Three things, then, now being assumed by them—the one from the passion, which was matter; the one from the conversion, which was the psychic; and the one she brought forth, that is, the spiritual—she turned to the forming of these. But the spiritual she could not form, since it was of the same substance as herself; so she turned to the forming of the psychic substance that had come from her conversion, putting forth the lessons she had received from the Savior. And first, they say, she formed out of the psychic substance the Father and King of all—both of those of the same substance as himself, that is, the psychic, which they call 'right,' and of those from the passion and from matter, which they call 'left.' For they assert that he formed all things after him, being secretly moved by the Mother; whence they also call him Mother-father and Fatherless and Demiurge and Father—calling him father of the 'right,' that is, of the psychic, but Demiurge of the 'left,' that is, of the material, and King of them all. For this Enthymesis, wishing to make all things to the honor of the Aeons, made images of them, they say—or rather the Savior did so through her; and she kept herself in the image of the invisible Father, unknown to the Demiurge; but him in the image of the Only-begotten Son, and the rest of the Aeons in the Archangels and Angels that came into being through these. So they say he became Father and God of those outside the Pleroma, being maker of all things both psychic and material; for, having separated the two substances that were confused and made bodies out of the incorporeal, he fashioned both the heavenly and the earthly things, and became Demiurge of material and psychic, of right and left, of light and heavy, of things tending upward and tending downward. For he constructed seven heavens, above which they say the Demiurge is; and for this reason they call him Hebdomad, and his mother Achamoth Ogdoad, preserving the number of the original and pre-existent Ogdoad, prior to the first Ogdoad of the Pleroma. The seven heavens they say are intelligent; and they suppose them to be Angels, and the Demiurge himself also an Angel resembling God; as also Paradise, being above the third heaven, they say is virtually a fourth Angel, and that Adam received something from it while he dwelt in it. These things the Demiurge asserted he was constructing of himself, but he made them while Achamoth was putting them forth; he made heaven without knowing heaven, and fashioned man without knowing man, and showed forth the earth without understanding the earth; and so in all cases, they say, he was ignorant of the ideas of the things he made, and ignorant even of the Mother herself, but supposed himself alone to be all. They assert that the Mother became the cause of this supposition for him, having so wished to bring him forth as head and beginning of her own substance and lord of the whole transaction. This Mother they also call Ogdoad, and Sophia, and Earth, and Jerusalem, and Holy Spirit, and Lord in the masculine. She occupies the place of the Middle, and is above the Demiurge but below or outside the Pleroma, until the consummation.
Since, then, they say the material substance was constituted out of three passions—fear, grief, and perplexity—the psychic things took their constitution from fear and from conversion: from the conversion they will have the Demiurge to have had his generation, and from the fear the whole remaining psychic substance, such as the souls of irrational animals and beasts and men. For this reason, being too feeble to know anything spiritual, he supposed himself alone to be God, and said through the Prophets, 'I am God, and besides me there is none.' And from the grief, they teach, the spiritual things of wickedness came to be; whence the Devil had his generation, whom they also call Cosmocrator (world-ruler), and the demons and the angels and every spiritual substance of wickedness. But the Demiurge they call a son of their Mother, and the Cosmocrator a creature of the Demiurge; and the Cosmocrator knows the things above him, that they are spiritual things of wickedness, but the Demiurge is ignorant, since he is psychic. Their Mother dwells in the super-heavenly place, that is, in the Middle; the Demiurge in the heavenly place, that is, in the Hebdomad; and the Cosmocrator (Almighty) in this world of ours. From the consternation and the helplessness, as from the more insignificant, the bodily elements of the world came to be, as we said before: the earth according to the stasis of consternation, water according to the motion of the tears of fear, air according to the consolidation of grief; while fire is inherent in all of them as death and corruption, just as ignorance, they teach, is hidden in the three passions. Having made the world, then, he also made the earthy man—not from this dry earth, but taking from the invisible substance, from the diffuse and fluid part of matter; and into him, they determine, he breathed the psychic man. And this is the man made after the image and likeness: after the image is the material man, similar to, but not of the same substance as, God; after the likeness is the psychic man, whence also his substance was called 'breath of life,' being from a spiritual emanation. Afterward, they say, the garment of skin was put about him; and this they say is the perceptible flesh. But the offspring of their Mother, of Achamoth, which she brought forth according to the contemplation of the angels about the Savior, being of the same substance as the Mother, spiritual, even this the Demiurge was ignorant of, they say; and it was secretly deposited in him without his knowing, so that, sown through him into the soul that is from him and into this material body, and carried in the womb in these and grown, it might become ready for the reception of the perfect Logos. So there escaped the notice of the Demiurge, as they say, the spiritual man sown together with his inbreathing by Sophia, with ineffable power and providence. For as he was ignorant of the Mother, so also of her seed; which seed they say is itself also a Church, an antitype of the Church above. And this, they hold, is the man within them; so that they have the soul from the Demiurge, the body from the dust, the fleshly from matter, and the spiritual man from the Mother Achamoth.
