Refutation of All Heresies, Vol. 2

forth from the first two powers, that is, Heaven and Earth. For Simon speaks explicitly of this in the Announcement, thus:—

“Unto you I say what I say, and I write what I write. The writing is this: There are two stems of all the Aeons, having neither beginning nor end, from one root, which is Power-Silence Original: dynamis sigē, unseen and incomprehensible. One of them appears on high, who is a great power, the mind of the universals, who orders all things and is a male. And the other below is a great Thought, a female giving birth to all things. These, then, being set over against each other, form a pair and show forth the middle space, an incomprehensible air having neither beginning nor end. In this space is a Father who upholds all things and nourishes those which have a beginning and end. This is He who Stood, Stands, and will Stand, being a masculo-feminine power after the likeness of the pre-existing Boundless Power which has neither beginning nor end but exists in oneness. For the thought which came forth from the power in oneness was two. And that was one.

p. 262.

For he, when he contained her within himself, was alone, nor was he indeed first although he existed beforehand; but having himself appeared from himself, a second came into being. But he was not called Father until she named him Father. Just as he, drawing himself forth from himself, manifested to himself his own thought, so also the thought having appeared did not create him; but beholding him, hid the Father—that is Power—within herself; and there is a masculo-feminine Power-and-Thought when they are set over against each other. For Power does not differ at all from thought, they being one. From the things on high is discovered Power; from those below, Thought. Thus, then, it is that that which appeared from them, being one,