Demiurge

• figure responsible for fashioning and maintaining the universe
• Gnosticism presents a distinction between the highest, unknowable God or Supreme Being and the demiurgic “creator” of the material. Several systems of Gnostic thought present the Demiurge as antagonistic to the will of the Supreme Being: his act of creation occurs in an unconscious semblance of the divine model, and thus is fundamentally flawed, or else is formed with the malevolent intention of entrapping aspects of the divine in materiality
• One Gnostic mythos describes the declination of aspects of the divine into human form. Sophia (Greek: Σοφία, lit. ‘wisdom’), the Demiurge’s mother and partial aspect of the divine Pleroma or “Fullness,” desired to create something apart from the divine totality, without the receipt of divine assent. In this act of separate creation, she gave birth to the monstrous Demiurge and, being ashamed of her deed, wrapped him in a cloud and created a throne for him within it. The Demiurge, isolated, did not behold his mother, nor anyone else, and concluded that only he existed, ignorant of the superior levels of reality.
• The Demiurge, having received a portion of power from his mother, sets about a work of creation in unconscious imitation of the superior Pleromaticrealm: He frames the seven heavens, as well as all material and animal things, according to forms furnished by his mother; working, however, blindly and ignorant even of the existence of the mother who is the source of all his energy. He is blind to all that is spiritual, but he is king over the other two provinces. The word dēmiurgos properly describes his relation to the material; he is the father of that which is animal like himself.[15]
• Thus Sophia’s power becomes enclosed within the material forms of humanity, themselves entrapped within the material universe: the goal of Gnostic movements was typically the awakening of this spark, which permitted a return by the subject to the superior, non-material realities which were its primal source.

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• Before the first imprint, the consciousness of the infant is “formless and void” — like the universe at the beginning of Genesis, or the descriptions of unconditioned consciousness (Nibbana) in the mystic traditions. As soon as the first imprint is made, structure emerges out of the creative void. The growing mind, alas, becomes trapped within this structure. It identifies with the structure; in a sense, it becomes the structure.
• If we confront the world without ideas we see only a muddle, the formless void that existed before “God” (intellect) started to create a universe (a system) in Genesis. Once we become the “image of God” by making our own universe, we have a model of the muddle.
• Subjective biases are individial inclinations shaped by Imprinting and conditioning. The more that a paticular behavior is repeated, the more we learn to see the world through a paticular lens that is biased, based on rewards and punishments from previous actions. We form a habitual way of seeing.
• The term idol is what Robert Anton Wilson uses to refer to perceptions that are shaped by confirmation bias. When an Idol “speaks,” generally through its “priests” it only says what the Faithful want to hear.
• Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s subjective biases.
• Every faith, every acceptance, creates necessary doubt or rejection of things outside of that faith. Every idolis jealous of other Idols.

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