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
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, he says--and taste the
bitter water. For the "bitter," he says, 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."[27]
16. Sufficient, he says, 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, he says, 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, and re-struck and recalled their type. For the true
man and one beloved by that sorceress is discovered by this
milk-white divine fruit, he says.
In like manner _Leviticus_, the third book, is smelling or
respiration. For the whole of that book treats of sacrifices and
offerings. And wherever there is a sacrifice, there arises the
smell of the scent from the sacrifice owing to the incense,
concerning which sweet smell the sense of smell is the test.
_Numbers_, the fourth book, signifies taste, wherein speech (or the
Word) energizes. And it is so called through uttering all things in
numerical order.
_Deuteronomy_, again, he says, 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, proving objects to be either hard, warm, or adhesive, so
also the fifth book of the Law is the synthesis of the four books
which precede it.
All ingenerables, therefore, he says, are in us in potentiality but
not in actuality, like the science of grammar or geometry. And if
they meet with befitting utterance[28] and instruction, and the
"bitter" is turned into the "sweet"--that is to say, spears into
reaping hooks and swords into ploughshares[29]--the Fire will not
have born to it husks and stocks, but perfect fruit, perfected in
its imaging, as I said above, 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," he says, "that bringeth not forth
good fruit, is cut down and cast into the fire."[30]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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