The Demiurge Explained: What is the Demiurge

Various philosophies describe the Demiurge: this force that can work for ill or good depending on what paradigm you align with. The commonality in all understandings of the Demiurge is that it is a craftsman or artisan, an architect of the physical. The Demiurge is us, our Ego that separates us from source when it is seen as the supreme ruler within. 

Gnostic Paradigm

In Gnosticism, the Demiurge is an aborted fragmentation of source consciousness. This grotesque, metaphysical mistake was cast off from the pleroma, or pure spiritual realm, and it creates from this cut-off realm, the physical world. Through this lens, our physical reality is depicted as celestial dross.

The Demiurge is known by a few different names. Samael is from the Aramaic word for “blind god,” or “god is blind. Saklas is from the Aramaic word for “fool,” and “Yeldebath, which meaning has no traceable roots, but many related to Jehovah and Yahweh.

The stories of Yeldebath take on many shapes within Gnosticism. There is a sympathetic lens where Yeldebath operates in ignorance of the higher power he came from. He never asked to be created. He came to be because of a grave mistake in the creation process. 

But what about the associations with Yahweh? In this light, we see Yeldebath as the deterioration of source light and pure consciousness. As vibration lowers, the true light fragments so much that God and the devil become two separate entities. Yet, the Demiurge believes or acts as though it is god, the highest supreme power when it is in fact, a lesser god. 

Within Gnosticism, the Demiurge is also seen as malevolent. He is an architect who rules over the physical realm, calculately crafting this realm with ill intention, knowing exactly where he stands in the cosmos and conspiring to keep those in his realm from overcoming his influence.

The Saturn Expression of the Demiurge

This is seen in a negative expression of Saturn. When Saturn is viewed in its most hostile, malevolent expression, Saturn is operating as an expression of the Demiurge. This goes beyond the generally understood harshness of Capricorn, Aquarius, and Saturn.

The gender of Saturn is androgynous, being both a negative feminine polarity and a negative masculine polarity that makes up the Demiurge. As the keeper of time, the Demiurge within this Saturnian framework is also Chronos, the keeper of time.

This is important to understand because Saturn is linked with harsh lessons, karma, and time. This third-dimensional experience within the fourth dimension allows us to have these experiences. Through the fabric of this physical reality and linear experience, we can overcome karma.

However, in this extreme, malevolent expression, the Saturnian energy exerts high levels of entropy resulting in crystalization. In thermodynamics, when there is full crystalization, we and the physical world materialize. Because Saturn is part of the materialization of the physical realm through crystalization, Saturn acts as an expression of the Demiurge.

Additionally, this Saturnian paradigm takes on the god element of the Demiurge through Saturn worship. All three Abrahamic religions have unique variations of worship that feed their life force to Saturn, therefore all three religions then feed their life force through worship into the Demiurge in its expression as Saturnian energy.

A clear example of this is the Crusades, where those battling thought they were on the righteous side and that their god was the mightiest when, in truth, the violence on both sides fed into the same “god.” These “gods” can be traced to the degradation form of Yahweh, the malevolent form of Saturnian energy, and therefore the Demiurge of Gnosticism.

The Matrix Expression of the Demiurge

The Demiurge in its most brutal expression is a force that crystalizes us into the physical realm through entropy, cutting us off from our higher spiritual power. Cut off, we become energetic food to be harvested back into the Demiurge through strife, suffering, violence, and sadism in its many forms. The Demiurge keeps us stuck in the cycle of samsara by feeding us back into its matrix.

As a concept, the matrix is neutral, but, as we understand it most commonly, it has a negative polarity. Think, “The Matrix” movie. This is how the Demiurge operates as a matrix. A harsh, physical reality that we are plugged into and controlled by to feed the system.

Whenever we speak with phrases such as, “The powers that be” or “The forces that are” we are referring to this malevolent force of the Demiurge. 

An architect, the Demiurge, designed the systematic program to trap us in the illusion of a physical reality where we consume one another in this food chain of entropy.  Even the very fact that we must consume food for our survival is a representation of the food chain that comes from this lesser god that feeds off us. Being trapped in the illusion of this reality, we become the battery for the fragmented realm created by the Demiurge.

