Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Excerpt: ...of the human race; but did not suffer with Him; and the disciples of Basilides taught that the Greek: ¿¿¿¿, put on the appearance only of humanity, and that Simon of Cyrene was crucified in His stead and ascended into Heaven. Basilides held that out of the unrevealed God, who is at the head of the world of emanations, and exalted above all conception or designation Greek: ¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿, ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿, were evolved seven living, self-subsistent, ever-active hyposatized powers: FIRST: THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 1st. NOUS Greek: ¿¿¿¿ The Mind. 2d. LOGOS Greek: ¿¿¿¿¿ The Reason. 3d. Phronesis Greek: ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ The Thinking Power. 4th. Sophia Greek: ¿¿¿¿¿ Wisdom. SECOND: THE ACTIVE OR OPERATIVE POWER. 5th. Dunamis Greek: ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ Might, accomplishing the purposes of Wisdom. THIRD: THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES. 6th. Dikaiosun¿ Greek: ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ Holiness or Moral Perfection. 7th. Eir¿n¿ Greek: ¿¿¿¿¿¿ Inward Tranquility. These Seven Powers (Greek: ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿. Dunameis), with the Primal Ground out of which they were evolved, constituted in his scheme the Greek: ¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿Prote Ogdoas, or First Octave, the root of all Existence. From this point, the spiritual life proceeded to evolve out of itself continually many gradations of existence, each lower one being still the impression, the antetype, of the immediate higher one. He supposed there were 365 of these regions or gradations, expressed by the mystical word Greek: ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ Abraxas. The Greek: ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ is thus interpreted, by the usual method of reckoning Greek letters numerically¿. Greek: ¿,1.¿,2.¿,100.a,l.¿ 60.Greek: ¿,l.¿, 200==365: which is the whole Emanation-World, as the development of the Supreme Being. In the system of Basilides, Light, Life, Soul, and Good were opposed to Darkness, Death, Matter, and Evil, throughout the whole course of the Universe. According to the Gnostic view, God was represented as...