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Against the Valentinians

Chapter XVII.--Achamoth in Love with the Angels. A Protest Against the Lascivious Features of Valentinianism. Achamoth Becomes the Mother of Three Natures.

Then Achamoth, delivered at length from all her evils, wonderful to tell ¹ goes on and bears fruit with greater results. For warmed with the joy of so great an escape from her unhappy condition, and at the same time heated with the actual contemplation of the angelic luminaries (one is ashamed) to use such language, (but there is no other way of expressing one's meaning), she during the emotion somehow became personally inflamed with desire ² towards them, and at once grew pregnant with a spiritual conception, at the very image of which the violence of her joyous transport, and the delight of her prurient excitement had imbibed and impressed upon her. She at length gave birth to an offspring, and then there arose a leash of natures, ³ from a triad of causes,--one material, arising from her passion; another animal, arising from her conversion; the third spiritual, which had its origin in her imagination.

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Adversus Valentinianos

17

[1] abhinc Achamoth expedita tandem de malis omnibus ecce iam proficit et in opera maiora frugescit. prae gaudio enim tanti ex infelicitate successus concalefacta simulque contemplatione ipsa angelicorum luminum, ut ita dixerim, subfermentata — pudet sed aliter exprimere non est — quodammodo subsuriit intra et ipsa in illos et conceptu statim intumuit spiritali ad imaginem ipsam quam vi laetantis ex laetitia prurientis intentionis imbiberat et sibi intimarat. [2] peperit denique et facta est exinde trinitas generum ex trinitate causarum: unum materiale quod ex passione, aliud animale quod ex conversione, tertium spiritale quod ex imaginatione.