(4) For how, being a goddess, did she not consider that he had neglected to sacrifice, not through contempt, but out of inadvertence, or under the idea that he had sacrificed?

(2) While she was alone with her father, she was a virgin and in an androgynous form. When she fell down into a body and entered this life, then she fell into the hands of thieves. Wanton men passed her from one to the other, used her, some by force, others by seducing her with a gift. They defiled her and took her virginity from her.

(3) In her body she became a whore and gave herself to everyone, seeing each one she hugged as a husband. After she let herself be taken by lecherous, unfaithful adulterers, she sighed deeply and repented. But even when she turned her face from the adulterers, she ran to others, and they compelled her to live with them and make love with them on their beds as if they were her masters. Then, out of shame, she no longer dared leave them, while they double-crossed her, pretending to be faithful, true husbands, as if they respected her. After all these acts, they took off, abandoning her.

(5) The prophetic woman too in Brandchidæ, whether she holds in her hand a wand, which was at first received from some God, and becomes filled with a divine splendour, or whether seated on an axis, she predicts future events, or dips her feet or the border of her garment in the water, or receives the God by imbibing the vapour of the water; by all these she becomes adapted to partake externally of the God. But the multitude of sacrifices, the sacred law of the whole sanctimony, and such other things as are performed in a divine manner, prior to the prophetic inspiration, viz. the baths of the prophetess, her fasting for three whole days, her retiring into the adyta, and there receiving a divine light, and rejoicing for a considerable time—all these evince that the God is entreated by prayer to approach, that he becomes externally present, and that the prophetess, before she comes to her accustomed place, is inspired in a wonderful manner; and that, in the spirit which rises from the fountain, another more ancient God, who is separate from the place, shines forth to the view, and who is also the cause of the place, of the country, and of the whole divination.

(37) Crowned with a triple tower-like tiara and her form adorned with symbolic creatures representative of her spiritual powers, Diana stood for the source of that imperishable doctrine which, flowing from the bosom of the Great Multimammia, is the spiritual food of those aspiring men and women who have consecrated their lives to the contemplation of reality. As the physical body of man receives its nutriment from the Great Earth Mother, so the spiritual nature of man is fed from the never failing fountains of Truth pouring outward from the invisible worlds.

On account of this it is said concerning her that she said, I am part of my mother, and I am the mother. I am the wife, I am the virgin. I am pregnant. I am the midwife. I am the one who comforts during labor pains. My husband produced me, and I am his mother, and he is my father and my lord. He is my potency; what he desires he speaks with reason. I am becoming, but I have borne a lordly man. Now these things were revealed by the will of Sabaoth and his Christ to the souls who will come to the fashioned bodies of the authorities. Concerning these the holy voice said, “Multiply and flourish to rule over all the creatures.” And these are the ones who are taken captive by the chief creator according to their destinies, and thus they were locked in the prisons of the fashioned bodies until the consummation of the age.

(1) And the First Mystery continued again in the discourse and said: "It came to pass then, before I had led forth Pistis Sophia out of the chaos, because it was not yet commanded me through my Father, the First Mystery which looketh within,--at that time then, after the emanations of Self-willed had perceived that my light-stream had taken from them the light-powers which they had taken from Pistis Sophia, and had poured them into Pistis Sophia, and when they again had seen Pistis Sophia, that she shone as she had done from the beginning, that they were enraged against Pistis Sophia and cried out again to their Self-willed, that he should come and help them, so that they might take away the powers in Pistis Sophia anew.

(2) With respect, however, to the mother of the Gods, you, indeed, seem to think that those who are possessed by the Goddess are males; for, conformably to this, you denominate them Metrizantes. But the thing is not truly so. For those who are precedaneously inspired by the mother of the Gods are women; but the males that are thus inspired are very few in number, and such as are more effeminate. This enthusiasm, however, has a vivific and replenishing power, on which account, also, it in a remarkable degree differs from all other mania.

