The Nature of Emanation

1. The emanation of the Totalities, who exist from the existent one, did not take place by being separated from each other, like [something] discarded by the one who gives birth to them.

2. Instead, their begetting resembles an act of extension, just as the Father extends himself to the ones he loves, so that [those] who have originated from him could also become him.

3. Although a unity, the current age is divided into units of time, which in turn are divided into years, which in their turn are divided into seasons, and (then) seasons into months, and months into days, and days into hours, and hours into minutes.

4. Even so, the age of truth, because it is one and many, is honored with the insignificant and important names as each can grasp it.

5. To use an analogy, this is like a spring that, although being what it is, it nevertheless flows, growing into streams and lakes and canals and branches.

6. Or, it is like a root that spreads out beneath trees, and branches with their fruit, or like a human body, divided in an inseparable manner into various branching limbs, primary and secondary limbs, great and small.

7. The aeons brought forth themselves in agreement with the third fruit by free will and by the understanding he gave them for thought.

8. It is not their desire to give glory [together with] what the separate Fullnesses brought forth in unison as words of [praise].

9. Neither is it their desire to give glory together with the entire Totality, nor do they desire to glorify together with any individual aeon who reached a higher place or state than his own, except he obtain [what] was desired from the one with a more exalted name and a higher place.

10. They receive each other at the higher place, and the one who wanted to go higher begets himself, in a manner of speaking, begetting himself together with the other one and with what he is, being renewed together with the one who came to him from his brother, and beholding him and entreating him about the matter.

11. So that this transpires in this way, the one who desired to give glory says nothing to him about it except this, because a limit for speech is set down in the Fullness, so that they remain silent about the ungraspability of the Father, yet permitting them to speak about their desire to grasp him.