Aeons or Aliens, Angels or Archons

During the lost months of the 2020 shutdown, I spent much of my time watching the History Channel series “Ancient Aliens.” I began with a skeptical mind, but was soon persuaded by the variety of evidence presented. Many years earlier I had read Erich von Danikens’ Chariots of the Gods, so I had the basic outline of ancient alien theory already in my head. I had also read Whitley Streiber’s Communion when it came out, so I felt I had a passing familiarity with the concept of alien abductions. But the evidence presented on “Ancient Aliens” goes far beyond those early revelations. By this point in time, only a dedicated naysayer could remain completely skeptical. Here’s the ancient aliens theory: that a variety of aliens from off-planet have been visiting our earth for thousands, if not millions, of years. That the stories told around the world by ancient human cultures of gods descending from the sky and living among them are true histories and not mere fables. That ancient aliens have given knowledge to humanity, particularly technological knowledge, to assist in the progress of human culture. That ancient aliens may have edited our DNA to make us into the modern human form we see today, and that they are possibly continuing to edit our DNA by means of alien abductions. Moreover, it is even suggested that our entire ecosystem may have been seeded by aliens from the get-go, including the placement of our moon to stabilize earth’s axis and to create tidal motion. I persuaded my brother, Bill, to watch the program with me, and so it is that we have watched and discussed every episode of their 15-season run that has been rebroadcast over the past couple of years, some more than once. Yes, many of the stories presented in the series overlap, and most of the evidence shows up time and again with the same commentary attached, yet my brother and I have found the repetition helpful in our effort to discern the truth of various aspects of the ancient aliens claim. Bill and I are nothing if not open-minded, yet we anchor our gullibility with an unusually well-developed sense of logic and critical thinking. As you know, both of us are PhDs with specialties in Philosophy and Rhetoric, and we have both taught critical thinking and logic at universities. So do not come away with the idea that we uncritically bought every claim hook, line, and sinker. We have paid special attention to the question continually raised by the ancient aliens theorists—were these “gods” of the pre-flood era merely misinterpreted alien visitors with alien tech? Are the “fallen angels” of the Book Enoch angels from God, or were they actually ancient astronauts who moved to earth and occasionally married human women? It is said that the worldwide flood was sent by God to wipe out the angel-human offspring known as Nephilim. What were the Nephilim and what God would have wiped out the entire earth and everyone on it to kill them off, and how is it that some humans were spared by warnings from “angels”? As observed by the program’s resident theorists, these types of stories can be taken as fables or as true histories and, if histories, are these actually the Biblical God, angels, and the gods of ancient cultures, or are they actually advanced, off-planet aliens who are apparently engaged in disagreements over human destiny, with sometimes catastrophic consequences? These are the questions that have occupied much discussion between Bill and me over the past couple of years, and they have run on a parallel track to our Gnostic Theology pursuits as we untangle the differences and origins of archons, aeons, angels, and fallen angels, and the difference between the God Above All Gods and the God of this world. I am happy to announce that we have turned a rhetorical corner and landed upon some sound hypotheses at last. Perhaps you can use our analysis the next time you consider the role of extra-terrestrials in our world. I realize that the following memes I’m going to share with you may sound new and strange unless you have previously studied gnostic cosmology. If you are new to Gnostic Insights, I encourage you to go to the GnosticInsights.com website and open the menu tab called “The Gnostic Gospel Primer.” There you will find a Valentinian Gnostic cosmology based upon the Tripartite Tractate book of the Nag Hammadi library. These initial eight episodes lay out in a clear and understandable way the basic cosmology of our universe and the origins of all things. The story is not difficult to understand, but it helps to listen to it from the beginning and go in order. There you will find episodes describing the God Above All Gods, as well as entities known as Aeons which dwell in a space called the Fullness of God, also known as the Pleroma. Aeons, by virtue of the fact that they dwell in the Pleroma, are by definition a type of ET. This ancient well in Sardinia, Italy, the Santa Christina well, is said to represent the “keyhole shape” found throughout the ancient world. To me, it looks like the Pleroma. Ancient alien theorists speak of ETs directing evolution to create our intelligent hominid species. Ancient alien theorists call into question the mainstream theory of evolution. They rightly point out that this planet of ours has not been around long enough for evolution to have spontaneously bumbled upon our exquisite design. They even call into question the premise that life on earth evolved randomly from a primordial soup into ever-increasing complexity and function. “Pan-spermia” has been proposed as a method by which primitive alien life forms hitchhiked their way across the heavens on asteroids to seed our oceans. According to ancient alien theorists, ETs probably interfered throughout ancient history to promote life on earth, including many interventions in protohumans to direct our upward evolution. I tend to agree with much of what they say about the impossibility of Darwinian evolution to achieve our current biosphere. I invite you to listen to the Gnostic Insights podcast called “Evolution and Conscious Aeonic Design,” which you can find at the Gnostic Insights.com website menu under the tab “Complete Episodes Library.” In that episode I call into question Darwinian evolution in favor of the same sort of planned evolution promoted by the ancient alien theorists. But where they identify “ETs” as the source, I identify those ETs as Aeons of the Fullness directing evolution. Episode Four of the Gnostic Insights Primer describes these Aeons that came before this universe. The Aeons populate the Fullness of God in the Pleroma, and they consist of names, places, personalities, powers, and forces, all arranged in a hierarchy, each of them representing a quality of God that would come to realization in this cosmos in which we dwell. It is through their intervention in our universe that evolution occurs to bring about their vision of our material cosmos. Simply ascribing evolution to the intervention of flesh and blood ETs merely pushes back the same ontological problems of random evolution—order cannot arise spontaneously out of disorder. 52 card pickup never finds the cards stacked in suits, and endless games of 52 card pickup over billions of years simply cannot achieve endless results of order from chaos. The physics of entropy always wins out. No matter how many times you toss the components of life up into the air, they never assemble themselves into complex working structures on the way down. What is true for physical evolution is also true of technological innovation. Ancient alien theorists point out that our most important technological innovations are often discovered simultaneously by multiple inventors worldwide. Whether it’s old tech such as language, medicine, metallurgy, and architecture, or new tech such as radio, relativity theory, and the telephone, these inventions appear without evolutionary precedent, arriving fully formed to multiple people, often through dreams and visions. T… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cydropp.substack.com/subscribe