(6) Woman, verily, is a sacrificial fire, O Gautama. The sexual organ, in truth, is its fuel; the hairs, the smoke; the vulva, the flame; when one inserts, the coals; the feelings of pleasure, the sparks. In this oblation the gods offer semen. From this oblation a person (puni$a) arises. He lives as long as he lives. Then when he dies, [14] then they carry him to the fire. His fire, in truth, becomes the fire; fuel, the fuel; smoke, the smoke; ffame, the flame; coals, the coals; sparks, the sparks. In this fire the gods offer a person (purusa). From this oblation the man arises having the color of light. '

(3) This Egyptian deity under many names appears as the principle of natural fecundity among nearly all the religions of the ancient world. She was known as the goddess with ten thousand appellations and was metamorphosed by Christianity into the Virgin Mary, for Isis, although she gave birth to all living things--chief among them the Sun--still remained a virgin, according to the legendary accounts.

(3) And this, indeed, is not absent from any one, who through aptitude is capable of being united to it. But this divine illumination is immediately present, and uses the prophetess as an instrument; she neither being any longer mistress of herself, nor capable of attending to what she says, nor perceiving where she is. Hence, after prediction, she is scarcely able to recover herself. And before she drinks the water, she abstains from food for a whole day and night; and retiring to certain sacred places, inaccessible to the multitude, begins to receive in them the enthusiastic energy. Through her departure, therefore, and separation from human concerns, she renders herself pure, and by this means adapted to the reception of divinity: and from hence she possesses the inspiration of the God, shining into the pure seat of her soul, becomes full of an unrestrained afflatus, and receives the divine presence in a perfect manner, and without any impediment.

(41) Although the early Pythian priestesses were always maidens--some still in their teens--a law was later enacted that only women past fifty years of age should be the mouthpiece of the oracle. These older women dressed as young girls and went through the same ceremonial as the first Pythiæ. The change was probably the indirect result of a series of assaults made upon the persons of the priestesses by the profane.

(4) She became a poor desolate widow, helpless. In her affliction she had no food. From them she had gathered nothing but the defilements when they coupled with her. Her offspring from the adulterers are mute, blind, and sickly. They are disturbed. But when her father who is above looked down on her and saw her sighing, suffering and in disgrace, and repenting of her prostitution, then she began to call on him for help with all her heart, saying, "Save me, my father. Look, I will report to you, for I left my house and fled from my woman's quarters. Restore me to yourself."

(3) After the deluge sent by the gods to destroy mankind at the close of the Iron Age, only Deucalion and Pyrrha were left alive. Entering a ruined sanctuary to pray, they were directed by an oracle to depart from the temple and with heads veiled and garments unbound cast behind them the bones of their mother. Construing the cryptic message of the god to mean that the earth was the Great Mother of all creatures, Deucalion picked up loose rocks and, bidding Pyrrha do likewise, cast them behind him. From these rocks there sprang forth a new and stalwart race of human beings, the rocks thrown by Deucalion becoming men and those thrown by Pyrrha becoming women. In this allegory is epitomized the mystery of human evolution; for spirit, by ensouling matter, becomes that indwelling power which gradually but sequentially raises the mineral to the status of the plant; the plant to the plane of the animal; the animal to the dignity of man; and man to the estate of the gods.

(4) But how she had collected her [forces, the god ...] unto Ea divulged

(96) 1 let it pass, and it is true, that she may be in Heaven with Body and Soul; but with such a Body as Moses and Elias had upon Mount Tabor, in the Apparition before Christ [at his Transfiguration,] viz. that new Body out of the Element; the transitory [corruptible Body] belongs to the Earth, for if we could have subsisted in God, with this [transitory and corruptible] Body, God would not have become Man, and have died for us. Even as all the Apostles of Christ are dead, and yet live; and so may it also be, that the Body of the Virgin was changed into a heavenly, and laid off the earthly. What does that avail us? She is no Goddess.

(4) Then she will begin to rage at herself like a woman in labor, writhing and screaming in the hour of delivery. But since she is female, she is powerless by herself to inseminate a child. So the father sent her from heaven her man, her brother, the firstborn. The bridegroom came down to the bride. She gave up her former whoring and cleansed herself of the pollution of adulterers, and she was renewed to be a bride. She cleansed herself in the bridal chamber. She filled it with perfume and sat there waiting for the true groom. She no longer goes about the marketplace, copulating with whomever she desires, but she waits for him, saying, "When will he come?" And she feared him, not knowing what he looked like. She no longer remembers, since she fell from her father's house long ago.

