§ 1.
Having now therefore these three ingredients given her, by their account: the first proceeding from Passion, which was matter; the second from a tendency to recovery, which was the animal part; the third that which she bore, that is, the spiritual part; she next applied herself to the forming thereof. However, the spiritual part she was unable herself to reduce into form, being herself of the same substance with it. But she betook herself to the formation of the animal substance which arose from her tendency to recovery, and so brought to light the instructions she had received from the Saviour.
Now her first formation out of the animal substance, they say, was the Father and King of all things; both of such as are of the same substance with himself, that is, the animal, the same which they call also things on the right hand; and of those also which owe their origin to passion and matter, the same which they say are on the left. For all things akin to himself1, they say, he formed, unconsciously moved thereto by his Mother: whence also they give him the names of Metropator, and Unfathered, and Artificer, and Father: affirming him to be Father of things on the right, that is, animal, but of those on the left, that is, material, Artificer; and of all taken together, King.
For the aforesaid Enthymesis [or Achamoth], they say, desired to do all to the honour of the Æons, and therefore made certain images of them; or rather the Saviour did so by her. And she reserved herself to be in the image of the invisible Father, she not being known by the Demiurgus [or Artificer]; while he was to represent the only-begotten Son, and the images of the other Æons were to be the Archangels and Angels formed by him.
§ 2.
He then, by their account, became Father and God of things without the Pleroma, being maker of all, both animal and material. For that he separated those two substances, before confused, and brought the incorporeal into bodily shape, and so framed both heavenly and earthly things, and became their Artificer, whether material or animal, on the right hand or on the left, light or heavy, of upward or of downward tendency: he having furnished seven Heavens, above which, they say, is the Demiurgus himself. And therefore they call him the Hebdomad, but his mother Achamoth the Ogdoad, she thus keeping entire the number of the original and first Ogdoad, belonging to the Pleroma.
Further; as to these seven heavens, which they say, are endowed with understanding, they suppose them to be a kind of Angels, and the Demiurgus too himself an angel like unto God. As they say also that Paradise, being above the third heaven, is virtually a fourth angel, and that Adam obtained I know not what from it, in consequence of his abode therein.
§ 3.
Moreover, they say that the Demiurgus fancied himself to be framing these things of himself, but that in reality he made them by virtue which came out from Achamoth: so that Heaven was made by him, not knowing heaven; and man was moulded, he not knowing man; and Earth manifested, while he was unacquainted with Earth. And throughout in like manner they say he was ignorant of the substantial forms of what he was making, and of his mother herself, and fancied that he himself alone was all. And the cause of this his imagination, they affirm, was his mother, whose will it had been so to train him up to be head and principle of his own proper substance, and director of this whole work. Which mother of his they call also the Ogdoad, and Wisdom, and Earth, and Jerusalem, and the Holy Spirit, and in the masculine, Lord. Her home, they say, is in the intermediate space, so that she abides above the Demiurgus, but beneath or without the Pleroma, until the consummation.
§ 4.
The material substance then being, as they say, made out of three passions or affections, fear, and grief, and perplexity; they will have it that the partakers of animal life owe their subsistence partly to fear and partly to an effort after recovery; that from this effort the Demiurgus had his birth; but from fear, all other being that has animal life, as the souls of irrational creatures, and of beasts, and men. Wherefore that he, wanting energy to discern any spiritual things, considered himself alone to be God, and said by his Prophets, I am God, beside Me there is none.2 From grief again they teach that the spiritual powers of wickedness proceeded; that hence the Devil had his origin, whom also they call the Ruler of this world, his demons too, and his angels, and all that spiritually exists on the side of wickedness. The Demiurgus however they call the son of that Mother of theirs, but the Ruler of this world, a creature of the Demiurgus. And that the Ruler of the world knows the things above him, because he is a spirit of wickedness; but the Demiurgus knows them not, as having merely an animal existence.
The abode of their Mother they say is the super celestial region, that is, in the intermediate space; of the Demiurgus, in the heavenly, that is, in the series of seven heavens; of the Ruler of the world, in this world of ours.
Further: that from that astonishment and extreme perplexity as from the meaner passions, the corporeal elements of the world, as we stated before, had their origin; Earth, upon the stay of that amazement; Water, upon the exciting of Fear; air, upon the fixing (or condensation) of grief. Fire, they say, existed in them all to be a cause of death and decay, even as ignorance was secretly mingled in those three passions.
§ 5.
Thus having formed the world, he created also the earthly man, not however out of this dry earth, but out of its invisible substance, taking his material from that which is continually exhaled and flowing [from the grosser being]. And into this earthly man as they carefully distinguish, he breathed the animal man. And this, they say, was the man formed after his image, and similitude: the material man being after his image, like but not consubstantial with, his God; while the animal man was after his likeness; for which cause also his substance is called the Spirit of Life, coming of a spiritual efflux [from Him]. But afterwards, they say, the coat of skins was put on him; and this, they say, is the frail flesh, the object of sense.
§ 6.
But the offspring of their Mother Achamoth, whereof she became pregnant in her contemplation of the Angels which waited on the Saviour, being of the same substance with the Mother-spiritual,—was unknown even to the Demiurgus, as they affirm. And they say it was secretly lodged in him without his consciousness, in order that by him having been sown in the soul which he made, and in this material body, and having therein, like an unborn babe received growth, it might be made ready to admit the perfect Word.
That spiritual Man therefore was unknown, as they say, to the Demiurgus, who was sown by Wisdom in the natural man at the moment of his breathing into his nostrils, and that through an ineffable Providence. For as he knew not his Mother, so neither did he know her seed. And this same seed they affirm also to be the Church, corresponding to the Church above.
And with this they maintain their inward being to be completed; as though they had their animal soul from the Demiurgus, their body from the dust of the Earth, and their fleshly part from its matter, while the spiritual Man comes from their Mother Achamoth.