DeConick A.D

97
SUPERPOWERS AND MONSTERS
In this process of emanation or dilation, Barbelo produces a hermaphrodite
son named Autogenes (Self-Originate), also known as Logos (Reason).
He is the Son of Man. He is responsible for generating the angel
Eleleth and the divine archetypes of Adam, Seth, and Seth’s offspring.
Because of God’s hermaphrodite nature, gender boundaries play no
role in the descent of the superpowers to earth, where they take on male
forms as easily as female. For that matter, the boundaries between species
are breached as well. The emissaries can appear human as easily as animal
or vegetable.
Who are the Sethian superpowers? The most common emissaries are
the Mother God, Barbelo; her son, Self-Originate; and his progeny, Seth
and Eleleth.
In some of the Sethian stories, Barbelo as Afterthought descends to
Adam and enlightens him in the Garden of Eden. She hides in Adam’s
body as a spiritual archetype of Eve. When she does not occupy Adam’s
body, she is a luminous female angel, the Mother of the Living, who
stands next to Adam and talks to him. At times in the stories, when Afterthought
wants to hide from Ialdabaoth and the other rulers, she inhabits
the tree of knowledge of good and evil, from which Adam and Eve eat.
She becomes the tree. Other times, she is an eagle nesting in the tree and
appearing to the human couple. In some versions of the story, she enters
the snake who instructs Adam and Eve to eat the fruit. When they do,
their minds are opened and the light of knowledge shines upon them.
They become aware of themselves and the beastly nature of their gods,
Ialdabaoth and his lieutenants, whom they now loathe.
The appearance of Afterthought in the Garden of Eden is the first
descent of a Sethian superpower to instruct humans about their predicament.
Of course, this does not work. When the rulers realize that Afterthought
has descended from her high place and has instructed the couple
about the truth, the rulers attack Adam and Eve with curses, shorten their
life spans, and bind them to lives of toil and servitude outside the garden.
Their memories are erased. They lose track of who they really are.
After Abel is killed by Cain, Adam and Eve have a son, Seth, whom the
Sethians identify as their primordial ancestor. Seth is chosen because he is
the only early character in the Bible who never interacts with or worships
YHWH. Also, he is described in the biblical narrative as a son born in
Adam’s likeness and image. The Sethians interpret this to mean that the