By Water & Blood

On the Sethians

The Sethians, whom some name Ophians or Ophites, call the God of all things Human Being, naming him again Light, and calling him blessed and incorruptible, and affirming that he has his dwelling in Depth; and his Thought they call Son of Man, and second Human Being. After this there exists the Holy Spirit; and below these, four elements: water, darkness, abyss, chaos. They call the Spirit female, and say that it is borne upon the elements. They say that the first Human Being and the second fell in love with the beauty of the Spirit and begot Light, which they call Christ. And the female, unable to bear the excess of the light, overflowed; and Christ with the mother was drawn up into the incorruptible Aeon, which they also call true Church; and the moisture of the light that had gushed forth, they say, fell downward and was called Wisdom, and Prunicus, and Androgynous. And swimming through the waters, she took on a body from them and was weighed down and was in danger of becoming submerged; but she rose up, and from the surrounding body fashioned the heaven, then later casting it off flew up to the mother. That one they call son of Prunicus. And that one again projected another son, and from that one they say another was constituted, and the projections advanced as far as the number seven. By each of these one heaven was crafted, and each inhabits his own. They also set names upon the aforementioned sons, using the language of the Hebrews, of which I judged it altogether superfluous to make mention.

They say that the others quarreled with the first—who is grandfather of some, great-grandfather of others, and ancestor of some. And he, disheartened, cast his thought into the dregs of matter and generated from it a serpent-formed son. Then the father of the serpent-formed one, boasting, said, “I am God and father, and there is none above me.” And the mother, displeased, cried out to him, “Do not lie; for there is above you the Father of all, first Human Being, Son of Man.” And when he heard these words of the serpent, the father said, “Come, let us make man according to our image.” And they add very many other things full of impiety and disgust together. That serpent-formed one they also name Michael and Samanna. And they divide the prophets and assign them to the seven sons as they wish. And Seth, they say, is some divine power; for this reason they were also styled Sethians. Jesus they say is another besides Christ; and that Jesus was born from the Virgin, but Christ came down into him from heaven. They also say that the apostles went astray, having supposed that the Savior’s flesh rose. And some of them say that Christ, molding himself into the form of a serpent, entered into the Virgin’s womb. And thus the wretched ones understand the apostolic saying: “Who, though existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.” And some say that the serpent itself was with Wisdom, and that as one warring against the maker as an opposing God he deceived Adam and gave the knowledge, and that for this reason the serpent was said to be wisest of all; and that the much-coiled arrangement of our entrails wears the body of the serpent, showing the life-giving wisdom of the serpent. For this very reason they also worship the serpent. Whom, charming with certain spells, they feed in darkness, and at the rite of their foul mysteries they bring him to the table; and when he has mounted upon it, they partake of the loaves as having been consecrated.