Pythagoras Behind Valentinus

According to Pythagoras, then, there are two worlds: one that the mind takes in, which has the Monad for its starting point, and one that the senses take in. To this second world belongs the group of four that carries the iota, the single stroke, a perfect number. And there is also, the Pythagoreans say, the iota, the single stroke, which comes first and rules the rest, and by which we lay hold of the being of those things that can be understood — things reached through mind and through sense. In that being there are nine bodiless attributes, which cannot exist without it: quality, quantity, relation, where, when, position, having, acting, and being acted on. Those, then, are the nine attributes that go with being; and counted in along with it they make up the perfect number, the ten. [a]

So the universe is divided, as we said, into the world of mind and the world of sense. And we have reason from the world of mind, so that by reason we may look at the being of the things known by mind, which are bodiless and divine. But we have, he says, five senses — smell, sight, hearing, taste, and touch. By these we arrive at a knowledge of the things that sense tells apart; and so, he says, the world of sense stands divided from the world of mind. That we have a separate instrument for each of the two, and get our knowledge that way, we can see from this. Nothing that belongs to the mind, he says, can be known to us from sense: no eye has seen, no ear heard, and no other sense has ever known the thing the mind takes in. And it is not possible, the other way round, to reach by reason any of the things that sense tells apart. You have to see that a thing is white, and taste that it is sweet, and know by hearing that it is in tune or out of tune. Whether a smell is pleasant or foul is the business of the nose, not of reason. It is the same with what we touch: rough or soft, warm or cold — these cannot be learned by hearing, far from it, for touch is the judge of them.

That being how things stand, the ordering of everything that has been made and is being made is found to happen along the lines of number. For just as, starting from the unit and adding units or threes and gathering up the numbers that follow, we build one very large sum out of number, and then, from a total heaped up that way, work out by a certain subtracting and reckoning back how to take the whole aggregate apart again — so, he says, the world is bound by a chain of number and of music, and by its tightening and slackening, by adding and by taking away, is kept always and forever from decay.

This, then, is roughly how the Pythagoreans state their view about the ordering of the world: [e]

“The two of them” — but which two? Strife and Love. In their system Love makes the world imperishable and everlasting, as they suppose; for substance and the world are one thing. Strife, on the other hand, separates and pulls apart, and by subdividing makes attempt after attempt to form a world. It is as if a man cut something into small pieces and divided it up by arithmetic — ten thousand into thousands and hundreds and tens, and drachmas into obols and small coppers. In that way, he says, Strife cuts the substance of the world up into animals, plants, metals, and things like these. So on their account the craftsman who brings to birth everything that comes to be is Strife, while Love, for her part, manages the universe and provides for it so that it lasts. Love brings the divided and scattered parts of the universe together into one, leads them out of their separate way of existing, unites them and adds them to the universe so that it may last, and so makes one system of it. They will never stop, then — neither Strife dividing the world nor Love fastening the divided parts back onto it. Something like that, it seems, is how the world is arranged according to Pythagoras.

But Pythagoras says the stars are chips off the sun, and that the souls of animals are carried down from the stars; that these souls are mortal while they are in the body, buried in it as though in a tomb; and that when we are separated from our bodies they rise up out of this world and become deathless. That is why Plato, when someone asked him what philosophy is, answered: “A separating of soul from body.”

Plato, then, became a pupil of Pythagoras and of these teachings as well, in which he speaks in riddles and in sayings such as this one: “When you leave your own house, do not turn back; if you fail to do this, the Furies, the avengers of Justice, will overtake you.” [i]

By “one’s own house” he means the body, and by the Furies its passions. So when you leave, he says — that is, when you go out of the body — do not lay claim to it again; but if you do, the passions will shut you inside a body once again. For these men suppose that souls pass over from one body to another, as Empedocles also says, who took over Pythagoras’ principles. Souls that love pleasure, he says — as Plato states — must, if while they are in the condition that belongs to being human they work out no philosophy, pass through all the animals and plants and come back into a human body. And if a soul takes up philosophy three times running, it climbs up to the nature of some star of its own kind; but if it does not take up philosophy, it must go through the same round of changes again. So he says the soul may even become mortal, if it is beaten by the Furies, that is, by the passions of the body, and deathless if it manages to escape the Furies, which are the passions.

But since we have also chosen to mention the sayings that Pythagoras put darkly to his disciples by way of symbols, it seems worth reminding the reader of the rest of his teaching too — and we take the subject up on account of the heresy-leaders as well, who try by some method of this sort to talk in symbols. The symbols are not their own; they have simply helped themselves to expressions the Pythagoreans used. So Pythagoras instructs his disciples, addressing them like this: “Tie up the bedroll.” [l]

People who mean to set out on a journey tie their clothes into a bundle so as to be ready for the road; in the same way he wants his disciples ready, since at any moment death is likely to come upon them by surprise. He meant that they should fall short in none of the qualities he required in his pupils. That is why he made a practice, as the day broke, of instructing the Pythagoreans to urge one another to tie up the bedroll — that is, to be ready to die.

