An archon, in the Gnosticism of late antiquity, was any of several servants of the Demiurge, the "creator god" that stood between the human race and a transcendent God that could only be reached through gnosis.

In this context they have the role of the daimons in Neo-Platonism.[1] They give their name to the sect called Archontics. They were thus called from the Greek word ἄρχοντες, "principalities", or "rulers", by reason that they held the world to have been created and ruled by malevolent Archons. The term was taken from the ancient Greek position of office "archon".