Aeon
（
αἰών). A term occurring frequently in the philosophical
speculations of the Gnostics, who conceived the emanations from Deity to be divided into two
classes: the one comprehending all those substantial powers which are contained within the
Divine Essence, and which completes the infinite plenitude of the Divine Nature; the other,
existing externally with respect to the Divine Essence, and including all finite and imperfect
natures. Within the Divine Essence, they, with wonderful ingenuity, imagined a long series of
emanative principles, to which they ascribed a real and substantial existence, connected with
the first substance as a branch with its root, or a solar ray with the sun. When they began to
unfold the mysteries of this system in the Greek language, these Substantial Powers, which
they conceived to be comprehended within the
πλήρωμα, or
Divine Plenitude, they called
αἴωνες, aeons. See
Gnostici.
