[Footnote 66: [Greek: kata ton taes suzugias logon.]]

[Footnote 67: This has led to the conjecture that the translation was made from the false reading Selene instead of Helene, while Bauer has used it to support his theory that Justin and those who have followed him confused the Phoenician worship of solar and lunar divinities of similar names with the worship of Simon and Helen.]

[Footnote 68: This is not to be confused with the Dositheus of Origen, who claimed to be a Christ, says Matter (Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme, Tom. i. p. 218, n. 1st. ed., 1828).]

[Footnote 69: An elemental.]

[Footnote 70: [Greek: pataer en aporraetois].]

[Footnote 71: Hegesippus (De Bello Judaico, iii. 2), Abdias (Hist., i, towards the end), and Maximus Taurinensis (Patr. VI. Synodi ad Imp. Constant., Act. 18), say that Simon flew like Icarus; whereas in Arnobius (Contra Gentes, ii) and the Arabic Preface to Council of Nicaea there is talk of a chariot of fire, or a car that he had constructed.]

[Footnote 72: Cotelerius in a note (i. 347, 348) refers the reader to the passages in the Recognitions and in Jerome's Commentary on Matthew, which I have already quoted. He also says that the author of the book, De Divinis Nominibus (C. 6), speaks of "the controversial sentences of Simon" ([Greek: Simonos antirraetikoi logoi]). The author is the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and I shall quote later on some of these sentences, though from a very uncertain source. Cotelerius also refers to the Arabic Preface to the Nicaean Council. The text referred to will be found in the Latin translation of Abrahamus Echellensis, given in Labbe's Concilia (Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova Collectio, edd. Phil. Labbaeus et Gabr. Cossartius, S.J., Florentiae, 1759, Tom. ii, p. 1057, col. 1), and runs as follows:

"Those traitors (the Simonians) fabricated for themselves a gospel, which they divided into four books, and called it the 'Book of the Four Angles and Points of the World.' All pursue magic zealously, and defend it, wearing red and rose-coloured threads round the neck in sign of a compact and treaty entered into with the devil their seducer."

As to the books of the followers of Cleobius we have no further information.]

[Footnote 73: A.D. 54-68.]

[Footnote 74: Art. "Simon Magus," Vol. IV. p. 686.]

[Footnote 75: Bolland, Acta SS. May iii. 9.]

[Footnote 76: vi. 12.]

[Footnote 77: Orat. xxi. 9.]



PART II.

A REVIEW OF AUTHORITIES.

The student will at once perceive that though the Simon of the Acts and the Simon of the fathers both retain the two features of the possession of magical power and of collision with Peter, the tone of the narratives is entirely different. Though the apostles are naturally shown as rejecting with indignation the pecuniary offer of the thaumaturge, they display no hate for his personality, whereas the fathers depict him as the vilest of impostors and charlatans and hold him up to universal execration. The incident of Simon's offering money to Peter is admittedly taken by the fathers from this account, and therefore their repetition in no way corroborates the story. Hence its authenticity rests entirely with the writer of the Acts, for Justin, who was a native of Samaria, does not mention it. As the Acts are not quoted from prior to A.D. 177, and their writer is only traditionally claimed to be Luke, we may safely consider ourselves in the domain of legend and not of history.

The same may be said of all the incidents of Simon's career; they pertain to the region of fable and probably owe their creation to the Patristic and Simonian controversies of later ages.

The Simon of Justin gives us the birthplace of Simon as at Gitta, and the rest of the fathers follow suit with variation of the name. Gitta, Gittha, Gittoi, Gitthoi, Gitto, Gitton, Gitteh, so run the variants. This, however, is a matter of no great importance, and the little burg is said to-day to be called Gitthoi.[78]

The statement of Justin as to the statue of Simon at Rome with the inscription "SIMONI DEO SANCTO" has been called in question by every scholar since the discovery in 1574 of a large marble fragment in the island of the Tiber bearing the inscription "SEMONI SANCO DEO FIDIO," a Sabine God. A few, however, think that Justin could not have made so glaring a mistake in writing to the Romans, and that if it were a mistake Irenaeus would not have copied it. The coincidence, however, is too striking to bear any other interpretation than that perhaps some ignorant controversialist had endeavoured to give the legend a historical appearance, and that Justin had lent a too ready ear to him. It is also to be noticed that Justin tells us that nearly all the Samaritans were Simonians.

We next come to the Simon of Irenaeus which, owing to many similarities, is supposed by scholars to have been taken from Justin's account, if not from the Apology, at any rate from Justin's lost work on heresies which he speaks of in the Apology. Or it may be that both borrowed from some common source now lost to us.

The story of Helen is here for the first time given. Whether or not there was a Helen we shall probably never know. The "lost sheep" was a necessity of every Gnostic system, which taught the descent of the soul into matter. By whatever name called, whether Sophia, Acamoth, Prunicus, Barbelo, the glyph of the Magdalene, out of whom seven devils are cast, has yet to be understood, and the mystery of the Christ and the seven aeons, churches or assemblies (ecclesiae), in every man will not be without significance to every student of Theosophy. These data are common to all Gnostic aeonology.

If it is argued that Simon was the first inventor of this aeonology, it is astonishing that his name and that of Helen should not have had some recognition in the succeeding systems. If, on the contrary, it is maintained that he used existing materials for his system, and explained away his improper connection with Helen by an adaptation of the Sophia-mythos, it is difficult to understand how such a palpable absurdity could have gained any credence among such cultured adherents as the Simonians evidently were. In either case the Gnostic tradition is shown to be pre-Christian. Every initiated Gnostic, however, must have known that the mythos referred to the World-Soul in the Cosmos and the Soul in man.

The accounts of the Acts and of Justin and Irenaeus are so confusing that it has been supposed that two Simons are referred to.[79] For if he claimed to be a reincarnation of Jesus, appearing in Jerusalem as the Son, he could not have been contemporary with the apostles. It follows, therefore, that either he made no such claim; or if he made the claim, Justin and Irenaeus had such vague information that they confused him with the Simon of the Acts; or that the supposition is not well-founded, and Simon was simply inculcating the esoteric doctrine of the various manifestations or descents of one and the same Christ principle.

The Simon of Tertullian again is clearly taken from Irenaeus, as the critics are agreed. "Tertullian evidently knows no more than he read in Irenaeus," says Dr. Salmon.[80]

It is only when we come to the Simon of the Philosophumena that we feel on any safe ground. The prior part of it is especially precious on account of the quotations from The Great Revelation ([Greek: hae megalae apophasis]) which we hear of from no other source. The author of Philosophumena, whoever he was, evidently had access to some of the writings of the Simonians, and here at last we have arrived at any thing of real value in our rubbish heap.

It was not until the year 1842 that Minoides Mynas brought to Paris from Mount Athos, on his return from a commission given him by the French Government, a fourteenth-century MS. in a mutilated condition. This was the MS. of our Philosophumena which is supposed to have been the work of Hippolytus. The authorship, however, is still uncertain, as will appear by what will be said about the Simon of Epiphanius and Philaster.

The latter part of the section on Simon in the Philosophumena is not so important, and is undoubtedly taken from Irenaeus or from the anti-heretical treatise of Justin, or from the source from which both these fathers drew. The account of the death of Simon, however, shows that the author was not Hippolytus from whose lost work Epiphanius and Philaster are proved by Lipsius to have taken their accounts.

The Simon of Origen gives us no new information, except as to the small number of the Simonians. But like other data in his controversial writings against the Gnostic philosopher Celsus we can place little reliance on his statement, for Eusebius Pamphyli writing in A.D. 324-5, a century afterwards, speaks of the Simonians as still considerable in numbers.[81]

The Simon of Epiphanius and Philaster leads us to speak of a remarkable feat of scholarship performed by R.A. Lipsius,[82] the learned professor of divinity in the university of Jena. From their accounts he has reconstructed to some extent a lost work of Hippolytus against heresies of which a description was given by Photius. This treatise was founded on certain discourses of Irenaeus. By comparing Philaster, Epiphanius, and the Pseudo-Tertullian, he recovers Hippolytus, and by comparing his restored Hippolytus with Irenaeus he infers a common authority, probably the lost work of Justin Martyr, or, may we suggest, as remarked above, the work from which Justin got his information.[83]

The Simon of Theodoret differs from that of his predecessor only in one or two important details of the aeonology, a fact that has presumably led Matter to suppose that he has introduced some later Gnostic ideas or confused the teachings of the later Simonians with those of Simon.[84]

The Simon of the legends is so entirely outside any historical criticism, and the stories gleaned from the Homilies and Recognitions are so evidently fabrications—most probably added to the doctrinal narrative at a later date—and so obviously the stock-in-trade legends of magic, that not a solitary scholar supports their authenticity. Probably one of the reasons for this is the strong Ebionism of the narratives, which is by no means palatable to the orthodox taste. In this connection the following table of the Ebionite scheme of emanation may be of interest:

GOD. (The One Being, the Principle of all things.) ^ / SPIRIT. MATTER. The Four elements. (This mixture produces) THE SON. THE DEVIL. (The Leader of the future cycle.) (The leader of the present cycle.) GREAT THINGS. LITTLE THINGS. (Heaven, light, life, etc.) (Earth, fire, death, etc.) ADAM. EVE. (Truth.) (Error.) / / MAN. (The union of Spirit and Body, of Truth and Error.) / / INFERIOR MEN. SUPERIOR MEN. Ishmael. Isaac. Esau. Jacob. Aaron. Moses. John the Baptist. Jesus. Antichrist. Christ. / V GOD. (Completion, rest.)[85]

There remains but to mention the curious theory of Bauer and the Tubingen school. It is now established by recent theological criticism that the Clementine writings were the work of some member or members of the Elkesaites, a sect of the Ebionites, and that they were written at Rome somewhere in the third century. The Elkessaeans or Elkesaites founded their creed on a book called Elkesai, which purported to be an angelic revelation and which was remarkable for its hostility to the apostle Paul. As the Recognitions contain much anti-Paulinism, Bauer and his school not only pointed out the Ebionite source of the Clementine literature, but also put forward the theory that whenever Simon Magus is mentioned Paul is intended; and that the narrative of the Acts and the legends simply tell the tale of the jealousy of the elder apostles to Paul, and their attempt to keep him from the fullest enjoyment of apostolic privileges. But the latest scholarship shakes its head gravely at the theory, and however bitter controversialists the anti-Paulinists may have been, it is not likely that they would have gone so far out of their way to vent their feelings in so grotesque a fashion.

