p. 301.“I behold all things hanging from air,
I perceive all things upheld by spirit,
Flesh hanging from soul,
Soul standing forth from air,
And air hanging from aether,
But fruits borne away from Bythos
But the embryo from the womb.”[164]
Understanding this thus:—Flesh is, according to them, Matter, which depends from the soul of the Demiurge. But soul stands out from air, that is the Demiurge from the Spirit outside the Pleroma. But air stands out from æther, that is Sophia Without from that which is within (the) limit and the whole Pleroma. Fruits are borne away from Bythos, which is the whole emanation of Aeons coming into being from the Father. The opinions of Valentinus have therefore been sufficiently told.[165] It remains to tell of the teachings of those who have been obedient to his school, another having different teaching.
3. About Secundus and Epiphanes.[166]
p. 302. 38. A certain Secundus, who was born at the same time as Ptolemy, says that there exist a right hand and a left hand tetrad like light and darkness. And he says that the Power which fell away and is lacking[167] came into being not from the thirty Aeons, but from their fruits. But there is a certain Epiphanes, a teacher of theirs, who says: “The First Principle[168] was incomprehensible, ineffable and unnameable” which he calls Solitude[169] and that a Power of this co-exists with it which he names Oneness.[170] The same Monotes and Henotes preceded [but] did not send forth[171] an unbegotten and invisible principle over all which he calls[172] a Monad. “With this Power co-exists a power of the same essence with itself, which same power I also name the One.” These four Powers themselves sent forth the remaining projections of the Aeons. But others of them p. 303. again have called the first and primordial Ogdoad by these names: first, “Before the Beginning,” then “Inconceivable,” third “Ineffable” and the fourth, “Invisible;”[173] and (they say) that from the first Proarche was projected in the first and fifth place Beginning; from Anennoetos, in the second and sixth (place) Unrevealed, from Arrheton in the third and seventh place, Unnameable and from Aoratos, Unbegotten.[174] (This is the) Pleroma of the first Ogdoad. And they will have these powers to have existed before Bythos and Sige. But yet others understand differently about Bythos himself, some saying that he is spouseless and neither male nor female, and others that Sige exists beside him as his female and that this is the first syzygy.