intimacy with her; and when he was involved in bursting disgrace
because of his mistress, he started a fabulous kind of
psychopompy[44] for his disciples, and saying, forsooth, that he
was the Great Power of God, he ventured to call his prostitute
companion the Holy Spirit, and he says that it was on her account
he descended. "And in each heaven I changed my form," he says, "in
order that I might not be perceived by my Angelic Powers, and
descend to my Thought, which is she who is called Prunîcus[45] and
Holy Spirit, through whom I brought into being the Angels, and the
Angels brought into being the world and men." (He claimed) that
this was the Helen of old, on whose account the Trojans and Greeks
went to war. And he related a myth with regard to these matters,
that this Power descending from above changed its form, and that it
was about this that the poets spake allegorically. And through this
Power from above--which they call Prunîcus, and which is called by
other sects Barbero or Barbelo--displaying her beauty, she drove
them to frenzy, and on this account was she sent for the despoiling
of the Rulers who brought the world into being; and the Angels
themselves went to war on her account; and while she experienced
nothing, they set to work to mutually slaughter each other on
account of the desire which she infused into them for herself. And
constraining her so that she could not reäscend, each had
intercourse with her in every body of womanly and female
constitution--she reïncarnating from female bodies into different
bodies, both of the human kingdom, and of beasts and other
things--in order that by means of their slaying and being slain,
they might bring about a diminution of themselves through the
shedding of blood, and that then she by collecting again the Power
would be enabled to reäscend into heaven.