(1) But to the women he is said to have discoursed concerning sacrifices as follows: In the first place indeed, as they would wish that another person who intended to pray for them, should be worthy and good, because the Gods attend to such as these; thus also it is requisite that they should in the highest degree esteem equity and modesty, in order that the Gods may be readily disposed to hear their prayers. In the next place, they should offer to the Gods such things as they have produced with their own hands, and should bring them to the altars without the assistance of servants, such as cakes, honey-combs, and frankincense. But that they should not worship divinity with blood and dead bodies, nor offer many things at one time, as if they never meant to sacrifice again.

With respect also to their association with men, he exhorted them to consider that their parents granted to the female nature, that they should love their husbands in a greater degree than those who were the sources of their existence. That in consequence of this, they would do well either not to oppose their husbands, or to think that they have then vanquished, when they submit to them. Farther still, in the same assembly also, Pythagoras is said to have made that celebrated observation, that it is holy for a woman, after having been connected with her husband, to perform sacred rites on the same day; but that this is never holy, after she has been connected with any other man.

He also exhorted the women to use words of good omen through the whole of life, and to endeavor that others may predict good things of them. He likewise admonished them not to destroy popular renown, nor to blame the writers of fables, who surveying the justice of women, from their accommodating others with garments and ornaments, without a witness, when it is necessary for some other person to use them, and that neither litigation nor contradiction are produced from this confidence,—have feigned, that three women used but one eye in common, on account of the facility of their communion with each other. He farther observed, that he who is called the wisest of all others, and who gave arrangement to the human voice, and in short, was the inventor of names, whether he was a God or a dæmon, or a certain divine man, perceiving that the genus of women is most adapted to piety, gave to each of their ages the appellation of some God.

Hence he called an unmarried woman Core , i. e. Proserpine; but a bride, Nympha ; the woman who has brought forth children, Mater ; and a grandmother, according to the Doric dialect, Maia . In conformity to which also, the oracles in Dodona and at Delphi, are unfolded in to light through a woman. But through this praise pertaining to piety, Pythagoras is said to have produced so great a change in female attire, that the women no longer dared to clothe themselves with costly garments, but consecrated many myriads of their vestments in the temple of Juno. The effect also of this discourse is said to have been such, that about the region of the Crotonians the fidelity of the husband to the wife was universally celebrated; [imitating in this respect] Ulysses, who would not receive immortality from Calypso, on condition that he should abandon Penelope.

Pythagoras therefore also observed, that it remained for the women to exhibit their probity to their husbands, in order that they might be equally celebrated with Ulysses. In short, it is recorded that through the above-mentioned discourses, Pythagoras obtained no moderate honor and esteem, both in the city of the Crotonians and throughout Italy.

Before Adam of light withdrew in the chaos, the authorities saw him. They laughed at the chief creator because he lied, saying, “I am god and there is no other god but me.” When they came to him, they said, “Is this not the god who ruined our work?” He answered and said, “Yes, but if you wish that he not be able to ruin our work, come, let’s create a human being from the earth according to the image of our body and according to the likeness of this being, to serve us, so that whenever this being sees his likeness, he may become enamored of it. Then he will no longer ruin our work, but we shall make those who are born from the light our servants through all the time of this age.” Now, all this came to pass according to the forethought of Pistis in order that humankind might appear after this likeness and condemn them on account of their fashioned bodies. And their fashioned bodies became fences for the light. Then the authorities received knowledge necessary to create people. Sophia Zoe, who is with Sabaoth, anticipated them and laughed at their decision because they were blind—in ignorance they created him against themselves. They do not know what they do. Because of this she anticipated them. She created her human being first in order that he might tell their fashioned body how to scorn them and thus to escape them. Now, the birth of the instructor occurred in this way. When Sophia let a drop of light fall, it floated on the water. Immediately a human being appeared, being androgynous. She molded that drop first as a female body. Afterward she molded it, with the body, in the likeness of the mother who appeared, and she finished it in twelve months. An androgynous human being was conceived, whom the Greeks call Hermaphrodite, while the Jews call his mother Eve of life, that is, the instructor of life. Her child is the creature who is lord. Afterward, the authorities called it the beast in order to lead their fashioned bodies astray. The meaning of the beast is the instructor, for it was found to be wiser than all beings. Moreover, Eve is the first virgin who gave birth without a man. She is the one who functioned as her own midwife.