“Of the universal Aeons there are two shoots, without beginning or end, springing from one Root, which is the Power invisible, inapprehensible Silence.  Of these shoots one is manifested from above, which is the Great Power, the Universal Mind ordering all things, male, and the other, (is manifested) from below, the Great Thought, female, producing all things.

“Hence pairing with each other,[34] they unite and manifest the Middle Distance, incomprehensible Air, without beginning or end.  In this is the Father who sustains all things, and nourishes those things which have a beginning and end.

“This is He who has stood, stands and will stand, a male-female power like the preexisting Boundless Power, which has neither beginning nor end, existing in oneness.  For it is from this that the Thought in the oneness proceeded and became two.

“So he[35] was one; for having her[36] in himself, he was alone, not however first, although preexisting, but being manifested from himself to himself, he became second.  Nor was he called Father before (Thought) called him Father.

“As, therefore, producing himself by himself, he manifested to himself his own Thought, so also the Thought that was manifested did not make the Father, but contemplating him hid him—­that is to say the Power—­in herself, and is male-female, Power and Thought.

     “Hence they pair with each other being one, for there is no
     difference between Power and Thought.  From the things above is
     discovered Power, and from those below Thought.

“In the same manner also that which was manifested from them[37] although being one is yet found as two, the male-female having the female in itself.  Thus Mind is in Thought—­things inseparable from one another—­which although being one are yet found as two.”

19.  So then Simon by such inventions got what interpretation he pleased, not only out of the writings of Moses, but also out of those of the (pagan) poets, by falsifying them.  For he gives an allegorical interpretation of the wooden horse, and Helen with the torch, and a number of other things, which he metamorphoses and weaves into fictions concerning himself and his Thought.

And he said that the latter was the “lost sheep,” who again and again abiding in women throws the Powers in the world into confusion, on account of her unsurpassable beauty; on account of which the Trojan War came to pass through her.  For this Thought took up its abode in the Helen that was born just at that time, and thus when all the Powers laid claim to her, there arose faction and war among those nations to whom she was manifested.

It was thus, forsooth, that Stesichorus was deprived of sight when he abused her in his