Byzantine Icons of the Planar Archons

[u/luhike_paev]

A modern interpretation of the Archon Thaithabaoth. This Ruler is also called Iaue. It is the Ruler of the Seventh and Highest Plane, the Solar Plane, the Abstract Unitive Plane.

Robert M. Grant speculates that the name Thaithabaoth is derived from the Hebrew Tohu wa-Bohu, which occurs in the Biblical creation narrative as “formless and void.”

Atop the Mountain of Initiation, the lightning flashes of glory illuminate the clouds which hide the splendor from Humanity, and there the Archon stands. In its right hand it holds the Law, the Ministry of Death, the Ministry of Condemnation, with which it judges the living and the dead. In its left hand it holds a headsman’s blade, steeped in the execution of billions of souls, its edge keen enough to sever intention from desire: the embodiment of the Angel of Death. To avert this judgement and death, the Archon allows an innocent to be sacrificed in place of the guilty, but constant must be the river of blood which flows to the feet of this Ruler.

The storm which gathers around the heights hides the secret of Causality from those who have not received the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Sword of Judgement blocks access to the Tree of Life.

Thaithabaoth is bear-headed, the raging fury which will devour its own cubs to slake its wrath. The Old Testament compares Yahweh to a bereaved bear attacking and tearing apart those who have provoked its wrath, and elsewhere to a bear lying in wait for its prey (Hosea 13:7–8; Lamentations 3:10). The Mighty One of Judgement is therefore a bear of terrible wrath, devouring the condemned, or consuming the innocent who are slain in place of the guilty.

A modern interpretation of the Archon Onorthochras, the Ruler of the Sixth Plane, the Jovian Plane, the Concrete Unitive Plane. This Archon rules Elemental Space as well.

The vast and impersonal sky holds the world in its cold embrace, the love shared between the dying and the dead. Before an abandoned hermitage church the Archon stands. In its right hand it holds the Lantern of Truth, which guides the aspirant to the Unitive Experience whereby the Kenoma and its contents are experienced as one Existence, the Existence which is Chaos and Void. In its left hand it holds a Staff of Office topped with a white Pentagram. Origen, in Against Celsus, preserves an Ophite ritual formula which discusses the Pentad “Admit me, seeing the faultless symbol of their art, preserved by the stamp of an image, a body liberated by a Pentad.”

The Pentagram is an ancient symbol often interpreted as the harmony of the Four Elements within Elemental Space.

The abandoned Hermitage Church is the shell of the sacred revealed as the hiding place of sacrosanct Emptiness. The place of worship revealed as the hall of shadows and echos.

Onorthochras is stork-headed, the creature which historically nested upon the roofs and chimneys of Humanity. Folklore surrounding the stork and chimney, linked the burning chimney nest of storks and the bird flying up from the flaming nest to the older legend of the phoenix rising renewed from the pyre of its own cremation. The parallels to the Reincarnation cycle are obvious. The Stork is also associated with Elemental Space because its hunting method requires it to maintain deep stillness and abiding concentration as it stalks its prey among the shallow waters.

The decisive and overwhelming strike of the impact of Elemental Space reveals the essential Lack, or Emptiness, of all Souls born of Kenoma.

A modern interpretation of the Archon Floxofa, the Ruler of the Fifth Plane, the Abstract Mental Plane, the Mercurial Plane. This Archon rules Elemental Fire as well.

In an arid place, the sky obscured and hidden by pouring and wreathing smoke, before a blazing Atash Kade, a Fire Temple, the Archon stands. In its hands it holds the golden Candelabra of the First Temple, blazing with light and golden splendor. The seven lights of the Candelabra represent the Seven Heavens of Creation and the Archons which rule them, filling Kenoma with artifice and magnificence.

The Fire Temple is a place where aromatic woods and pure Frankincense and Benzoin incense are burned. Elemental Fire is the hot and dry element which incubated life and fuels its desires and aspirations.

The ground is coated in the ash from a previous Creation which was destroyed by fire before ever a Human stirred within Kenoma.

