The Gnostics and Their Remains

Splendour"--the mantle, as it were, wherewith he must be clothed in silence. All is an emanation from this Being; the nearer therefore that any approaches to him, the more perfect is it, and the less so does it become as it recedes from him: this idea of gradation is eminently Persian. Before the creation of the world, the Primal Light filled all, so that there was no void at all; but when the Supreme Being, residing within this Light, resolved to display and manifest his perfection, he retired within himself, and formed around him a void space. Into this void he let fall his first emanation--a ray of the Light, which is the cause and principle of all existence, uniting in itself the generative and conceptive forces; being both father and mother in the sublimest sense, pervading all, and without which nothing can for an instant subsist.

From this Double Force, designated by the first two letters of the name Jehovah (Yod, He *), emanated the First-born of God, the Tikkun, or "Universal Type" (Platonic Idea), and the general container of all beings, united within himself by means of the Primal Ray. He is the creator, preserver, and prime animator of the world. He is the "Light of light," possessing the three primitive forces of the Godhead: the light, the spirit, and the life. Inasmuch as he has received what he gives, the light and the life, he is considered as equally a generative and conceptive principle as the "Primitive Man," Adam-Kadmon; and as man himself is called the "little world," or the microcosm, so this Being, his Type, is properly designated the "great world," or Macrocosm. In this their Adam-Kadmon, the principle of light and life, the Kabbalists have united the attributes of the same principles amongst the Persians.

Adam-Kadmon has manifested himself in ten emanations, which are not indeed actual beings, but sources of life, vessels of the Almighty Power, types of all the creation. Their names are: the Crown, Wisdom, Prudence, Magnificence, Severity, Beauty, 'Victory, Glory, Foundation, Empire. To Wisdom they gave the title Jah; to Prudence Jehovah; to Magnificence El;

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