There being, then, three things—the material, which they also call 'left,' they say of necessity perishes, since it is unable to receive any breath of incorruptibility; the psychic, which they also call 'right,' since it is intermediate between the spiritual and the material, goes wherever it makes its inclination; and the spiritual is sent forth so that, paired here with the psychic, it might be formed, being educated together with it in the course of life. And this, they say, is the salt and the light of the world; for the psychic things needed psychic and perceptible instruction. For this purpose, they say, the world too was constructed; and the Savior came to this psychic element, since it is also self-determining, in order to save it. For of those he was to save he received the first-fruits, they assert: from Achamoth, the spiritual; from the Demiurge, he put on the psychic Christ; from the dispensation, he was clothed with a body having psychic substance, constructed by ineffable skill so that it became both visible and tangible and capable of suffering. And of anything material he received nothing whatever, they say; for matter is not receptive of salvation. The consummation will be when all the spiritual is formed and perfected—that is, the spiritual men, those who have the perfect knowledge of God and of Achamoth; and these, they suppose, are the ones initiated into the mysteries. For the psychic things were taught to the psychic men, those confirmed by works and bare faith, and not having the perfect knowledge; and these, they say, are we who are of the Church. Therefore good conduct is necessary for us; for otherwise it is impossible to be saved. But themselves, they dogmatize, will be saved altogether and in every way—not through conduct, but because they are by nature spiritual. For as the earthy cannot partake of salvation (for they say it is not receptive of it), so again the spiritual—which they themselves are, as they would have it—cannot admit corruption, whatever sort of deeds they engage in. For just as gold deposited in mire does not cast off its beauty but keeps its own nature, the mire being unable to harm the gold, so too, they say, are they: whatever material deeds they engage in, they are in no way harmed nor do they cast off the spiritual substance.
Wherefore indeed the most perfect among them do without fear all the forbidden things, concerning which the Scriptures affirm that those who do them shall not inherit the kingdom of God. For they eat without distinction things offered to idols, thinking they are in no way defiled by them; and at every festal entertainment of the nations held in honor of the idols they are the first to assemble, so that some of them do not even abstain from the spectacle hateful to God and to men. Others, slavishly given over to the pleasures of the flesh to satiety, say that the fleshly things are to be rendered to the fleshly and the spiritual to the spiritual. And some of them secretly corrupt the women who are being taught this doctrine by them, as many women, often deceived by some of them and then converted to the Church of God, have confessed along with the rest of their error. Others, having grown shameless even openly, drew away from their husbands whatever women they desired, and regarded them as their own wives. Others again, at first making a solemn pretense of dwelling together as with sisters, were exposed in the course of time, the 'sister' having become pregnant by the 'brother.' And while doing many other foul and godless things, they run down us—who through fear of God guard ourselves against sinning even in thought and word—as ignorant and knowing nothing; but they exalt themselves on high, calling themselves perfect and seeds of election. For they say that we receive grace for use, and therefore it will be taken away from us; but that they have grace as their own possession, having descended from above from the ineffable and unnameable pairing; and for this reason it will be added to them. Therefore in every way they must always practice the mystery of the pairing. And this they persuade the foolish, saying in these very words: 'Whoever, being in the world, did not love a woman so as to possess her, is not of the truth and will not attain to the truth; but whoever, being of the world, was not possessed by a woman, will not attain to the truth, because he was not possessed in the desire of a woman.' For this reason, then, they name us, the good, 'psychic,' and say we are of the world, and that continence and good conduct are necessary for us, so that by it we may come to the place of the Middle; but for themselves, called spiritual and perfect, by no means—for it is not conduct that leads into the Pleroma, but the seed, which is sent forth from there as an infant and is perfected here. When all the seed has been perfected, they say their Mother Achamoth passes from the place of the Middle and enters within the Pleroma, and receives her bridegroom, the Savior, who came from all, so that a pairing comes to be of the Savior and the Sophia who is Achamoth. And this is bridegroom and bride, but the bridal chamber is the whole Pleroma. And the spiritual, having stripped off their souls and become intelligent spirits, entering uncontainably and invisibly within the Pleroma, will be given as brides to the angels about the Savior. The Demiurge himself will also pass over to the place of the Mother Sophia, that is, into the Middle; and the souls of the righteous will likewise rest in the place of the Middle. For nothing psychic enters within the Pleroma.