In conclusion of this Part let us take a general review of our authorities with regard to the life of Simon and the immoral practices attributed to his followers, including a few words of notice on the lost Simonian literature, and reserving the explanation of his system and some notice of magical practices for Part III.

I have distinguished the Simon of the fathers from the Simon of the legends, as to biography, "by convention" and not "by nature," as the Simonians would say, for the one and the other is equally on a mythical basis. It is easy to understand that the rejection of the Simon of the legends is a logical necessity for those who have to repudiate the Ebionite Clementines. Admit the authenticity of the narrative as regards Simon, and the authenticity of the other incidents about John the Baptist and Peter would have to be acknowledged; but this would never do, so Simon escapes from the clutches of his orthodox opponents as far as this count is concerned.

But the biographical incidents in the fathers are of a similar nature precisely to those in the Clementines, and their sources of information are so vague and unreliable, and at such a distance from the time of their supposed occurrence, that we have every reason to place them in the same category with the Clementine legends. Therefore, whether we reject the evidence or accept it, we must reject both accounts or accept both. To reject the one and accept the other is a prejudice that a partisan may be guilty of, but a position which no unbiassed enquirer can with justice take up.

The legends, however, may find some excuse when it is remembered that they were current in a period when the metal of religious controversy was glowing at white heat. Orthodox Christians had their ears still tingling with the echoing of countless accusations of the foulest nature to which they had been subjected. Not a crime that was known or could be imagined that had not been brought against them; they naturally, therefore, returned the compliment when they could do so with safety, and though in these more peaceful and tolerant days much as we may regret the flinging backwards and forwards of such vile accusations, we may still find some excuse for it in the passionate enthusiasm of the times, always, however, remembering that the readiest in accusation and in putting the worst construction on the actions of others, is generally one who unconsciously brings a public accusation against his own lower nature.

This has been well noticed by Matter, who writes as follows:

"There is nothing so impure," says Eusebius, "and one cannot imagine anything so criminal, but the sect of the Simonians goes far beyond it."[86]

The bolt of Eusebius is strong; it is even too strong; for one can imagine nothing that goes beyond the excess of criminality; and Eusebius, belonging to a community who were just escaping from punishments into which accusations no less grave had caused them to be dragged, should not perhaps have allowed himself to speak as he does. But man is made thus; he pursues when he ceases to be pursued.[87]

All societies that have secret rites and a public position, as was the case with all the early communities of Christians and Gnostics, have had like accusations brought against them. The communities of the Simonians and Christians may or may not have been impure, it is now impossible to pronounce a positive opinion. The important point to notice is that the accusations being identical and the evidence or want of evidence the same, condemnation or acquittal must be meted out to both; and that if one is condemned and the other acquitted, the judgment will stand condemned as biassed, and therefore be set aside by those who prefer truth to prejudice.

So eager were the fathers to discredit Simon that they contradict themselves in the most flagrant fashion on many important points. On the one hand we hear that Samaria received the seed of the Word from the apostles and Simon in despair had to flee, on the other hand Justin, a native of Samaria, tells us, a century after this supposed event, that nearly all the Samaritans are Simonians. The accounts of Simon's death again are contradictory; if Simon perished so miserably at Rome, it is the reverse of probable that the Romans would have set up a statue in his honour. But, indeed, it is a somewhat thankless task to criticize such manifest inventions; we know the source of their inspiration, and we know the fertility of the religious imagination, especially in matters of controversy, and this is a sufficient sieve wherewith to sift them out of our heap.

I must now say a few words on Simonian literature of which the only geniune specimens we can in any way be certain are the quotations from the Apophasis of Simon in the text of the Philosophumena.

That there was a body of Simonian scriptures is undoubtedly true, as may be seen from the passages we have quoted from the Recognitions, Jerome, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Arabic Preface to the Nicaean Council, and for some time I was in hopes of being able to collect at least some scattered fragments of these works, but they have all unfortunately shared the fate of much else of value that the ignorance and fear of orthodoxy has committed to the flames. We know at any rate that there was a book called The Four Quarters of the World, just as the four orthodox gospels are dedicated to the signs of the four quarters in the old MSS., and that a collection of sentences or controversial replies of Simon were also held in repute by Simonians and were highly distasteful to their opponents. Matter[88] and Amelineau[89] speak of a book by the disciples of Simon called De la Predication de S. Paul, but neither from their references nor elsewhere can I find out any further information. In Migne's Encyclopedie Theologique,[90] also, a reference is given to M. Miller (Catalogue des Manuscripts Grecs de l'Escurial, p. 112), who is said to mention a Greek MS. on the subject of Simon ("un ecrit en grec relatif a Simon"). But I cannot find this catalogue in the British Museum, nor can I discover any other mention of this MS. in any other author.

At last I thought that I had discovered something of real value in Grabe's Spicilegium, purporting to be gleanings of fragments from the heretics of the first three centuries A.D.,[91] but the date of the authority is too late to be of much value. Grabe refers to the unsatisfactory references I have already given and, to show the nature of these books, according to the opinion of the unknown author or authors of the Apostolic Constitutions (Grabe calls him the "collector," and for some reason best known to himself places him in the fourth century[92]), quotes the following passage from their legendary pages.

"Such were the doings of these people with names of ill-omen slandering the creation and marriage, providence, child-bearing, the Law and the Prophets; setting down foreign names of Angels, as indeed they themselves say, but in reality, of Daemons, who answer back to them from below."

It is only when Grabe refers to the Simonian Antirrhetikoi Logoi, mentioned by the Pseudo-Dionysius, which he calls "vesani Simonis Refutatorii Sermones," that we get any new information.

A certain Syrian bishop, Moses Barcephas, writing in the tenth century,[93] professes to preserve some of these controversial retorts of Simon, which the pious Grabe—to keep this venom, as he calls it, apart from the orthodox refutation—has printed in italics. The following is the translation of these italicized passages:

"God willed that Adam should not eat of that tree; but he did eat; he, therefore, did not remain as God willed him to remain: it results, therefore, that the maker of Adam was impotent."

"God willed that Adam should remain in Paradise; but he of his own disgraceful act fell from thence: therefore the God that made Adam was impotent, inasmuch as he was unable of his own will to keep him in Paradise."

"(For) he interdicted (he said) Adam from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, by tasting which he would have had power to judge between good and evil, and to avoid this, and follow after that."

"But (said he) had not that maker of Adam forbidden him to eat of that tree, he would in no way have undergone this judgment and this punishment; for hence is evil here, in that he (Adam) had done contrary to the bidding of God, for God had ordered him not to eat, and he had eaten."

"Through envy (said he) he forbade Adam to taste of the tree of life, so that, of course, he should not be immortal."

"For what reason on earth (said he) did God curse the serpent? For if (he cursed him) as the one who caused the harm, why did he not restrain him from so doing, that is, from seducing Adam? But if (he cursed him) as one who had brought some advantage, in that he was the cause of Adam's eating of that good tree, it needs must follow that he was distinctly unrighteous and envious; lastly, if, although from neither of these reasons, he still cursed him, he (the maker of Adam) should most certainly be accused of ignorance and folly."

Now although there seems no reason why the above contentions should not be considered as in substance the arguments employed by Simon against his antagonists of the dead-letter, yet the tenth century is too late to warrant verbal accuracy, unless there may have been some Syrian translation which escaped the hands of the destroyers. The above quoted specimen of traditionary Simonian logic, however, is interesting, and will, we believe, be found not altogether out of date in our own times.[94]

Finally, there is one further point that I have reserved for the end of this Part in order that my readers may constantly keep it in mind during the perusal of the Part which follows.

We must always remember that every single syllable we possess about Simon comes from the hands of bitter opponents, from men who had no mercy or toleration for the heretic. The heretic was accursed, condemned eternally by the very fact of his heresy; an emissary of Satan and the natural enemy of God. There was no hope for him, no mercy for him; he was irretrievably damned.[95] The Simon of our authorities has no friend; no one to say a word in his favour; he is hounded down the byways of "history" and the highways of tradition, and to crush him is to do God service. One solitary ray of light beams forth in the fragment of his work called The Great Revelation, one solitary ray, that will illumine the garbled accounts of his doctrine, and speak to the Theosophists of to-day in no uncertain tones that each may say:

Methinks there is much reason in his sayings. If thou consider rightly of the matter, [Simon] has had great wrong.[96]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 78: M.E. Amelineau, "Essai sur le Gnosticisme Egyptien," Annales du Musee Guimet, Tom. xvi. p. 28.]

[Footnote 79: Mosheim's Institutes of Ecclesiastical History (Trans. etc., Murdock and Soames; ed. Stubbs 1863), Vol. I., p. 87, note, gives the following list of those who have maintained the theory of two Simons: Vitringa, Observ. Sacrar., v. 12, Sec. 9, p. 159, C.A. Heumann, Acta Erudit. Lips. for April, A.D. 1727, p. 179, and Is. de Beausobre, Diss. sur l'Adamites, pt. ii. subjoined to L'Enfants' Histoire de la Guerre des Hussites, i. 350, etc. Dr. Salmon also holds this theory.]

[Footnote 80: Dict. Christ. Biog., art. "Helena," Vol. II, p. 880.]

