to them, moves on the water, and which is fashioned according to the similitude into a perfect celestial, becoming in no whit inferior to the ingenerable Power, and this is the meaning of their saying:  “Thou and I, the one thing; before me, thou; that after thee, I.”

This, he says, is the one Power, separated into the above and below, generating itself, increasing itself, seeking itself, finding itself, its own mother, its own father, its sister, its spouse; the daughter, son, mother, and father of itself; One, the Universal Root.

And that, as he says, the beginning of the generation of things which are generated is from Fire, he understands somewhat in this fashion.  Of all things of which there is generation, the beginning of the desire for their generation is from Fire.  For, indeed, the desire of mutable generation is called “being on fire.”  And though Fire is one, yet has it two modes of mutation.  For in the man, he says, the blood, being hot and yellow—­like fire when it takes form—­is turned into seed, whereas in the woman the same blood (is changed) into milk.  And this change in the male becomes the faculty of generating, while that in the female (becomes) nourishment for the child.  This, he says, is “the flaming sword that is turned about to keep the way of the tree of life."[32] For the blood is turned into seed and milk; and this Power becomes mother and father, father of those that are born, and mother of those that are nourished, standing in want of nothing, sufficient unto itself.  And the tree of life, he says, is guarded by the fiery sword which is turned about, (which tree), as we have said, (is) the seventh Power which proceeds from itself, contains all (in itself), and is stored in the six Powers.  For were the flaming sword not turned about, that fair tree would be destroyed and perish; but if it is turned into seed and milk, that which is stored in them in potentiality, having obtained a fitting utterance,[33] and an appointed place in which the utterance may be developed, starting as it were from the smallest spark, it will increase to all perfection, and expand, and be an infinite power, unchangeable, equal and similar to the unchangeable Aeon, which is no more generated for the boundless eternity.

18.  Conformably, therefore, to this reasoning, for the foolish, Simon was a god, like that Libyan Apsethus; (a god) subject to generation and suffering, so long as he remained in potentiality, but freed from the bonds of suffering and birth, as soon as his imaging forth was accomplished, and attaining perfection he passed forth from the first two Powers, to wit heaven and earth.  For Simon speaks distinctly concerning this in his Revelation as follows: 

     “To you, therefore, I say what I say, and write what I write.  And
     the writing is this.