Quoted By:
>The figure which is most frequently found on these stones is that which has given its name to this entire class. The god Abraxas, or, as it reads on the gems, ΑΒΡΑΣΑΞ, the letters of which, taken numerically, according to the Greek alphabet, give, when summed up, the number 365 (A=1, B=2, P=100, Α=1, Σ=200, A=1, Ξ=60), being the number of days in the sun's annual course. He is supposed to be the sun god, or the supreme deity, whose physical representative the sun is. He is figured with the head of a cock, sacred to the sun, with a human body, clad in a cuirass, terminating in serpents instead of legs
>By the side of the god, besides the word Abraxas, is also engraved the name Iao, which would seem, as well as the names Adonai, Sabaoth, frequently engraved on these gems, to be other titles of the sun god. Abraxas, the supreme deity or good spirit, and Seth, or the god of evil, are the representatives of the two antagonistic principles in nature, according to the Gnostic doctrines. In the Gnostic creed, the author of evil was regarded as the creator of the world, and was considered as the being with whom men have chiefly to do, either in this world or in the next. According to the Gnostic view, matter was essentially evil, consequently the supreme deity, or author of good, could not be its author
>Whence the famous talisman or charm "Abracadabra" has been derived
>The grafito found in a room of the Palatine Hill, evidently a προσκυνημα, οr aet of worship, by some Gnostic Christian, represents the crucified Seth, the father of Judæus and Palestinus, the ass god of the Semitic tribes, for, as Mr. Sharpe observes, the creator of the world, the author of evil, in the Gnostic creed, was looked upon by the Gnostics as the god of the Jews, and the author of the Mosaic law
