The Gnostics and Their Remains

the commandments and institutions of Ildabaoth and his Sons, the Planetary Genii, and afterwards the teaching of the Prophets, inspired from the same source, Achamoth infused into their predictions something higher, comprehended not even by their Lord, and made them preach the advent of the Primal Man, the eternal Æon, the heavenly Christ. [The same notion was a favourite one with the Mediæval Cathari.]

Achamoth was so afflicted at the condition of Man that she never rested until she had prevailed on her mother, the celestial Sophia, to move Bythos into sending down the Christ to the aid of the Spiritual Sons of Seth. Ildabaoth himself had been caused to make ready the way for his coming through his own minister, John the Baptist; in the belief that the kingdom Christ came to establish was merely a temporal one: a supposition fostered in him by the contrivance of Achamoth. Besides inducing him to send the Precursor, she made him cause the birth of the Man Jesus by the Virgin Mary; because the creation of a material person could only be the work of the Demiurgus; not falling within the province of a higher power. As soon as the Man Jesus was born, the Christ, uniting himself with Sophia, descended through the seven planetary regions, assuming in each an analogous form, thus concealing his true nature from their presiding Genii, whilst he attracted into himself the sparks of the divine Light they still retained in their essence. [These "analogous forms" are explained by the fact that the Ophite Diagramma figured Michael as a lion, Suriel as a bull, Raphael as a serpent, Gabriel as an eagle, Sabaoth as a bear, Erataoth as a dog, Ouriel as an ass.] In this manner the Christ entered into the man Jesus at the moment of his baptism in the Jordan. From this time forth Jesus began to work miracles; before that He had been entirely ignorant of his own mission. But Ildabaoth at last discovering that he was subverting his own kingdom upon earth, stirred up the Jews against him, and caused him to be put to death. When he was on the cross, the Christ and Sophia left his body, and returned to their own place. Upon his death the Two took the Man Jesus, abandoned his Material body to the earth, and gave him a new one made out of the Æther. Thenceforth he consisted

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