Hylical

Gnosticism reveals the same conception of a triple order of humanity... Upon this psychological basis, Valentinus seeks to outline a philosophy of history in which Pagans assume the lowest position of hylical men, Jews the next rank of the psychical, while the highest order of the πνευματικοί (pneumatikoí) is reserved for those who, redeemed from the flesh and the low, have become Christians.

The opposition between spirit and soul is due to the latter having a very fine substance. It is more akin to the "hylical" body and is densior et crassior (denser and grosser) than the spirit.

So it is manifeſt that the Heretical Valentinians underſtood their Maſter Plato, when they made their Choical Men to periſh immediately upon this Diſſolution from the Body. Theſe Choical Men were ſuppoſed deſtitute even of the Pnoe. They are the ſame with thoſe which were call'd Hylical.

This tripartite division of the cosmos is useful starting point, inasmuch as it indicates the manner in which although much gnostic ontology is dualistic in its outward form, it is invariably grounded in a notion of space, time and consciousness as divided into three incommensurable realms, which find expression at various levels of the system through a series of bifurcations and tertiary emanations, from the initial series of androgynous aeons prior to the dissolution of the pleroma, to the sub- or post-pleromatic and mimetically androgynous or sexually paired archons, each assigned a specific dominion within the hylical cosmos with its conceptual, plasmatic and material territories, as well as their attendant agents of administration, negotiation and communication: thrones, principalities, powers, virtues, intelligences, and of course, common-or-garden spirits, angels and demons.