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
So much has been written on metempsychosis and reïncarnation of late
that it is hardly necessary to dwell on a now so familiar idea. In its
widest sense the whole process of nature is subject to this mode of
existence, and in its more restricted sense it is the path of pilgrimage
of the Soul in the desert of Matter. In treating of a philosophical
conception, which has already been completely established as far as its
"visible side" is concerned by the researches of Modern Science in the
field of evolution, it is a waste of time to obscure the main issue by a
rehashing of the superstitious belief that the human Soul might pass
back to the brute. It may be that this superstition arose from the
consideration that the body and lower vestures of the Soul were shed off
and gradually absorbed by the lower creation in the alchemical processes
of nature. This was the fate of the "Purgations" of the Soul, but the
Soul itself when once it had passed from bodies of the lower kingdoms,
to bodies in the man-stage, could not retrogress beyond the limits of
that human kingdom.
By a glance at the Diagram, and regarding it from the microcosmic point
of view, it is easy to see that the inner nature of man is more complex
than the elementary trichotomy of Body, Soul, and Spirit, might lead us
to suppose. Each plane of Being, for which the Soul has its own
appropriate Vesture, is generated from an "indivisible point," as Simon
called it, a zero-point, to use a term of modern Chemistry; six of which
are shown in the Diagram, and each plane of Being is bounded by such
zero-points, for they are points like that of the Circle whose centre is
everywhere and circumference nowhere.
To pass on to the soteriology of Simon. The general concept of this
presents no difficulty to the student of Eastern Religions. The idea
that the great teachers are Avatâras, incarnations, or descents, of the
Supreme Being, appearing on earth to aid mankind, is simple enough to
comprehend in itself, and would be open to little objection, were it not
for the theological dogmas and mythological legends that are wont to be
so busily woven round the lives of such teachers. In the present age it
is hardly necessary for us, with the experience of the past before our
eyes, to raise dissension as to whether such a manifestation is entirely
divine, or entirely human, or perfectly human and divine at one and the
same time, or neither or all of these.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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