soul. The Second Descent The speaker is a voice that appeared through thought and is one joined to another. The speaker is called the unchanging speech, the mother of the voice, and the thought of the invisible one. The speaker has come twice, once in the likeness of masculinity and the second time in the likeness of a female. The speaker reveals the coming end of this realm and the beginning of the eternal realm without change. The powers are disturbed by the voice of the speaker, but do not recognize it. The speaker is androgynous, both mother and father, and gives shape to all through bearing light. The speaker invites the listener into the high perfect light and offers to glorify, enthrone, and baptize them. The speaker also reveals that they have hidden in everyone and revealed themselves in them, and that they created breath and cast the eternally holy spirit into their people. The Third Descent The speaker is the word in the ineffable voice and light that came from the great speech of the mother. The speaker reveals its mysteries to the reader, who is considered a brother or sister. The speaker then came three times: once as the voice's speech, then as the word, and finally as light. The speaker delivered the reader to various entities, and the reader was given the five seals from the light of the mother. The speaker wore Jesus and took him from the cross to his father's house. The text ends with the speaker proclaiming the ineffable five seals (a Sethian baptismal rite) to live in the reader and for the reader to live in it. Similarities with other texts The content of the text is Sethian and, thus, shares beliefs with other Sethian Gnostic works, such as the Apocryphon of John, Zostrianos, Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit, and Three Steles of Seth. References Gnostic apocrypha Sethian texts Coptic literature Nag Hammadi library