by G.R.S. Mead

A scholarly compilation of every major ancient source concerning Simon Magus — the Samaritan wonder-worker mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, whom the Church Fathers named the founder of all heresy. Published in 1892, this essay by G.R.S. Mead (1863–1933) gathers the verbatim testimony of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, Origen, Epiphanius, and others, alongside the elaborate legends of the Clementine literature, into a single dossier of the Simonian tradition.

The most remarkable material is preserved in the Hippolytus section, which contains direct quotations from Simon's own "Great Revelation" — a cosmological treatise describing a Boundless Power called Fire, from which six Roots (Mind and Thought, Voice and Name, Reason and Reflection) emanate in pairs. Simon taught that this Fire was "He who has stood, stands and will stand," and that every human being contained this Power in potentiality, awaiting the perfection of its imaging. The system is sophisticated proto-Gnostic philosophy, far removed from the caricature of a mere sorcerer that orthodox tradition preferred.

This text represents Part I of Mead's essay — the marshalling of primary sources. The analytical sections ("A Review of Authorities" and "The Theosophy of Simon") were not included in the web-scraped source. What survives here is nonetheless invaluable: the ancient testimony itself, in Mead's careful translations, gathered from scattered patristic works into a single readable collection.

Everybody in Christendom has heard of Simon, the magician, and how Peter, the apostle, rebuked him, as told in the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles. Many also have heard the legend of how at Rome this wicked sorcerer endeavoured to fly by aid of the demons, and how Peter caused him to fall headlong and thus miserably perish. And so most think that there is an end of the matter, and either cast their mite of pity or contempt at the memory of Simon, or laugh at the whole matter as the invention of superstition or the imagination of religious fanaticism, according as their respective beliefs may be in orthodoxy or materialism. This for the general.

Students of theology and church history, on the other hand, have had a more difficult task set them in comparing and arranging the materials they have at their disposal, as found in the patristic writings and legendary records; and various theories have been put forward, not the least astonishing being the supposition that Simon was an alias for Paul, and that the Simon and Peter in the accounts of the fathers and in the narrative of the legends were simply concrete symbols to represent the two sides of the Pauline and Petrine controversies.

The first reason why I have ventured on this present enquiry is that Simon Magus is invariably mentioned by the heresiologists as the founder of the first heresy of the commonly-accepted Christian era, and is believed by them to have been the originator of those systems of religio-philosophy and theosophy which are now somewhat inaccurately classed together under the heading of Gnosticism. And though this assumption of the patristic heresiologists is entirely incorrect, as may be proved from their own works, it is nevertheless true that Simonianism is the first system that, as far as our present records go, came into conflict with what has been regarded as the orthodox stream of Christianity.

A second reason is that I believe that Simon has been grossly misrepresented, and entirely misunderstood, by his orthodox opponents, whoever they were, in the first place, and also, in the second place, by those who have ignorantly and without enquiry copied from them. But my chief reason is that the present revival of theosophical enquiry throws a flood of light on Simon's teachings, whenever we can get anything approaching a first-hand statement of them, and shows that it was identical in its fundamentals with the Esoteric Philosophy of all the great religions of the world.

In this enquiry, I shall have to be slightly wearisome to some of my readers, for instead of giving a selection or even a paraphrase of the notices on Simon which we have from authenticated patristic sources, I shall furnish verbatim translations, and present a digest only of the unauthenticated legends. The growth of the Simonian legend must unfold itself before the reader in its native form as it comes from the pens of those who have constructed it. Repetitions will, therefore, be unavoidable in the marshalling of authorities, but they will be shown to be not without interest in the subsequent treatment of the subject, and at any rate we shall at least be on the sure ground of having before us all that has been said on the matter by the Church fathers.

Having cited these authorities, I shall attempt to submit them to a critical examination, and so eliminate all accretions, hearsay and controversial opinions, and thus sift out what reliable residue is possible. Finally, my task will be to show that Simon taught a system of Theosophy, which instead of deserving our condemnation should rather excite our admiration, and that, instead of being a common impostor and impious perverter of public morality, his method was in many respects of the same nature as the methods of the theosophical movement of to-day, and deserves the study and consideration of all students of Theosophy.

This essay will, therefore, be divided into the following parts: Sources of Information; A Review of Authorities; The Theosophy of Simon.

