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Gnostic cosmology differed strongly from Christian conceptions in other areas as well. In most Gnostic traditions, the material and divine worlds can be clearly distinguished; many Gnostics considered the Creator of the World (whom they called Ialdabaoth) not merely separate from God, but inferior or even malign and resentful. In Gnostic thought, the Godhead, in its Platonic purity, cannot have created the gross cumbersome material world. Rather, emanations from God (usually eight or 30 "aeons", identified as angels in more Christian Gnosticisms) extend from the empyrean to the material, and the lowest such Aeon, the Demiurge, creates the world. Nevertheless, although the Demiurge's Creation remains horribly flawed, hope exists, at least for some. One of the aeons, Sophia, the Feminine Principle of Divine wisdom (whom some traditions blame for the Creation through her lustful weakness or her prideful reason), bring forth a redeeming spirit in memory of the higher world. When that redeemer rescues Sophia from the world through divine marriage, the reign of matter can be broken.

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