What does the world at large know of Peter and Simon, for example? Profane history has no record of these two, while that which the so‐called sacred literature tells us of them is scattered about, contained in a few sentences in the _Acts_. As to the _Apocrypha_, their very name forbids critics to trust to them for information. The Occultists, however, claim that, one‐sided and prejudiced as they may be, the apocryphal _Gospels_ contain far more historically true events and facts than does the _New Testament_, the _Acts_ included. The former are crude tradition, the latter (the official _Gospels_) are an elaborately made up legend. The sacredness of the _New Testament_ is a question of private belief and of blind faith, and while one is bound to respect the private opinion of one’s neighbour, no one is forced to share it. Who was Simon Magus, and what is known of him? One learns in the _Acts_ simply that on account of his remarkable magical Arts he was called “the Great Power of God.” Philip is said to have baptised this Samaritan; and subsequently he is accused of having offered money to Peter and John to teach him the power of working true “miracles,” false ones, it is asserted, being of the Devil.(196) This is all, if we omit the words of abuse freely used against him for working “miracles” of the latter kind. Origen mentions him as having visited Rome during the reign of Nero,(197) and Mosheim places him among the open enemies of Christianity;(198) but Occult tradition accuses him of nothing worse than refusing to recognise “Simeon” as a Vicegerent of God, whether that “Simeon” was Peter or anyone else being still left an open question with the critic. That which Irenæus(199) and Epiphanius(200) say of Simon Magus—namely, that he represented himself as the incarnated trinity; that in Samaria he was the Father, in Judæa the Son, and had given himself out to the Gentiles as the Holy Spirit—is simply backbiting. Times and events change; human nature remains the same and unaltered under every sky and in every age. The charge is the result and product of the traditional and now classical _odium theologicum_. No Occultists—all of whom have experienced personally, more or less, the effects of theological rancour—will ever believe such things merely on the word of an Irenæus, if, indeed, he ever wrote the words himself. Further on it is narrated of Simon that he took about with him a woman whom he introduced as Helen of Troy, who had passed through a hundred reincarnations, and who, still earlier, in the beginning of æons, was Sophia, Divine Wisdom, an emanation of his own (Simon’s) Eternal Mind, when he (Simon) was the “Father”; and finally, that by her he had “begotten the Archangels and Angels, by whom this world was created,” etc.