Certain neo-gnostic New Age teachings based on belief in UFOs have essentially the darkest idea of the Demiurge as the master of the Archons, Anunnaki, Reptoids and their human slaves on Earth.
The old Christian Gnostics generally had a negative, but still far more subtle view of the Demiurge than is shown by some new self-styled Gnostics today, according to whom this jailer god surrounded this planet of ours with false paradises, so that even death after a good reign on Earth is not no guarantee that it can be escaped. Marcion’s view was based on the existence of two gods: the Good God who is the father of Jesus Christ and the God of the visible world, the Demiurge or the God of the Old Testament. According to Makrion, the physical world did not belong to the sphere ruled by the good God, but thanks to Christ, man nevertheless became available with knowledge by which he could free himself from material shackles.
According to the Gnostic Basilides, the Jewish God Yahweh created the material world and belongs to a lower rank of spiritual beings.
The Setian Gnostics, of all the ancient Gnostics, held the most pessimistic opinion about the Demiurge, considering that the aeon Sophia imitates God without his salgasity and thus creates his own emanations, which also resulted in the appearance of Yaldabaot, the Serpent with the head of a lion.
Unlike the Sethians, the Epiphanians had a positive opinion of the Demiurge. Epiphanes was a representative of the Gnostic school that did not despise the physical world, but believed that it too was full of divinity and that there was nothing unholy in God’s light. The positions of the Neoplatonists about the Demiurge differed significantly from the Christian Gnostics.
The Neoplatonists, led by Plotinus, advocated the same idea that the Demiurge was credited with the creation of the material world, with the fact that they believed that the material world and its source could not be evil, because they represent a copy of God’s perfection. According to the Neoplatonists, the Demiurge, as an artist and craftsman, creates on Earth only what already exists in the higher spheres. The Demiurge could not have created a better world. It is a copy and that it is of a transitory nature. While the Neoplatonists call the Demiurge the poet and credit him with building a proportionate cosmos from the primordial waters, Christian Gnostics usually blame him for the chaos, corruption, and imperfection of the creation of the material world.