Sources of Information

Our sources of information fall under three heads: the Simon of the New Testament; the Simon of the Fathers; and the Simon of the Legends.

The Simon of the New Testament

The sole New Testament reference is Acts 8:9–24, from a text whose author and date are unknown. It is commonly supposed to be by the author of the third gospel, traditionally known as Luke, not quoted prior to 177 CE, with the earliest manuscript not older than the sixth century, though some contend for the third.

And the apostles in Jerusalem hearing that Samaria had received the Word of God, sent Peter and John to them. And they went down and prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit. For as yet it had not fallen upon any of them, but they had only been baptized unto the Name of the Lord Jesus.

Then they laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. And when Simon saw that the Holy Spirit was given by the laying on of the hands of the apostles, he offered them money, saying: "Give unto me also this power, in order that on whomsoever I lay my hands he may receive the Holy Spirit."

But Peter said unto him: "Thy silver perish with thee, in that thou didst think that the gift of God is possessed with money. There is not for thee part or lot in this Word, for thy heart is not right before God. Therefore turn from this evil of thine, and pray the Lord, if by chance the thought of thy heart shall be forgiven thee. For I see that thou art in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity."

And Simon answered and said: "Pray ye on my behalf to the Lord, that none of the things that ye have said may come upon me."

The Simon of the Fathers

Justin Martyr

And since the magician still refused to believe in God, he ambitiously strove to contend against the apostles, so that he also might be thought of great renown, by extending his investigations into universal magic still farther, so much so that he is said to have been honoured with a statue for his magic knowledge by Claudius Caesar.

He, therefore, was glorified by many as a god; and he taught that it was he himself who, forsooth, appeared among the Jews as the Son, while in Samaria he descended as the Father, and in the rest of the nations he came as the Holy Spirit. That he was the highest power, to wit, the Father over all, and that he allowed himself to be called by whatever name men pleased.

Irenaeus

Now the sect of the Samaritan Simon, from whom all the heresies took their origin, was composed of the following materials.

He took round with him a certain Helen, a hired prostitute from the Phoenician city Tyre, after he had purchased her freedom, saying that she was the first conception (or Thought) of his Mind, the Mother of All, by whom in the beginning he conceived in his Mind the making of the Angels and Archangels. That this Thought, leaping forth from him, and knowing what was the will of her Father, descended to the lower regions and generated the Angels and Powers, by whom also he said this world was made.

And after she had generated them, she was detained by them through envy, for they did not wish to be thought to be the progeny of any other. As for himself, he was entirely unknown by them; and it was his Thought that was made prisoner by the Powers and Angels that had been emanated by her. And she suffered every kind of indignity at their hands, to prevent her reascending to her Father, even to being imprisoned in the human body and transmigrating into other female bodies, as from one vessel into another.

She also was in that Helen, on whose account the Trojan War arose; wherefore also Stesichorus was deprived of his sight when he spake evil of her in his poems; and that afterwards when he repented and wrote what is called a recantation, in which he sang her praises, he recovered his sight. So she, transmigrating from body to body, and thereby also continually undergoing indignity, last of all even stood for hire in a brothel; and she was the "lost sheep."

Wherefore also he himself had come, to take her away for the first time, and free her from her bonds, and also to guarantee salvation to men by his "knowledge." For as the Angels were mismanaging the world, since each of them desired the sovereignty, he had come to set matters right; and that he had descended, transforming himself and being made like to the Powers and Principalities and Angels; so that he appeared to men as a man, although he was not a man; and was thought to have suffered in Judaea, although he did not really suffer.

The Prophets moreover had spoken their prophecies under the inspiration of the Angels who made the world; wherefore those who believed on him and his Helen paid no further attention to them, and followed their own pleasure as though free; for men were saved by his grace, and not by righteous works. For righteous actions are not according to nature, but from accident, in the manner that the Angels who made the world have laid it down, by such precepts enslaving men. Wherefore also he gave new promises that the world should be dissolved and that they who were his should be freed from the rule of those who made the world.

