The Seed and the Great Archon

Everything that can be spoken of, then, and everything that has not yet been discovered and has to be passed over, was to be fitted to the world that was going to be produced out of the Seed. At the proper seasons this Seed grows in a way of its own, by addition, through the working of a God so great and of such a kind that no creature can put him into words or take him in by any perception. All of it lay stored up in the Seed, just as we see afterwards in a newborn child the coming of teeth, and the substance of a father, and mind, and everything that had no existence before but comes to a person little by little as he grows up out of childhood. But it would be absurd to say that some projection of a non-existent God became something non-existent — for Basilides shuns and dreads outright the idea that things are generated by being put forth out of a substance. What sort of projection, he asks, is there any need of? What sort of matter must we suppose was there beforehand, so that God could put a world together the way a spider makes its web, or the way a mortal man takes a piece of bronze or of wood or some other part of matter in order to work it? No: God spoke the word, he says, and it was carried into effect. And this, these men claim, is what Moses said: [a]

“Let there be light.”

“And there was light.” Where, he asks, did the light come from? Out of nothing. For it has not been written where it came from, he says, but only this: that it came from the voice of the one who speaks the word. And the one who speaks the word, he says, did not exist, and neither did what was being produced. The seed of the world-system, he says, was generated out of things that do not exist — and by the seed I mean the word that was spoken, “Let there be light.” And this, he says, is what has been said in the Gospels: “He was the true light, which gives light to every man coming into the world.” It is from that Seed that every man takes his beginnings, and from it that he is given light. This is the seed that holds in itself the whole mass of all seeds. Aristotle calls such a thing a genus, and divides it into endless species: just as out of “animal,” which has no existence of its own, we cut off ox, horse, and man. So when the world-Seed becomes the ground of what comes after it, these people say — to quote Basilides’ own words:

“Whatever I say was made after these, ask no question about where it came from. The Seed had all the seeds stored and lying at rest in itself, as things that do not exist, and which a non-existent God meant to produce.”

Let us see, then, what they say comes first out of the world-Seed, what second, and what third. In the Seed itself, he says, there was a Sonship, threefold, in every respect of the same substance as the non-existent God, and begotten out of things that do not exist. Of this Sonship, divided in three, one part was fine, one coarse, and one needed cleansing. The fine part, at the very moment the non-existent one first laid the Seed down, burst out at once and went up and hurried from below to the heights, with the sort of speed the poet describes:

And it reached, he says, the one who does not exist. For every nature longs for him, because of his overflowing beauty and bloom — though each nature longs for him in a different way. The coarser part of the Sonship stayed on in the Seed. Being a sort of imitation, it could not hurry upward: it fell far short of the fineness the other Sonship had, which went up by its own power, and so it was left behind. So the coarser Sonship fitted itself out with a wing of the kind Plato, Aristotle’s teacher, fastens on the soul in the Phaedrus. Basilides calls such a thing not a wing but Holy Spirit. Clothed in this Spirit, the Sonship does it good and is done good to in turn. It does good in this way: a bird’s wing, taken off the bird, would not soar high up on its own, and a bird stripped of its wing would never soar high either. That was the sort of relation the Sonship stood in toward the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit toward the Sonship. For the Sonship, carried upward by the Spirit as by a wing, lifts its own wing — that is, the Spirit — up along with it, and comes near to the fine Sonship and to the non-existent God, the one who built the world out of things that do not exist. But it was not able to keep this Spirit with it, since the Spirit was not of the same substance and has no nature in common with the Sonship. Clean dry air is against the nature of fish and destroys them; in just that way, against the nature of the Holy Spirit, was that place where the non-existent God and the Sonship are together — a place more unspeakable than unspeakable things, and higher up than all names.

So the Sonship left this Spirit near that blessed place, which no mind can conceive and no words can picture. It did not leave it altogether abandoned or cut off from the Sonship — far from it. It is as when a very fragrant ointment is put into a jar: however carefully the jar is emptied, some scent of the ointment still remains and is left behind after the ointment has been separated from it, and the jar keeps the smell of the ointment though it no longer holds the ointment itself. So the Holy Spirit has gone on with no share in the Sonship, and separated from it, and holds in itself, as the jar holds the ointment’s, the power — the scent — of Sonship. And this is what has been said: “Like the ointment on the head that ran down to Aaron’s beard.” This is the scent borne down from the Holy Spirit above, as far as the formlessness and the stretch of space near our own world. And from there the Sonship began to climb, held up, Basilides says, on eagles’ wings and on their backs. For everything, he says, hurries upward from below, from the worse toward the better; not one of the things among the better is so silly as to go down. But the third Sonship, the one that needs cleansing, has stayed, he says, in the vast mass of all seeds, doing good and receiving good. In what way it receives good and does good we will say later, when we come to the proper place for that question.

