The Botched Theology of QAnon’s Dad, or the Reality of Gnosticism

David Icke doesn’t know anything about anything.

Alright.

Here’s the deal:

I have for a very, very long time had essentially a special interest in Gnosticism on a theology level. I’m not religious myself anymore, but grew up “Oriental”—or better Eastern—Orthodox with Muslim ancestry on my father’s side, though I consider myself something of a “spiritual atheist” now. I certainly hold spiritual beliefs and superstitions (you never know how many nazars and safety pins I could be wearing at any one time), but nothing of an outright religious sort.

Not the point. But is a preamble.

Why are we here?

Today we’re gonna have a chat about Gnosticism, David Icke, and QAnon.

Therefore, please be advised that this essay will necessarily touch on discussions of Antisemitism on the part of Icke and Q which are naturally incredibly heavy and awful to stomach subjects. Take care of yourself. I say that not only given the content, but also because I don’t intend to be as scholarly here as perhaps some of my previous articles. There will be a dissection of actual Gnostic theology, of course, as I will be debunking the botched “Gnosticism” of David Icke, but in all honesty—I’m simply partial to a little roast of an Englishman because I don’t respect the British.

This essay-rant is also heavily influenced by Ryan Beard on YouTube whose video “Demi Lovato Promoted A Racist Lizard Cult?!” features a segment explaining who David Icke is and what his beliefs are, as well as the Antisemitic alignments of Gaia which platforms him. You can learn about all that from Ryan, he’s a treat to watch and this video is highly informative and an excellent rebuttal to modern USian alt-right Antisemitism.

I, however, am not here to be constructive—at least not today and not entirety. I’m salty, and everyone will have to take on that burden.

Content Warnings: Antisemitism, racism, conspiracy theories, religion

David is a former footballer and sports broadcaster (an English one, no less) turned conspiracy theorist whose primary belief is that the world is run by reptilians.

See, when I moved to the West as a teenager, I thought that was a joke.

Apparently, it’s not.

David Icke proclaims his belief in Gnosticism, and I will get into what that is and why this man’s version of it is nonsense, but walk at my pace for now.

He believes that the God of the Bible (Βίβλος), the Tōrā (תּוֹרָה)—and the Qur’ān (الْقُرْآن) by proxy, I assume—is actually Satan who has a council of 4th dimensional beings called “Archons” who are aliens from another dimension responsible for all the evil in the world because that’s their sustenance, and who manipulate the devout of the aforementioned faiths into believing in this false God to thus actually become “Satanists”.

Are we good?

That sucks, because we’re not done.

The way these “Archons”, according to Icke, exert their influence is by infiltrating the government through mating with humans in order to obtain a physical form and instating the resulting progeny as powerful leaders from “Archon bloodlines”, particularly Jewish leaders. What comes from the mating of an Archon with a human is a reptilian.

And it actually does get worse.

Icke then goes on to say that to feed off of this negative energy the Archons need to sustain themselves, the reptilians must eat human babies (Blood Libel mentioned). And what is this secret society of powerful, “mostly Jewish”, reptilians called? Well, it’s called the Illuminati, of course! Or the New World Order.

We’ve arrived. That… that we have…

But this isn’t the final destination either when it comes to David, oh no. This is an insane man. Because Icke’s conspiracies actually have horrendous and violent real-world repercussions, not least of which being QAnon which proclaims that Democrats drink the blood of babies and run child sex trafficking rings in the basements of pizza parlours and are all Jews actually.

You know? Like insane people.

It’s the Satanic Ritual Abuse hoax all over again. Satanic Panic for your conservative white step-uncle (that sounds very specific but I don’t actually have one of those).

David Icke, to circle back, believes that the notoriously Antisemitic text the Protocols of the Elders of Zion which was instrumental in the Holocaust is actually super fvcking canon, and he lovingly calls it “The Protocols of the Illuminati”.

Now, this is a man who doesn’t know anything about anything. And there’s also a lot more to his lore than I’ve outlined here. However, like I said, watch Ryan’s video for further expounding upon that, though once again tread carefully for it is very triggering material.

I’m here to talk about Icke’s quote-unquote “Gnosticism” and why it’s complete and utter a-scriptural nonsense.

Of course, first and foremost, what is Gnosticism?

Gnosticism (Γνωστικός) is a collection of late 1st century CE theological concepts and principles stemming from Christian and Jewish religious sects. There are many, many schools of Gnosticism, a wide gamut of Gnostic scriptures like the Chenoboskion (Χηνοβόσκιον) Manuscripts AKA famously the Nag Hammadi library, and a good number of sources of influence like the Merkavá (מֶרְכָּבָה)—or early Jewish mysticism—Apocalyptic literature, early Christianity such as Docetism, and even Middle Platonism.

And you know what’s really amusing to me?

That explanation alone put a massive gaping hole in David Icke’s tires because Gnosticism is deeply rooted in Judaism—arguably more than Christianity is.