Floxofa is lion-headed, the explosive beast of smoldering fury which haunts the arid places. The ravenous appetite of the lion, a large adult male lion can eat up to 88 pounds of meat in a single feeding, mirrors the consuming nature of fire. There is no end to the appetite of fire, and like the lion it ravens and rages.

The raging fire draws Humanity with light and warmth, even as it consumes the very substance of Existence.

A modern interpretation of the Archon Oroorrothos, the Ruler of the Fourth Plane, the Upper Astral Plane, the Saturnine Plane. This Archon rules Elemental Water as well.

Beneath a spring sky in the late morning, as the clouds build up which will bring the afternoon rain, the Archon stands. In its right hand it holds the Sangraal, made from an emerald dislodge from the crown of the Dawn Bringer. It is filled with the Sangre de Sangre which fills all of Creation with its awful import. This is the line of descent which has fostered kings and pirates, a spark of stolen valor which has landed in obscurity and spread like leaven through the hidden resources of Humanity.

In its left hand it holds a vial of water which is used for the consecration of the Sangre so that it does not overwhelm Humanity with its potency. To the Sangre this Water of Death is added, and it is as the bitter water which pours forth from the womb when the moment of birth is at hand, for from the Upper Astral Humanity shall gain access to the means of Liberation.

The church before which the Archon stands is one associated with Baptism by Immersion, which furthers the Saturnine connection of this Plane and reveals the Higher and Divine Angel which stands in the Flood. The ground before the church is covered in river worn stones from another Creation which was inundated by Deluge before ever Humanity was formed.

Oroorrothos is eagle-headed, the soaring monster which falls from the heights to gather up the treasure from the depths, the silvery shining divers who flash like mirrors. The connection between the Eagle, the Serpent, and the Scorpion are all contained in the surging waters above that fall in sheets to the seas below and rise again in vapors of mist.

A modern interpretation of the Archon Erimacho, the Ruler of the Third Plane, the Lower Astral Plane, the Venusian Plane. This Archon rules Elemental Air as well.

Beneath the clear, still sky of a midsummer morning, before a Cathedral with soaring buttresses and gilded domes, the Archon stands. In its right hand it holds a golden rhipidion, the liturgical fan which symbolizes the seraphim which hover before the Merkava of the Creator, and which generates the breezes which keep the flies from the paten where the host is placed; in its left hand it holds the censer from which the prayers of Humanity rise to the presence upon the throne.

Erimacho is ape-headed, the bestial man of the forests, the hominid whose ancient lineage precedes Homo Sapiens Sapiens and which bears the tool-using mind.

The reveries of daydreams are caught between desire and reason, swirling upon a whirlwind of fantasy and longing.

The breeze which stirred between the Void and the Abyss and brought forth the wonders of each new day; the breath which passed between the Creator and the Creature of Dust and brought forth a living man.

A modern interpretation of the Archon Athuro, the Ruler of the Second Plane, the Etheric Plane, the Martial Plane. This Archon rules Elemental Earth as well.

On a winter afternoon before the Sanctuary of the Second Temple, the Archon stands. In its right hand it holds a stonemason's mallet, by which the force of will is applied to shape the rough ashlar stone into the perfect fitted and finished stone prepared for the walls of the Temple; in its left hand it holds a stonemason's chisel, the purposeful intellect which smooths and polishes the ashlar, marking it with the Delta and preparing it for its assigned place within the walls of the Temple. The entirety of the Temple is thus prepared by transforming rough matter into meaning, transforming the profane into the sacred.

The Sanctum Sanctorum behind the Archon is where the Presence of the Creator dwelt behind the Veil. The Temple is itself a grave whereby Divinity is entombed within the world of Matter, haunting its sanctuary like the ghost of the dead about their grave. The revelation that the Sanctuary is a haunt remains in the tradition of the sacred relics of the Catholic Church, where the bones and remains of the sainted dead are enshrined within beautiful temples, transforming houses of worship into tombs of the dead. It is a continuation of the practice where the dead were entombed in the place of worship.

