Demurge

Demurge (from Gr. dēmos, 'people,' and ergon, 'a work;' hence a 'handicraftsman') was the name given in the cosmogony of the Gnostics to the creator or former of the world of sense. He was conceived as the archon or chief of the lowest order of the spirits or æons of the pleroma; mingling with chaos, he formed in it a corporeal animated world. He created man, but could impart to him only his own weak principle, the psychē or sensuous soul; therefore the highest, the really good God, added the divine rational soul, or pneuma. But the power of evil in the material body, and the hostile influence of the merely sensuous demiurge, prevented the development of that higher element. The demiurge holding himself to be the highest God, could not bring his creatures to the knowledge of the true Godhead; as the Jehovah of the Jews, he gave them the imperfect law of Moses, which promised merely a sensuous happiness, and even that not attainable; and against the spirits of the hylē, or world of matter, he sent only a psychical, and therefore powerless Messiah, the man Jesus. See GNOSTICS.