[Sidenote: p. 353.] 23. Now when the first and second ascensions of the Sonhood[55] had come to pass, and the Holy Spirit remained by itself in the way described, being set midway between the hypercosmic firmaments and the cosmos--for Basilides divides the things that are into two first made and primary divisions, one of which is called by him an ordered world,[56] and the other hypercosmic things--and between these two [he places] the Boundary Spirit,[57] which same is at once Holy and holds abiding in it the savour of the Sonhood, it being the firmament which is above the heaven.[58] [When these ascensions had taken place], there escaped from and was engendered from the cosmical seed and the Seed-mass, the Great Ruler, the head of the cosmos, a certain beauty and greatness and power which cannot be spoken.[59] For he is, says [Basilides], more ineffable than the ineffable ones, mightier than the mighty, and better than all the fair ones you can describe. He, when engendered, burst through, soared aloft, and was borne right up on high as far as the firmament, but stayed there thinking that the firmament was the end of all ascension [Sidenote: p. 354.] and uplifting and not imagining that there was anything at all beyond this. And he became wiser, mightier, more eminent, and more luminous and everything which you can describe as excelling in beauty all the other cosmic things which lay before him, save only the Sonhood left behind in the Seed-mass. For he knew not that [this Sonhood] was wiser and mightier and better than he. Therefore he deemed himself Lord and King[60] and wise architect, and set about the creation in detail[61] of the ordered world. And in the first place he did not think it meet for him to be alone, but created for himself and engendered from the things which lay below him a Son much better and wiser than himself. For all this the God-who-was-Not had foreordained when he let fall the Seed-mass. When, therefore, [the Great Ruler] beheld his Son, he wondered, and was filled with love and astounded: for so [splendid] did the beauty of the son appear to the Great Ruler. And the Ruler seated him at his right hand. This is what is called by Basilides the Ogdoad where sits the Great Ruler. Then the Great Wise Demiurge fashioned the whole of the [Sidenote: p. 355.] heavenly, that is, the aethereal creation. But the Son begotten by him set it working and established it, being much wiser than the Demiurge himself.[62]