Pistis Sophia - The Light-treasury

The Light-treasury

With regard to the region which comes next beneath the realm of light, we learn but little from the fourth book. It is divided into three provinces, the right, the left, and that of the middle between them. What we are told of the rulers of these three dominions agrees so closely with the statements of the three earlier books that we may here conveniently combine both descriptions. There is, however, one essential difference between the latter and the former of these descriptions. According to that, the thesauros luminis is no longer identical, as in this, with the upper realm of light, but is placed below the three khoremata the upper world, and stands at the head of the kerasmos or region of mixed light. The thesauros luminis, or terra lucis (topos probolon) is then, according to this representation, the place from whence the light, which has its source in the upper world, is brought down into the lower world, and whereby it is again transmitted upwards from the one world to the other. In this thesauros luminis are found twelve gathering-points of lights (taxeis taxeon), the seven phonai or amen (which, according to the fourth book, are the seven highest spirits of the world of light after the Pater paternitatis), and five trees of light. Beside the seven phonai and the five trees of light are found, moreover, in this region three amen, the gemini soteres, and nine phylakes, who are charged with the office of guarding the light. From the above-named gathering-points of light proceed further twelve soteres, each of whom again is set over twelve taxeis. The mixture of hyle with the thesauros, or treasury of light, or the already existing combination of purer and impurer elements therein, has produced the material out of which the lower regions of the kerasmos were formed.