Against Heresies: Book II
Chapter 16: The Creator of the world either self-generated the images of things to be created, or the fullness of the universe was shaped after the image of some previous system; and so on indefinitely
If they do not agree with any of these conclusions, they must admit that their Pleroma was modeled after some other system, more spiritual and powerful than itself. If the Demiurge did not create the figure of the existing creation on his own but based it on forms from above, then from whom did their Bythus—who ensured the Pleroma had such a configuration—receive the form of those things that existed before himself? It must be that either the intention to create was in the god who made the world, allowing him to derive the model of its formation from himself, or if departing from this, one must continually question where the configuration of what has been made originates from and what is the number and substance of the model. If Bythus could impart such a configuration to the Pleroma on his own, then why couldn't the Demiurge independently create the world that exists? Moreover, if creation is an image of those things above, why shouldn't we claim that those, in turn, are images of others above them, and those above also images of others, continuing indefinitely with images of images?
This difficulty arose for Basilides after he completely missed the truth, and thought that by an endless series of beings formed from one another, he might avoid such confusion. When he claimed that three hundred and sixty-five heavens were created through succession and similarity by one another, and that clear evidence of these was found in the number of days in a year, as I mentioned before; and that above these there was a power they also call Unnameable, and its arrangement—he still did not escape such confusion. For, when asked where the image of its structure came from for that heaven above all others, from which he believes the rest were formed through succession, he will say, from that arrangement belonging to the Unnameable. He must then say either that the Unspeakable formed it from himself, or he will need to admit that there is some other power above this being, from whom his Unnameable One received such vast numbers of structures as do, according to him, exist.
3. How much safer and more accurate it is, then, to immediately acknowledge the truth: that this God, the Creator, who formed the world, is the only God, and that there is no other God besides Him—He Himself using His own model and design for the things that have been made—rather than to exhaust ourselves with such an impious and roundabout explanation, only to eventually have to focus on one Being and admit that from Him came the design of created things.
Concerning the accusation made against us by the followers of Valentinus, who claim that we remain in the lower Hebdomad and cannot elevate our minds to understand higher things because we reject their bizarre beliefs: the followers of Basilides levy the same charge against them, arguing that they (the Valentinians) are entangled in lower matters, reaching only the first and second Ogdoad. They mistakenly believe that, immediately after the thirty Æons, they have discovered Him who is above all things, the Father, without extending their thoughts to the Pleroma beyond the three hundred and sixty-five heavens, which is above forty-five Ogdoads. Furthermore, anyone might accuse them similarly by imagining four thousand three hundred and eighty heavens or Æons, as this aligns with the number of hours in a year. If someone further includes the nights, thus doubling the hours mentioned and imagining a vast multitude of Ogdoads and an innumerable host of Æons, and thereby believing he has surpassed all others in perfection in opposition to Him who is above all things, the Father, he will levy the same charge against everyone else. According to this view, they are either lacking and remain among lower things or stay in an intermediate space, unable to grasp such a multitude of heavens or Æons.