The Aeons Seek the Father

1. The whole system of the aeons possesses a love and a yearning for the perfect, complete discovery of the Father, and this is their unrestrained unity.

2. Although the Father eternally reveals himself, it was not his desire that they know him (automatically), because he allows that he will be grasped in a mode of searching, reserving to himself his unsearchable primal essence.

3. The Father bestowed basic desires to the aeons, because they form places on the path that leads to him, as toward a school of training for behavior.

4. He has offered to them:

faith in him and prayer to the one they do not see, and a strong hope in the one they do not grasp, and a fruitful love that looks to what it does not see, and a worthy understanding of the eternal mind, and a blessing of wealth and freedom, and an understanding that longs to glorify the Father for [his] thought.

5. By his will the exalted Father is known, by the Spirit that breathes within the Totalities, even imparting to them an idea to search for the unknown one, as when a pleasant aroma makes someone search for the source of the aroma, because the aroma of the Father excels over these natural ones.

6. This is because his sweetness causes the aeons unspeakable pleasure, and it produces in them the idea of mixing with him who desires that they know him in a unified way, and to help each other in the Spirit that is planted within them.

7. Although a great weight bears down on them, they are renewed in an indescribable manner, because they cannot be separated from that in which they are placed in an ungrasping way, because they will not speak, remaining silent concerning the Father’s glory, concerning the one who can speak, and nevertheless from him they will acquire a form.

8. Although speech cannot describe him, he revealed [himself.]

9. They possess [him] concealed within a thought.

10. This is why the aeons remain silent about the way the Father subsists in his form and his essence and his greatness, whereas the aeons are worthy of knowing by his Spirit that he cannot be named nor comprehended.

11. It is by his spirit, the trace of seeking him, that he supplies them the capacity to grasp him and to speak of him.

12. Each aeon is a name, [that is], each is a quality and power of the Father, because he exists in several names, which are mixed together and in harmony with each other.

13. One can speak of him because of the riches of speech, just like the Father, though being a single name on account of his unity, possesses countless qualities and names.