[Footnote 81: Hist. Eccles., ii. 13.]

[Footnote 82: Quellenkritik des Epiphanios.]

[Footnote 83: Cf. Dr. Salmon's art. "Hippolytus Romanus," Dict. Christ. Biog., iii. 93, 94.]

[Footnote 84: Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme, Tom. i. p. 197 (1st ed. 1828).]

[Footnote 85: Les Bibles, et les Initiateurs Religieux de l'Humanite, Louis Leblois, i. 144; from Uhlhorn, Die Homilien und Recognitionen, p. 224.]

[Footnote 86: Hist. Eccles., ii. 13.]

[Footnote 87: Op. cit., i. 213.]

[Footnote 88: Op. cit., ii. 217.]

[Footnote 89: Op. cit., 32.]

[Footnote 90: Tom. xxiii, "Dictionnaire des Apocryphes," Vol. II., Index, pp. lxviii, lxix.]

[Footnote 91: Spicilegium SS. Patrum ut et Haereticorum Saeculorum post Christum natum, I, II et III; Johannes Ernestus Grabius; Oxoniae, 1714, ed. alt., Vol. I., pp. 305-312.]

[Footnote 92: P. 306.]

[Footnote 93: Comment. de Paradiso, c. i., pp. 200, et seqq., editionis Antverpiensis, anno 1567, in 8vo.]

[Footnote 94: Grabe is also interesting for a somewhat wild speculation which he quotes from a British Divine (apud Usserium in Antiquitatibus Eccles. Britannicae), that the tonsure of the monks was taken from the Simonians. (Grabe, op. cit., p, 697.)]

[Footnote 95: In the epistle of St. Ignatius Ad Trallianos (Sec. 11), Simon is called "the first-born Son of the Devil" ([Greek: prototokon Diabolou huion]); and St. Polycarp seems to refer to Simon in the following passage in his Epistle Ad Philipp. (Sec. 7):

"Everyone who shall not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, is antichrist, and who shall not confess the martyrdom of the cross, is of the Devil; and he who translates the words of the Lord according to his own desires, and says there is neither resurrection nor judgment, he is the first-born of Satan."]



PART III.

THE THEOSOPHY OF SIMON.

In treating of eschatology and the beginning of things the human mind is ever beset with the same difficulties, and no matter how grand may be the effort of the intellect to transcend itself, the finite must ever fail to comprehend the infinite. How much less then can words define that which even the whole phenomenal universe fails to express! The change from the One to the Many is not to be described. How the All-Deity becomes the primal Trinity, is the eternal problem set for man's solution. No system of religion or philosophy has ever explained this inexplicable mystery, for it cannot be understood by the embodied Soul, whose vision and comprehension are dulled by the grossness of its physical envelope. Even the illuminated Soul that quits its prison house, to bathe in the light of infinitude, can only recollect flashes of the Vision Glorious once it returns again to earth.

And this is also the teaching of Simon when he says:

I say there are many gods, but one God of all these gods, incomprehensible and unknown to all, ... a Power of immeasurable and ineffable Light, whose greatness is held to be incomprehensible, a Tower which the maker of the world does not know.

This is a fundamental dogma of the Gnosis in all climes and in all ages. The demiurgic deity is not the All-Deity, for there is an infinite succession of universes, each having its particular deity, its Brahma, to use the Hindu term, but this Brahma is not THAT which is Para-Brahman, that which is beyond Brahma.

This view of the Simonian Gnosis has been magnificently anticipated in the Rig Veda (x. 129) which reads in the fine translation of Colebrooke as follows:

That, whence all this great creation came, Whether Its will created or was mute, The Most High Seer that is in highest Heaven, He knows it—or perchance even He knows not.

In treating of emanation, evolution, creation or whatever other term may be given to the process of manifestation, therefore, the teachers deal only with one particular universe; the Unmanifested Root, and Universal Cause of all Universes lying behind, in potentiality ([Greek: dynamis]), in Incomprehensible Silence ([Greek: sigae akatalaeptos]). For on the "Tongue of the Ineffable" are many "Words" ([Greek: logoi]), each Universe having its own Logos.

Thus then Simon speaks of the Logos of this Universe and calls it Fire ([Greek: pyr]). This is the Universal Principle or Beginning ([Greek: ton holon archae]), or Universal Rootage ([Greek: rizoma ton holon]). But this Fire is not the fire of earth; it is Divine Light and Life and Mind, the Perfect Intellectual ([Greek: to teleion noeron]). It is the One Power, "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." It is That, "which has neither beginning nor end, existing in oneness." "Producing itself by itself, it manifested to itself its own Thought ([Greek: epinoia])."

It is quite true that this symbology of Fire is not original with Simon, but there is also no reason to suppose that the Samaritan teacher plagiarized from Heracleitus when we know that the major part of antiquity regarded fire and the sun as the most fitting symbols of Deity. Of the manifested elements, fire was the most potent, and therefore the most fitting symbol that could be selected in manifested nature.

But what was the Fire of Heracleitus, the Obscure ([Greek: ho skoteinos]), as Cicero, with the rest of the ancients, called him, because of his difficult style? What was the Universal Principle of the "weeping philosopher," the pessimist who valued so little the estimation of the vulgar ([Greek: ochloloidoros])? It certainly was no common "fire," certainly no puerile concept to be brushed away by the mere hurling of an epithet.

Heracleitus of Ephesus (flor. c. 503 B.C.) was a sincerely religious man in the highest sense of the word, a reformer who strongly opposed the degenerate polytheism and idolatry of his age; he insisted on the impermanence of the phenomenal universe, of human affairs, beliefs and opinions, and declared the One Eternal Reality; teaching that the Self of man was a portion of the Divine Intelligence. The object of his enquiry was Wisdom, and he reproached his vain-glorious countrymen of the city of Diana with the words: "Your knowledge of many things does not give you wisdom."

In his philosophy of nature he declared the One Thing to be Fire, but Fire of a mystical nature, "self-kindled and self-extinguished," the vital quickening power of the universe. It was that Universal Life, by participation in which all things have their being, and apart from which they are unsubstantial and unreal. This is the "Tree of Life" spoken of by Simon.

In this Ocean of Fire or Life—in every point or atom of it—is inherent a longing to manifest itself in various forms, thus giving rise to the perpetual flux and change of the phenomenal world. This Divine Desire, this "love for everything that lives and breathes," is found in many systems, and especially in the Vedic and Phoenician Cosmogony. In the Rig Veda (x. 129), it is that Kama or Desire "which first arose in It (the Unknown Deity)," elsewhere identified with Agni or Fire. In the fragments of Phoenician Cosmogony, recovered from Sanchuniathon, it is called Pothos ([Greek: pothos]) and Eros ([Greek: eros]).

In its pure state, the Living and Rational Fire of Heracleitus resides in the highest conceivable Heaven, whence it descends stage by stage, gradually losing the velocity of its motion and vitality, until it finally reaches the Earth-stage, having previously passed through that of "Water." Thence it returns to its parent source.

In this eternal flux, the only repose was to be found in the harmony that occasionally resulted from one portion of the Fire in its descent meeting another in its ascent. All this took place under Law and Order, and the Soul of man being a portion of the Fire in its pure state, and therefore an exile here on Earth, could only be at rest by cultivating as the highest good, contentment ([Greek: euarestaesis]), or acquiescence to the Law.

The author of the Philosophumena professes to give us some additional information on this philosopher who "bewailed all things, condemning the ignorance of all that lives, and of all men, in pity for the life of mortals," but the obscure philosopher does not lend himself very easily to the controversial purposes of the patristic writer. Heracleitus called the Universal Principle ([Greek: ton hapanton archae]) Intellectual Fire ([Greek: pur noeron]), and said that the sphere surrounding us and reaching to the Moon was filled with evil, but beyond the Moon-sphere it was purer.[97]

The sentences that the author quotes from Heracleitus in Book IX, are not only obscure enough in themselves, but are also rendered all the more obscure by the polemical treatment they are subjected to by the patristic writer. Heracleitus makes the ALL inclusive of all Being and Non-Being, all pairs of opposites, "differentiation and non-differentiation, the generable and ingenerable, mortal and immortal, the Logos and Aeon, and the Father and Son," which he calls the "Just God." This ALL is the "Sadasat-Tatparam yat" of the Bhagavad Gita, inclusive of Being (Sat), Non-Being (Asat), and That Which transcends them (Tatparam yat).[98]

This Logos plays an important part in the system of the Ephesian sage, who says that they who give ear to the Logos (the Word or Supreme Reason) know that "All is One" ([Greek: hen panta eidenai]). Such an admission he calls, "Reflex Harmony" ([Greek: palintropos harmoniae]), like unto the Supernal Harmony, which he calls Hidden or Occult, and declares its superiority to the Manifested Harmony. The ignorance and misery of men arise from their not acting according to this Harmony, that is to say, according to (Divine) Nature ([Greek: kata phusin]).

He also declares that the Aeon, the Emanative Deity, is as a child playing at creation, an idea found in both the Hindu and Hermetic Scriptures. In the former the Universe is said to be the sport (Lila) of Vishnu, who is spoken of in one of his incarnations as Lilavatara, descending on earth for his own pleasure, when as Krishna he assumed the shape of man as a pretence (a purely Docetic doctrine), hence called Lila-manusha-vigraha; while in the latter we learn from a magic papyrus that Thoth (the God of Wisdom) created the world by bursting into "seven peals of laughter." This, of course, typifies the Bliss of the Deity in Emanation or Creation, caused by that Divine Love and Compassion for all that lives and breathes, which is the well-spring of the Supreme Cause of the Universe.

