but if it does not do so an absence
of art and darkness ensues, exactly as if it had not existed at
all; and on the death of the man it perishes with him.

13. Of these six Powers and the seventh which is beyond the six, he
calls the first pair Mind and Thought, heaven and earth; and the
male (heaven) looks down from above and takes thought for its
co-partner, while the earth from below receives from the heaven the
intellectual fruits that come down to it and are cognate with the
earth. Wherefore, he says, the Word ofttimes steadfastly
contemplating the things which have been generated from Mind and
Thought, that is from heaven and earth, says: "Hear, O heaven, and
give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath said: I have generated sons
and raised them up, but they have set me aside."[19]

And he who says this, he says, is the seventh Power, He who has
stood, stands and will stand, for He is the cause of those good
things which Moses praised and said they were very good. And (the
second pair is) Voice and Name, sun and moon. And (the third)
Reason and Reflection, air and water. And in all of these was
blended and mingled the Great Power, the Boundless, He who has
stood, as I have said.

14. And when Moses says: "(It is) in six days that God made the
heaven and the earth, and on the seventh he rested from all his
works," Simon arranges it differently and thus makes himself into a
god. When, therefore, they (the Simonians) say, that there are
three days before the generation of the sun and moon, they mean
esoterically Mind and Thought--that is to say heaven and earth--and
the seventh Power, the Boundless. For these three Powers were
generated before all the others. And when they say "he hath
generated me before all the Aeons," the words, he says, are used
concerning the seventh Power. Now this seventh Power which was the
first Power subsisting in the Boundless Power, which was generated
before all the Aeons, this, he says, was the seventh Power, about
which Moses says: "And the spirit of God moved over the water,"
that is to say, he says, the spirit which hath all things in
itself, the Image of the Boundless Power, concerning which Simon
says: "_The Image from, the incorruptible Form, alone ordering all
things._" For the Power which moves above the wa