The Demiurge

I sometimes see in Satanic and Luciferian circles the idea of a Demiugre, whether it’s a literal or symbolic one, that has created the material world and kept Mankind as prisoner. When people talk about the Demiurge they are most likely referring to the Gnostic Christian concept of the Demiurge, the being that creates the world and imprisons the spirit of Man in its creation, who is usually identified as Yaldaboath. The Gnostic premise is the the Demiurge refers to a creator deity or creative being separate from the true God – the unknowable supreme spirit, the source of creation (sometimes referred to as Bythos). This Demiurge is usually treated as a malevolent and tyrannical being who created mankind as a way of keeping the soul, or souls, bound to the world and subject to the sufferings of life. For the Gnostics, not only is matter inferior to spirit but the world is also evil because it is created by an unjust deity. They also identified their Demiurge with YHWH as he is depicted in the Old Testament – that is, they are treated as the same being. The Demiurge often goes by the name Yaldabaoth, but has also been named Samael, which is the same name as a certain fallen angel from Jewish and Christian lore who is often viewed synonymously with the conventional Satan (in fact, it’s possible that Samael was originally the closest thing to evil incarnate in Jewish lore).

The Gnostic conception of the Demiurge as the creator of the material world may have its origins in the Platonic conception of the Demiurge. For Plato, the term “demiurge” referred simply an entity that fashioned the world, or the cosmos, as described in the Timaeus, his dialogue on the creation of the universe. The word itself simply means “craftsman” or “artisan”, thus in Plato’s Timaeus the Demiurge is a celestial artisan responsible for the creating of the universe. The Timaeus, it should be noted, is not a religious text, but rather a philosophical text entailing what Plato himself only considered to be a likely explanation for how the universe came into being. The Platonic Demiurge would generate the cosmos by imposing order on the chaos that came before it by imitating a pre-existing eternal model of creation, in contrast to the Gnostic Demiurge who is often considered to be either bumbling and incompetent or entirely malevolent.

In substance, the Gnostic Demiurge is essentially taking Plato’s conception of the Demiurge and sort of demonizing it whilst interpreting it, or identifying it, as Yahweh, the deity of the Old Testament and the deity commonly perceived as the “God of the Bible”, which they in turn equate with the demon named Samael. The clear takeaway is that the creator of the world, within the Gnostic framework, is evil and so is his creation. It seems baffling to me, then, that a Satanist or a Luciferian would embrace that idea because Satanists, by contrast, don’t see the world as evil and neither do Luciferians. We, ultimately, embrace this world, we embrace life and we intend to derive fulfillment from it. To me, at least, a Satanist who believes that the world is created by an evil Demiurge and believes that he/she must seek to transcend the evils of the world and of matter is not much different from the Christian rebuking Satan, the lord of this world, because according to the Gnostic teachings this is what it is in practice. The only difference between the Gnostic and the mainstream Christian is that that the Gnostics believe that Satan is actually Jehovah/Yahweh.

Yaldabaoth, the Gnostic demiurge