Hidden Mother; She who knows the
Mysteries of the Elect; the Holy Dove, who has given birth to the two
Twins; Ennoia; and by many another name varying according to the
terminology of the different systems, but ever preserving the root idea
of the World-Soul in the Macrocosm and the Soul in Man.

Within every form, aye, even apparently the meanest, is Epinoia
confined; for everything within is innate with Life; every form contains
a spark of the Divine Fire, essentially of the same nature as the All;
for in the Roots, and also in all things--since all is built on their
type--is "the whole of the Boundless Power together _in potentiality_,
but not _in actuality_."

The reason given for this imprisonment of Sophia in most of the systems
is that she endeavoured to create without her Syzygy, the Father or
Nous, wishing to imitate alone the self-generating power of the Supreme.
Thus through ignorance she involved herself in suffering, from which she
was freed by repentance and experience. What explanation of this supreme
mystery was publicly ventured on by Simon we cannot know, for the
patristic accounts are confused and contradictory.

Irenaeus tells us that:

She was the first Conception (Epinoia) of his Mind, the Mother of
All, by whom in the beginning he conceived in his Mind, the making
of the Angels and Archangels.

This Epinoia, leaping forth from _him_ (the Boundless Power), and
knowing what was the will of her Father, descended to the Lower
Regions and generated the Angels and Powers, by whom also he said
the world was made. And after she had generated them, she was
detained by them through envy, for they did not wish to be thought
the progeny of another. As for himself he was entirely unknown by
them; and it was his Thought (Epinoia) that was made prisoner by
the Powers and Angels that had been emanated by her. And she
suffered every kind of indignity at their hands to prevent her
reaescending to her Father, even to being imprisoned in the human
body and transmigrating into other female bodies, as from one
vessel into another.

Tertullian's account differs by the important addition that the "design
of the Father was prevented"; how or why he does not say.

She was his first Suggestion whereby he suggested the making of the
Angels and Archangels; that she sharing in this design had sprung
forth from the Father, and leap