By Water & Blood

On the Archontics

From these some, styled Archontics, having invented certain books, name them revelations of prophets. One of these they called Symphony, in which they wrote seven heavens, and that each of them has one ruler, and that a certain mother, Luminous, is highest. They anathematize the bath and the partaking of the mysteries, as being done into the name of Sabaoth; for they say that this one tyrannizes in the seventh heaven. The food of the rulers, they say, is souls, and without this it is not possible for them to live. The devil, they say, is the son of Sabaoth; and Sabaoth is the God of the Jews; and the son, being evil, does not honor him, but opposes him in all things. Cain and Abel, they say, are children of the devil. And they mythologize certain other things full of every impiety. And certain others, after death, put oil and water on the heads of those who have completed their course. For thus, they say, they will be both invisible and superior to the intervening rulers and authorities. They also teach them to recite a certain myth, which, if I inserted it into the composition, I supposed I would share in the nonsense.