The Refutation of All Heresies

Logos himself also, and Zoe, then saw that Nous and Aletheia had celebrated the Father of the universe by a perfect number; and Logos himself likewise with Zoe wished to magnify their own father and mother, Nous and Aletheia. Since, however, Nous and Aletheia were begotten, and did not possess paternal (and) perfect uncreatedness, Logos and Zoe do not glorify Nous their father with a perfect number, but far from it, with an imperfect one. For Logos and Zoe offer twelve Aeons unto Nous and Aletheia.

For, according to Valentinus, these— namely, Nous and Aletheia, Logos and Zoe, Anthropos and Ecclesia— have been the primary roots of the Aeons. But there are ten the Aeons proceeding from Nous and Aletheia, and twelve from Logos and Zoe— twenty and eight in all. And to these (ten) they give these following denominations: Bythus and Mixis, Ageratus and Henosis, Autophyes and Hedone, Acinetus and Syncrasis, Monogenes and Macaria. These are ten Aeons whom some say (have been projected) by Nous and Aletheia, but some by Logos and Zoe.

Others, however, affirm that the twelve (Aeons have been projected) by Anthropos and Ecclesia, while others by Logos and Zoe. And upon these they bestow these following names: Paracletus and Pistis, Patricus and Elpis, Metricus and Agape, Aeinous and Synesis, Ecclesiasticus and Macariotes, Theletus and Sophia. But of the twelve, the twelfth and youngest of all the twenty-eight Aeons, being a female, and called Sophia, observed the multitude and power of the besetting Aeons, and hurried back into the depth of the Father.

And she perceived that all the rest of the Aeons, as being begotten, generate by conjugal intercourse. The Father, on the other hand, alone, without copulation, has produced (an offspring). She wished to emulate the Father, and to produce (offspring) of herself without a marital partner, that she might achieve a work in no wise inferior to (that of) the Father. (Sophia, however,) was ignorant that the Unbegotten One, being an originating principle of the universe, as well as root and depth and abyss, alone possesses the power of self-generation.

But Sophia, being begotten, and born after many more (Aeons), is not able to acquire possession of the power inherent in the Unbegotten One. For in the Unbegotten One, he says, all things exist simultaneously, but in the begotten (Aeons) the female is projective of substance, and the male is formative of the substance which is projected by the female. Sophia, therefore, prepared to project that only which she was capable (of projecting), viz., a formless and undigested substance. And this, he says, is what Moses asserts: “The earth was invisible, and unfashioned.” This (substance) is, he says, the good (and) the heavenly Jerusalem, into which God has promised to conduct the children of Israel, saying, “I will bring you into a land flowing with milk and honey.”