Middle Region
Next, after the region of the right, comes that of the middle (the topos meson), the spirits of which are specially entrusted with the guardianship of human souls. Among them the fourth book names (besides the Zarazaz or Maskelli, which probably belongs here,) the great Iao the Good, and the little Sabaoth the Good, to which the first book adds the little Iao. In this place of the midst the light-maiden (parthenos lucis) has her seat, and is the judge of souls, who either discloses for them the gates of the light-realm, or sends them back into earthly existence.
Under her are placed (according to the text of the later description) seven other light-maidens with their fifteen helpers (parastatai). In the topos Parthenou sun and moon also have their seats (the diskos solis and the diskos lunae), and thence transmit their light, obscured indeed by many veils (katapetasmata), into the lower realms of creation. The diskos solis is described in the fourth book as a great dragon carrying his tail in his mouth, and drawn by four great powers in the form of four white horses. The basis of the moon has the form of a ship drawn by two white cattle and steered from the stern by a boy; a male and a female dragon forming the rudder.
Read more about this topic: Pistis Sophia
Famous quotes containing the words middle and/or region:
“Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“It was the most wild and desolate region we had camped in, where, if anywhere, one might expect to meet with befitting inhabitants, but I heard only the squeak of a nighthawk flitting over. The moon in her first quarter, in the fore part of the night, setting over the bare rocky hills garnished with tall, charred, and hollow stumps or shells of trees, served to reveal the desolation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)