But if you perhaps think it stops here, it keeps going.

And it keeps going in our favour.

So what are the convictions of Gnosticism?

(I would like to just remind the senate floor before we proceed that I am not a Gnostic myself; merely a nerd).

Gnosticism has a very complex theology and I don’t want to bog you down with details, but unfortunately some things are unavoidable. I’ve debated regarding how I will present this timeline, and I think I’ll just rawdog it because if QAnoners don’t give a fvck, why should I?

I’m not here talking to QAnoners or Icke. Deradicalisation is important, and a vital part of far leftist advocacy, but it cannot be the only means by which we operate, and deradicalisation is not my forte—not with my personality. I’m here to educate the people who are unaware, and I’m also here to vent my frustration.

So. In the simplest terms imaginable:

The principal belief of Gnosticism is that the spiritual realm is stratified according to a dualistic cosmology of good and evil. The “upper” realm is where dwells the Monad or Bythos, the Absolute, the Aiōn Teleos (Αἰών Τέλεος)—the “Perfect/Broadest Aeon”. The One. This is an unknowable god in an unknowable, immaterial realm called the Pleroma (Πλήρωμα), or the “Fullness”, wherein they dwell with their Aeons which means essentially “vital force” and who are emanations of The One. Gnostic sects the likes of the Basilidians, the Marcosians, the Valentinianists all had slightly different interpretations of what this is. It’s an extremely old belief system so you can imagine.

The names of the Aeons don’t matter much to our discussion except for one: Sophia (Σοφία; ⲧⲥⲟⲫⲓⲁ). Or “Wisdom”. Being both the human soul analog and the anthropic and feminine aspect of God (The One; the Monad). Her Hebrew name is Achamōth.

The basic theological story goes that Sophia brought about instability in the Pleroma by attempting to learn the entirety of the unknowable Monad which is impossible, engendering her fall from Pleroma into the lower regions of the spiritual realm through fear which was not an existing concept in Pleroma. This resulted in the creation Ialdabaoth (Ιαλδαβαώθ; ⲒⲀⲖⲦⲀⲂⲀⲰⲐ), or the Demiurge: a false, malevolent God.

“Within limitless realms dwells incorruptibility. Sophia, who is called Pistis, wanted to create something, alone without her consort; and her product was a celestial thing. A veil exists between the world above and the realms that are below; and shadow came into being beneath the veil; and that shadow became matter; and that shadow was projected apart. And what she had created became a product in the matter, like an aborted foetus. And it assumed a plastic form moulded out of shadow, and became an arrogant beast resembling a lion.”

—The Hypostasis of the Archons¹

Things are starting to add up, yeah? No? Hang in there, we’ll weather this.

This false god Ialdabaoth, also named in the Apocryphon of John as Saklas and Samael, wanted to imitate The One, so he created his own council of spiritual entities quite like the Monad’s Aeons. Except Ialdabaoth’s were the Archons (Ἄρχοντες) of whom there are seven. He and the Archons then created the material world, which is where you and I allegedly reside.

“…the spiritual world above and the material world below symbolize the two polar states of being, and with [an] intermediate realm of liminality between.”

—Gnosticism: A Study in Liminal Symbolism, Ingvild Sælid Gilhus²

This is where from the concept that the God of the Bible, Tōrā, and Qur’ān is actually Ialdabaoth and an evil, envious being comes from: the idea that the Demiurge is the creator of the material world, and since he is, and the Biblical God is, then they must be one and the same. Right?

N… not… entirely.

While, yes, several Gnostic sects do adhere to this concept, not all do. In fact, far from it.

The Valentinians, one of the most prominent and widely-adhered-to Gnostic movements, believed Ialdabaoth was merely incompetent and not simply evil for funsies, and that he merely lacks the power of The One to maintain the goodness of the world.

I actually found out Icke supposedly “subscribes” to Gnosticism when I was a little over today years old and was immediately galvanised when witnessing just how utterly batshit it is. But the aforementioned is not the main shtick of David Icke. Namely, he cites the Biblical God, Ialdabaoth in this context, as Satan. While this is an extremely lengthy subject and I’m not here to really go into that, there’s not that much evidence of Ialdabaoth actually being a Satan analog. Gnosticism doesn’t really have a Satan. If anything, Sophia-Achamōth is more symbolically similar to Lucifer specifically bar the fact that Sophia was, or is, able to repent and re-ascend to Pleroma unlike Lucifer, but despite the Jewish and Christian roots of Gnosticism, this religion has a fundamentally different theological framework. Likening Ialdabaoth to Satan is akin to likening any faith’s malevolent entity to Satan.

And here we do need to discuss Gnosticism in the framing of Antisemitism. Trigger warning.

A major aspect of Ancient Egypt’s extreme Antisemitism was them attributing the behaviour of HaShem (הַשֵּׁם‎), YHWH, to Sutekh, or Set, the god of violence among much else, who in the Osiris myth murdered and usurped his brother Osiris, god of fertility and the afterlife. Sutekh is equivalent to the ancient Greek Typhon (Τυφῶν). A monstrous serpent. And what was Ialdabaoth described as? A serpentine beast with a lion’s head.