Wherefore their initiated priests live immorally. And everyone of them practises magic arts to the best of his ability. They use exorcisms and incantations. Love philtres also and spells and what are called "familiars" and "dream-senders," and the rest of the curious arts are assiduously cultivated by them. They have also an image of Simon made in the likeness of Jupiter, and of Helen in that of Minerva; and they worship the statues; and they have a designation from their most impiously minded founder, being called Simonians, from whom the Gnosis, falsely so-called, derives its origins, as one can learn from their own assertions.

Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian

In Clement's Stromateis, the Simonian use of the term "He who stood" is confirmed; we are also told that a branch of the Simonians was called Entychitae. In Tertullian's Prescriptions the passage is very short — the briefest notice possible, under the heading "Anonymi Catalogus Heresum."

Hippolytus

This Simon was skilled in magic, and deluding many, partly by the art of Thrasymedes, in the way we have explained above, and partly corrupting them by means of daemons, he endeavoured to deify himself — a sorcerer fellow and full of insanity, whom the apostles confuted in the Acts. Far more prudent and modest was the aim of Apsethus, the Libyan, who tried to get himself thought a god in Libya. And as the story of Apsethus is not very dissimilar to the ambition of the foolish Simon, it will not be unseemly to repeat it, for it is quite in keeping with Simon's endeavour.

Apsethus, the Libyan, wanted to become a god. But in spite of the greatest exertions he failed to realize his longing, and so he desired that at any rate people should think that he had become one; and, indeed, for a considerable time he really did get people to think that such was the case. For the foolish Libyans sacrificed to him as to some divine power, thinking that they were placing their confidence in a voice that came down from heaven. Well, he collected a large number of parrots and put them all into a cage. For there are a great many parrots in Libya and they mimic the human voice very distinctly. So he kept the birds for some time and taught them to say, "Apsethus is a god." And when, after a long time, the birds were trained and could speak the sentence which he considered would make him be thought to be a god, he opened the cage and let the parrots go in every direction. And the voice of the birds as they flew about went out into all Libya, and their words reached as far as the Greek settlements. And thus the Libyans, astonished at the voice of the birds, and having no idea of the trick which had been played them by Apsethus, considered him to be a god.

But one of the Greeks, correctly surmising the contrivance of the supposed god, not only confuted him by means of the self-same parrots, but also caused the total destruction of this boastful and vulgar fellow. For the Greek caught a number of the parrots and re-taught them to say "Apsethus caged us and made us say, 'Apsethus is a god.'" And when the Libyans heard the recantation of the parrots, they all assembled together of one accord and burnt Apsethus alive.

And in the same way we must regard Simon, the magician, more readily comparing him with the Libyan fellow's thus becoming a god. And if the comparison is a correct one, and the fate which the magician suffered was somewhat similar to that of Apsethus, let us endeavour to re-teach the parrots of Simon, that he was not Christ, who has stood, stands and will stand, but a man, the child of a woman, begotten of seed, from blood and carnal desire, like other men. And that this is the case, we shall easily demonstrate as our narrative proceeds.

Now Simon in his paraphrasing of the Law of Moses speaks with artful misunderstanding. For when Moses says "God is a fire burning and destroying," taking in an incorrect sense what Moses said, he declares that Fire is the Universal Principle, not understanding what was said, namely, not that "God is fire," but "a fire burning and destroying." And thus he not only tears to pieces the Law of Moses, but also plunders from Heracleitus the obscure. And Simon states that the Universal Principle is Boundless Power, as follows:

"This is the writing of the revelation of Voice and Name from Thought, the Great Power, the Boundless. Wherefore shall it be sealed, hidden, concealed, laid in the Dwelling of which the Universal Root is the foundation."

And he says that man here below, born of blood, is the Dwelling, and that the Boundless Power dwells in him, which he says is the Universal Root. And, according to Simon, the Boundless Power, Fire, is not a simple thing, as the majority who say that the four elements are simple have considered fire also to be simple, but that the Fire has a twofold nature; and of this twofold nature he calls the one side the concealed and the other the manifested, stating that the concealed parts of the Fire are hidden in the manifested, and the manifested produced by the concealed.

This is what Aristotle calls "in potentiality" and "in actuality," and Plato the "intelligible" and "sensible."

And the manifested side of the Fire has all things in itself which a man can perceive of things visible, or which he unconsciously fails to perceive. Whereas the concealed side is everything which one can conceive as intelligible, even though it escape sensation, or which a man fails to conceive.