Diving into the Mystery of Being, Heracleitus showed how a thing could be good or evil, and evil or good, at one and the same time, as for instance sea water which preserved and nourished fishes but destroyed men. So also, speaking in his usual paradoxical manner, which can only be understood by a full comprehension of the dual nature of man,—the real divine entity, and the passing and ever-changing manifestation, which so many take for the whole man—he says:

The immortals are mortal, and the mortals immortal, the former living the death of the latter, and the latter dying the life of the former.[99]

Thus all externals are transitory, for "no one has ever been twice on the same stream, for different waters are constantly flowing down," and therefore in following externals we shall err, for nothing is efficient and forcible except through Harmony, and its subjection to the Divine Fire, the central principle of Life.

Such was the Fire of the distinguished Ephesian, and of like nature was the Fire of Simon with its three primordial hypostases, Incorruptible Form ([Greek: aphthartos morphae]), Universal Mind ([Greek: nous ton holon]), and Great Thought ([Greek: epinoia megalae]), synthesized as the Universal Logos, He who has stood, stands and will stand ([Greek: ho estos, stas, staesomenos]).

But before passing on to the aeonology of Simon, a short delay, to enquire more fully into the notions of the Initiated among the ancients as to the nature of Mystic Fire, will not be without advantage.

If Simon was a Samaritan and learned in the esoteric interpretation of scripture, he could not have failed to be acquainted with the Kabalah, perhaps even with the now lost Chaldaean Book of Numbers. Among the books of the Kabalah, the Zohar, or "Book of Splendour," speaks of the mysterious "Hidden Light," that which Simon calls the Hidden Fire ([Greek: to krupton]), and tells us of the "Mystery of the Three Parts of the Fire, which are One" as follows:

Began Rabbi Sim-on and said: Two verses are written, "That YHVH thy Elohim is a devouring fire, a zealous Ail (El)" (Deut., iv. 24); again it is written, "But you that cleave unto YHVH your Elohim, are alive, every one of you, this day" (Deut., iv. 4). On this verse "That YHVH thy Elohim is a consuming fire," this we said to the companions; That it is a fire which devours fire, and it is a fire which devours itself and consumes itself, because it is a fire which is more mighty than fire, and it has been so confirmed. But, Come, See! Whoever desires to know the wisdom of the Holy Unity should look in that flame arising from a burning coal or a lighted lamp. This flame comes out only when united with another thing. Come, See! In the flame which goes up are two lights: one light is a bright white and one light is united with a dark or blue; the white light is that which is above and ascends in a straight path, and that below is that dark or blue light, and this light below is the throne to the white light and that white light rests upon it, and they unite one to the other so that they are one. And this dark light, or blue colour, which is below, is the precious throne to the white. And this is the mystery of the blue. And this blue dark throne unites itself with another thing to light that from below, and this awakes it to unite with the upper white light, and this blue or dark, sometimes changes its colour, but that white above never changes its colour, it is always white; but that blue changes to these different colours, sometimes to blue or black and sometimes to a red colour, and this unites itself to two sides. It unites to the above, to that white upper light, and unites itself below to the thing which is under it, which is the burning matter, and this burns and consumes always from the matter below. And this devours that matter below, which connects with it and upon which the blue light rests, therefore this eats up all which connects with it from below, because it is the nature of it, that it devour and consume everything which depends on it and is dead matter, and therefore it eats up everything which connects with it below, and this white light which rests upon it never consumes itself and never changes its light, and therefore said Moses; "That YHVH thy Elohim is a consuming fire." Surely He consumes. It devours and consumes every thing which rests under it; and on this he said: "YHVH is thy Elohim" not "our Elohim," because Moses has been in that white light, Above, which neither devours nor consumes. Come, See! It is not His Will to light that blue light that should unite with that white light, only for Israel; because they cleave or connect under Him. And, Come, See! Although the nature of that dark or blue light is, that it shall consume every thing which joins with it below, still Israel cleaves on Him, Below, ... and although you cleave in Him nevertheless you exist, because it is written: "You are all alive this day." And on this white light rests above a Hidden Light which is stronger. Here is the above mystery of that flame which comes out from it, and in it is the Wisdom of the Above.[100]

And if Chaldaea gave the impulse which enshrined the workings of the Cosmos in such graphic symbology as the above, we are not surprised to read in the Chaldaean Oracles ([Greek: logia]),[101] ascribed to Zoroaster, that "all things are generated from One Fire."[102] And this Fire in its first energizing was intellectual; the first "Creation" was of Mind and not of Works:

For the Fire Beyond, the first, did not shut up its power ([Greek: dunamis]) into Matter ([Greek: hulae]) by Works, but by Mind, for the fashioner of the Fiery Cosmos is the Mind of Mind.[103]

A striking similarity with the Simonian system, indeed, rendered all the closer by the Oracle which speaks of that:

Which first leaped forth from Mind, enveloping Fire with Fire, binding them together that it might interblend the mother-vortices,[104] while retaining the flower of its own Fire.[105]

This "flower" of Fire and the vorticle idea is further explained by the Oracle which says:

Thence a trailing whirlwind, the flower of shadowy Fire, leaping into the wombs (or hollows) of worlds. For thence it is that all things begin to stretch below their wondrous rays.[106]

Compare this with the teaching of Simon that the "fruit" of the Tree is placed in the Store-house and not cast into the Fire.

In his aeonology, Simon, like other Gnostic teachers, begins with the Word, the Logos, which springs up from the Depths of the Unknown—Invisible, Incomprehensible Silence. It is true that he does not so name the Great Power, He who has stood, stands and will stand; but that which comes forth from Silence is Speech, and the idea is the same whatever the terminology employed may be. Setting aside the Hermetic teachings and those of the later Gnosis, we find this idea of the Great Silence referred to several times in the fragments of the Chaldaean Oracles. It is called "God-nourished Silence" ([Greek: sigae theothremmon]), according to whose divine decrees the Mind that energizes before all energies, abides in the Paternal Depth.[107] Again:

This unswerving Deity is called the Silent One by the gods, and is said to consent (lit. sing together) with the Mind, and to be known by the Souls through Mind alone.[108]

Elsewhere the Oracles demonstrate this Power which is prior to the highest Heaven as "Mystic Silence."[109]

The Word, then, issuing from Silence is first a Monad, then a Duad, a Triad and a Hebdomad. For no sooner has differentiation commenced in it, and it passes from the state of Oneness ([Greek: monotaes]), than the Duadic and Triadic state immediately supervene, arising, so to say, simultaneously in the mind, for the mind cannot rest on Duality, but is forced by a law of its nature to rest only on the joint emanation of the Two. Thus the first natural resting point is the Trinity. The next is the Hebdomad or Septenary, according to the mathematical formula 2^{n}-1, the sum of n things taken 1, 2, 3 ... n, at a time. The Trinity being manifested, n here =3; and 2^{3}-1 = 7.

Thus Simon has six Roots and the Seventh Power, seven in all, as the type of the Aeons in the Pleroma. These all proceed from the Fire. In like manner also the Cabeiric deities of Samothrace and Phoenicia were Fire-gods, born of the Fire. Nonnus tells us they were sons of the mysterious Hephaestus (Vulcan),[110] and Eusebius, in his quotations from Sanchuniathon, that they were seven in number.[111] The Vedic Agni (Ignis) also, the God of Fire, is called "Seven-tongued" (Sapta-jihva) and "Seven-flamed" (Sapta-jvala).[112]

In the Hibbert Lectures of 1887, Prof. A.H. Sayce gives the following Hymn of Ancient Babylonia to the Fire-god, from The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia (iv. 15):

1. The (bed) of the earth they took for their border, but the god appeared not,

2. from the foundations of the earth he appeared not to make hostility;

3. (to) the heaven below they extended (their path), and to the heaven that is unseen they climbed afar.

4. In the Star(s) of Heaven was not their ministry; in Mazzaroth (the Zodiacal signs) was their office.

5. The Fire-god, the first-born supreme, into heaven they pursued and no father did he know.

6. O Fire-god, supreme on high, the first-born, the mighty, supreme enjoiner of the commands of Anu!

7. The Fire-god enthrones with himself the friend that he loves.

8. He reveals the enmity of those seven.

9. On the work he ponders in his dwelling-place.

10. O Fire-god, how were those seven begotten, how were they nurtured?

11. Those seven in the mountain of the sunset were born;

12. those seven in the mountain of the sunrise grew up.

13. In the hollows of the earth they have their dwelling;

14. on the high places of the earth their names are proclaimed.

15. As for them, in heaven and earth they have no dwelling, hidden is their name.

16. Among the sentient gods they are not known.

17. Their name in heaven and earth exists not.

18. Those seven from the mountain of the sunset gallop forth;

19. those seven in the mountain of the sunrise are bound to rest.

20. In the hollows of the earth they set the foot.

21. On the high places of the earth they lift the neck.

22. They by nought are known; in heaven and in earth is no knowledge of them.[113]

Though I have no intention of contending that Simon obtained his ideas specifically from Vedic, Chaldaean, Babylonian, Zoroastrian, or Phoenician sources, still the identity of ideas and the probability, almost amounting to conviction for the student, that the Initiated of antiquity all drew from the same sources, shows that there was nothing original in the main features of the Simonian system.

