Everything which we do not distinguish falleth into the pleroma and is made void by its opposite. If, therefore,
we do not distinguish god, effective fullness is for us extinguished. Moreover god is the pleroma itself, as
likewise each smallest point in the created and uncreated is pleroma itself. Effective void is the nature of the
devil. God and devil are the first manifestations of nothingness, which we call the pleroma. It is indifferent
whether the pleroma is or is not, since in everything it is balanced and void. Not so creatura. In so far as god
and devil are creatura they do not extinguish each other, but stand one against the other as effective opposites.
We need no proof of their existence. It is enough that we must always be speaking of them. Even if both were
not, creatura, of its own essential distinctiveness, would forever distinguish them anew out of the pleroma.
Everything that discrimination taketh out of the pleroma is a pair of opposites. To god, therefore, always
belongeth the devil. This inseparability is as close and, as your own life hath made you see, as indissoluble as
the pleroma itself. Thus it is that both stand very close to the pleroma, in which all opposites are extinguished
and joined.
God and devil are distinguished by the qualities of fullness and emptiness, generation and destruction.
EFFECTIVENESS is common to both. Effectiveness joineth them. Effectiveness, therefore, standeth above both;
is a god above god, since in its effect it uniteth fullness and emptiness. This is a god whom ye knew not, for
mankind forgot it. We name it by its name: ABRAXAS. It is more indefinite still than god and devil. That god
may be distinguished from it, we name the god HELIOS or sun. Abraxas is effect. Nothing standeth opposed to
it but the ineffective; hence its effective nature freely unfoldeth itself. The ineffective is not, therefore resisteth
not. Abraxas standeth above the sun and above the devil. It is improbable probability, unreal reality. Had the
pleroma a being, Abraxas would be its manifestation. It is the effective itself, nor any particular effect, but effect
in general.