So when a first and a second ascent of the Sonship had taken place, and the Holy Spirit had stayed behind in the way described, set as a firmament between the spaces above the world and the world. For Basilides divided the things that exist into two continuous and primary parts, and calls the one of them, in a certain sense, world, and the other, in a certain sense, the spaces above the world. The Spirit, the dividing line between the world and the spaces above it, is the one that is holy and keeps the scent of Sonship abiding in itself. While the firmament that is above the heaven was coming into being, there burst forth and was begotten out of the world-Seed and the mass of all seeds the Great Archon, the head of the world, a certain kind of beauty and greatness and power that cannot be broken. For he is, Basilides says, more unspeakable than unspeakable things, more powerful than powerful things, wiser than wise things, and better than any of the beautiful things you could name. Once begotten, this Archon lifted himself up and soared and was carried, all of him, as far as the firmament. And there he stopped, supposing the firmament to be the end of his rising and climbing, and reckoning that nothing at all existed beyond it. And he became wiser, more powerful, more shapely, more brilliant than all the things lying below him that remained within the world — outstanding in beauty above any things you could name, except only the Sonship still left behind in the mass of all seeds. For he was not aware that there is a Sonship wiser and more powerful and better than himself. [k]

So, taking himself for Lord and Master and a wise master builder, he turned to the work of creating every object in the world-system. First, he thought it not fitting to be alone, and made for himself, begetting him out of the things lying below him, a son far better than himself and wiser. For the non-existent God had determined all this beforehand, when he cast down the mass of all seeds. So when he saw the son he was seized with astonishment, and loved him, and was struck with amazement — for some beauty of that kind seemed to the Great Archon to belong to the son — and the Archon made him sit at his right hand. This, according to these people, is what is called the Ogdoad, where the Great Archon has his throne. The whole heavenly creation, that is, the aether, he himself made, the Great Wise Demiurge. But the son begotten of this Archon works in him and offers him suggestions, being endowed with far greater wisdom than the Demiurge himself.

This, then, is what Aristotle means by the entelecheia of a natural organic body: a soul at work in the body, without which the body can accomplish nothing — a soul greater, more splendid, more powerful and wiser than the body. So the account Aristotle had already given of the soul and the body is what Basilides works out, applying it to the Great Archon and his son. For the Archon, according to Basilides, has begotten a son; and the soul, as an activity and a completing, is what Aristotle calls the entelecheia of a natural organic body. So, just as the entelecheia governs the body, the son, according to Basilides, governs the god who is more unspeakable than unspeakable things. [o]

Everything, then, has been provided for and managed by the entelecheia of the Great Archon — everything, that is, that exists in the region of aether as far down as the moon, for from that quarter onward air is separated off from aether. When all the objects in the region of aether had been arranged, another Archon came up again out of the mass of all seeds: greater, of course, than all the things below him, except for the Sonship that had been left behind, but far inferior to the First Archon. This second Archon they call Rhetos. And this place is called the Hebdomad, and this Archon is the manager and maker of everything below. He too made for himself, out of the mass of all seeds, a son more sensible and wiser than himself, in the same way as has been said to have happened with the First Archon. What exists in this quarter of the universe is, he says, the actual mass and gathering of all seeds; and the things that are generated are produced according to nature, as has already been settled by the one who reckons out things to come — when they ought to be, and of what kind, and how. And over these there is no chief, no guardian, no creator. For the reckoning that the non-existent One made when he did the work of creating is cause enough for them.

So when, on the account of these people, the whole world and the things above the world were finished, and nothing was left laboring under any lack, there still remains in the mass of all seeds the third Sonship, which had been left behind in the Seed to do good and to receive good. And the Sonship that had been left behind must necessarily be revealed as well and set back up above; and its place should be above the Boundary Spirit, near the fine and imitating Sonship and the non-existent One. This would agree with what has been written, he says: “The creation itself groans together and is in labor together, waiting for the revealing of the sons of God.” Now we who are spiritual, he says, are those sons, who have been left here to arrange and shape and set right and complete the souls whose nature it is to go on in this quarter of the universe. “Sin, then, reigned from Adam to Moses,” as it has been written. [t]

For the Great Archon held sway, and holds an empire whose limits reach as far as the firmament; and he imagines that he alone is God, and that nothing exists above him, since all things had been kept guarded by unrevealed Silence. This, he says, is the mystery that was not made known to the generations before; but in those days the Great Archon, the Ogdoad, was king and lord — so it seemed — of the universe. In fact the Hebdomad was king and lord of this quarter of the universe, and the Ogdoad is Arrhetos while the Hebdomad is Rhetos. This, he says, is the Archon of the Hebdomad, the one who spoke to Moses and says:

“I am the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and I did not make known to them the name of God.”

That is how they want the verse to have been written — meaning the God who is Arrhetos, the Archon of the Ogdoad. So all the prophets who were before the Savior uttered their predictions, he says, from this source.

Since, then, it had to be that we should be revealed as the children of God — and it is waiting for our revealing, he says, that the creation habitually groans and is in labor — the good news came into the world and passed through every rule and authority and dominion and every name that is named. And it came in reality, though nothing came down from above, and the blessed Sonship did not withdraw from that inconceivable and blessed and non-existent God. Far from it. For as Indian naphtha, when it is only seen from a great distance away, still catches fire, so from below, out of the formlessness of the mass of all seeds, the powers pass upward as far as the Sonship. For, on the illustration of the Indian naphtha, the son of the Great Archon of the Ogdoad, as if he were some kind of naphtha, grasps and seizes thoughts from the blessed Sonship, whose dwelling place lies beyond the Boundary Spirit. For the power of the Sonship that is in the middle of the Holy Spirit — that is, in the middle of the Boundary Spirit — shares the flowing and rushing thoughts of the Sonship with the son of the Great Archon.