What does this have to do with anything?

Well, the Egyptians were notorious for accusing Jews of onolatry: donkey worship. Litwa writes:

“Seth-Yahweh was a donkey-shaped god of evil established in pre-Christian cultural memory and adapted by alternative Christian groups to express a hostility toward the Judean creator that had been voiced for centuries. This means that so-called Phibionite, Sethian, and Ophite Christians [Gnostic classifications] did not have to invent Yahweh as an evil character out of whole cloth. The wicked creator was already available, and his symbolic value was cashed out in new mythmaking practices that could be aimed not (or not only) at Jews but also at other Christian opponents.”

—The Donkey Deity from The Evil Creator: Origins of an Early Christian Idea, Matthew David Litwa³

While you can definitely accuse certain Gnostic elements of Antisemitism, it is most definitely not worse than that of Christianity or Islam. Any degree of Antisemitism is bad, it is disgusting. Gnosticism is a culprit. But do you notice what the Egyptians did? They equated a deity they saw as heretical to a deity of their own they saw as malicious based partly on not only an arbitrary, but a disputed fact. Because Sutekh having the head of a donkey is not a fact. The Set animal, or sha, has been a long-standing mystery among Egyptologists, proposed to be an antelope, an aardvark, an okapi, a takula (I don’t know why I used its Amharic name). The Book of the Faiyum literally cited his head to be that of a flamingo! The other reasoning the Egyptians had was that the Coptic iō (ⲓⲱ) means “donkey”, and because Ialdabaoth sounds like it starts with Iō, and the Koinē Greek Iaō (Ἰαω) which was used to refer to HaShem by Hellenised Jews kind of sounds like the native Egyptian iō, then Jews must necessarily worship a donkey, which is crazy mental gymnastics, especially when you account for the fact that they were going off of Hellenised Jews. Which is a product of colonisation.

“These factors, even if judged artificial today, were more than enough for Hellenized Egyptians to portray Yahweh as a form of Seth.”

—The Donkey Deity from The Evil Creator: Origins of an Early Christian Idea, Matthew David Litwa

Now, who else equate a deity they see as heretical to a deity of their own they see as malicious based partly on not only an arbitrary, but a disputed fact?

David Icke.

By conflating Ialdabaoth with Satan.

I’m not saying Ialdabaoth isn’t at all Satan™, but Icke is saying he completely is, despite everything pointing away if not sometimes on the contrary.

Gnosticism was historically considered heretical by Christianity, and Gnostics’ main gripe was always with Christians, not Jews. David Icke’s obsession with Antisemitic conspiracy theories such as those propounded in the awful Protocols of the Elders of Zion, conspiracies which originate from the Christian churches of Medieval times when Gnosticism was already practically eradicated from public consciousness, is both fascinating and befuddling, because he calls himself a “Gnostic”, and yet he subscribes to Christian beliefs and parameters of gentile supremacy and a dualism unlike that of Gnosticism. Through that, he betrays the arguably utmost Gnostic statue: fvck with Christians.

Icke is a fundamentalist Christian who believes in aliens!

And that’s another thing: Archons are interdimensional aliens from the 4th dimension? The Archons, alongside Ialdabaoth, created our dimension (the “3rd”, if you want). They are of our dimension. The Pleroma and The One are of an upper dimension, and even then they are not aliens because that’s not how the spiritual realm works.

And perhaps the most insane take of all is the idea that the Archons can mate with humans to birth reptilians…?

To birth the what?

That is not a thing… in any possible world!

Gnosticism outlines three types of humans: the hylic, the pneumatic, and the psychic, which are all contingent on the extent to which said human has attained Gnosis (Γνῶσις), or the knowledge of spiritual truth, i.e. knowledge of the unknowable Monad through which the human soul (pneuma; πνεῦμα) will be able to transcend materiality to the Pleroma, which is the entire point of Gnosticism! The fvck you think it’s called that for?

Icke’s idea of humanity being somehow “the good guys” and there existing some evil reptilians is not an all Gnostic, because in Gnosticism, humans as carnate beings are the afterbirth of creation. The material world is not supposed to exist because Ialdabaoth is not supposed to exist because Sophia was never supposed to be nosey!

David Icke doesn’t know anything about anything!

~Sfar~Ⓐ🧿֎⨳

1. Layton, B. (1974). The Hypostasis of the Archons, or “The Reality of the Rulers”. The Harvard Theological Review, 67(4), 351–425. https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/archons.html

2. Gilhus, I. S. (1984). Gnosticism: A Study in Liminal Symbolism. Numen, 31(1), 106. https://doi.org/10.2307/3269891

3. Litwa, M. D. (2021). The Evil Creator: Origins of an Early Christian Idea. Oxford University Press.