“Do not stir the fire with a sword.” He means: do not quarrel with a man in a rage by speaking to him. A man in a passion is like fire, and the spoken word is the sword.

“Do not tread on a broom.” He means: do not despise a small thing.

“Do not plant a palm tree in the house.” He means: do not stir up strife in a family; the palm is a symbol of battle and slaughter.

“Do not eat off a stool.” He means: do not take up a lowly trade, so that you may not be a slave to the body, which perishes, but make your living from letters. It lies within your reach both to feed the body and to make the soul better.

“Do not bite into a whole loaf.” He means: do not cut down what you own, but live on the profit of it, and guard your property whole, like an unbroken loaf.

“Do not eat beans.” He means: do not accept the government of a city; for in those days they used beans to ballot for their magistrates.

These, then, and assertions like them, are what the Pythagoreans put forward; and the heretics, imitating them, are supposed by some people to be uttering important truths. The Pythagorean system holds that the maker of everything said to exist is the Great Geometer and Reckoner — a sun; and that this one has been fixed in the whole world as a soul is fixed in a body, according to Plato’s statement. For the sun, being of the nature of fire, is like the soul, while the earth is like the body. Separate fire off and there would be nothing visible; and there would be nothing to touch without something solid, and no solid body exists without earth. So the Deity put air in the middle and shaped the body of the universe out of fire and earth. [t]

And the sun, he says, reckons and measures out the world by geometry in something like this way. The world is a unity that the senses take in, and it is about this world that we are now speaking. A man skilled in numbers and a geometer has divided it into twelve parts, and the names of those parts are these: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. Then he divides each of the twelve parts into thirty parts, and these are the days of the month. Then he divides each of the thirty parts into sixty small ones, and each of the small ones into smaller portions still, and those into portions smaller again. And doing this always and never letting up, gathering the divided portions into a sum and making it a year, and then loosening and dividing the compound once more, the sun brings the great year of the world to completion.

That is roughly the opinion of Pythagoras and Plato, as I — who have looked closely into their systems — have tried to state it briefly. And it is from this system, not from the Gospels, that Valentinus, as I have proved, has gathered the materials of his heresy, I mean the heresy that is his own; so he may fairly be reckoned a Pythagorean and a Platonist, not a Christian. Valentinus, then, and Heracleon and Ptolemaeus and that whole school, as pupils of Pythagoras and Plato and following those guides, have laid down the system of numbers as the foundation of their teaching. For according to these people too the source of the universe is a Monad — unbegotten, imperishable, beyond grasping, beyond conceiving, fruitful, and the cause of the coming to be of everything that exists. And this Monad they call Father. [w]

There is, however, a good deal of disagreement to be found among them. Some, so that Valentinus’ Pythagorean teaching may be kept quite unmixed, hold that the Father has nothing female about him, no wife, and is alone. Others, thinking it impossible that anything made should come to be from a male only, necessarily reckon Sige in along with the Father of the universe, as his wife, so that he may be a father at all. Whether Sige is ever married to him or not is a point we leave them to wrangle over among themselves. We, keeping for the present to the Pythagorean principle, which is one and unmarried, with nothing female about it and lacking nothing, will go on to give an account of their teachings just as they themselves press them.

There is nothing at all, says Valentinus, that has been begotten; the Father alone is unbegotten, not held by place, not held by time, with no one to advise him, and not any other kind of being that could be taken in by the ordinary ways of perceiving. He was alone, subsisting, as they say, in a state of quiet, and resting by himself within himself. But since he was fruitful, it seemed good to him at a certain point to bring to birth and lead out the most beautiful and perfect of the seeds of existence that he had within himself; for the Father was not fond of being alone. He was all love, he says, and love is not love unless there is something to be loved.

So the Father, alone as he was, sent out Nous and Aletheia — a pair that became the lady and beginning and mother of all the Aeons they reckon within the Pleroma. Nous and Aletheia were sent out from the Father; and Nous, himself able to go on begetting, since he came from one that was fruitful, in imitation of the Father sent out Logos and Zoe; and Logos and Zoe sent out Anthropos and Ecclesia. But when Nous and Aletheia saw that their own offspring had been born fruitful, they gave thanks to the Father of the universe and offered him a perfect number: ten Aeons. For Nous and Aletheia, he says, could not offer the Father anything more perfect than this number. The Father is perfect, and so ought to be celebrated by a perfect number; and ten is a perfect number, because it is the first of the numbers formed by a plurality. But the Father, being more perfect, since he alone is unbegotten, found the means of sending out all the roots of existing things by the one first pairing of Nous and Aletheia.