This is also confirmed by the statements in Epiphanius and the Apostolic Constitutions that the Simonians gave "barbarous" or "foreign names" to their Aeons. That is to say, names that were neither Greek nor Hebrew. None of these names are mentioned by the Fathers, and probably the Greek terms given by the author of the Philosophumena and Theodoret are exoteric equivalents of the mystery names. There is abundant evidence, from gems, monuments and fragments, to show that there was a mystery language employed by the Gnostic and other schools. What this language was no scholar has yet been able to tell us, and it is sufficiently evident that the efforts at decipherment are so far abortive. The fullest and most precious examples of these names and of this language are to be found in the papyri brought back by Bruce from Abyssinia at the latter end of the last century.[114]

Jamblichus tells us that the language of the Mysteries was that of ancient Egypt and Assyria, which he calls "sacred nations," as follows:

But, you ask, why among our symbolical terms ([Greek: saemantika]) we prefer barbarous (words) to our respective native (tongues)? There is also for this a mystic reason. For it was the gods who taught the sacred nations, such as the Egyptians and Assyrians, the whole of their sacred dialect, wherefore we think that we ought to make our own dialects resemble the speech cognate with the gods. Since also the first mode of speech in antiquity was of such a nature, and especially since they who learnt the first names concerning the gods, mingled them with their own tongue—as being suited to such (names) and conformable to them—and handed them down to us, we therefore keep unchanged the rule of this immemorial tradition to our own times. For of all things that are suited to the gods the most akin is manifestly that which is eternal and immutable.[115]

The existence of this sacred tongue perhaps accounts for the constant distinction made by Homer between the language of the gods and that of men.[116] Diodorus Siculus also asserts that the Samothracians used a very ancient and peculiar dialect in their sacred rites.[117]

These "barbarous names" were regarded as of the greatest efficacy and sanctity, and it was unlawful to change them. As the Chaldaean Logia say:

Change not the barbarous names, for in all the nations are there names given by the gods, possessing unspeakable power in the Mysteries.[118]

And the scholiast[119] adds that they should not be translated into Greek.

It is, therefore, most probable that Simon used the one, three, five, and seven syllabled or vowelled names, and that the Greek terms were substitutes that completely veiled the esoteric meaning from the uninitiated.

The names of the seven Aeons, as given by the author of the Philosophumena, are as follows: The Image from the Incorruptible Form, alone ordering all things ([Greek: eikon ex aphthartou morphaes kosmousa monae panta]), also called The Spirit moving on the Waters ([Greek: to pneuma to epipheroumenon epano tou hudatos]) and The Seventh Power ([Greek: hae ebdomae dunamis]); Mind ([Greek: nous]) and Thought ([Greek: epinoia]), also called Heaven ([Greek: ouranos]) and Earth ([Greek: gae]); Voice ([Greek: phonae]) and Name ([Greek: onoma]),[120] also called Sun ([Greek: haelios]) and Moon ([Greek: selaenae]); Reason ([Greek: logismos]) and Reflection ([Greek: enthumaesis]), also called Air ([Greek: aaer]) and Water ([Greek: hudor]).

The first three of these are sufficiently explained in the fragment of Simon's Great Revelation, preserved in the Philosophumena, and become entirely comprehensible to the student of the Kabalah who is learned in the emanations of the Sephirothal Tree. Mind and Thought are evidently Chokmah and Binah, and the three and seven Sephiroth are to be clearly recognized in the scheme of the Simonian System which is to follow.

Of the two lower Syzygies, or Lower Quaternary of the Aeons, we have no details from the Fathers. We may, however, see some reason for the exoteric names—Voice and Name, Reason and Reflection—from the following considerations:

(1) We should bear in mind what has already been said about the Logos, Speech and Divine Names. (2) In the Septenary the Quaternary represents the Manifested and the Triad the Concealed Side of the Fire. (3) The fundamental characteristics of the manifested universe with the Hindus and Buddhists are Name (Nama) and Form (Rupa). (4) Simon says that the Great Power was not called Father until Thought (in manifestation becoming Voice) named ([Greek: onomasai]) him Father. (5) Reason and Reflection are evidently the two lowest aspects, principles, or characteristics, of the divine Mind of man. These are included in the lower mind, or Internal Organ (Antah-karana), by the Vedantin philosophers of India and called Buddhi and Manas, being respectively the mental faculties used in the certainty of judgment and the doubt of enquiry.

This Quaternary, among a host of other things, typifies the four lower planes, elements, principles, aspects, etc., of the Universe, with their Hierarchies of Angels, Archangels, Rulers, etc., each synthesized by a Lord who is supreme in his own domain. Seeing, however, that the outermost physical plane is so vast that it transcends the power of conception of even the greatest intellect, it is useless for us to speculate on the interplay of cosmic forces and the mysterious interaction of Spheres of Being that transcend all normal human consciousness. It is only on the lowest and outermost plane that the lower Quaternary symbolizes the four Cardinal Points. The Michael (Sun), Gabriel (Moon), Uriel (Venus), and Raphael (Mercury) of the Kabalah, the four Beasts, the Wheels of Ezekiel, were living, divine, and intelligent Entities pertaining to the inner nature of man and the universe for the Initiated.

It is to be presumed that the Simonians had distinct teachings on this point, as is evidenced by the title of their lost work, The Book of the Four Angles and Points of the World. The Four Angles were probably connected with the four ducts or Streams of the "River going forth from Eden to water the Garden." These Streams have their analogy on all planes, and cosmically are of the same nature as the Akasha-Ganga—the Ganges in the Akashic Ocean of Space—and the rest of the Rivers in the Pauranic writings of the Hindus.

But before going further it will be as well to have a Diagram or Scheme of the Simonian Aeonology, for presumably the School of Simon had such a Scheme, as we know the Ophites had from the work of Origen, Contra Celsum.

[121]

Of course no Diagram is anything more than a symbolical mnemonic, so to say; in itself it is entirely insufficient and only permits a glance at one aspect, or face, of the world-process. It is a step in a ladder merely, useful only for mounting and to be left aside when once a higher rung is reached. Thus it is that the whole of the elements of Euclid were merely an introduction to the comprehension of the "Platonic Solids," which must also, in their turn, be discarded when the within or essence of things has to be dealt with and not the without or appearance, no matter how "typical" that appearance may be.

Sufficient has already been said of the Universal Principle, of the Universal Root and of the Boundless Power—the Parabrahman (That Which transcends Brahma), Mula-Prakriti (Root-Nature), and Supreme Ishvara, or the Unmanifested Eternal Logos, of the Vedantic Philosophers. The next stage is the potential unmanifested type of the Trinity, the Three in One and One in Three, the Potentialities of Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva, the Preservative, Emanative, and Regenerative Powers—the Supreme Logos, Universal Ideation and Potential Wisdom, called by Simon the Incorruptible Form, Universal Mind and Great Thought. This Incorruptible Form is the Paradigm of all Forms, called Vishva Rupam or All-Form and the Param Rupam or Supreme Form, in the Bhagavad Gita[122] spoken also of as the Param Nidhanam or Supreme Treasure-house,[123] which Simon also calls the Treasure-house [Greek: thaesauros] and Store-house [Greek: apothaekae], an idea found in many systems, and most elaborately in that of the Pistis-Sophia.

Between this Divine World, the Unmanifested Triple Aeon, and the World of Men is the Middle Distance—the Waters of Space differentiated by the Image or Reflection of the Triple Logos (D) brooding upon them. As there are three Worlds, the Divine, Middle, and Lower, which have been well named by the Valentinians the Pneumatic (or Spiritual), Psychic (or Soul-World), and Hylic (or Material), so in the Middle Distance we have three planes or degrees, or even seven. This Middle Distance contains the Invisible Spheres between the Physical World and the Divine. To it the Initiated and Illuminati, the Spiritual Teachers of all ages, have devoted much exposition and explanation. It is divine and infernal at one and the same time, for as the higher parts—to use a phrase that is clumsy and misleading, but which cannot be avoided—are pure and spiritual, so the lower parts are corrupted and tainted. The law of analogy, imaging and reflection, hold good in every department of emanative nature, and though pure and spiritual ideas come to men from this realm of the Middle Distance, it also receives back from man the impressions of his impure thoughts and desires, so that its lower parts are fouler even than the physical world, for man's secret thoughts and passions are fouler than the deeds he performs. Thus there is a Heaven and Hell in the Middle Distance, a Pneumatic and Hylic state.

The Lord of this Middle World is One in his own Aeon, but in reality a reflection of the triple radiance from the Unmanifested Logos. This Lord is the Manifested Logos, the Spirit moving on the Waters. Therefore all its emanations or creations are triple. The triple Light above and the triple Darkness below, force and matter, or spirit and matter, both owing their being and apparent opposition to the Mind, "alone ordering all things."

The Diagram to be more comprehensible should be so arranged, mentally, that each of the higher spheres is found within or interpenetrating the lower. Thus, from this point of view, the centre is a more important position than above or below. External to all is the Physical Universe, made by the Hylic Angels, that is to say those emanated by Thought, Epinoia, as representing Primeval Mother Earth, or Matter; not the Earth we know, but the Adamic Earth of the Philosophers, the Potencies of Matter, which Eugenius Philalethes assures us, on his honour, no man has ever seen. This Earth is, in one sense, the Protyle for which the most advanced of our modern Chemists are searching as the One Mother Element.

The idea of the Spirit of God moving on the Waters is a very beautiful one, and we find it worked out in much detail in the Hindu scriptures. For instance, in the Vishnu Purana,[124] we find a description of the emanation of the present Universe by the Supreme Spirit, at the beginning of the present Kalpa or Aeon, an infinity of Kalpas and Universes stretching behind. This he creates endowed with the Quality of Goodness, or the Pneumatic Potency. For the three Qualities (or Gunas) of Nature (Prakriti) are the Pneumatic, Psychic and Hylic Potencies of the Waters of Simon.

At the close of the past (or Padma) Kalpa, the divine Brahma, endowed with the quality of goodness, awoke from his night of sleep, and beheld the universe void. He, the supreme Narayana, the incomprehensible, the sovereign of all creatures, invested with the form of Brahma, the god without beginning, the creator of all things; of whom, with respect to his name Narayana, the god who has the form of Brahma, the imperishable origin[125] of the world, this verse is repeated: "The waters are called Nara, because they were the offspring of Nara (the supreme spirit); and, as, in them, his first (Ayana)[126] progress (in the character of Brahma) took place, he is thence named Narayana (he whose place of moving was the waters)."

Sir Wm. Jones translates this well-known verse of Manu[127] as follows:

The waters are called Narah, because they were the production of Nara, or the spirit of God; and, since they were his first Ayana, or place of motion, he thence is named Narayana or moving on the waters.

