Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Valentinianism" in English language version.
For the genesis of Apollo from Isis and Osiris that took place while the Gods were still in the womb of Rhea, is an enigmatical way of stating that before this [sensible] cosmos became manifest, and Matter was perfected by Reason (Logos), Nature, proving herself imperfect, of herself brought forth her first birth. Wherefore also they say that that God was lame in the dark, and call him Elder Horus; for he was not cosmos, but a sort of image and phantasm of the world which was to be.
If Plutarch is not mistaken, Isis was the same with the self-existent Divine Wisdom ... Apollo, or the elder Horus, born of Isis while yet in the womb of her mother Rhea, allegorises the ancient difficulty of accounting for the origin of matter, otherwise than by making it co-ordinate with the ideal forms that it should eventually take. This part of the Egyptian myth must certainly have suggested the idea of the Valentinian Demiurge; as Isis did of Sophia or Achamoth; mutatis nominibus, the words of Plutarch very nearly express the Valentinian theory; τὸν Ὥρον, ὃν ἡ ῏Ισις εἰκόνα τοῦ νοητοῦ κόσμου αἰσθητὸν ὄντα γεννᾷ. Then again the terms in which Plutarch speaks of the functions of Isis, are suggestive of the Valentinian notion, where they are not Platonic. No doubt they may have received from him a deeper Platonic colouring, but it is impossible not to believe that the fundamental ideas of the Valentinian theory were received from the theosophy of ancient Egypt, when he says, "For Isis is the female principle of nature, the recipient of every Gnostic natural product, as the nurse and comprehensive principle (πανδεχής) in Plato. But by the many she is called the million-named, for moulded (τρεπομένη f. l. τυπουμένη) by reason she embraces all forms and ideas. And congenital with her is Love of the first and mightiest of all, which is one and the same with the Good; this she desires and follows after, but she avoids and repels all participation with Evil, being to both indeed as space and matter, but inclining always of her own accord to the better principle, occasioning in it the procreative impulse of inseminating her with emanations and types in which she rejoices and exults, as impregnated with produce. For produce is the material image of Substance, and the contingent is an imitation of that which IS."
— Harvey 1857, pp. 22-4