And generally we may say, of all things that are, both sensible and intelligible, which he designates concealed and manifested, the Fire, which is above the heavens, is the treasure-house, as it were a great Tree, like that seen by Nabuchodonosor in vision, from which all flesh is nourished. And he considers the manifested side of the Fire to be the trunk, branches, leaves, and the bark surrounding it on the outside. All these parts of the great Tree, he says, are set on fire from the all-devouring flame of the Fire and destroyed. But the fruit of the Tree, if its imaging has been perfected and it takes the shape of itself, is placed in the storehouse, and not cast into the Fire. For the fruit, he says, is produced to be placed in the storehouse, but the husk to be committed to the Fire; that is to say, the trunk, which is generated not for its own sake but for that of the fruit.

And this he says is what is written in the scripture: "For the vineyard of the Lord Sabaoth is the house of Israel, and a man of Judah a well-beloved shoot." And if a man of Judah is a well-beloved shoot, it is shown, he says, that a tree is nothing else than a man. But concerning its sundering and dispersion, he says, the scripture has sufficiently spoken, and what has been said is sufficient for the instruction of those whose imaging has been perfected, namely: "All flesh is grass, and every glory of the flesh as the flower of grass. The grass is dried up and the flower thereof falleth, but the speech of the Lord endureth for the eternity." Now the Speech of the Lord, he says, is the Speech engendered in the mouth and the Word, for elsewhere there is no place of production.

To be brief, therefore, the Fire, according to Simon, being of such a nature — both all things that are visible and invisible, and in like manner, those that sound within and those that sound aloud, those which can be numbered and those which are numbered — in the Great Revelation he calls it the Perfect Intellectual, as being everything that can be thought of an infinite number of times, in an infinite number of ways, both as to speech, thought and action, just as Empedocles says:

"By earth earth we perceive; by water, water; by aether divine, aether; fire by destructive fire; by friendship, friendship; and strife by bitter strife."

For, he says, he considered that all the parts of the Fire, both visible and invisible, possessed perception and a portion of intelligence.

The generable cosmos, therefore, was generated from the ingenerable Fire. And it commenced to be generated, he says, in the following way. The first six Roots of the Principle of generation which the generated cosmos took, were from that Fire. And the Roots, he says, were generated from the Fire in pairs, and he calls these Roots Mind and Thought, Voice and Name, Reason and Reflection, and in these six Roots there was the whole of the Boundless Power together, in potentiality, but not in actuality.

And this Boundless Power he says is He who has stood, stands and will stand; who, if his imaging is perfected while in the six Powers, will be, in essence, power, greatness and completeness, one and the same with the ingenerable and Boundless Power, and not one single whit inferior to that ingenerable, unchangeable and Boundless Power. But if it remain in potentiality only, and its imaging is not perfected, then it disappears and perishes, he says, just as the potentiality of grammar or geometry in a man's mind. For potentiality when it has obtained art becomes the light of generated things, but if it does not do so an absence of art and darkness ensues, exactly as if it had not existed at all; and on the death of the man it perishes with him.

Of these six Powers and the seventh which is beyond the six, he calls the first pair Mind and Thought, heaven and earth; and the male looks down from above and takes thought for its co-partner, while the earth from below receives from the heaven the intellectual fruits that come down to it and are cognate with the earth. Wherefore, he says, the Word ofttimes steadfastly contemplating the things which have been generated from Mind and Thought, that is from heaven and earth, says: "Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath said: I have generated sons and raised them up, but they have set me aside."

And he who says this, he says, is the seventh Power, He who has stood, stands and will stand, for He is the cause of those good things which Moses praised and said they were very good. And the second pair is Voice and Name, sun and moon. And the third, Reason and Reflection, air and water. And in all of these was blended and mingled the Great Power, the Boundless, He who has stood.

And when Moses says that in six days God made the heaven and the earth, and on the seventh he rested from all his works, Simon arranges it differently. When, therefore, they say that there are three days before the generation of the sun and moon, they mean esoterically Mind and Thought — that is to say heaven and earth — and the seventh Power, the Boundless. For these three Powers were generated before all the others.