Substantially the same statement is made in the Linga, Vayu, and Markandeya Puranas, and the Bhagavata explains it more fully as follows:

Purusha (the Spirit) having divided the egg (the ideal universe in germ), on his issuing forth in the beginning, desiring a place of motion (Ayanam) for himself, pure he created the waters pure.

In the Vishnu Purana, again, Brahma, speaking to the Celestials, says:

I, Mahadeva (Shiva), and you all are but Narayana.[128]

The beautiful symbol of the Divine Spirit moving and brooding over the Primordial Waters of Space—Waters which as differentiation proceeds become more and more turbid—is too graphic to require further explanation. It is too hallowed by age and sanctified by the consent of humanity to meet with less than our highest admiration.

Dissertation on our Diagram could be pursued to almost any length, but sufficient has already been said to show the points of correspondence between the ideas ascribed to Simon and universal Theosophy.

Let us now enquire into the part played by Epinoia, the Divine Thought, in the cosmic process, reserving the part played by her in the human drama to when we come to treat of the soteriology of Simon. We have evidently here a version of the great Sophia-mythus, which plays so important a part in all Gnostic systems. On the one hand the energizings of the mother-side of Divine Nature, on the other the history of the evolution of the Divine Monad, shut into all forms throughout the elemental spheres, throughout the lower kingdoms, up to the man stage.

The mystery of Sophia-Epinoia is great indeed, insoluble in its origins; for how does that which is Divine descend below and create Powers which imprison their parent? It is the mystery of the universe and of man, insoluble for all but the Logos itself, by whose self-sacrifice Sophia, the Soul, is finally freed from her bonds.

Epinoia is a Power of many names. She is called the Mother, or All-Mother, Mother of the Living or Shining Mother, the Celestial Eve; the Power Above; the Holy Spirit, for the Spiritus in some systems is a feminine power (in a symbolical sense, of course), pre-eminently in the Codex Nazaraeus, the scripture of the Mandaites. Again she is called She of the Left-hand, as opposed to the Christos, He of the Right-hand; the Man-woman; Prouneikos; Matrix; Paradise; Eden; Achamoth; the Virgin; Barbelo; Daughter of Light; Merciful Mother; Consort of the Masculine One; Revelant of the Perfect Mysteries; Perfect Mercy; Revelant of the Mysteries of the Whole Magnitude; Hidden Mother; She who knows the Mysteries of the Elect; the Holy Dove, who has given birth to the two Twins; Ennoia; and by many another name varying according to the terminology of the different systems, but ever preserving the root idea of the World-Soul in the Macrocosm and the Soul in Man.

Within every form, aye, even apparently the meanest, is Epinoia confined; for everything within is innate with Life; every form contains a spark of the Divine Fire, essentially of the same nature as the All; for in the Roots, and also in all things—since all is built on their type—is "the whole of the Boundless Power together in potentiality, but not in actuality."

The reason given for this imprisonment of Sophia in most of the systems is that she endeavoured to create without her Syzygy, the Father or Nous, wishing to imitate alone the self-generating power of the Supreme. Thus through ignorance she involved herself in suffering, from which she was freed by repentance and experience. What explanation of this supreme mystery was publicly ventured on by Simon we cannot know, for the patristic accounts are confused and contradictory.

Irenaeus tells us that:

She was the first Conception (Epinoia) of his Mind, the Mother of All, by whom in the beginning he conceived in his Mind, the making of the Angels and Archangels.

This Epinoia, leaping forth from him (the Boundless Power), 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 the world was made. And after she had generated them, she was detained by them through envy, for they did not wish to be thought the progeny of another. As for himself he was entirely unknown by them; and it was his Thought (Epinoia) 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 reaescending to her Father, even to being imprisoned in the human body and transmigrating into other female bodies, as from one vessel into another.

Tertullian's account differs by the important addition that the "design of the Father was prevented"; how or why he does not say.

She was his first Suggestion whereby he suggested the making of the Angels and Archangels; that she sharing in this design had sprung forth from the Father, and leaped down into the Lower Regions; and that there, the design of the Father being prevented, she had brought forth Angelic Powers ignorant of the Father, the artificer of this world (?); by these she was detained, not according to his intention, lest when she had gone they should be thought to be the progeny of another, etc.

The Philosophumena say nothing on this point, except that Epinoia "throws all the Powers in the World into confusion through her unsurpassable Beauty."

Philaster renders confusion worse confounded, by writing:

And 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 (the Angels) had deceived the human race.

He asserted, moreover, that there was a certain other Thought (Intellectus) who descended into the world for the salvation of men.

Epiphanius further complicates the problem as follows:

This Power (Prunicus and Holy Spirit) descending from Above changed its form.... And through the Power from Above ... displaying her beauty, she drove them to frenzy, and on this account was she sent for the despoiling of the Rulers who brought the World into being; and the Angels themselves went to war on her account; and while she experienced nothing, they set to work to mutually slaughter each other on account of the desire which she infused into them for herself.

Theodoret briefly follows Irenaeus.

In these contradictory accounts we have a great confusion between the roles played by Nous and Epinoia, the Father and Thought, the Spirit and Spiritual Soul. Then again how did the Lower Regions come into existence, for Epinoia to descend to them? This lacuna is filled by the fuller information of the Philosophumena which shows us the scheme of self-emanation out or down into matter by similitude, thus confining the problem of "evil" to space and time, and not raising it into an eternal principle. Naturally it is not to be supposed that the origin of "evil" is solvable for man in his present state, therefore whether it was according to the design or contrary to the design of the Father, will ever depend upon the point of view from which we severally regard the problem.

Law, Justice, and Compassion are not incompatible terms to one whose heart is set firm on spiritual things; and the view that evil is not a thing in itself, but exists only because of human ignorance, is one that must commend itself to the truly religious and philosophical mind. Thus evil is not a fixed quantity in itself, it depends on the internal attitude each man holds with regard to externals as to whether they are evil or no.

For instance, it is not evil for an animal or savage to kill, for the light of the higher law is not yet flaming brightly in their hearts. That only is evil if we do what is displeasing to the Self. This may perhaps throw some light on the Simonian dogma of action by accident (ex accidenti), or institution ([Greek: thesei]), as opposed to action according to nature (naturaliter or [Greek: phusei])—evidently the same idea as the teaching of Heracleitus to act according to nature ([Greek: kata phusin]) which he explains as according to the Unmanifested Harmony which we can hear by straining our ears to catch that still small voice within, the Voice of the Silence, the Logos or Self. Simon presumably refers to this in the phrase "the things which sound within" ([Greek: ta enaecha]), an idea remarkably confirmed by Psellus,[129] who quotes the following Logion:

When thou seest a most holy, formless Fire shining and bounding throughout the depths of the whole Cosmos, give ear to the Voice of the Fire.

This brings us to a consideration of the teachings of Simon with regard to the Lesser World, the Microcosm, Man, and to the scheme of his soteriology. Evidently Simon taught the ancient, immemorial doctrine that the Microcosm Man was the Mirror and Potentiality of the Cosmos, the Macrocosm, as we have already seen above. Whatever was true of the emanation of the Universe, was also true of Man, whatever was true of the Macrocosmic Aeons was true of the Microcosmic Aeons in Man, which are potentially the same as those of the Cosmos, and will develop into the power and grandeur of the latter, if they can find suitable expression, or a fit vehicle. This view will explain the reason of the ancients for saying that we could only perceive that of which we have a germ already within us. Thus it is that Empedocles taught:

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

And if the potentiality of all resided in every man, the teaching on this point most forcibly has been, Qui se cognoscit, in se omnia cognoscit—He who knows himself, knows all in himself—as Q. Fabius Pictor tells us. And, therefore, the essential of moral and spiritual training in ancient times was the attainment of Self-Knowledge—that is to say, the attainment of the certitude that there is a divine nature within every man, which is of infinite capacity to absorb universal Wisdom; that, in brief, Man was essentially one with Deity.

With Simon, as with the Hermetic philosophers of ancient Egypt, all things were interrelated by correspondence, analogy, and similitude. "As above, so below," is the teaching on the Smaragdine Table of Hermes. Therefore, whatever happened to the divine Epinoia, the Supreme Mother, among the Aeons, happened also to the human Spiritual Soul or Monadic Essence, in its evolution through all stages of manifestation. This Soul is shut into all forms and bodies, successively up to the stage of man.

From one point of view this teaching has been conclusively proved by Modern Science. The evolution of the external form has been traced throughout all the kingdoms and is no longer in question. The ancient teachers of evolution, though less exact in detail, were more accurate in fact, in postulating a "something within" which alone could make the external evolution of form of any intelligible purpose. The Spiritual Soul—the Life, Consciousness, Spirit, Intelligence, whatever we may choose to call it—was formless in itself, but ever assuming new forms by a process called metempsychosis, metasomatosis, metangismos, etc., which in the human stage becomes reincarnation, the rebirth or Punarjanman of the Hindus.

So much has been written on metempsychosis and reincarnation 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 Avataras, 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.

Eastern philosophy, regarding not only the external phenomenal world as ever-changing and impermanent, but also all appearance or manifestation—no matter how subjective it may be to us now—as not the one Truth in itself, which it claims alone to be without change, it is easy to see the reason why the Gnostic Philosophers for the most part held to Doceticism—that is to say that the body of a Saviour was not the Saviour himself, but an appearance. The heat of polemical controversy may have led to exaggerated views on both sides, but the philosophical mind will not be distressed at the thought that the body is an appearance or mask of the real man, and that it forms no part of his eternal possession. None the less the body is real to us here, for we all have bodies of a like nature, and appearances are real to appearances. Yet this does not invalidate the further consideration that there are other bodies, vestures, or vehicles of consciousness, besides the gross physical "coat of skin," for the use of the spiritual man, each being an "appearance" in comparison to the higher vehicle, which is in its turn an "appearance" to that which is more subtle and less material or substantial than itself.