When these things have come about thus, they teach that the fire lurking in the world, blazing out and being kindled and consuming all matter, will be consumed together with it, and will pass into being no more. They declare that the Demiurge knew none of these things before the coming of the Savior. But there are those who say that he emitted a Christ as his own son, but psychic; and that he spoke concerning him through the Prophets. He is the one who passed through Mary, as water passes through a pipe; and upon him, at the baptism, descended that Savior from the Pleroma, from all, in the form of a dove. There came to be in him also that same spiritual seed from Achamoth. So they assert that our Lord became composite out of these four, preserving the type of the original and first Tetrad: out of the spiritual, which was from Achamoth; out of the psychic, which was from the Demiurge; out of the dispensation, which was constructed by ineffable skill; and out of the Savior, which was the dove that descended into him. And this one remained impassible (for it was not possible for him to suffer, being uncontainable and invisible); and for this reason, when he was led before Pilate, the Spirit of Christ that had been placed in him was taken up. Nor, they say, did the seed from the Mother suffer; for it too was impassible, being spiritual and invisible even to the Demiurge himself. There suffered, then, according to them, the psychic Christ and the one mysteriously constructed out of the dispensation, so that through him the Mother might display the type of the Christ above—that one who was extended on the Cross and formed Achamoth with the forming according to substance; for all these things, they say, are images of those. As for the souls that have received the seed of Achamoth, they say they became better than the rest; and therefore were loved more than the others by the Demiurge, who did not know the cause but reckoned them to be such of himself. Therefore, they say, he appointed them as prophets and priests and kings. And many things, they expound, were spoken by this seed through the prophets, inasmuch as it was of a higher nature; and many things also the Mother spoke concerning the things above, but also through this and through the souls that came from it. And so they cut up the prophecies, wishing some to have been spoken by the Mother, some by the seed, and some by the Demiurge. And Jesus likewise: some things spoken by the Savior, some by the Mother, some by the Demiurge, as we shall show as our discourse proceeds. The Demiurge, being ignorant of the things above him, was indeed moved by the things said, but despised them, supposing now one cause and now another—either the prophesying spirit, which had a certain movement of its own, or the man, or the intermixture of the inferior beings; and so he remained ignorant until the coming of the Lord. But when the Savior came, they say he learned all things from him, and gladly went over to him with all his power; and he is the centurion in the Gospel who says to the Savior, 'For I too have soldiers and servants under my own authority, and whatever I command, they do.' He will complete the dispensation concerning the world until the proper time, especially for the care of the Church, but also through the knowledge of the prize prepared for him, that he will pass to the place of the Mother.
They posit three kinds of men—spiritual, earthy, and psychic—just as there came to be Cain, Abel, and Seth; and from these the three natures, no longer in a single individual, but according to kind. The earthy passes into corruption; the psychic, if it chooses the better things, will rest in the place of the Middle, but if the worse, it too will pass to things like itself; while the spiritual things, whatever Achamoth sows from that time until now in righteous souls, having been educated and nurtured here—because they were sent forth as infants—and afterward deemed worthy of perfection, will be given as brides to the Angels of the Savior, as they dogmatize; their souls of necessity resting in the Middle together with the Demiurge forever. And the psychic souls themselves they subdivide again, saying that some are by nature good and some by nature evil. And the good are these, which become receptive of the seed; but those by nature evil could never receive that seed.
Such, then, being their hypothesis—which neither the Prophets proclaimed, nor the Lord taught, nor the Apostles handed down, and which they boast to know about the whole of things more fully than others, reading it out of writings that are not Scripture, and, as the saying goes, undertaking to weave ropes out of sand—they attempt to fit to their statements, in a way meant to seem credible, either the Lord's parables, or prophetic sayings, or apostolic words, so that their fabrication may not appear to be without witness; overstepping the order and connection of the Scriptures and, so far as in them lies, dissolving the members of the truth. They transfer and remold, and making one thing out of another, deceive many by the ill-compounded sophistry and fantasy of the dominical oracles they fit together. It is as if someone, when a beautiful image of a king had been carefully constructed out of precious gems by a skilled artist, were to dissolve the underlying figure of the man, transfer those gems and rearrange them, and make a form of a dog or a fox, and that too poorly made; and then should determine and say that this is that beautiful image of the king which the skilled artist constructed, pointing to the gems that had been beautifully composed by the first artist into the image of the king, but badly transferred by the later one into the form of a dog; and through the fantasy of the gems should mislead the more inexperienced, who have no grasp of the kingly form, and persuade them that this rotten figure of a fox is that beautiful image of the king. In the very same way these men, having stitched together old wives' fables, then dragging in words and expressions and parables from here and there, wish to fit the oracles of God to their own fables. And as for whatever they fit to the things within the Pleroma, we have stated it.
