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THE OGDOAD. 483
They maintain that first of all the four elements, fire, water, earth and air, were
produced after the image of the primary Tetrad above, and that then if we add
their operations, namely, heat, cold, moisture and dryness, an exact likeness of the
Ogdoad is presented.*
Only this "likeness" and the Ogdoad itself is a blind, just as in the
seven creations of the Vishnu Purdna, to which two more are added, of
which the eighth, termed Anugraha, "possesses both the qualities of
goodness and darkness," a Sankhyan more than a Puranic idea. For
Irenseus says again, that:
They [the Gnostics] had a like eighth creation which was good and bad, divine
and human. They afiirm that man was formed on the eighth day. Sometimes they
affirm that he was made on the sixth day, and at others on the eighth; unless,
perchance, they mean that his earthly part was formed on the sixth day and his
fleshly part [] on the eighth day; these two being distinguished by them.t
They were so "distinguished," but not as Irenseus gives it. The
Gnostics had a superior, and an inferior Hebdomad in Heaven ; and a
third terrestrial Hebdomad, on the plane of matter. lao, the Mystery
God and the Regent of the Moon, as given in Origen's Chart, was the
chief of these superior "Seven Heavens," J hence identical with the
chief of the Lunar Pitris, that name being given by them to the Lunar
Dhyan Chohans. "They affirm that these seven heavens are intelligent,
and speak of them as being angels'' writes the same Irenaeus; and
adds that on this account they termed lao Hebdomas, while his mother
was called Ogdoas, because, as he explains, "she preserved the number
oi the first begotten and primary Ogdoad of the Plerdma"%
This "first begotten Ogdoad" was in Theogony the Second Logos,
the Manifested, because it was bom of the Seven-fold First Logos,
hence it is the eighth on this manifested plane; and in Astrolatry, it
was the Sun, Marttanda, the eighth Son of Aditi, whom she rejects
while preserving her Seven Sons, the planets.
For the Ancients have
never regarded the Sun as a planet, but as a central ayid fixed Star.
This, then, is the second Hebdomad born of the Seven-rayed One,
Agni, the Sun and what not, only not the seven planets, which are
Sijrya's Brothers, not his Sons. With the Gnostics, these Astral Gods
were the Sons of laldabaoth (from ilda, child, and baoth
||
^ZZ)^ ^^^ Son
of Sophia Achamoth, the daughter of Sophia or Wisdom, whose region
Contra Htrr., I. xvii. i.
f Ibid., I. XXX.
X Superior to the Spirits, or " Heavens," of the Earth only.
i Ibtd., I. V. 2.
(1 See Isis Unveiled, II. 183.