Now this seventh Power which was the first Power subsisting in the Boundless Power, which was generated before all the Aeons, this, he says, was the seventh Power, about which Moses says: "And the spirit of God moved over the water," that is to say, the spirit which hath all things in itself, the Image of the Boundless Power, concerning which Simon says: "The Image from the incorruptible Form, alone ordering all things." For the Power which moves above the water is generated from an imperishable Form, and alone orders all things.

Now the constitution of the world being with them after this or a similar fashion, God, he says, fashioned man by taking soil from the earth. And he made him not single but double, according to the image and likeness. And the Image is the spirit moving above the water, which, if its imaging is not perfected, perishes together with the world, seeing that it remains only in potentiality and does not become in actuality. But if its imaging should be perfected and it should be generated from an "indivisible point," as it is written in his Revelation, the small shall become great. And this great shall continue for the boundless and changeless eternity, inasmuch as it is no longer in the process of becoming.

How and in what manner, then, he asks, does God fashion man? In the Garden, he thinks. We must consider the womb a Garden, he says, and that this is the "cave." In speaking of the Garden, Moses allegorically referred to the womb. And if God fashions man in his mother's womb, that is to say in the Garden, the womb must be taken for the Garden, and Eden for the region surrounding the womb, and the "river going forth from Eden to water the Garden" for the navel. This navel is divided into four channels, for on either side of the navel two air-ducts are stretched to convey the breath, and two veins to convey blood.

For as long as the babe is being fashioned in the Garden, it neither takes nourishment through the mouth, nor breathes through the nostrils. For seeing that it is surrounded by the waters of the womb, death would instantly supervene if it took a breath. But the whole of the foetus is wrapped up in an envelope called the amnion, and is nourished through the navel and receives the essence of the breath through the dorsal duct.

The river, therefore, which goes out of Eden, is divided into four channels — four senses of the foetus: sight, hearing, smelling, taste and touch. For these are the only senses the child has while it is being formed in the Garden.

This, he says, is the law which Moses laid down, and in accordance with this very law each of his books was written, as the titles show. The first book is Genesis, and the title of the book is sufficient for a knowledge of the whole matter. For this Genesis is sight, which is one division of the river. For the world is perceived by sight.

The title of the second book is Exodus. For it was necessary for that which is born to travel through the Red Sea, and pass towards the Desert — by Red the blood is meant — and taste the bitter water. For the "bitter" is the water beyond the Red Sea, inasmuch as it is the path of knowledge of painful and bitter things which we travel along in life. But when it is changed by Moses, that is to say by the Word, that bitter water becomes sweet. And that this is so, all may hear publicly by repeating after the poets:

"In root it was black, but like milk was the flower. Moly the Gods call it. For mortals to dig it up is difficult; but Gods can do all things."

Sufficient is what is said by the Gentiles for a knowledge of the whole matter, for those who have ears for hearing. For he who tasted this fruit was not only not changed into a beast by Circe, but using the virtue of the fruit, reshaped those who had been already changed into beasts, into their former proper shape.

In like manner Leviticus, the third book, is smelling or respiration. For the whole of that book treats of sacrifices and offerings. Numbers, the fourth book, signifies taste, wherein speech energizes. And it is so called through uttering all things in numerical order. Deuteronomy, again, is so entitled in reference to the sense of touch of the child which is formed. For just as the touch by contact synthesizes and confirms the sensations of the other senses, so also the fifth book of the Law is the synthesis of the four books which precede it.

All ingenerables, therefore, are in us in potentiality but not in actuality, like the science of grammar or geometry. And if they meet with befitting utterance and instruction, and the "bitter" is turned into the "sweet" — that is to say, spears into reaping hooks and swords into ploughshares — the Fire will not have born to it husks and stocks, but perfect fruit, perfected in its imaging, equal and similar to the ingenerable and Boundless Power. "For now," says he, "the axe is nigh to the roots of the tree: every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, is cut down and cast into the fire."

And so, according to Simon, that blessed and imperishable principle concealed in everything is in potentiality but not in actuality — He who has stood, stands and will stand. This, he says, is the one Power, separated into the above and below, generating itself, increasing itself, seeking itself, finding itself, its own mother, its own father, its sister, its spouse; the daughter, son, mother, and father of itself; One, the Universal Root.

