LITERATURE OF GNOSTIC WISDOM 155The mother of them all is matter.
The one who is lord over heat is Phloxopha,
the one who is lord over cold is Oroorrothos,
the one who is lord over what is dry is Erimacho,
the one who is lord over wetness is Athuro.
The mother of all these, Onorthochras, stands in the midst of them, for
she is unlimited and mingles with them all. She is matter, and by her they are
nourished.
The four principal demons are:
Ephememphi, the demon of pleasure,
Yoko, the demon of desire,
Nenentophni, the demon of grief,
Blaomen, the demon of fear.
The mother of them all is Esthesis-Ouch-Epi-Ptoe.^59
From the four demons have come passions:
From grief come jealousy, envy, pain, trouble, distress, hardheartedness,
anxiety, sorrow, and others.
From pleasure comes an abundance of evil, vain conceit, and the like.
From desire come anger, wrath, bitterness, intense lust, greed, and the like.
From fear come terror, servility, anguish, and shame.
All these are like virtues and vices. The insight into their true nature is Anaro,
who is head of the material soul, and it dwells with Esthesis-Z-Ouch-Epi-Ptoe.^60
This is the number of angels. In all they number 365.^61 They all worked
together until, limb by limb, the psychical and material body was completed.
Now, there are others over the remaining passions, and I have not told you
about them. If you want to know about them, the information is recorded in
the Book of Zoroaster.^62
- "Sense-perception is not in an excited state" (from Greek), a philosophical saying (see Lay-
ton, Gnostic Scriptures, p. 43, who calls the saying "Stoic ethical jargon"). - "The seven senses [?] are not in an excited state" (from Greek), another version of the
philosophical saying cited in the preceding note. - The angels assembling the psychical body parts correspond to the days in the solar year, as
above. - The precise identification of the Book of Zoroaster remains uncertain, but the title calls to
mind a text from the Nag Hammadi library, Zostrianos, or else Porphyry's Life of Plotinos 16,
where Porphyry refers to other texts written under the name of Zoroaster, including a book of
Zoroaster.