Simon Magus: An Essay on the Founder of Simonianism Based on the Ancient Sources With a Re-Evaluation of His Philosophy and TeachingsMead, G. R. S. (George Robert Stow)
Religion
Simon Magus: An Essay on the Founder of Simonianism Based on the Ancient Sources With a Re-Evaluation of His Philosophy and Teachings
Mead, G. R. S. (George Robert Stow)
Simon, Magus, active 1st century
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, as I have said.
14. And when Moses says: "(It is) in six days that God made the
heaven and the earth, and on the seventh he rested from all his
works," Simon arranges it differently and thus makes himself into a
god. When, therefore, they (the Simonians) 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. And when they say "he hath
generated me before all the Aeons," the words, he says, are used
concerning the seventh Power. 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, he says, 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, he says, 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. And this is the meaning of the
Scripture, he says: "Lest we be condemned together with the
world."[20] 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 (_aeon_), in as
much as it is no longer in the process of becoming.[21]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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