Today we’re going to talk about how the Aeons of the Fullness of God were generated. And the reason we talk about the Aeons so much is because we are downstream from the Aeons. We are representatives of all of the traits of the Aeons—we second-order powers, and we humans in particular, since I am a human talking to other humans here. So everything I say about the Aeons and how they relate to the Father and how they relate to the Son and to each other, we have that nature inside of us as well, because it is a flowing stream of consciousness that begins at the Father, passes through the Son, passes through the totalities and into the Aeons, and then down into us. So let’s review this basic Gnostic wisdom here.

The instant the all became self-aware, the all fell out of their unthinking, blissful union as one, and arranged themselves into what’s called the Fullness.

“Each one of the Aeons is a name, that is, each of the properties and powers of the Father, since he exists in many names, which are intermingled and harmonious with one another, just as the Father is a single name, because he is a unity, yet is innumerable in his properties and names.”

By this point in the Tripartite Tractate, the Son comes to be referred to as the Father, because the Son is the Father of the third glory, that is, the Aeons of the Fullness. We see here that the Son, although a singular monad, is still a unity of many Aeons. The Son becomes knowable through the innumerable properties and names of the Aeons.

What does it mean by names? I think that these names are the first appearance of what we would come to call ego. These disparate identities include names like flower, tree, dog, human, even parts of living bodies who themselves are alive, like kidney cells. They’re not names like my name or like Frank or George. They are not those types of identities. These are functional identities.

The Aeons then arrange themselves into a hierarchy of,

“minds of minds, which are found to be words of words, elders of elders, degrees of degrees, which are exalted above one another. Each one of those who give glory has his place and his exaltation and his dwelling and his rest, which consists of the glory which he brings forth.”

Now, the hierarchy of the Fullness prefigures the fractal patterns of our universe. Minds over minds, words over words, superiors over superiors, as Thomason’s translation puts it, refers to the personalities and how they relate to one another. Elders of elders and degrees of degrees refers to the manner by which things are sorted, stacked, and ordered—first, second, third, superior, inferior, and so on. Each with its own place, exaltation, dwelling, and rest reflects the fact that each self-aware entity has its own unique place in the grand scheme, its own personal expression or exaltation, a location different than its neighbors, thus possessing its very own point of view.

So it’s not about hierarchies of men the way humans tend to think of it. It’s not about, well—look at the hierarchy of government or the hierarchy of the Catholic church. It’s not about the peons at the bottom, and then you come a little higher into the elders, and then you have the priests, and then you have the cardinals, and bishops, and the pope. That isn’t the kind of hierarchy we’re talking about. It’s the way that our bodies go together, for example. Our cells are smaller than our organs. Our organs are smaller than the organism. They stack upward, and part of the Gnostic gospel is the higher the fewer precept.

You hear that a lot in Gnosticism, the higher the fewer. That simply refers to how a hierarchy stacks, like a pyramid. There’s more objects at the bottom and fewer as you go up and up until you culminate in one. So that is what it means to be the hierarchy of the Fullness. The Fullnesses at the bottom are more akin to the cells in our bodies, and then as you go up and up the pyramid, you finally arrive at the organism.

“It is he, the Father, who gave root impulses to the Aeons, since there are places on the path which leads toward him, as toward his school of behavior. He has extended to them faith in and prayer to him whom they do not see, and a firm hope in him of whom they do not concede, and a fruitful love which looks toward to that which it does not see, and an acceptable understanding of the eternal mind, and a blessing which is riches and freedom, and a wisdom of the one who desires the glory of the Father for his thought.”

The originating Father continually emanates a holy spirit out through the Son that entices its generations to seek out their source. The Tripartite Tractate says,

“It is by virtue of his will that the Father, the one who is exalted, is known, that is, by virtue of the spirit which breathes in the Totalities, and it gives them an idea of seeking after the unknown one, just as one is drawn by a pleasant aroma to search for the thing from which the aroma arises, since the aroma of the Father surpasses these ordinary ones, for his sweetness leaves the Aeons in ineffable pleasure, and it gives them their idea of mingling with him, who wants them to know him in a united way, and to assist one another in the spirit which is sown within them.”

And remember, all of this applies to us humans as well. This is the way we are to seek the Father, the way we are to relate to each other. It is said that although the Father put an unquenchable thirst to align themselves with the one into the minds of the Fullness, he did not reveal to them the Father’s ineffable nature and the impossibility of reuniting with him and surviving to tell the tale. This was doubtless to keep alive the hope of reunification with the Father as a motive for continually giving glory. Now all of this has been from Tripartite Tractate verse 75.

“The Aeons of the Fullness sat in perfect equilibrium in their hierarchy of ranks, stations, and names. They were a congress of one accord,”

meaning they agreed on everything and they cooperated together to bring about a single dream of paradise. You could note one difference between the ALL and the Fullness is that while the ALL sings their songs in blissful union, the Fullness sings their songs in perfectly tuned, multi-toned harmony. In addition to their identities,

“the Aeons of the Fullness were all given wisdom,”

which is the ability to reason with logic and prudence. You see, by the way, they weren’t given emotion, which is the ability to get passionate about things whether or not it’s reasonable or logical. So we are to follow the path of logic and prudence. Prudence means knowing to do the right thing at the right time.

“They were given a thirst to seek after the originating consciousness of their creator and a desire to align themselves with the Father’s will through the process of giving glory.”

And they were all creative geniuses, able to dream up a fully functioning mental paradise where whatever they willed in the Father’s name happily happened. This dream of paradise is our foretaste of heaven shared by cultures around the world.

The generation of the Aeons was not a one-and-done deal. And by the way, generation used in this sense of the word, it’s not generation like I am one generation and my parents were a different generation. It’s not that kind of generation. It means to generate, to create, to emit. The generation of the Aeons was not a one-and-done deal. After their initial emanation out of the ALL, the Aeons continued to generate more and more Aeons through various combinations of Aeons giving glory.

The pattern by which these younger Aeons were generated was the same as the manner by which the original Aeons of the Aeons were generated as an exchange of love and admiration passed between the Father and the Fullnesses. The Aeons of the Aeons praised the Father together and together they received the Father’s reflected glory.

You see, these Aeons of the Aeons, what we are calling the ALL, did not have self-identity. They were all for one and one for all. You can remember it that way. This exchange of praise from the Aeons and reflected glory from the Father resulted in the generation of new aeonic emanations.

As we have already noted, the exchange of admirations and glory between the Father and son was like,

“the multitude of some who kiss one another with a good insatiable thought. The kiss being a unity, although it involves many kisses.”

And like all fractals, this pattern replicated itself throughout the generations that followed. These kisses first formed the generation of the ALL. Then the ALL, also known as the Totalities of the ALL, procreated,

“innumerable Aeons also in an uncountable way. They too beget by the properties and dispositions in which it exists. For these comprise its association, which they form toward one another and toward those who have come forth from them, toward the Son, for whose glory they exist. As a result, just as they were brought forth in glory for the Father, so too, in order to appear perfect, they appeared acting by giving glory. Since each one of them individually does not exist so as to give glory in a unitary way to him whom he loves. The fruit of the third glory, however, consists of honors of the will of each one of the Aeons and each one of those properties.”