Chapter XV.-Strange Account of the Origin of Matter, from the Various Affections of Achamoth. The Waters from Her Tears; Light from Her Smile.
Well, now, the Pythagoreans may learn, the Stoics may know, Plato himself (may discover), whence Matter, which they will have to be unborn, derived both its origin and substance for all this pile of the world-(a mystery) which not even the renowned Mercurius Trismegistus, master (as he was) of all physical philosophy, thought out. You have just heard of "Conversion," one element in the "Passion" (we have so often mentioned). Out of this the whole life of the world, and even that of the Demiurge himself, our God, is said to have had its being. Again, you have heard of "sorrow" and "fear." From these all other created things took their beginning. For from her tears flowed the entire mass of waters. From this circumstance one may form an idea of the calamity which she encountered, so vast were the kinds of the tears wherewith she overflowed. She had salt tear-drops, she had bitter, and sweet, and warm, and cold, and bituminous, and ferruginous, and sulphurous, and even poisonous, so that the Nonacris exuded therefrom which killed Alexander; and the river of the Lyncestµ flowed from the same source, which produces drunkenness; and the Salmacis was derived from the same source, which renders men effeminate. The rains of heaven Achamoth whimpered forth, and we on our part are anxiously employed in saving up in our cisterns the very wails and tears of another. In like manner, from the "consternation" and "alarm" (of which we have also heard), bodily elements were derived. And yet amidst so many circumstances of solitude, in this vast prospect of destitution, she occasionally smiled at the recollection of the sight of Christ, and from this smile of joy light flashed forth. How great was this beneficence of Providence, which induced her to smile, and all that we might not linger for ever in the dark! Nor need you feel astonished how from her joy so splendid an element could have beamed upon the world, when from her sadness even so necessary a provision flowed forth for man. O illuminating smile! O irrigating tear! And yet it might now have acted as some alleviation amidst the horror of her situation; for she might have shaken off all the obscurity thereof as often as she had a mind to smile, even not to be obliged to turn suppliant to those who had deserted her.
Chapter XVI.-Achamoth Purified from All Impurities of Her Passion by the Paraclete, Acting Through Soter, Who Out of the Above-Mentioned Impurities Arranges Matter, Separating Its Evil from the Better Qualities.
She, too, resorts to prayers, after the manner of her mother. But Christ, Who now felt a dislike to quit the Pleroma, appoints the Paraclete as his deputy. To her, therefore, he despatches Soter, (who must be the same as Jesus, to whom the Father imparted the supreme power over the whole body of the ¦ons, by subjecting them all to him, so that "by him," as the apostle says, "all things were created" ), with a retinue and cortege of contemporary angels, and (as one may suppose) with the dozen fasces. Hereupon Achamoth, being quite struck with the pomp of his approach, immediately covered herself with a veil, moved at first with a dutiful feeling of veneration and modesty; but afterwards she surveys him calmly, and his prolific equipage. With such energies as she had derived from the contemplation, she meets him with the salutation, ku/rie xai=re (" Hail, Lord ")! Upon this, I suppose, he receives her, confirms and conforms her in knowledge, as well as cleanses her from all the outrages of Passion, without, however, utterly severing them, with an indiscriminateness like that which had happened in the casualties which befell her mother. For such vices as had become inveterate and confirmed by practice he throws together; and when he had consolidated them in one mass, he fixes them in a separate body, so as to compose the corporeal condition of Matter, extracting out of her inherent, incorporeal passion such an aptitude of nature as might qualify it to attain to a reciprocity of bodily substances, which should emulate one another, so that a twofold condition of the substances might be arranged; full of evil through its faults, the other susceptible of passion from conversion. This will prove to be Matter, which has set us in battle array against Hermogenes, and all others who presume to teach that God made all things out of Matter, not out of nothing.