his followers worshipped under the form of Athena,
the goddess of wisdom. According to Valentinus's
system, as described by Hippolytus (Book VI, xxv–xxvi), Sophia is the youngest of the twenty-eight aeons.
Observing the multitude of æons and the power of
begetting them, she hurries back into the depth of the
Father, and seeks to emulate him by producing off-spring without conjugal intercourse, but only projects
an abortion, a formless substance. Upon this she is
cast out of the Pleroma. According to the Valentinian system as described by Irenajus (op. cit., I) and
Tertullian (Adv. Valent., ix), Sophia conceives a pas-
sion for the First Father himself, or rather, under pretext of love she seeks to know him, the Unknowable,
and to comprehend his greatness. She would have
suffered the consequence of her audacity by ultimate
dissolution into the immensity of the Father, but for
the Boundary Spirit. According to the Pistis Sophia
(ch. xxix) Sophia, daughter of Barbelos, originally
dwelt in the highest, or thirteenth heaven, but she is
seduced by the demon Authades by means of a ray of
light, which she mistook for an emanation from the
First Father, Authades thus enticed her into Chaos
below the twelve Æons, where she is imprisoned by evil
powers. According to these ideas, matter is the fruit
of the sin of Sophia; this, however, was but a Valentinian development; in the older speculations the
existence of matter is tacitly presupposed as eternal
with the Pleroma, and through her sin Sophia falls
from the realm of light into the Chaos or realm of
darkness. This original dualism, however, was overcome by the predommant spirit of Gnosticism, pantheistic emanationism. The Sophia myth is completely
absent from the Basilidian and kindred systems. It is
suggested, with great verisimilitude, that the Egyptian
myth of Isis was the original source of the Gnostic
"lower wisdom". In many systems this (
Greek characters)
is sharply distinguished from the Higher Wisdom mentioned above; as, for instance, in the magic formula
for the dead mentioned by Irenæus (op. cit., I, xxi, 5),
in which the departed has to address the hostile
archons thus: " I am a vessel more precious than the
female who made you. If your mother ignores the
source whence she is, I know myself, and I know-
whence I am and invoke the incorruptible Sophia, who
is in the Father, the mother of your mother, who has
neither father nor husband. A man-woman, born
from a woman, has made you, not knowing her
mother, but thinking herself alone. But I invoke her
mother." This agrees with the system minutely de-
scribed by Irenæus (op. cit., I, iv–v), where Sophia
Achamoth, or Lower Wisdom, the daughter of Higher
Wisdom, becomes the mother of the Demiurge; she
being the Ogdoad, her son the Hebdomad, they form a
counterpart of the heavenly Ogdoad in the Pleromata.
This is evidently a clumsy attempt to fuse into one
two systems radically different, the Basilidian and the
Valentinian; the ignorance of the Great Archon,
which is the central idea of Basilides, is here transferred to Sophia, and the hybrid system ends in bewildering confusion.
(c) Soterilogy.—Gnostic salvation is not merely individual redemption of each human soul ; it is a cosmic
process. It is the return of all things to what they
were before the flaw in the sphere of the Æons brought
matter into existence and imprisoned some part of the
Divine Light in the evil Hyle ((Greek characters)). This setting free
of the light sparks is the process of salvation ; when all
light shall have left Hyle, it will be burnt up, destroyed,
or be a sort of everlasting hell for the Hylicoi. In
Basilidianism it is the Third Filiation that is captive in
matter, and is gradually being saved, now that the
knowledge of its existence has been brought to the
first Archon and then to the Second Archon, to each
by his respective Son; and the news has been spread
through the Hebdomad by Jesus the Son of Mary, who
died to redeem the Third Filiation. In Valentinianism the process is extraordinarily elaborate. When
this world has been born from Sophia in consequence
of her sin. Nous and Aletheia, two ^ons, by command
of the Father, produce two new ^ons, Christ and the
Holy Ghost; these restore order in the Pleroma, and
in consequence all Æons together produce a new Æon,
Jesus Logos, Soter, or Christ, whom they offer to the
Father. Christ, the Son of Nous and Aletheia, has
pity on the abortive substance born of Sophia and
gives it essence and form. Whereupon Sophia tries
to rise again to the Father, but in vain. Now the
Æon Jesus-Soter is sent as second Saviour, he unites
himself to the man Jesus, the son of Mary, at his baptism, and becomes the Saviour of men. Man is a
creature of the Demiurge, a compound of soul, body,
and spirit. His salvation consists in the return of his
(Greek characters) or spirit to the Pleroma; or if he be only a Psychicist, not a full Gnostic, his soul ((Greek characters)) shall return
to Achamoth. There is no resurrection of the body.
(For further details and differences see Valentinus.)
In Marcionism, the most dualistic phase of Gnosticism, salvation consisted in the possession of the knowledge of the Good God and the rejection of the Demiurge.
The Good God revealed himself in Jesus and appeared
as man in Judea; to know him, and to become entirely
free from the yoke of the World-Creator or God of the
Old Testament, is the end of all salvation. The Gnostic Saviour, therefore, is entirely different from the
Christian one. For (1) the Gnostic Saviour does not
save. Gnosticism lacks the idea of atonement. There
is no sin to be atoned for, except ignorance be that sin.
Nor does the Saviour in any sense benefit the human
race by vicarious sufferings. Nor, finally, does he
immediately and actively affect any individual human
soul by the power of grace or draw it to God. He was
a teacher, he once brought into the world the truth,
which alone can save. Asa flame sets naphtha on fire,
so the Saviour's light ignites predisposed souls moving
down the stream of time. Of a real Saviour who with
love human and Divine seeks out sinners to save them,
Gnosticism knows nothing. The Gnostic Saviour (2)
has no human nature, he is an æon, not a man ; he only
seemed a man, as the three Angels who visited Abraham seemed to be men. (For a detailed exposition see
{{sc|Docetæ) The -Eon Soter is brought into the strangest relation to Sophia: in some systems he is her brother, in others her son, in others again her spouse. He
is sometimes identified with Christ, sometimes with
Jesus; sometimes Christ and Jesus are the same aeon,
sometimes they are different; sometimes Christ and
the Holy Ghost are identified. Gnosticism did its
best to utilize the Christian concept of the Holy Ghost,
but never quite succeeded. She made him the Horos,
or Methorion Pneuma ((Greek characters)), the
Boundary-Spirit, the Sweet Odour of the Second Filiation, a companion æon with Christos, etc., etc. In
some systems he is entirely left out.
(d) Eschatology.—It is the merit of recent scholarship to have proved that Gnostic eschatology, consisting in the soul's struggle with hostile archons in its
attempt to reach the Pleroma, is simply the soul's
ascent, in Babylonian astrology, through the realms
of the seven planets to Anu. Origen (Contra Celsum,
VI, xxxi), referring to the Ophitic system, gives us the
names of the seven archons as Jaldabaoth, Jao, Sabaoth, Adonaios, Astaphaios, Ailoaios, and Oraios, and
tells us that Jaldabaoth is the planet Saturn. Astaphaios is beyond doubt the planet Venus, as there are
gnostic gems with a female figure and the legend
(Greek characters), which name is also used in magic spells as the name of a goddess. In the Mandsean system Adonaios represents the Sun. Moreover, St. Irenæus tells
us: "Sanctam Hebdomadem VII Stellas, quas dicunt
planetas, esse volunt." It is safe, therefore, to take
the above seven Gnostic names as designating the
seven stars, then considered planets, Jaldabaoth
((Hebrew characters)—child of Chaos?—Saturn, called "the Lion-
