Why astrology is at the center of Gnosticism, and why you still don't need to believe it, to be a Gnostic ...

Gnosticism originated in Antiquity for 1500 to 1800 years ago, so understanding real Gnosticism requires one to study what the real Gnostics thought and make your own personal modernization, uninfluenced by any modern "prophet" that superimposes the Gnostic message with their own stuff.

The central representation of the archons in Gnosticism is seven high archons and twelve low archons. Seven is the number of classical planets, and twelve is the number of calendar months. There might be other meanings too, but you may research that yourself – I don't know.

The seven classical planets represents pagan gods: Moon = Horaeus, Mercury = Aiolaeus, Venus = Astaphaeus, Sun = Adonaeus, Mars = Sabaoth, Jupiter = Iao, Saturn = Ialdabaoth ("Practicing Gnosis", April D DeConick, page 55).

The twelve low archons represents star signs, but without established associations to the twelve lower archons: Athoth, Harmas [called the eye of flame], Kalilaumbri, Yabel, Adonaiu [called Sabaoth], Cain [called the sun], Abel, Abrisene, Yobel, Armupiel, Melcheir-adonein, Belias. If you want to know, research it yourself! Learn astrology, read the Secret Book of John!

If you want to know the obscure symbols of Gnosticism, astrology is one guidance beside the symbology presented in the Secret Book of John. Just remember that modern astrology makes a lot of compromises towards psychology which makes the symbols "reasonable" – the astrology of the antiquity was more simplistic, and the symbollogy was more naive, Aries rushed on and butted his/her head, Gemini was split in two persons, etc.. Research it yourself!

Astrology relies on the four "elements" of Empedocles fire, earth, air and water, who use to be associated with the "personality types" of choleric, melancholic, sanguinic and phlegmatic. It has a vague counterpart in the MBTI class personality traits developed by C G Jung (NB: not a Gnostic according to himself!), Katharine Briggs, and Isabelle Myers. The connection between MBTI and the four "elements" should be SP/artisan = air, NF/idealist = fire, SJ/guardian = earth, NT/rational = water according to Jung.

Note however: MBTI has 16 personality types, the zodiacal signs amount to 12, and the archons/planets amount to 7. Also note: psychologists avoid MBTI. They prefer using the personality metric Big 5, which gives an unlimited number of personality characterizations that yet has a low explanation value according to the same psychologists.

Also note: There are scientific studies of the efficacy of astrology, and they generally tend to indicate that it isn't. This is no problem for Gnosticism however, we don't need effective horoscopes to decode symbols, and one of the goals of Classical Gnosticism was to use magic formulae to get rid of the influence of the evil planets and thereby liberate us from Fate. We can simply reinterpret these planets as mental (or societal?) forces that trap us into the matter (or a materialist world view?), while the Gnostic prayers make us get rid of that imprisonment by "programming up" our independence from those forces.