unchangeable Aeon, which is no more generated for the boundless eternity. 18. Conformably, therefore, to this reasoning, for the foolish, Simon was a god, like that Libyan Apsethus; (a god) subject to generation and suffering, so long as he remained in potentiality, but freed from the bonds of suffering and birth, as soon as his imaging forth was accomplished, and attaining perfection he passed forth from the first two Powers, to wit heaven and earth. For Simon speaks distinctly concerning this in his _Revelation_ as follows: "_To you, therefore, I say what I say, and write what I write. And the writing is this._ "_Of the universal Aeons there are two shoots, without beginning or end, springing from one Root, which is the Power invisible, inapprehensible Silence. Of these shoots one is manifested from above, which is the Great Power, the Universal Mind ordering all things, male, and the other, (is manifested) from below, the Great Thought, female, producing all things_. "_Hence pairing with each other_,[34] _they unite and manifest the Middle Distance, incomprehensible Air, without beginning or end. In this is the Father who sustains all things, and nourishes those things which have a beginning and end._ "_This is He who has stood, stands and will stand, a male-female power like the preëxisting Boundless Power, which has neither beginning nor end, existing in oneness. For it is from this that the Thought in the oneness proceeded and became two._ "_So he_[35] _was one; for having her_[36] _in himself, he was alone, not however first, although preëxisting, but being manifested from himself to himself, he became second. Nor was he called Father before (Thought) called him Father._ "_As, therefore, producing himself by himself, he manifested to himself his own Thought, so also the Thought that was manifested did not make the Father, but contemplating him hid him--that is to say the Power--in herself, and is male-female, Power and Thought._ "_Hence they pair with each other being one, for there is no difference between Power and Thought. From the things above is discovered Power, and from those below Thought._ "_In the same manner also that which was manifested from them_[37] _although being one is yet found as two, the male-female having the female in itself. Thus Mind is in Thought--things inseparable from one another--which although being one are yet found as two._"