and beliefs, noting that both systems have a common goal of attaining primordial spiritual unity through erotic bliss and the consumption of menses and semen. In a third passage (91 f.), enumerating the Archons said to have their seat in each heaven, Epiphanius mentions as the inhabitants of the eighth or highest heaven "her who is called Barbēlō", and the self-gendered Father and Lord of all things, and the virgin-born (αὐτολόχευτον) Christ (evidently as her son, for according to Irenaeus her first progeny, "the Light", was called Christ); and similarly he tells how the ascent of souls through the different heavens terminated in the upper region, "where Barbēro or Barbēlō is, the Mother of the Living" (). Theodoret (H. F. f. 13) merely paraphrases Irenaeus, with a few words from Epiphanius. Jerome several times includes Barbēlō in lists of portentous names current in Spanish heresy, that is, among Priscillianists; Balsamus and Leusibora being three times associated with it (Ep. 75 c. 3, p. 453 c. Vall.; c. Vigil. p. 393 A; in Esai. lxvi. 4 p. 361 c; in Amos iii. 9 p. 257 E). Babel Babel, in the book of "Baruch" of the Gnostic Justin, the name of the first of the twelve "maternal angels" born to Elohim and Edem (Hipp. Haer. v. 26, p. 151). She is identical with Aphrodite, and is enjoined by her mother to cause adulteries and desertions among men, in revenge for Edem's desertion by Elohim (p. 154). When Heracles is sent by Elohim as "a prophet of the uncircumcision" to overcome "the twelve evil angels of the creation," i. e. the maternal angels, Babel, now identical with Omphale, beguiles and enfeebles him (p. 156; x. 15, p. 323). She may possibly be the Baalti or female Baal of various Semitic nations, though the intrusive β is not easily explained. But it is on the whole possible to take Babel, "confusion" (Joseph. Ant. i. 4, § 3), as a form of Barbēlō, which may have the same meaning. The eclecticism of Justin would account for his deposition of Barbēlō from the first to the second place, where she is still above Hachamoth. Significance In Gnostic accounts of God, the notions of impenetrability, stasis and ineffability are of central importance. The emanation of Barbēlō may be said to function as an intermediary generative aspect of the Divine, or as an abstraction of the generative aspect