Jacques Lacarrière, author of The Gnostics, points out that the Gnostics understood how the occult signature of the archons could be found in all those authoritarian structures and systems that deny the authenticity and self-determination of the individual. Church and State are therefore two temporal powers in the hands of these interdimensional forces whose purpose is to remove free will. Lacarrière sees Gnosticism as a "cosmic protest" against the world as a prison, where archons symbolize every form of oppression - from clericalism to totalitarianism - that suffocates the authentic individual.