Message #134094

[Demiurge]

Furthermore, the Spirit rests upon Chaos, or the waters of Creation, which are Matter, Water, Darkness, the Abyss. This Chaos was devoid of all life, for life proceeds ultimately from the Supreme, who has no connection whatever with Matter. Neither could his purely intellectual daughter, Sophia, act directly upon it; she therefore employed for agent her own emanation, Achamoth, whose mixed imperfect nature fitted her for that office.

This First Tetrad, Bythos, Ennoia, Sige, Sophia, were in the meantime creating Ecclesia, the Idea of the Holy Church. But the imperfect Achamoth upon descending into Chaos, lost her way there, and became ambitious of creating a world entirely for herself. She floated about in the Abyss, delighted at imparting life and motion to the inert elements, until she became so hopelessly entangled in Matter as to be unable to extricate herself from its trammels. In this condition she produced the creator of the material world, the Demiurgus, Ildabaoth.

But after this event, Achamoth feeling the intolerable burden of her material part, after long and repeated efforts, at length struggled forth out of Chaos. She had never belonged to the Pleroma, but she attained to the "Middle Space"; where she entirely shook off her material part, and determined to erect a barrier between the World of Intelligence and the World of

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[paragraph continues] Matter. Ildabaoth, "Son of Darkness," creator and tyrant of the Lower World, followed the example of Bythos in producing subordinate Emanations. First of all he generated an Angel in his own likeness; this Angel a second; and so on up to the number of six. These are all reflexions one of the other; but they inhabit, with their father, Ildabaoth, seven different regions; to which the Middle Space, dominion of their origin Achamoth, forms the eighth. Their names are Iao, Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloi, Ouraios, Astaphaios. They became the Genii of the seven worlds, or planetary spheres. The first four names are the mystic titles of the God of the Jews--degraded thus by the Ophites into appellations of the subordinates of the Creator; the two last signify the forces of Fire and Water.

In this degradation of the names most sacred in the Jewish theology, is clearly to be recognised, the very teaching of those "dreamers" reprobated by Jude, v. 8 for despising "Dominion," and speaking evil of "Dignities." For "Dominion" is the "Empire" in the Sephiroth (see page 35) to which the Kabbala assigned the title Adonai. Now we find here the Ophites making Adonai the third son of Ildabaoth, a malevolent Genius, and like his father and brethren, the eternal adversary of the Christ. The "Dignities" mean the other personages of the Sephiroth, similarly dishonoured by the new doctrine. Jude shows plainly whom he had in view by contrasting in the next verse the audacity of these "blasphemers" with the respect shown by the Archanged Michael towards his opponent on account of his angelic nature, however fallen from his high estate. By a most singular coincidence (much too close to have been merely accidental), Jude's censure, nay, his very expressions are repeated by Peter in his second Epistle (ii. 10). If either of these Epistles were really written by the Apostles whose names they bear, these passages bring to light the very early existence of this school of Gnosticism, which indeed may have been founded before the promulgation of Christianity. But to return to the operations of Ildabaoth. Besides the Spirits above mentioned, he generated Archangels, Angels, Virtues, and Powers presiding over all the details of the creation. Ildabaoth was far from being a pure spirit; ambition

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