he would've done so. And if he loved goodness only, he would want to safeguard his creations from its counterpart. This complete God would not need to test us by placing us in an imperfect world, as the outcome would already be known in advance.

There are three main counter points to the paradox; one which centers around the idea of free will, one which posits that duality is necessary, and one which argues God has a plan and we can't understand it.

The argument of free will only holds if one accepts that an all-loving, perfect God would deliberately allow - or even require - the existence of evil to make free will possible. Personally, I find this logic unconvincing. Why would a truly benevolent and omnipotent being need to introduce evil as a prerequisite for choice?

The notion that duality is necessary - that good cannot exist without evil - suggests that God is not perfect, but dependent on contrast to define goodness. This line of thinking aligns with esoteric traditions like Kabbalism or Freemasonry, which preach that chaos can and sometimes should be cast upon the world so that higher powers can make their desired order from it; that chaos is not just inevitable, but desirable, as it can be used as a tool to control the masses.

Finally, the belief that God might be an amoral trickster with a plan (which implies he'd require such a plan to destroy evil to begin with), or a blind, stupid, alien and indifferent force incapable of crafting a perfect world, is equally unappealing to me. It reduces the divine to something less than divine: flawed, erratic, or even malevolent.

The three responses to the Epicurean paradox I mentioned above have something in common - they all mistake God for the Demiurge, the chaotic god that dillutes good in evil; the god worshiped by freemasons and other mystery religions.

In the picture above, we see a masonic altar, which features a black and white checkerboard floor - which symbolizes the duality of good and evil, of light and darkness -, and a dark-blue cubical altar at its center - symbolizing the Demiurge, the limited god of the abyss.

As a reminder, Christ's cross - a symbol of the triumph of the soul over matter, as Christ was martyred on the cross and his soul was freed from his corporeal vessel - is an unmade cube.

The Epicurean paradox, however, provides the golden key, the answer to itself, which is that the god of this world is demiurgic in nature; and that evil has a purpose in the world which he created.

Pure evil scarcely exists. After all, evilness is the absence of good, as is darkness the absence of light. The world we live in has no pure darkness within it; it is surrounded by the abyssal void of space - as are our souls surrounded by matter -, but the sun illuminates even the night through the moon's reflected light. Evil is a force of corruption, and a negation, an absence, first and foremost.

This duality between good and evil is reflected in the dichotomy between soul and physical matter. Soul is creativity, feeling, memory (immortality), knowledge, light; and matter is darkness, forgetfulness (mortality), blindness, suffering, decay. Matter is covetous, and demands sacrifices to feed itself and grow - all living beings must extract energy to survive, like leeches, and often kill other creatures for their own sake -; but it is also weak, and eventually rots and dies.

According to Plato's theory of forms, matter merely attempts to immitate ideas, which hold the true meaning, the truer, liberated forms of all things; thus, even the beauty we see manifested in matter is merely a shallow copy of what exists in the ideal world, in Paradise.

There is a Biblical story which also substantiates this Gnostic point of view; one I've talked about before in this Patreon. Christ's journey through the desert.

After his baptism - a ritual that cleanses one's soul, for as is above, so is below -, Jesus walked through the harsh, barren desert for forty days and forty nights while fasting as a trial of the Holy Spirit. The trial's purpose was to test if Jesus had managed to completely rise above the material world even while trapped in a physical vessel, if he had truly overcome his very humanity as the Son of God. Thus, the significance of the number 4 - which is the number of the material, of the square, which stands in opposition to 3, the Holy number of the circle, the Pi, and of the triangle.

And what was the final step of the trial? A confrontation with the devil himself, during which he offered to Jesus the entire world if only he bowed down to him. Jesus, of course, said no, and pointed toward the sky to mean he has no need to rule over this imperfect material world when he comes from the perfect realm of Heaven. The devil is symbolic, in this exchange, of matter itself - of the physical world -, as well as of short-sightedness, of stupidity. After all, why would Jesus trade the ideal world for the material? It truly makes no sense. To deal with the devil is to trade future prosperity for the short term. To surrender your spirit to the unclean flesh.

That story hides a deep truth within. If Satan could offer to Jesus the entire world, it means he has control over it. That this world is his world.

To conclude this post, I will explain what I believe to be the truth about this world and the cosmos in accordance with my own Christian faith.

There is a common, archetypal understanding of the beggining of creation. At first, there was only dark chaos (which is often depicted an endless body of water, like a cosmic sea, such as in Genesis). But then, a God began to shape the chaos to create from it distinct forms.

I view this idea as the True God having come out of this wild, chaotic darkness to distill it. This God separated light from dark, and thus, created Paradise - the perfect world of pure light. What remained on the other side was pure darkness; the void of space.

In this world of distilled light, of souls, of ideas, an archetype which I will call Lucifer was born; and if the Nag Hammadi is correct about this incident, it happened when an ideal being experimented with darkness in blind curiosity. Lucifer was a mixture of light and darkness; thus, he fell from Paradise into the abyss, for darkness is heavy and dragged him down. There, he wished to make his own kingdom which he would rule as a god.

He created his world by mixing the light, which he had acquired from Paradise, with matter; he trapped the light in physical vessels so that it could not drift upwards to return to where it came from. And like a king taxes his subjects, this Demiurgic god taxes his creations - that is, he extracts their energy by making them experience the chaotic world he placed them on. Through temptation, and, by extension, sin, humanity is fooled into trading Paradise for short-term benefits in this imperfect realm.

And in order to ascend to Paradise, we must follow truth and goodness; we must prioritize the spiritual over the material, and follow the words and actions of Christ, who preached the message of distilled goodness and light.

Even though the True God in Paradise is made of pure light, he purposely descended to the deep, dark abyss and trapped himself in flesh to free us - like a fish swimming in dark waters (the ichthys) - in the form of Jesus Christ. He allowed himself to suffer the worst fate of all to save mankind. He died the most painful death imaginable for our sake, and was mocked by legions of fools for it.

This explanation is perfectly logical, and answers the question of free will. We have free will because of our souls, and the Demiurge has no control over it; which is why we can use it to reject his tainted bargain and return to Paradise. The True God is, indeed, allmighty, all-knowing and all-powerful in his kingdom of light, but he does not have full control over darkness, for he is a being of pure light; which is precisely why he had to come to us as Jesus Christ.

And this is the end of this post. Thank you for reading it! I appreciate the support! And may God bless you.