“Ophis is but the successor of the Egyptian Chnupis, the Good Serpent with a lion’s radiating head, and was held from days of the highest antiquity as an emblem of wisdom, or Thauth, the instructor and Saviour of humanity, the “Son of God”. “Oh men, live soberly…win your immortality” exclaims Hermes, the thrice-great Trismegistus. “Instructor and guide of humanity, I will lead you on to salvation.” Thus the oldest sectarians regarded Ophis, the Agathodaemon, as identical with Christos; the serpent being the emblem of celestial wisdom and eternity, and, in the present case, the antitype of the Egyptian Chnupis-serpent.
These Gnostics, the earliest of our Christian era held “That the supreme Aeon, having emitted other Aeons out of himself, one of them, a female, Prunnikos, (concupiscence), descended into the chaos, whence, unable to escape, she remained suspended in the mid-space, being too clogged by matter to return above, and not falling lower where there was nothing in affinity with her nature. She then produced her son Ilda-Baoth, the God of the Jews, who, in his turn, produced seven Aeons, or angels, who created the seven heavens.”
In this plurality of heavens, the Christians believed from the first, for we find Paul teaching of their existence, and speaking of a man “caught up to the third heaven”, (2 Corinthians 12:2). From these seven angels Ilda-Baoth shut up all that was above him, lest they should know of anything superior to himself.
They then created man in the image of their Father, but prone and crawling on the earth like a worm. But the heavenly mother, Prunnikos, wishing to deprive Ilda-Baoth of the power with which she had unwittingly endowed him, infused into man a celestial spark – the spirit. Immediately man rose upon his feet, soared in mind beyond the limits of the seven spheres, and glorified the Supreme Father, Him that is above Ilda-Baoth. Hence, the latter, full of jealousy, cast down his eyes upon the lowest stratum of matter, and begot a potency in the form of a serpent, whom they, (the Ophites), call his son. Eve, obeying him as the son of God, was persuaded to eat of the Tree of Knowledge.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 