This figure is also variously referred to as 'Mother-Father' (hinting at her apparent androgyny), 'The Triple Androgynous Name', or 'Eternal Aeon'.
All subsequent acts of creation within the divine sphere (save, crucially, that of the lowest aeon Sophia) occurs through her coaction with God.
The text describes her thus: This is the first thought, his image; she became the womb of everything, for it is she who is prior to them all, the Mother-Father (Anthropos), the holy Spirit, the thrice-male, the thrice-powerful, the thrice-named androgynous one, and the eternal aeon among the invisible ones, and the first to come forth.Barbēlō is found in other Nag Hammadi writings: In Zostrianos, Barbelo has three sublevels or subaeons that represent three distinct phases:[2] In the Pistis Sophia Barbēlō is named often, but her place is not clearly defined.
She is noticed in several neighbouring passages of Epiphanius, who in part must be following the Compendium of Hippolytus, as is shown by comparison with Philaster (c. 33), but also speaks from personal knowledge of the Ophitic sects specially called "Gnostici" (i.
In his next article, on the "Gnostici", or Borborites (83 C D), the idea of the recovery of the scattered powers of Barbēlō recurs as set forth in an apocryphal Book of Noria, Noah's legendary wife.
And she intimated that what has been taken from the Mother on High by the archon who made the world, and others with him—gods, demons, and angels—must be gathered from the power in the bodies, through the male and female emissions.In both places Epiphanius represents the doctrine as giving rise to sexual libertinism.
[3] In a third passage (91 f.), enumerating the Archons said to have their seat in each heaven, Epiphanius mentions as the inhabitants of the eighth or highest heaven "her who is called Barbēlō", and the self-gendered Father and Lord of all things, and the virgin-born (αὐτολόχευτον) Christ (evidently as her son, for according to Irenaeus her first progeny, "the Light", was called Christ); and similarly he tells how the ascent of souls through the different heavens terminated in the upper region, "where Barbērō or Barbēlō is, the Mother of the Living" (Genesis 3:20).