It was known, and stated, very early that the man Jesus, the son of Mary, was the principium individuationis. Thus Basilides is reported by Hippolytus as saying:
''Now Jesus became the first sacrifice in the discrimination of the natures, and the Passion came to pass for no other reason than the discrimination of composite things.
For in this manner, he says, the sonship that had been left behind in a formless state [anopsia] . . , needed separating into its components, in the same way that Jesus was separated."
According to the rather complicated teachings of Basilides, the "non-existent" God begot a threefold sonship.
The first "son," whose nature was the finest and most subtle, remained up above with the Father.
The second son, having a grosser (iraxv^pio-Tepa) nature, descended a bit lower, but received "some such wins: as that with which Plato . . . equips the soul in his Phaedrus."
The third son, as his nature needed purifying, fell deep est into "formlessness."
This third "sonship" is obviously the grossest and heaviest because of its impurity.
In these three emanations or manifestations of the non-existent God it is not hard to see the trichotomy of spirit, soul, and body.
Spirit is the finest and highest; soul, as the ligamentum spiritus et corporis, is grosser than spirit, but has "the wings of an eagle," so that it may lift its heaviness up to the higher regions.
Both are of a "subtle" nature and dwell, like the ether and the eagle, in or near the region of light, whereas the body, being heavy, dark, and impure, is deprived of the light but nevertheless contains the divine seed of the third sonship, though still unconscious and formless.
This seed is as it were awakened by Jesus, purified and made capable of ascension by virtue of the fact that the opposites were separated in Jesus through the Passion (i.e., through his division into four).
Jesus is thus the prototype for the awakening of the third sonship slumbering in the darkness of humanity.
He is the "spiritual inner man."
He is also a complete trichotomy in himself, for Jesus the son of Mary represents the incarnate man, but his immediate predecessor is the second Christ, the son of the highest archon of the hebdomad, and his first prefiguration is Christ the son of the highest archon of the ogdoad, the demiurge Yahweh.
This trichotomy of Anthropos figures corresponds exactly to the three sonships of the non-existing God and to the division of human nature into three parts.
We have therefore three trichotomies:
First sonship Christ of the Ogdoad Spirit
Second sonship Christ of the Hebdomad Soul
Third sonship Jesus the Son of Mary Body ~Carl Jung, Aion, Para 118
