Aeon (Gnosticism)

In many Gnostic systems, various emanations of God are known by such names as One, Monad, Aion teleos (αἰών τέλεος "The Broadest Aeon"), Bythos (βυθός, "depth" or "profundity"), Arkhe (ἀρχή, "the beginning"), Proarkhe (προαρχή, "before the beginning") and as Aeons (which are also often named and may be paired or grouped).

: υἱότης huiotes); according to Marcus, they are numbers and sounds; in Valentinianism they form male/female pairs called syzygies (συζυγίαι, from σύζυγοι syzygoi: lit.

These Aeons belong to a purely ideal, noumenal, intelligible, or supersensible world; they are immaterial, they are hypostatic ideas.

This creature does not belong to Pleroma, and the One emanates two savior Aeons, Christ and the Holy Spirit, to save humanity from the Demiurge.

Aeons bear a number of similarities to Judaeo-Christian angels, including roles as servants and emanations of God, and existing as beings of light.

The Gnostic Gospel of Judas, found in 2006, purchased, held, and translated by the National Geographic Society, also mentions Aeons.

The first series of beings, the Aeons, were thirty in number, representing fifteen syzygies or pairs sexually complementary.

There were those, both in earlier systems, and even among the Valentinians who held, that the origin of things was to be traced to a single Principle, which some described as hermaphrodite; others said was above all sex.

17) makes Sige the daughter of Bythos and by him the mother of Logos, a fable which he classes with the incests which heathen mythology attributed to Jupiter.

ridicules the absurdity of the later form of Valentinian theory, in which Sige and Logos are represented as coexistent Aeons in the same Pleroma.

14) to trace the invention of Sige to the heathen poets, quoting Antiphanes, who in his Theogony makes Chaos the offspring of Night and Silence.

In place of Night and Silence they substitute Bythus and Sige; instead of Chaos, they put Nous; and for Love (by whom, says the comic poet, all other things were set in order) they have brought forward the Word; while for the primary and greatest gods they have formed the Æons; and in place of the secondary gods, they tell us of that creation by their mother which is outside of the Pleroma, calling it the second Ogdoad.

For Democritus was the first who maintained that numerous and diverse figures were stamped, as it were, with the forms [of things above], and descended from universal space into this world.

Charis, in the system of Valentinus, was an alternative name, with Ennoea and Sige, for the consort of the primary Aeon Bythos (Iren.

The name expresses that aspect of the absolute Greatness in which it is regarded not as a solitary monad, but as imparting from its perfection to beings of which it is the ultimate source; and this is the explanation given in the Valentinian fragment preserved by Epiphanius (Haer.

The word has possibly also a technical meaning in the Ophite prayers preserved by Origen (Contra Celsum, vi.

4) speaks of the church as created before all things and of the world as formed for her sake; and in the newly discovered portion of the so-called Second Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians (c. 14) the writer speaks of the spiritual church as created before the sun and moon, as pre-existent like Christ Himself, and like him manifested in the last days for men's salvation; and he even uses language which, if it were not sufficiently accounted for by what is said in the Epistle to the Ephesians as to the union between Christ and His church, might be supposed to have affinity with the Valentinian doctrine of the relation between Anthropos and Ecclesia.

[7] The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews quotes the direction to Moses to make the tabernacle after the pattern shewn him on the Mount (a passage cited in Acts 7:44), and his argument dwells on the inference that the various parts of the Jewish service were but copies of better heavenly archetypes.

In him thus made a higher power puts the seed of the heavenly pneumatic essence (sperma tes anothen ousias).

2, the youngest Aeon Sophia, in her passion to comprehend the Father of all, runs the danger of being absorbed into his essence, from which she is saved by coming into contact with the limiting power Horos, whose function it is to strengthen all things outside the ineffable Greatness, by confining each to its appointed place.

31) he directs the production of a new pair of Aeons, Christ and the Holy Spirit, who restore order by separating from the Pleroma the unformed offspring of Sophia.

But besides, this Aeon has a sixth name, which in the version of Hippolytus is made his primary title Stauros; and it is explained (Irenaeus, i.

The literal earthly crucifixion of the Saviour (that seen by the psychic church, which only believes in the historical Jesus) was meant to represent an archetypal scene in the world of Aeons, when the younger Sophia, Achamoth, is healed through the Savior's instrumentation.

Valentinus, falling in with these (remarks), has made a fundamental principle in his system “the King of all,” whom Plato mentioned, and whom this heretic styles Pater, and Bythos, and Proarche over the rest of the Æons.

On the one hand, he discharges as already described, a function within the Pleroma, separating the other Aeons from the ineffable Bythos, and saving them from absorption into his essence.

On the other hand, Horos is the outside boundary of the Pleroma itself, giving it permanence and stability by guarding it against the intrusion of any foreign element.

The animated TV series Æon Flux draws its name and some of its iconography from Gnosticism, notably aeons (the two main characters forming a syzygy) and a demiurge.

[8][9] The webcomic Homestuck also draws inspiration from Gnostic ideas, with the main character Jade Harley being called "gardenGnostic" as a pseudonym.

The level after it, aptly named "Archon Grid" has its final boss as Abraxas, although he is contorted to look much different, holding certain characteristics in common.

There are many other references to Gnostic ideologies, such as the main goal of the game achieving ultimate enlightenment over everything else, rather than accepting your situation.