Thus, in the descent from the Divine World, the Soul transforms itself, or clothes itself in forms, or bodies, or vestures, which it weaves out of its own substance, like to the Powers of the Worlds it passes through, for every Soul has a different vehicle of consciousness for every World or Plane.

But the doctrine of the Soter, or Saviour, does not apply until the Christ-stage or consummation is reached. Following the idea of rebirth, there is a spiritual life cycle, or life-thread, on which the various earth-lives are strung, as beads on a necklace, each successive life being purer and nobler, as the Soul gains control of matter, or the driver control of the chariot and steeds that speed him through the experiences of life. As the end of this great cycle approaches, an earthly vehicle is evolved that can show forth the divine spirit in all the fulness possible to this world or phase of evolution.

Now as the problem can be viewed from either the internal or external point of view, we have the mystery of the Soul depicted both from the side of the involution of spirit into matter and of the evolution of matter into spirit. If, on the one hand, we insist too strongly on one view, we shall only have a one-sided conception of the process; if, on the other, we neglect one factor, we shall never solve the at present unknown quantity of the equation. Thus the Soul is represented as the "lost sheep" struggling in the meshes of the net of matter, passing from body to body, and the Spirit is represented as descending, transforming itself through the spheres, in order to finally rescue its Syzygy from the bonds that are about her.

The Soul aspires to the Spirit and the Spirit takes thought for the Soul; as the Simonians expressed it:

The male (Heaven, i.e., the Nous or Christ, or Spiritual Soul) looks down from above and takes thought for its co-partner (or Syzygy); while the Earth (i.e., the Epinoia or Jesus, or Human Soul) from below receives from the Heaven the intellectual (in the spiritual and philosophical sense, of course) fruits that come down to it and are cognate with the Earth (i.e., of the same nature essentially as Epinoia, who is essentially one with Nous).

When this mystery is represented dramatically, so to say, and personified, these two aspects of the Soul are depicted as two persons. Thus we have Simon and Helen, his favourite disciple, Krishna and Arjuna, etc. In the Canonical Gospels the favourite disciple is said to be John, and the women-disciples are placed well in the background. In the Gnostic Gospels, however, the women-disciples are not so ostracized, and the view taken by these early communities of philosophical and mystical Christians throws much light on that wonderful history of the Magdalene that has so touched the heart of Christendom. For instance, in the Pistis-Sophia, the chief of all the disciples, the most spiritual and intuitive, is Mary Magdalene. This is not without significance when we remember the love of the Christ for Mary "out of whom he had cast seven devils."

The allegory is a striking one, and perfectly comprehensible to the student of comparative religion. As there are seven Aeons in the Spiritual World, seven principles or aspects of the Spiritual Soul, so here on Earth, by analogy, there are seven lower aspects, or impure reflections. As there are seven Cardinal Virtues, the Prajna-Paramitas, or Perfections of Wisdom, of the Buddhists, so there are seven Cardinal Vices, and these must be cast out by the spiritual will, before the repentant Mary, or Human Soul, can be purified.

This is the mystery of the Helen, the "lost sheep." Then follows the mystical marriage of the Lamb, the union of the Human and Spiritual Soul in man, referred to so often in the Gospels and other mystical scriptures.

Naturally the language used is symbolical, and has naught to do with sex, in any sense. Woe unto him or her who takes these allegories of the Soul as literal histories, for nothing but sorrow will follow such materialization of divine mysteries. If Simon or his followers fell into this error, they worked their own downfall, under the Great Law, as surely do all who forge such bonds of matter for their own enslavement.

But with condemnation we have nothing to do; they alone who are without sin have the right to cast stones at the Magdalenes of this world; and they who are truly without sin use their purity to cleanse their fellows, and do not sully it with the stains of self-righteous condemnation. We, ordinary men and women of the age, are all "lost sheep," human souls struggling in ignorance; shall we then stone our fellows because their theology has a different nomenclature to our own? For man was the same in the past as he is to-day. The Human Soul has ever the same hopes and fears, loves and hates, passions and aspirations, no matter how the mere form of their expression differs. That which is important is the attitude we hold to the forms with which we are surrounded. To-day the form of our belief is changed; the fashion of our dress is scientific and not allegorical, but are we any nearer the realization that it is a dress and no more, and not the real expression of the true man within?

Let us now take a brief glance at the Symbolical Tree of Life, which plays so important a part in the Simonian Gnosis. Not, however, that it was peculiar to this system, for several of the schools use the same symbology. For instance, in the Pistis-Sophia[130] the idea is immensely expanded, and there is much said of an Aeonian Hierarchy called the Five Trees. As this, however, may have been a later development, let us turn to the ancient Hindu Shastras, and select one out of the many passages that could be adduced, descriptive of the Ashvattha Tree, the Tree of Life, "the Ashvattha of golden wings," where the bird-souls get their wings and fly away happily, as the Sanatsujatiya tells us. The passage we choose is from the Bhagavad Gita, that marvellous philosophical episode from the Mahabharata, which from internal evidence, and at the very lowest estimate, must be placed at a date anterior to Simon. At the beginning of the fifteenth Adyaya we read:

They say the imperishable Ashvattha is with root above and branches below, of which the sacred hymns are the leaves. Who knows this, he is a knower of knowledge. Upwards and downwards stretch its branches, expanded by the potencies (Gunas); the sense-objects are its sprouts. Downwards, too, its roots are stretched, constraining to action in the world of men. Here neither its form is comprehended, nor its end, nor beginning, nor its support. Having cut with the firm sword of detachment (sc. non-attachment to the fruit of action) this Ashvattha, with its overgrown roots, then should he (the disciple) search out that Supreme whither they who come never return again, (with the thought) that now he is come to that primal Being, whence the evolution of old was emanated.

For what is this "sword of detachment" but another aspect of the "fiery sword" of Simon, which is turned about to guard the way to the Tree of Life? This "sword" is our passions and desires, which now keep us from the golden-leaved Tree of Life, whence we may find wings to carry us to the "Father in Heaven." For once we have conquered Desire and turned it into spiritual Will, it then becomes the "Sword of Knowledge"; and the way to the Tree of Spiritual Life being gained, the purified Life becomes the "Wings of the Great Bird" on which we mount, to be carried to its Nest, where peace at last is found.

The simile of the Tree is used in many senses, not the least important of which is that of the heavenly "vine" of the reincarnating Soul, every "life" of which is a branch. This explains Simon's citation of the Logion so familiar to us in the Gospel according to Luke:

Every tree not bearing good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire.

This also explains one of the inner meanings of the wonderful passage in the Gospel according to John:

I am the true vine and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away; and every branch that beareth fruit he purgeth it that it may bear more fruit.[131]

For only the spiritual fruit of every life is harvested in the "Store-house" of the Divine Soul; the rest is shed off to be purified in the "Fire" of earthly existence.

Into the correspondence between the world-process of Nature, and that which takes place in the womb of mortal woman, it will not be necessary to enter at length. No doubt Simon taught many other correspondences between the processes of Cosmic Nature and Microcosmic Man, but what were the details of this teaching we can in no way be certain. Simon may have made mistakes in physiology, according to our present knowledge, but with the evidence before us all we can do is to suspend our judgment. For in the first place, we do not know that he has been correctly reported by his patristic antagonists, and, in the second, we are even yet too ignorant of the process of the nourishment of the foetus to pronounce any ex cathedra statement. In any case Simon's explanation is more in agreement with Modern Science than the generality of the phantasies on scientific subjects to which the uninstructed piety of the early Fathers so readily lent itself. As to whether the Initiated of the ancients did or did not know of the circulation of the blood and the functions of the arterial system, we must remain in doubt, for both their well known method of concealing their knowledge and also the absence of texts which may yet be discovered by the industry of modern exploration teach us to hold our judgment in suspense.

Again, seeing the importance which the symbolical Tree played in the Simonian System, it may be that there was an esoteric teaching in the school, which pointed out correspondences in the human body for mystical purposes, as has been the custom for long ages in India in the Science of Yoga. In the human body are at least two "Trees," the nervous, and vascular systems. The former has its "root" above in the cerebrum, the latter has its roots in the heart. Along the trunks and branches run currents of "nervous ether" and "life" respectively, and the Science of Yoga teaches its disciples to use both of these forces for mystical purposes. It is highly probable also that the Gnostics taught the same processes to their pupils, as we know for a fact that the Neo-Platonists inculcated like practices. From these considerations, then, it may be supposed that Simon was not so ignorant of the real laws of the circulation of the blood as might otherwise be imagined; and as to the nourishment of the embryo, modern authorities are at loggerheads, the majority, however, inclining to the opinion of Simon, that the foetus is nourished through the umbilical cord.[132]

The last point of importance to detain us, before passing on to a notice on the magical practices ascribed to Simon, is the allegorical use made by the Simonians of Scripture. Here again we have little to do with the details reported, but only with the idea. It was a common belief of the sages of antiquity that the mythological part of the sacred writings of the nations were to be understood in an allegorical fashion. Not to speak of India, we have the Neo-Platonic School with its analogetical methods of interpretation, and the mention of a work of Porphyry in which an allegorical interpretation of the Iliad was attempted. Allegorical shows of a similar nature also were enacted in the Lesser Mysteries and explained in the Greater, as Julian tells us in the Mother of the Gods,[133] and Plutarch on the Cessation of Oracles.[134]

Much evidence could be adduced that this was a widespread idea held by the learned of antiquity, but space does not here allow a full treatment of the subject. What is important to note is that Simon claimed this as a method of his School, and therefore, in dealing with his system, we cannot leave out so important a factor, and persist in taking allegorical and symbolical expressions as literal teachings. We may say that the method is misleading and has led to much superstition among the ignorant, but we have no right to criticize the literal and historical meaning of an allegory, and then fancy that we have criticized the doctrine it enshrines. This has been the error of all rationalistic critics of the world bibles. They have wilfully set on one side the whole method of ancient religious teaching, and taken as literal history and narrative what was essentially allegorical and symbolical. Perhaps the reason for this may be in the fact that wherever religion decays and ignorance spreads herself, there the symbolical and allegorical is materialized into the historical and literal. The spirit is forgotten, the letter is deified. Hence the reaection of the rationalistic critic against the materialism and literalism of sacred verities. Nevertheless, such criticism does not go deep enough to affect the real truths of religion and the convictions of the human soul, any more than an aesthetic criticism on the shape of the Roman letters and Arabic figures can affect the truth of an algebraical formula. Rationalistic criticism may stir people from literalism and dogmatic crystallization, in fact it has done much in this way, but it does not reach the hidden doctrines.