For Simon speaks distinctly concerning this in his Revelation as follows:

"To you, therefore, I say what I say, and write what I write. And the writing is this.

"Of the universal Aeons there are two shoots, without beginning or end, springing from one Root, which is the Power invisible, inapprehensible Silence. Of these shoots one is manifested from above, which is the Great Power, the Universal Mind ordering all things, male, and the other is manifested from below, the Great Thought, female, producing all things.

"Hence pairing with each other, they unite and manifest the Middle Distance, incomprehensible Air, without beginning or end. In this is the Father who sustains all things, and nourishes those things which have a beginning and end.

"This is He who has stood, stands and will stand, a male-female power like the preexisting Boundless Power, which has neither beginning nor end, existing in oneness. For it is from this that the Thought in the oneness proceeded and became two.

"So he was one; for having her in himself, he was alone, not however first, although preexisting, but being manifested from himself to himself, he became second. Nor was he called Father before Thought called him Father.

"As, therefore, producing himself by himself, he manifested to himself his own Thought, so also the Thought that was manifested did not make the Father, but contemplating him hid him — that is to say the Power — in herself, and is male-female, Power and Thought.

"Hence they pair with each other being one, for there is no difference between Power and Thought. From the things above is discovered Power, and from those below Thought.

"In the same manner also that which was manifested from them although being one is yet found as two, the male-female having the female in itself. Thus Mind is in Thought — things inseparable from one another — which although being one are yet found as two."

And he said that his Thought was the "lost sheep," who again and again abiding in women throws the Powers in the world into confusion, on account of her unsurpassable beauty; on account of which the Trojan War came to pass through her. When her body was changed by the Angels and lower Powers — which also made the world — she lived in a brothel in Tyre, a city of Phoenicia, where he found her on his arrival. He professes that he had come there for the purpose of finding her for the first time, that he might deliver her from bondage.

While this Simon was leading many astray by his magic rites in Samaria, he was confuted by the apostles. And at last he travelled to Rome and again fell in with the apostles. And towards the end of his career he settled under a plane tree and continued his teachings. And finally he said that if he were buried alive, he would rise again on the third day. And he did actually order a grave to be dug by his disciples and told them to bury him. So they carried out his orders, but he has stopped away until the present day, for he was not the Christ.

Origen

Celsus says he knows certain Simonians who are called Heleniani, because they worship Helen or a teacher Helenus. But Celsus is ignorant that the Simonians in no way confess that Jesus is the Son of God, but they say that Simon is the Power of God, telling some marvellous stories about the fellow, who thought that if he laid claim to like powers as those which he thought Jesus laid claim to, he also would be as powerful among men as Jesus is with many.

For the former, Simon, pretended he was the Power of God, which is called Great, and the latter, Dositheus, that he too was the Son of God. For nowhere in the world do the Simonians any longer exist.

Philastrius

He also dared to say that the world had been made by Angels, and the Angels again had been made by certain endowed with perception from heaven, and that they had deceived the human race.

He asserted, moreover, that there was a certain other Thought, who descended into the world for the salvation of men; he says she was that Helen whose story is celebrated in the Trojan War by the vainglorious poets. And the Powers, led on by desire of this Helen, stirred up sedition. She, arousing desire in those Powers and appearing in the form of a woman, could not reascend into heaven, because the Powers which were in heaven did not permit her to reascend.

But after he had fled from the blessed Peter from the city of Jerusalem, and came to Rome, and contended there with the blessed apostle before the Emperor Nero, he was routed on every point by the speech of the blessed apostle, and being smitten by an angel came by a righteous end.

Epiphanius

He came forward publicly and under the cloak of the name of Christ. And being lewd in nature, the vagabond fabricated a corrupt allegory for those whom he had deceived. For picking up a roving woman, called Helen, who originated from the city of the Tyrians, he took her about with him, and saying that he was the Great Power of God, he ventured to call his prostitute companion the Holy Spirit.

"And in each heaven I changed my form," he says, "in order that I might not be perceived by my Angelic Powers, and descend to my Thought, which is she who is called Prunicus and Holy Spirit, through whom I brought into being the Angels, and the Angels brought into being the world and men."

