8. Following up these and such-like (words) the most wonderful Gnostics having invented a new art of grammar[76] imagine that their own prophet Homer unspeakably[77] foreshowed[78] these things and they mock at those who not being initiated in the Holy Scriptures are led together into such designs. But they say: whoso says all things were framed from one, errs; but whoso says from three speaks the truth and gives an exposition of (the things of) the universe. For one, he says, is the blessed nature of the Blessed Man above, Adamas, and one is the mortal (nature), [Sidenote: p. 158.] below, and one is the kingless race begotten on high, where, he says, is Mariam the sought-for one, and Jothor the great wise one, and Sephora the seer,[79] and Moses whose generation was not in Egypt--for there were children born to him in Midian--and this, he says, was not forgotten by the poets:--
“In three lots were all things divided and each drew a domain of his own.”--(_Iliad_, XV, 169.)
For sublime things, he says, must needs be spoken, but they are spoken everywhere, lest “hearing they should not hear and seeing they should see not.”[80] For if, he says, the sublime things were not spoken, the cosmos could not have been framed. These are the three ponderous words: Caulacau, Saulasau, Zeesar.[81] Caulacau the one on high, [Sidenote: p. 159.] Adamas, Saulasau, the mortal nature below, Zeesar the Jordan which flows back on its source. This is, he says, the masculo-feminine Man who is in all things, whom the ignorant call the triple-bodied Geryon--as if Geryon were “flowing from Earth”[82]--and the Greeks usually “the heavenly horn of Mên”[83] because he has mingled and compounded all things with all. “For all things, he says, were made through him and apart from him not one thing was made. That which was in him is life.”[84] This, he says is the life, the unspeakable family of perfect men which was not known to the former generation. But the “nothing” which came into being apart from him is the world of form; for it came without him by the 3rd and 4th.[85] This, he says, is the cup Condy in which the king drinking, divineth. This, he says, is that which was hidden among the fair grains of Benjamin. And the Greeks also say the same with raving lips:--