darting forth their rays. The Fullness of His Countenance is unknown to the external worlds who seek His Face, for evermore yearning to know It; for unto them His Word has run forth and to behold It is their desire. The Light of His Eyes pierces to the spaces of the external Plêrôma and the Word goes forth from His Mouth to those who dwell in Heaven and to those who dwell beneath it. The hairs of His Head are the number of the Hidden Worlds, and the Features of His Face are the type of the Eternities; the hairs of His Beard are the number of the External Worlds. The stretching out of His Hands is the manifestation of the Cross (3). The strain of the Cross is the Ennead, the Ninefold Being. He who springs up [? or is nailed] to the right and to the left of the Cross is the Man whom no man can comprehend. He is the Father, the Fount whence Silence wells, He for whom the Quest is everywhere. The Father is He from whom went forth the Monad and the Spark of Light, and before this all the Worlds were dark nothings. For it is that Spark of Light which has placed all things in the rays of Its Splendour, so they have received Knowledge [Gnôsis], Life, Hope, Peace, Faith, Love and Resurrection, the Second Birth and the Seal. Now these things are the Ennead, the Ninefold Being, which has come forth from the Father without beginning, who alone has been His own Father and His own Mother, whose Plêrôma surrounds the twelve (4) Deeps.

The First Deep is the Universal Fount, from whom all fountains have gone forth.

The Second Deep is the Universal Wisdom, from whom all wisdoms have gone forth.

The Third Deep is the Universal Mystery, from whom all mysteries have gone forth.

The Fourth Deep is the Universal Gnôsis, from whom all Gnôses have gone forth.

The Fifth Deep is the Universal Purity, from whom all purity has gone forth.

The Sixth Deep is the Silence that contains all silences.

The Seventh Deep is the Universal Super-essential Essence, from whom all essences have gone forth.

The Eighth Deep is the Forefather from whom and by whom all forefathers exist.

The Ninth Deep is the All-Father, Self-Father, in whom is the All-Paternity of those who are Self-Fathers of the all.

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.

There is also another Space called the Deep, where there are three Paternities. In the first thereof is Kaluptô, the Hidden God. In the Second Paternity there are Five Trees, and in the midst of them an altar. An Alone-begotten Word stands upon the altar, having the twelve countenances of the Mind of all things, and before him are the prayers of all beings placed. The Universe rejoices over him because he has manifested himself. He it is that the Invisible World has struggled to know, and it is on his account that the Man has appeared. In the Third Paternity is Silence and the Fount which twelve Anointed Ones contemplate, beholding themselves therein. In him are also found Love and the Universal Mind and furthermore the Universal Mother from whom has gone forth that Ennead whose names are Prôtia, Pantia, Pangenia, Loxophania, Loxogenia, Loxokrateia, Lôia, and Iouêl. She is the First Beyond Knowledge, the Mother of the Ennead, who completes a Decad, come forth from the Monad of the Unknowable.

Following there is another Space, more stretched out, where is hidden a great treasure which the Universe surrounds. [This Space] is the Immeasurable Deep where is an altar whereon three Powers are gathered: a Solitary being, an Unknowable being, and an Infinite being, in the midst of whom is revealed a Sonship called the Anointed Glorifier. This is he who glorifies everyone and impresses upon him the seal of the Father, who brings everybody into the eternity of the