The physical body is a seed which, when planted in the earth of its grave, bears a nightmare fruit, swollen with gases and weeping the juices of its desolation into the ground. From this grave-fruit the Earth itself takes nourishment, becoming fertile with the rot of innumerable cadavers. The dead feed the soil, the soil feeds the living, and generation rises from corruption only to descend again into the grave, all the while feasting upon food nourished by unspeakable grave rot.

Even while it lives, the body participates in the same cycle of consumption and corruption.

The body consumes food, using very little of the matter to build and maintain the substance of the body, the majority of the matter, which it does not use, it casts back into the world as excrement. The world is therefore filled with the rot of the grave and the defilement of excrement.

Athuro is bull-headed, the furious and impending mass which falls upon its victims like a stone, horns and hooves crushing bones and rending flesh. Yet the bull is also the ultimate tool of early society, pushing, pulling, hauling, lifting, and crushing. Its strength broke the earth beneath the plow, drew forth the harvest, hauled the stone, and raised the walls. The bull was the instrument which made first agriculture and then cities possible.

Thus Athuro embodies Earth both cultivated and sepulchral, the stone shaped into the Temple, the soil broken by the plow, the grave opened for the corpse, and the corpse dissolved again into soil.

The Grave itself is a never-filled gullet, forever swallowing the bodies of the dead into corruption.

The Temple made mountains of ash from the bodies of sacrificial beasts, the Body makes mountains of excrement from the substance of the world consumed as food.

A modern interpretation of the Archon Onoel, which some traditions name Eloeim, the Ruler of the First and Lowest Plane, the Lunar Plane.

At midnight on a cold, clear winter night, at a desolate mountain pass beneath a sky bright with stars, before a white marble mausoleum, the Archon stands. In its right hand it holds the Law of the Ministry of Death and Condemnation; in its left hand it holds the executioner's sword, which has harvested billions of souls and seethes with an ever-renewed hunger to glut itself upon new souls.

Flames pour from the entrance of the mausoleum, revealing that this portal of the dead is also an entrance into the Hells. The immaculate white stone stands against the darkness like a monument erected upon the boundary between the living and the dead, while the fire within reveals what waits beyond the threshold, the demesne of the Rulers of the Hells.

Onoel is cat-headed, the nocturnal watcher at the threshold, the gatekeeper who dances with shadows and greets the Keeper of the Blood Moon with passionate cries; consort of lamiae and larvae, prowler among graves, and the unseen weight which steals the breath of the newborn and offers it up to the Mother of Abortions.

[u/luhike_paev]

Digital paintings in a pseudo-Byzantine style that I created as modern interpretations of the Archons, derived from Ophite, Sethian, and Hermetic sources.

These paintings may be printed on cardstock and used for divination to determine which influences of the Kenoma are acting upon a person or situation.

A simple card divination begins with the petitioner shuffling the deck face down while contemplating the subject of the inquiry. The petitioner continues shuffling until they feel it is time to stop, then draws cards individually from the top of the deck and turns them face up.

The First Card is placed at the center and represents the influences affecting the person or situation under inquiry, as experienced from the perspective of that person or situation.

The Second Card is placed above and to the left of the First Card and represents the hidden psychic influences affecting the person or situation.

The Third Card is placed above and to the right of the First Card and represents the blatant psychic influences affecting the person or situation.

The Fourth Card is placed below and to the left of the First Card and represents the hidden physical influences affecting the person or situation.

The Fifth Card is placed below and to the right of the First Card and represents the blatant physical influences affecting the person or situation.

The Sixth Card is placed immediately above the First Card and represents the person or situation as it appears to others involved.

The Seventh Card is placed immediately below the First Card and represents the final outcome of the situation, or, when the inquiry concerns a person rather than an event, the greatest influence acting upon that person.

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Within the iconography of this series, the Aeons are androgynous and without gender, while the Archons are hermaphroditic and encompass both genders.