But whatever they try to appropriate from the Scriptures to the things outside their Pleroma is of this kind. The Lord, they say, came to his passion in the last times of the world for this reason: that he might display the passion that occurred concerning the last of the Aeons, and through that very end might make manifest the end of the transaction concerning the Aeons. That twelve-year-old maiden, the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, whom the Lord, standing over her, raised from the dead, they explain to be a type of Achamoth, whom the Christ, having been extended, formed and brought to a perception of the light that had left her. And that the Savior appeared to her while she was outside the Pleroma, in the condition of an abortion, Paul, they say, declared in the first Epistle to the Corinthians: 'And last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.' Likewise the coming of the Savior with his contemporaries to Achamoth he made manifest, they say, in the same Epistle, when he said, 'A woman ought to have a covering on her head because of the angels.' And that, when the Savior came to her, Achamoth out of modesty put on a covering, Moses made plain, they say, by placing a veil on his face. And the passions which she suffered, the Lord, they assert, signified on the cross. In saying, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' he indicated, they say, that Sophia was abandoned by the light and was hindered by Horos from her forward impulse; her grief, in saying, 'My soul is sorrowful even unto death'; her fear, in saying, 'Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me'; and her perplexity likewise, in saying, 'And what shall I say? I know not.' They teach that he showed the three kinds of men thus: the material, in saying to the one who asked, 'Shall I follow you?'—'The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head'; the psychic, in saying to the one who said, 'I will follow you, but permit me first to take leave of those in my house'—'No one who has put his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of heaven.' For this one, they say, is the intermediate. And likewise the one who confessed that he had done most of the parts of righteousness, but then was unwilling to follow and, overcome by riches, did not become perfect—him too they will have to be of the psychic kind. And the spiritual, in saying, 'Let the dead bury their own dead; but you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God'; and in saying to Zacchaeus the tax-collector, 'Make haste and come down, for today I must stay in your house.' For these, they declare, came to be of the spiritual kind. And the parable of the leaven, which the woman is said to have hidden in three measures of meal, they say signifies the three kinds; for by the woman, they teach, is meant Sophia; by the three measures of meal, the three kinds of men—spiritual, psychic, earthy; and by the leaven they teach the Savior himself to be meant. And Paul, they say, expressly named earthy, psychic, spiritual: in one place, 'As is the earthy, such also are the earthy'; in another, 'But the psychic man does not receive the things of the Spirit'; and in another, 'The spiritual man judges all things.' And the saying, 'the psychic does not receive the things of the Spirit,' they say is spoken of the Demiurge, who, being psychic, knew neither the Mother, who is spiritual, nor her seed, nor the Aeons in the Pleroma. And that the Savior took up the first-fruits of those he was to save, Paul declared, they say, in saying, 'And if the first-fruit is holy, so also is the lump.' By 'first-fruit' they teach the spiritual is meant; but by 'the lump,' us—that is, the psychic Church, whose lump they say he took up and consolidated in himself, since he was himself leaven.
And that Achamoth went astray outside the Pleroma, and was formed by the Christ, and was sought out by the Savior, they say he indicated in saying that he had come to the lost sheep. For by the lost sheep they explain their Mother to be meant, from whom they would have the Church here to have been sown; and by the wandering, her sojourn outside the Pleroma amid all the passions, out of which they suppose matter to have come into being. The woman who sweeps the house and finds the drachma they explain to mean the higher Sophia, who, having lost her Enthymesis, afterward—when all things have been cleansed through the coming of the Savior—finds her; and therefore she too is restored, according to them, within the Pleroma. Simeon, who took the Christ into his arms and gave thanks to him and said, 'Lord, now you let your servant depart according to your word in peace,' they say is a type of the Demiurge, who, when the Savior came, learned of his own transference and gave thanks to Bythos. And by the prophetess proclaimed in the Gospel, who had lived seven years with a husband, and remained a widow all the rest of the time until, seeing the Savior, she recognized him and spoke about him to all, they determine Achamoth to be most plainly indicated; she who, having seen the Savior with his contemporaries for a little while, remained for all the rest of the time in the Middle, awaiting him—when he would come again and restore her to her pairing. Her name too, they say, was indicated by the Savior in saying, 'And wisdom is justified by her children'; and by Paul thus: 'But we speak wisdom among the perfect.' And the pairings within the Pleroma Paul mentioned, they assert, when he showed it in a single instance; for writing concerning the pairing pertaining to life, he said: 'This mystery is great—but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.'