Gnostic teachings constantly emphasize that the Archons are imitators who cannot produce anything original, yet they arrogantly claim they can. The Lord Archon is called antimimon pneuma, "counterfeit spirit." (Apoc John III, 36:17. The term occurs several times in different texts.) The cosmos he produces is described by the Coptic term hal, "simulation." The vast planetary system of the Archons is a stereoma, a virtual reality projection in simulation of a higher dimensional pattern.

Typically, the Archontic framework of the planetary system has been depicted by "armillary bands" that surround the Earth. Taken in many esoteric systems (Hermetics and Rosicrucianism) as the preeminent image of cosmic harmony, the model of the planetary spheres reflects a mindless imitation of divine design, not the living reality of the cosmos.

Yaldabaoth, the presumed all-mighty creator God, really creates nothing; instead, he copies from "archetypal" patterns in the Pleroma. The planetary stereoma of his making is like a plastic copy of an abalone shell. Only someone who does not know the reality of the abalone shell, and what living miracle of nature is required to produce it, would accept the plastic substitution. Here again, the cosmic-noetic parallel applies: Archons simulate in the cosmos at large, and they also simulate i in the human mind. This is a key indication of their effect, a clue to their subtle intrusion tactics.

The main cosmological texts in the NHL, On the Origin of the World, The Hypostasis of the Archons, and The Apocryphon of John, are consistent in describing how the solar system arises as an inorganic simulation of the living pattern of the eternal Aeons. Here is further insight into "the generation of error." One might be excused (but just barely) for mistaking plastic for pearl, but it would be terrible ignorance indeed to be unaware that it takes an entire ocean and a living, symbiotic biosphere to produce a pearl. Yet such is the ignorance of the Archons that they cannot comprehend the living miracle of divine order, rooted in the Pleroma, even when they are imitating it.

The "stereoma" of the Archons is truly a grandiose accomplishment, rather like the many-roomed Venetian palace of a Mafia don afflicted with religious grandiosity and a militaristic sense of the command chain:

Now the prime parent (archigenetor), the master breeder of the Archons, since he commanded vast orbiting worlds, produced heavens for each of his offspring... beautiful dwellings, and in each heaven Yaldabaoth produced glorious decor, seven times excellent: thrones and mansions and temples, and also chariots and celestial virgins... consigning to each one its own heaven-like realm, and providing them with mighty armies of gods and commanders and messengers and overseers, in countless myriads, so that they might all serve and be served. On the Origin of the World, 19.

Readers familiar with the archetypal psychology of C. G. Jung will recognize in this passage all the elements of the heaven archetype common to the mainstream religions: heavenly mansions, celestial armies, cloud chariots, virgins on order, choirs of angels arranged with military precision. The stereoma is loaded with spiritual kitsch. If anyone needs evidence of how the Archons can infect human imagination, here it is, seven times excellent.

It may come as a shock that so much of what human beings have imagined as heaven is an Archontic fantasy, or would be so regarded by Gnostics. It is rather as if our idea of heaven (the realm of the Afterlife) were based on a Disney theme park. There is indeed something Disneyesque about the Archons, and there is in turn something distinctly Archontic about the Disneyfication of our world.