Gnostic Diagrams of the Cosmos & Glossary of Gnostic Terms
Gnostic Glossary:
* The All/The One - Pleroma:
Greek, meaning "The Fullness" or "Perfection".
The totality of Divine powers. The Divine Principal. The Good God.
The one who is incomparable and incomprehensible.
The Pleroma is the totality of beings in the Upper Aeons.
* Aeons:
Emanations of the All. In the various systems these emanations are differently named, classified and described, but the emanation theory itself is common to all forms of Gnosticism. They are described as existing in layers (like an onion) between human beings and The All.
The Upper Aeons emanated outward from The All/The One, which lies at the centre as their Source (also 'Root').
The Lower Aeons IMITATE the Upper Aeons and have the Demiurge Yaldabaoth as their Source.
* The Lower Aeons:
Also called the "Deficiency" and "Imperfection". Through the power which Yaldabaoth took from his mother Sophia, he created the lower Aeons.
"A veil exists between the world above and the realms that are below; and shadow came into being beneath the veil; and that shadow became matter; and the shadow was projected apart..."
From: Hypostasis of the Archons.
* Sophia:
Greek for "Wisdom". One of the (lesser) Aeons formed out of the mind of The All. Sophia created Yaldabaoth, the 'Demiurge', when she tried to 'emanate' without her counterpart (Christ).
* The Demiurge:
The child of Sophia and the one who formed this material universe. The god also described in the Old Testament who said in Exodus: "For I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God..."
The "half-maker". He is the spiritual being who had become forgetful of his origins, even of the Ultimate God. He thinks that he is the totality and that there is no God before him.
* The Archons
Servants of the Demiurge. False rulers. Demons. The rulers of the Lower Aeons.
The lures and distractions of this material world. Created by the chief Archon Yaldabaoth, the 'Demiurge'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0bNpmA_0Yw