nd tempest,
Hippolytus observes:

"These the Sethian says are the three principles of our system; or when
he states that three were born in paradise--Adam, Eve, the serpent; or
when he speaks of three persons, namely, Cain, Abel, Seth, and again
of three others, Shem, Ham, Japheth; or when he mentions three
patriarchs--Abraham, Isaac, Jacob; or when he speaks of three days
before the sun, etc."

The same writer says that their entire system is derived from the
ancients; that, antecedent to the Eleusinian mysteries, were enacted by
them the ceremonies connected with the worship of the Great Mother.(86)

86) Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies, book v., ch. 15.

We have observed that through some process not thoroughly understood
at the present time, the adherents of the older faith had succeeded in
reinstating their Deity. The powers of Nature had come to be represented
by Typhon Seth. It was the God of Death and of Life, of Destruction and
Regeneration. The simoom of the desert and the cold of winter were Seth,
as were also the genial powers of Spring. We are informed by various
writers that Typhon Seth was feminine. She was the early God of the
Jews. In other words, the Jews were formerly worshippers of a female
Deity. Jehovah, Iav, was originally female.

Although the secret meaning of all the allegories contained in the Old
Testament is not fully understood, still the belief that Cain, Abel, and
Seth represented the self-triplicated Deity at a time when the idea of
man as a creator had been accepted, or when his power to reproduce was
becoming the highest idea of a creative force, is consistent with what
is known of the Cabala of the Jews, or of the esoteric meaning of the
Jewish scriptures formerly known only to the priests. In other
words, the ancient doctrines, the true meaning of which was no longer
understood by them, were patched together as a basis for the later
developments in Jewish religious experience.

We have seen that six hundred years after Adam appears Noah, another
self-triplicated Saviour or preserver of man, with his ark or seed
vessel, beneath which is veiled the female element. Afterward Abraham
becomes the Great Father or Saviour, and later Moses. That, in the time
of the latter, the more ancient worship of a creative force in Nature
represented by the Aleim, had, by the masses of the people, been wholly
lost, is evident from the Old Testament writings. The worship of the
Fath