Demiurge: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 18:23, 25 February 2019

Demiurge (from the Greek δημιουργός, dēmiourgos) is a term used in the Platonic, Neopythagorean, and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy for the divine being that "fashions" the cosmos. This demiurge is not the same as the creator figure in the monotheistic sense, because both the demiurge and the primordial material from which the demiurge fashions the universe both come from another source. In Theosophical teachings, this ideas fits quite well the concept of Logos.

H. P. Blavatsky wrote in The Secret Doctrine that the Demiurge is not a single being but, rather, the collectivity of all the creative powers of the cosmos, which are guided by the abstract principle of Cosmic Ideation.

[The Secret Doctrine] admits a Logos or a collective “Creator” of the Universe; a Demi-urgos—in the sense implied when one speaks of an “Architect” as the “Creator” of an edifice, whereas that Architect has never touched one stone of it, but, while furnishing the plan, left all the manual labour to the masons; in our case the plan was furnished by the Ideation of the Universe, and the constructive labour was left to the Hosts of intelligent Powers and Forces. But that Demiurgos is no personal deity,—i.e., an imperfect extra-cosmic god,—but only the aggregate of the Dhyan-Chohans and the other forces.[1]

Notes

  1. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. I, (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993), 279-280.