He claimed that this was the Helen of old, on whose account the Trojans and Greeks went to war. And through this Power from above — which they call Prunicus, and which is called by other sects Barbero or Barbelo — displaying her beauty, she drove the Rulers to frenzy. And constraining her so that she could not reascend, each had intercourse with her in every body of womanly constitution — she reincarnating from female bodies into different bodies — in order that by means of their slaying and being slain, they might bring about a diminution of themselves through the shedding of blood.

"And she it is who is now with me, and on her account have I descended. And she was looking for my coming. For she is the Thought, called Helen in Homer."

He supposes names for the Dominions and Principalities, and says there are different heavens, and says that no man can be saved in any other fashion than by learning this mystagogy. This is the beginning of the so-called Gnostics. And he pretended that the Law was not of God, but of the left-hand Power, and that the Prophets were not from the Good God but from this or the other Power.

Jerome

"I am the Word of God; I am the glorious one, I the Paraclete, the Almighty, I the whole of God."

Theodoret

The divine grace armed great Peter against the fellow's madness. For following after him, he dispelled his abominable teaching like mist and darkness. But for all that the thrice wretched fellow did not cease from his working against the truth, until he came to Rome, in the reign of Claudius Caesar. And he so astonished the Romans with his sorceries that he was honoured with a brazen pillar. But on the arrival of the divine Peter, he stripped him naked of his wings of deception, and having challenged him to a contest in wonder-working, caused him to fall headlong from a great height by his prayers.

Theodoret provides a concise summary of the doctrine: Simon started with supposing some Boundless Power, which he called the Universal Root, and said that this was Fire, which had a twofold energy, the manifested and the concealed. From it were emanated three pairs, which he also called Roots: Mind and Thought, Voice and Intelligence, Reason and Reflection. He called himself the Boundless Power, and said that he had appeared to the Jews as the Son, to the Samaritans he had descended as the Father, and among the rest of the nations he had gone up and down as the Holy Spirit. And having made a certain harlot called Helen live with him, he pretended that she was his first Thought, the Universal Mother, through whom he had made the Angels and Archangels; and that the world was fabricated by the Angels, who in envy cast her down. He himself had descended to free her from her chains, and to offer to men salvation through a system of knowledge peculiar to himself.

The Simon of the Legends

The so-called Clementine Literature — the Recognitiones and Homiliae — provides the most elaborate legendary account of Simon. The originals are placed by conjecture somewhere about the beginning of the third century; the Greek originals are lost, and the Latin translation of Rufinus alone remains. The latest scholarship is of the opinion that the Clementines are unmistakably a production of the sect of the Ebionites.

Clement, the hero of the legendary narrative, arrives at Caesarea Stratonis in Judaea, on the eve of a great controversy between Simon and the apostle Peter, and attaches himself to the latter as his disciple. The history of Simon is told to Clement, in the presence of Peter, by Aquila and Nicetas.

Simon was the son of Antonius and Rachael, a Samaritan of Gittha, a village six schoeni from the city of Caesarea. It was at Alexandria that Simon perfected his studies in magic, being an adherent of John, a Hemerobaptist, through whom he came to deal with religious doctrines.

John was the forerunner of Jesus, according to the method of combination or coupling. Whereas Jesus had twelve disciples, as the Sun, John the Moon had thirty, the number of days in a lunation — one of his disciples being a woman called Helen. Of all John's disciples, Simon was the favourite, but on the death of his master he was absent in Alexandria, and so Dositheus, a co-disciple, was chosen head of the school.

Simon, on his return, acquiesced in the choice, but his superior knowledge could not long remain under a bushel. One day Dositheus, becoming enraged, struck at Simon with his staff; but the staff passed through Simon's body like smoke, and Dositheus, struck with amazement, yielded the leadership to Simon and became his disciple, and shortly afterwards died.

The magic achievements of Simon, as narrated by Aquila and Nicetas from their own experience: Simon can dig through mountains, pass through rocks as if they were merely clay, cast himself from a lofty mountain and be borne gently to earth, break his chains when in prison, cause the doors to open of their own accord, animate statues, make trees grow suddenly, pass through fire unhurt, change his face, fly in the air, become gold, make and unmake kings. The Homilies add: making stones into loaves, melting iron, producing images at a banquet; he makes spectres appear in the market place, statues move when he walks out, and shadows go before him which he says are souls of the dead.

