The Gnôsis of the Light

by F. Lamplugh

The Tenth Deep is the All-Power, from whom all powers have gone forth.

The Eleventh Deep is that in which there is the First Invisible, from whom have gone forth all invisibles.

The Twelfth Deep is the Truth, from whence all truths have sped forth.

Now the Truth (5) which envelops all things is the Image of the Father, the End of all things. She is the Mother of all Eternities, who surrounds all Deeps, the Monad beyond knowledge who cannot be known, without seal-mark and having all seal-marks within, blessed for ever and ever. To the Father Ineffable, Inconceivable, Unthinkable, Unchangeable, all things have been made like in their being. They rejoiced and have been filled with life-giving powers. They engendered myriads and myriads and myriads of æons, and in Joy, because they rejoiced with the Father (6).

These are the worlds from which the Cross upsprang, and from their incorporeal limbs the Man has come forth. It is the Father and Fount of all being who has produced the limbs.

Now from the Father are all names (7), whether Ineffable One, or Incorruptible One, or Invisible One, or Simple One, or Solitary One, or Powerful One, or Triple-powered One, or the names that in Silence alone are named. In the Father are they all, and He it is whom the Outer Worlds behold [as men behold] the starry sky at night. Even as men [so gazing into the night] desire to see the Sun, so do the Outer Worlds desire to see Him because of the very Invisibility which surrounds Him. He it is who to the æons gives life perpetually, and by His Word hath the Indivisible ... the Monad in order to know it. For it is by His Word that the Holy Plêrôma exists. This is the Father, the Second Creator, by the breath of whose Mouth Providence (Pronoia) has been in travail of those who were not, and it is by His Will that they are.... This is the Father, Ineffable, Unspeakable, Beyond Knowledge, Invisible, Immeasurable, Infinite. He has produced those that are in Him within Himself. The Thought of His Greatness has He brought forth from non-being that He might make them to be. Incomprehensible is He in His limbs. A Space has He made for His limbs that they might dwell in Him and know Him for their Sire. From His First Thought (8) has He made them come forth, and she has become a Space for them and given them being....

In this wise has He created the Temple of the Plêrôma. At the four gates of the [Temple of] the Plêrôma are four Monads, a Monad at each gate, and six Supporters at each gate, in all four and twenty Supporters, and four and twenty myriads of powers at each gate, nine Enneads at each gate, ten Decads at each gate, twelve Dodecads at each gate, and five Pentads of Powers at each gate. At each gate there is an Overseer of triple aspect having countenances Ingenerable, True, and Ineffable. Of these faces one gazes upon the external æons without the gate; another beholds Sêtheus, and the third looks upward to the Sonship contained in every Monad. There it is that Aphrêdon is discovered with his twelve Holy Ones and the Forefather, and in that Space abides also Adam, the Man of the Light, with his three hundred æons. There also is the Perfect Mind. All these surround a Basket (9) that knows no death. The Ineffable face of the Overseer, who is the Warden of the Holy Place, gazes into the Holy of Holies upon the Boundless One. Now this Warden has faces twain. One is disclosed from the side of the Deep, the other from the side of the Overseer called the Child (or Servant). For there is a Deep [within the Holy of Holies] which is named "Light" (10), or "He who gives the Light," and in this Abyss there is concealed an Alone-begotten Son. He it is who manifests the Three Powers, who is mighty amongst all Powers.

This (? the Holy of Holies) is the Indivisible One, [the atom—Body or Church] that can never be divided, in whom the All is discovered, because all powers are hers.

He who is the Triple Power has three faces, an Aphrêdonian face that is called Aphrêdon Pêxos, in which is found a latent Only-begotten One.

When the (?) Idea comes out of the Deep, Aphrêdon takes the Thought to conduct her to the Alone-begotten of Alone-begottens, to lead her to the Child, so that she may be brought to the Space of the Triple Power for self-perfecting, and be escorted in the Space of the Five Ingenerables.