Now Simon contended that many of the narrations of Scripture were allegorical, and opposed those who held to the dead-letter interpretation. To the student of comparative religion, it is difficult to see what is so highly blameworthy in this. On the contrary, this view is so worthy of praise, that it deserves to be widely adopted to-day, at the latter end of the nineteenth century. To understand antiquity, we must follow the methods of the wise among the ancients, and the method of allegory and parable was the manner of teaching of the great Masters of the past.

But supposing we grant this, and admit that all Scriptures possess an inner meaning and lend themselves to interpretation on every plane of being and thought, who is to decide whether any particular interpretation is just or no? Already we have writers arising, giving diametrically opposite interpretations of the same mystical narrative, and though this may be an advance on bald physical literalism, it is by no means encouraging to the instructed and philosophical mind.

If the Deity is no respecter of persons, times, or nations, and if no age is left without witness of the Divine, it would seem to be in accordance with the fitness of things that all religions in their purity are one in essence, no matter how overgrown with error they may have become through the ignorance of man. If, again, the root of true Religion is one, and the nature of the Soul and of the inner constitution of things is identical in all climes and times, as far as its main features are concerned, no matter what terminology, allegory, and symbology may be employed to describe it; and not only this, but if it be true that such subjective things are as potent facts in human consciousness as any that exist, as indeed is evidenced by the unrivalled influence such things have had on human hearts and actions throughout the history of the world—then we must consider that an interpretation that fits only one system and is found entirely unsuitable to the rest, is no part of universal religion, and is due rather to the ingenuity of the interpreter than to a discovery of any law of subjective nature. The method of comparative religion alone can give us any certainty of correct interpretation, and a refusal to institute such a comparison should invalidate the reliability of all such enquiries.

Now Simon is reported to have endeavoured to find an inner meaning in scriptural narratives and mythologies, and against this method we can have nothing to say; it is only when a man twists the interpretation to suit his own prejudices that danger arises. Simon, however, is shown to have appealed to the various sacred literatures known in his time, an eclectic and theosophical method, and one that cannot very well be longer set on one side even in our own days.

The primitive church was not so forgetful of symbology as are the majority of the Christian faith to-day. One of the commonest representations of primitive Christian art was that of the "Four Rivers." As the Rev. Professor Cheetham tells us:

We find it repeated over and over again in the catacombs, either in frescoes or in the sculptured ornaments of sarcophagi, and sometimes on the bottoms of glass cups which have been discovered therein.[135]

The interpretations given by the early divines were many and various; in nearly every case, however, it was an interpretation which applied to the Christian system alone, and accentuated external differences. Little attempt was made to find an interpretation in nature, either objective or subjective, or in man. Simon, at any rate, made the attempt—an effort to broaden out into a universal system applying to all men at all times. This is also the real spirit of pure Christianity which is so often over-clouded by theological partisanship. A true interpretation must stand the test of not only religious aspiration, but also philosophical thought and scientific observation.

Nor again should we find cause to grieve at an attempted interpretation of the Trojan Horse, that was fabricated by the advice of Athena (Minerva-Epinoia), for did not George Stanley Faber, in the early years of this century, labour with much learning to prove its identity with the Ark. True he only turned similar myths into the terms of one myth and got no further, but that was an advance on his immediate predecessors. Simon, however, had centuries before gone further than Faber, as far as theory is concerned, by seeking an interpretation in nature. But, in his turn, as far as our records go, he only attempted the interpretation of one aspect of this graphic symbol, saying that it typified "ignorance." An interpretation, however, to be complete should cover all planes of consciousness and being from the physical human plane to the divine cosmic. The Ark floating on the Waters of the Deluge and containing the Germs of Life, the Mundane Egg in the Waters of Space, and the Mare with her freight of armed warriors, all typify a great fact in nature, which may be studied scientifically in the development of the germ-cell, and ethically by analogy, as the egg of ignorance, the germs in which are, from the lower aspect, our own evil passions.

In speaking of such allegories and tracing the correspondences between certain symbologies and the natural facts of embryology, Simon speaks of the "cave" which plays so important a part in so many religious allegories. As the child is born in a "cave," so the "new man" is also born in a "cave," and all the Saviours are so recorded to have been born in their birth legends. The Mysteries of antiquity were for the most part solemnized in caves, or rock-cut temples. The Epoptae deemed such caverns as symbols both of the physical world and Hades or the Unseen World, which surrounds every child of man. Into such a cave, in the middle of the Ocean, Cronus shut his children, as Porphyry[136] tells us. It was called by the name Petra, or Rock, and from such a Rock Mithras is said to have been born.[137]

Faber endeavours to identify this symbolical cave with the Ark,[138] which may be permissible from one aspect, as the womb of mother nature and of the human mother correspond analogically.

In the "new birth" of the mysteries, the Souls were typified as bees born from the body of an ox, for they were to gather the honey of wisdom, and were born from the now dead body of their lower natures. In the cave were two doors, one for immortals, the other for mortals. In this connection the cave is the psychic womb that surrounds every man, of which Nicodemus displays such ignorance in the Gospels. It is the microcosmic Middle Distance; by one door the Lower Soul enters, and uniting with its immortal consort, who descends through the door of the immortals, becomes immortal.

The cavern is overshadowed by an olive tree—again the Tree of Life to which we have referred above—on the branches of which the doves rest, and bring back the leaves to the ark of the body and the prisoner within it.

But space does not permit us to pursue further this interesting subject, which requires an entire treatise by itself, or even a series of volumes. Enough, however, has been said to show that the method of interpretation employed by Simon is not without interest and profit, and that the tolerant spirit of to-day which animates the best minds and hearts in Christendom will find no reason to mete out to Simon wholesale condemnation on this score.

There are also many other points of interest that could be elaborated upon, in the fragments of the system we are reviewing, but as my task is in the form of an essay, and not an exhaustive work, I must be content to pass them by for the present, and to hurry on to a few words on that strange and misunderstood subject, commonly known as Magic.

What Magic, the "Great Art" of the ancients, was in reality is now as difficult to discover as is the true Religion that underlies all the great religions of the world. It was an art, a practice, the Great and Supreme Art of the most Sacred Science of God, the Universe and Man. It was and it is all this in its highest sense, and its method was what is now called "creation." As the Aeons imitated the Boundless Power and emanated or created in their turn, so could man imitate the Aeons and emanate or create in his turn. But "creation" is not generation, it is a work of the "mind," in the highest sense of the word. By purification and aspiration, by prayer and fasting, man had to make his mind harmonious with the Great Mind of the Universe, and so by imitation create pure vehicles whereby his consciousness could be carried in every direction of the Universe. Such spiritual operations required the greatest purity and piety, real purity and true piety, without disguise or subterfuge, for man had to face himself and his God, before whom no disguise was possible. The most secret motives, the most hidden desires, were revealed by the stern self-discipline to which the Adepts of the Science subjected themselves.

But as in all things here below, so with the Art of Magic, it was two-fold. Above I have only spoken of the bright side of it, the path along which the World-Saviours have trodden, for no one can gain entrance to the path of self-sacrifice and compassion unless his heart burns with love for all that lives, and unless he treads the way of wisdom only in order that he may become that Path itself for the salvation of the race. But there is the other side; knowledge is knowledge irrespective of the use to which it may be put. The sword of knowledge is two-edged, as remarked above, and may be put to good or evil use, according to the selfishness or unselfishness of the possessor.

But corruptio optimi pessima, and as the employment of wisdom for the benefit of mankind—as, for instance, curing the sick, physically and morally—is the highest, so the use of any abnormal power for the advantage of self is the vilest sin that man can commit.

There are strange analogies in Nature, and the higher the spiritual, the lower the corresponding material process; so that we find in the history of magic—perhaps the longest history in the world—extremes ever meeting. Abuse of spiritual powers, and the vilest physical processes, noxious, fantastic, and pestilential, are recorded in the pages of so-called magical literature, but such foul deeds are no more real Magic than are the horrors of religious fanaticism the outcome of true Mohammedanism or Christianity. This is the abuse, the superstition, the degeneration of all that is good and true, rendered all the more vile because it pertains to denser planes of matter than even the physical. It is a strange thing that the highest should pair with the lowest where man is concerned, but it ever remains true that the higher we climb the lower we may fall.

Man is much the same in nature at all times, and though the Art was practised in its purity by the great World-Teachers and their immediate followers, whether we call it by the name Magic or no, it ever fell into abuse and degeneracy owing to the ingrained ignorance and selfishness of man. Thus the Deity and Gods or Daemons of one nation became the Devil and Demons of another; the names were changed, the facts remained the same. For if we are to reject all such things as superstition, hallucination, and what not, the good must go with the bad. But facts, whether good or bad, are still facts, and man is still man, no matter how he changes the fashion of his belief. The followers of the World-Teachers cannot hold to the so-called "miracles" of their respective Masters and reject all others as false in fact, no matter from what source they may believe they emanate. In nature there can be nothing supernatural, and as man stands mid-way between the divine and infernal, if we accept the energizing of the one side of his nature, we must also accept that of the other. Both are founded on nature and science, both are under law and order.