Second-Order Beings

Within this fragmented realm, there are beings created as extensions of the Demiurge. These beings lack the divine spark because they were not created directly from source consciousness. They are created from this corrupted, fragmented realm, and thus second-order beings.

These “rulers” do the bidding of the Demiurge. They are like the agents in the movie “The Matrix.” Gnosticism calls them archons. They are the inverted expression of angels. Archons are high demonic forces that do the bidding of this corrupted expression of the Demiurge.

In our current reality, these forces may trick us into believing that we are giving our powers to the highest expression, one that is “benevolent,” creating rules, systems, and order for our highest good. These forces are sly and will take on many forms to keep us feeding back into a fractured realm. It is their highest task to keep us separate from source consciousness.

Although not directly taught in Gnosticism, how we can look at the Demiurge today is that it is the ego. Our ego is this lesser god. The Demiurge is the ego’s fragmentation into what we know as God and what we know as the devil. That entire battle between god and the devil goes on within the lower consciousness when we are completely stuck in the physical experience.

Plato & the Neoplatonian Paradigm

Plato had an entirely different paradigm of the cosmos and of the Demiurge’s role within the cosmos. 

The Demiurge is still a craftsman, but a benevolent one. It is a benevolent architect that holds a vital role in shaping the physical universe. In this paradigm, the Demiurge takes the raw, unorganized, chaotic materials of the void and creates order out of them.

As such, the Demiurge is the first emanation of the Monad. The Demiurge is not source, not the Monad, but is the first reflection of such. It is the awareness of the Monad because it functions as an architect that synthesizes matter in an expression that points us back to source. In this light, the Demiurge is an artisan, creating an artistic expression of source in the physical world to remind us of source.

This story diverges. The Demiurge started as a benevolent craftsman, this artisan of source. In some versions of the story, the Demiurge maintains this benevolent intention. In others, the Demiurge loses its benevolent intention as things go awry. Cut off from that original intent, we arrive at the version of the Demiurge we see today.

Consistent Threads

Throughout all the different narratives of the Demiurge, what is tried and true through each story is that the Demiurge is a craftsman of the physical reality. Whether the Demiurge is malevolent and hostile energy or helpful and benefic energy depends on our personal cosmology and our spiritual sovereignty. The truth is, the Demirge can play both roles. It doesn’t need to be in conflict. We can look at this reality for what it is within all of its negative and dark elements and we can acknowledge that it may be able to serve a higher, more unified purpose. 

We may use the paradigm of the physical realm being separate from the spiritual to serve us in extracting the knowledge, wisdom, and truth of our reality. This paradigm can help us gain knowledge that can’t be accessed from another paradigm. 

When we have integrated as much as we can from viewing reality in the dualistic setting, having benefitted from the paradigms of physical vs spiritual or good vs evil, then we have the opportunity to grow into a higher divine architecture. We move into a paradigm where we see within this physical realm, the imbued essence of the divine. As we behold the divine spark within, this reality becomes more divine. 

The Demiurge is us. It represents what is going on within our soul complex. When we explore the nature of our reality and ourselves, seeing both the farm-feeding frenzy and the map to pure source, we are getting closer to understanding our creative nature. We can imbue all of these understandings with our creative light because we are creative energy.

When we set aside all of the stories, the Demiurge is the ego. It represents the physical reality that the ego operates in. How we view having an ego will shift as our paradigm shifts. We can view it as a malevolent, destructive force separating us from ourselves or a benevolent helper that directs us back to source energy. There are many paradigms: all evil, all good, dualistic (physical is evil and spiritual is good), or we can align with the paradigm that this reality is all horrific and at the same time divine, finding balance in the chaos. 

The Demiurge is the organizing force that structures spiritual essence into physicality and it can accommodate all views. It can accommodate all forms of reality because it’s trying to organize and synthesize the monad and the monad is everything, including the malevolent. The Demiurge can accommodate everyone’s perception, creating and organizing reality to suit whatever we are also creating. Essentially, the choice is yours. The Demiurge is what you make of it.