Then Logos himself, and Zoe, saw that Nous and Aletheia had celebrated the Father of the universe with a perfect number, and Logos himself, with Zoe, wanted to magnify their own father and mother, Nous and Aletheia. But since Nous and Aletheia had been begotten and did not possess the Father’s perfect uncreatedness, Logos and Zoe do not glorify Nous their father with a perfect number, but far from it, with an imperfect one: Logos and Zoe offer Nous and Aletheia twelve Aeons. For according to Valentinus these — Nous and Aletheia, Logos and Zoe, Anthropos and Ecclesia — have been the primary roots of the Aeons. Ten Aeons proceed from Nous and Aletheia and twelve from Logos and Zoe: twenty-eight in all. [ab]

To the ten they give these names: Bythius and Mixis, Ageratos and Henosis, Autophyes and Hedone, Acinetos and Syncrasis, Monogenes and Macaria. These are the ten Aeons that some say were sent out by Nous and Aletheia and others by Logos and Zoe. Others again affirm that the twelve were sent out by Anthropos and Ecclesia, and others that they came from Logos and Zoe. And on these they bestow the following names: Paracletus and Pistis, Patricos and Elpis, Metricos and Agape, Aeinous and Synesis, Ecclesiasticus and Macariotes, Theletos and Sophia.

But of the twelve, the twelfth and youngest of all the twenty-eight Aeons — a female, and called Sophia — took note of how many the begetting Aeons were and how much power they had, and ran back up into the depth of the Father. She saw that all the rest of the Aeons, being begotten, beget by coming together in pairs, while the Father alone had produced offspring without any partner. She wanted to match the Father and to produce offspring of her own without a husband, so that she might accomplish a work in no way behind the Father’s. What she did not know was that the Unbegotten One, being the source of the universe and root and depth and abyss, is the only one who holds the power of begetting by himself. Sophia was begotten, and born long after many others, and she is not able to take possession of the power that belongs to the Unbegotten One. For in the Unbegotten One, he says, all things exist together at once, but among the begotten Aeons the female sends out the substance and the male gives shape to the substance the female has sent out.

So Sophia prepared to send out the only thing she was capable of sending out: a formless, unworked substance. And this, he says, is what Moses asserts when he says: “The earth was invisible and unformed.” This, he says, is the good land — the heavenly Jerusalem, into which God has promised to lead the children of Israel when he says: “I will bring you into a land flowing with milk and honey.”

So ignorance came about inside the Pleroma because of Sophia, and shapelessness because of Sophia’s offspring, and confusion arose in the Pleroma. All the Aeons that had been begotten were seized with the fear that formless and unfinished offspring of the Aeons would be born in the same way, and that before long some destruction would take hold of the Aeons. So all the Aeons turned to begging the Father to quiet the grieving Sophia; for she went on weeping and wailing over the miscarriage she had produced — for that is their word for it. Then the Father, feeling for Sophia’s tears and accepting the Aeons’ plea, orders another sending out. He did not, Valentinus says, send out anything himself; it was Nous and Aletheia who sent out Christ and the Holy Spirit, to give shape to the miscarriage and to separate it off, and to comfort Sophia and put a stop to her groaning. And thirty Aeons came into existence along with Christ and the Holy Spirit. Some of these people want this to be a Triacontad of Aeons; others want Sige to exist alongside the Father, and the Aeons to be reckoned in along with them. [ah]

So when Christ had been sent out in addition, and the Holy Spirit with him, by Nous and Aletheia, this miscarriage of Sophia’s — shapeless, born of her alone, begotten without any coming together — is at once separated off from all the Aeons, so that the perfect Aeons should not be disturbed at the sight of its shapelessness. Then, so that the shapelessness of the miscarriage should not show itself at all to the perfect Aeons, the Father again sends out one more Aeon: Stauros. And he, begotten great, as from a mighty and perfect father, and sent out to guard and defend the Aeons, becomes a limit of the Pleroma, holding all the thirty Aeons together inside himself; for these are the ones who had been sent out.

This Aeon is called Horos, because he keeps the Hysterema that is outside separated off from the Pleroma; and Metocheus, because he shares in the Hysterema as well; and Stauros, because he is fixed there unbending and not to be talked round, so that nothing belonging to the Hysterema can come near the Aeons who are inside the Pleroma. Outside Horos, or Metocheus, or Stauros, is what they call the Ogdoad; and that is the Sophia who is outside the Pleroma, the one whom Christ, sent out in addition by Nous and Aletheia, gave shape to and made a perfect Aeon, so that she should not be behind any of the Aeons within the Pleroma in power. But since Sophia was given her shape outside, and it was neither possible nor right that Christ and the Holy Spirit, who had been sent out from Nous and Aletheia, should stay outside the Pleroma, Christ hurried away from her who had been given shape, and the Holy Spirit with him, back to Nous and Aletheia inside the Limit, so that with the rest of the Aeons they might glorify the Father.