Editing Gnostic Text/The Reality of the Rulers (section)

==The Creation of Eve==

The rulers consulted with each other and said, “Come, let us make a deep sleep fall over Adam.” And he slept. Now this deep sleep was a lack of gnosis. They cut his side open and extracted from it a living woman, his spirit. Then they patched him up with flesh where she had been, and in place of a spirit he had only a mind.

The spiritual woman came to him and told him, “Arise, Adam.” When he opened his eyes and saw her, he said, “I am alive because of you, so I name you ‘Mother of the Living.’ You are my mother and my midwife, the woman through whom I was born.”

The rulers approached Adam and saw him talking to his partner. They became greatly agitated with lust for her, and they said, “Come, let us mate with her.” They ran after her as she laughed at them for their stupidity and blindness. When they caught her, she transformed into the tree of life, leaving behind only a shadow that looked like her physical form. The rulers befouled the shadow. By defiling the body they had molded in their own image, they condemned themselves.