Select Works, Section 168 (part 2)

Divine archetypal beings or eternal attributes dwelling within the Pleroma, often arranged in male-female syzygies.

The 'greater powers contained in the total of existence' alludes to the divine archetypes or aeons.

The material body viewed as a prison, tomb, or source of error that hinders spiritual knowledge and return.

Matter is contrasted with the Soul, producing images rather than reality, implying its inferiority.

A secondary creator deity—often ignorant or malevolent—responsible for fashioning the material world, distinct from the supreme transcendent God.

The passage mentions 'creators' and the creation of the world plan, though it questions their decline.

The doctrine that God has no parts, divisions, or composite attributes; pure undivided being.

The argument that the Soul keeps to its own place without movement implies an unchanging, simple nature.

The Gnostic myth of Wisdom's prolapse from the Pleroma — her unilateral desire or error producing the Demiurge and the entrapment of divine sparks in matter.

The text argues against the myth of the Soul's decline and creation born from arrogance, which parallels the Sophia myth.

The void or emptiness outside the pleroma; the realm of matter, ignorance, and deficiency.

The 'lower realm' and 'darkness' represent the void or deficient matter outside the divine source.

The divine fullness or totality of the highest realm, populated by aeons and divine attributes, contrasted with the deficient material world.

References to 'greater powers' and the 'Far Country' imply the divine fullness of the Gnostic Pleroma.

The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.

The passage debates whether the Soul has actually declined or separated from its place to illuminate the lower.

Division of the human being into three principles: spirit (pneuma), soul (psyche), and body/matter (hyle or soma).

The text explicitly distinguishes between the reasoning Soul and the vegetative and generative Soul as distinct forms.

Ontological opposition between two primal principles (light/darkness, truth/lie, spirit/matter) as the fundamental structure of reality.

[auto] There is a clear distinction made between the illuminating Soul and the darkness or matter of the lower realm.

The uncreated luminous quality of the divine, sometimes experienced directly in mystical states; illumination as revelation.

[auto] The passage centrally employs metaphors of light, illumination, and outflow to describe the Soul's relationship with the lower realm.

A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.

[auto] It describes an outflow from higher powers to a lower realm, establishing a hierarchy of existence.

The divine reason, word, or ordering principle through which the universe was created; mediates between the transcendent God and the material world.

[auto] The text references the 'plan of a Universe' as an ordering principle that illuminates and creates the world.