Angels-ARCHON

Archon, a Greek term meaning “ruler,” is the name of a class of entities
who played an important role in Gnostic thought and who are
roughly comparable to evil archangels.
According to the Gnostic myth of creation, Sophia, one of the
spiritual beings (aeons) residing in the pleroma (human kind’s true
home, “the absolute spirit”) inadvertently creates another entity—
often called Yaldabaoth—who creates our familiar world (Robinson,
p. 9f). This creation involves the emanation of the seven levels of the
classical cosmos, corresponding to seven planetary spheres of the
Ptolemaic astronomical scheme. The archons are the rulers who govern
each of these levels and act as guardians, preventing the sparks of light (i.e., the divine essence of individual human beings) from
returning to the pleroma. Part of the knowledge imparted to the
Gnostics is information on how to bypass these archons on their journey
back to the pleroma (Robinson, p. 33f).
One result of conceptualizing the cosmos as the creation of an evil
divinity is that the angelic beings in the heavenly spheres surrounding
the earth—the archons—are also evil. Familiarity with Gnosticism
allows us to understand certain otherwise unintelligible passages in
the writings of certain early Christians, who were clearly influenced
by the Gnostic perspective, for example, the oft-quoted passage about
spiritual warfare from the book of Ephesians (6:12):
[W]e are not contending against flesh and blood, but against
the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers
of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness
in the heavenly places.
What, one might well ask, is the meaning of “the spiritual hosts of
wickedness in the heavenly places?” Isn’t the locus of evil spiritual
forces in hell, which is traditionally conceptualized as being below
rather than above the earth? In this passage and others that might be
cited, “heavenly wickedness” refers to the archons. Even the word
“rulers” here is a translation of the Greek archon, so that the original
passage reads, “archons of this present darkness.”