Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
There subsist, then, according to them, these three things: one arising from her suffering, which is matter; another from her turning, which is soul-substance; and a third which she brought forth, which is spiritual — and thus she turned to the shaping of these into their proper forms. But she was unable to give shape to the spiritual, since it was of the same substance as herself; instead, she turned to the shaping of that which had come into being from her own turning, the substance of soul, and she also, drawing on the Savior, put forth teachings. And they say that first, out of the soul-substance, she formed God the Father, and the Savior, and the king of all things of the same substance as himself, that is, of the soul, whom they call the things on the left. For the things that came after him, they say, he formed while unknowingly moved by his mother. Hence they call him Metropator, and Apator, and Demiurge, and Father — for he is called the father of the things below him, but king of all things. For his mother, wishing, through him, to bring the Enthymesis to a shaping — or rather, to bring the Savior himself to expression through her — had learned from the Savior. And they say that she herself, after the likeness of the unseen Father, remained hidden from the Demiurge's knowledge. And they say this Demiurge is the father of the Only-begotten Son; and that the rest of the Aeons are the angels and archangels who were made by him.
They say that the Father and God of the things they call material, or "hylic," is the Fashioner. For by separating the two substances that had been confused, and by making corporeal things out of incorporeal ones, he fabricated the world, becoming the maker of things right and left, light and heavy, of what flies upward and what sinks downward. They say he also made seven heavens, and that above these heavens is the Demiurge. For this reason they call him the Hebdomad, while they call the mother Achamoth the Ogdoad, since she preserves the number of the firstborn and original Ogdoad of the Pleroma. The seven heavens they hold to be intellectual beings; they teach that these, together with the Demiurge himself, are angels, and that the Demiurge is an angel made in the likeness of God. Paradise, likewise, existing above the third heaven as a power, they call a fourth archangel, and they say Adam derived something from it while he dwelt there.
They say that the Demiurge supposed he had fashioned all these things entirely by himself, when in fact Achamoth had made them through him. For he made heaven without knowing what heaven was, and formed man without knowing man, and brought forth the earth without knowing the earth; in all things, they say, he was ignorant of the very forms of what he was making, and ignorant too of his own mother, imagining that nothing existed but himself. They say the cause of this activity on his part was his mother, who wished to bring him forth in this way — as the head and beginning of her own substance, yet as the lord of the whole work. This Mother they also call the Ogdoad, and Sophia, and Earth, and Jerusalem, and the Holy Spirit, and, using the masculine, the Lord. They say she occupies a middle place, being above the Demiurge, but below — or rather outside — the Pleroma, up to its very limit. They say that material substance is composed of three passions: fear, grief, and perplexity. From fear and from turning-about the animal substance received its being; from this turning-about, they hold, the Demiurge had his origin; from fear came the rest of animal substance, that of both dumb animals and of men. And for this reason, being superior to them, he foreknew things spiritual, and, supposing himself the only God, declared by the mouths of the prophets, "It is I who am God; apart from me exists nothing." From grief, they teach, spiritual things of wickedness came to be; hence the devil had his origin, whom they also call the Cosmocrator, and the demons, and every spiritual substance of wickedness. But they say the Demiurge is the psychic son of his mother, while the Cosmocrator is a creature of the Demiurge; and the Cosmocrator understands the things above him, since he is a spiritual wickedness, while the Demiurge is ignorant of them, since he is animal. They say their mother dwells in the place that is heavenly, that is, in the middle region; the Demiurge dwells in the place that is in heaven, that is, the Hebdomad; and the Cosmocrator dwells in the place that is our world. From terror and perplexity, as from something quite deranged, the bodily elements of the world were made, as we said before: earth from the state of terror, water from the movement of fear, air from the fixing of grief; while fire, they teach, was inherent in all of these as death and corruption, just as ignorance too was hidden within all three passions. When he had thus fashioned the world, they say he also made man of earth — not from this dry earth, but taking from an invisible substance, from matter poured out and fluid — and into this man they hold that he breathed the psychic element. This man, they say, was made "according to the image and likeness": according to the image, in that he was of the same substance as God; according to the likeness, in that he was psychic — which is why the substance of that breath was called "the spirit of life," since it came from a spiritual origin. After this, they say, he was clothed with a garment of skin, which they hold to be this sensible flesh.
As for the offspring of their mother Achamoth — whom, according to their view, she brought forth in contemplation of the angels attending the Savior — they say it is of the same substance as its mother, spiritual, and that the Demiurge was ignorant of it as well. It was secretly deposited within him, they say, without his knowledge, so that through him a seed might be sown into that soul which came from him, and carried, as it were, in a womb, in this material body, and there enlarged, so as to be made ready to receive the perfect account. Thus, they say, the spiritual man lay hidden from the Demiurge, sown together by Sophia with his breath, by an indescribable power and providence. For just as his own mother lay hidden from his knowledge, in that same way her seed escaped his notice too. This seed, they say, is itself the Church, the image of the Church above, and it is this man within themselves — for it is precisely the object, or rather the very proposition, of their "knowledge." So that the rational soul might not be empty, they hold that it consists of the psychic element, from the breath; the fleshly element, from matter; and the spiritual man, from the mother Achamoth.