Aeon In Gnosticism, the Aeon is a celestial power of a high order. It is a term used to designate the 1st created being or beings, with Abraxix as head; also, as an emanation of God, to be compared with the sefira.)
Since creation there have been, according to Basilides, 365 Aeons (other sources give 8, 12, 24, & 30), chief among them, apart from Abraxis, being the female personification of wisdom (Pistis Sophia) and the male personification of power (Dynamis).
Prior to the 6th century and the Dionysian hierachic system, the aeons were counted among the 10 angelic orders; they were personalized by the 3rd-century Hippolytus thus: Bythios, Mixis, Ageratos, Henosis, Autophyes, Hedone, Akinetos, Nonogenes, and Macaria. As far back as the 1st & 2nd centuries C.E., Ignatuius Theophorus, in his "Epistles to the Trallians", spoke of the "mightiness of the Aeons, the diversity between thrones and authorities, the pre-eminence of the Seraphim." "The Aeons," says W. R. Newbold in "Descent of Christ in the Odes of Solomon" ("Journal of Biblical Literature", Dec 1912), "are the hypostatized thoughts of God, " emanated in pairs, male and female, and, "taken together form the pleroma or fullness of God."
There is a myth of a proud Aeon, (probably Abraxis), who mirrored himself on chaos and become Lord of the world. Early in life, George William Russell, the Irish poet and mystic, decided to sign his writings, "Aeon." A proofreader, who could not decipher the word, queried "AE"? Russell adopted the initials and thereafter never wrote under his own name. [Rf. King, "The Gnostics and Their Remains; Mead, "Fragments of a Faith Forgotten"; George William Russell (AE), "The Candle of Vision"]
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