📖 Preservation & Authorship
This translation of The Hypostasis of the Archons (also known as The Reality of the Rulers, Nag Hammadi Codex II, 4) is reproduced for educational and spiritual use under fair use.
Translation by Dr. Willis Barnstone & Marvin Meyer, from The Gnostic Bible (© 2003, Shambhala / HarperCollins). All rights reserved by the original publishers.
The Hypostasis of the Archons (Codex II, 4) reveals the mythic foundation of Gnostic cosmology. It recounts how the Archons — rulers of the material heavens — sought to dominate creation, and how Sophia, through compassion, intervened to restore the divine image within humanity.
This text reimagines Genesis as an occult battle between ignorance and remembrance, exposing the false creators who shaped the visible world. It is both a myth of resistance and a manual of awakening — the defiance of spirit against the machinery of matter.