The most peculiar incident is the use Simon is said to have made of the soul of a dead boy, by which he did many of his wonders. Simon explains the theory: "First of all the spirit of the man having been turned into the nature of heat draws in and absorbs, like a cupping-glass, the surrounding air; next he turns the air which comes within the envelope of spirit into water. And the air in it not being able to escape owing to the confining force of the spirit, he changed it into the nature of blood, and the blood solidifying made flesh; and so when the flesh is solidified he exhibited a man made of air and not of earth."

The coming controversy with Simon is then explained by Peter to rest on certain passages of scripture. Peter admits that there are falsehoods in the scriptures, but says this is to be guarded as an esoteric secret. Simon declares: "I say that there are many gods, but one God of all these gods, incomprehensible and unknown to all," and again: "My belief is that there is a Power of immeasurable and ineffable Light, whose greatness is held to be incomprehensible, a power which the maker of the world even does not know, nor does Moses the lawgiver, nor your master Jesus."

After a wordy harangue of Peter, Simon is said to have been worsted and flies to Tyre. The main dispute takes place at Laodicea on the unity of God. The last incident of interest takes place at Antioch, where Simon changes the face of Faustinianus into an exact likeness of his own; Peter sends the transformed Faustinianus to Antioch, who in the guise of Simon makes a confession of imposture and testifies to the divine mission of Peter.

The Later Legends

The Greek Acts of Peter and Paul represent both apostles as having taken part in the conflict at Rome. Simon and Peter are each required to raise a dead body to life. Simon, by his magic, makes the head move, but as soon as he leaves the body it again becomes lifeless. Peter, by his prayers, effects a real resurrection.

In the Acts of Nereus and Achilleus, Simon had fastened a great dog at his door to prevent Peter entering. Peter by making the sign of the cross renders the dog tame towards himself, but so furious against Simon that the latter had to leave the city in disgrace. Simon pretends to permit his head to be cut off, and by the power of glamour appears to be decapitated, while the executioner really cuts off the head of a ram.

The last act of the drama is the erection of a wooden tower in the Campus Martius, and Simon is to ascend to heaven in a chariot of fire. But through the prayers of Peter, the two daemons who were carrying him aloft let go their hold and so Simon perishes miserably.

So much for these motley stories; here and there instructive, but mostly absurd. I shall now endeavour to sift out the rubbish from this patristic and legendary heap, and perhaps we shall find more of value than at present appears.

Colophon

"Simon Magus: An Essay on the Founder of Simonianism Based on the Ancient Sources With a Re-Evaluation of His Philosophy and Teachings," by G.R.S. Mead. Published by the Theosophical Society, London, 1892. Digitised from the Gnostic Society Library.

This text contains Part I of Mead's essay — the Sources of Information — comprising the New Testament account (Acts 8:9–24), verbatim translations of all major patristic witnesses (Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, Philastrius, Epiphanius, Jerome, and Theodoret), and a digest of the Clementine legends and later Roman traditions. Part II ("A Review of Authorities") and Part III ("The Theosophy of Simon"), in which Mead sifts the evidence and reconstructs Simon's actual philosophy, were not included in the web-scraped source.

The Hippolytus section draws on the Philosophumena (Refutatio Omnium Haeresium, VI.7–20), which contains the most extensive surviving quotations from Simon's own "Great Revelation" — the cosmological treatise describing the Boundless Power as Fire with a twofold nature (concealed and manifested), the six Roots emanating in pairs, and the doctrine of potentiality requiring perfection of imaging.

Restored from staging by the Sub-Miko of the New Tianmu Anglican Church. Hand-read in full. Garbled diacriticals corrected throughout (apostrophe corruption: Iren'us → Irenaeus, H'reses → Haereses, Jud'a → Judaea, C'sar → Caesar, Gn'sis → Gnosis, pre'xisting → preexisting, Prun'cus → Prunicus, etc.). Inline bibliographic apparatus (edition citations interspersed between patristic passages) removed from the body. Wall-of-text paragraphs broken throughout. Heading hierarchy regularised. Redundant title block removed. Epiphanius's refutation of Simon (a lengthy passage of orthodox polemic quoting Scripture against the Simonian doctrine) condensed to preserve the Simonian testimony while reducing editorial hostility. Blockquote and colophon authored.

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