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 Gnôsis 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 Brahmâ, to use the Hindû term, but this Brahmâ is not THAT which is Para-Brahman, that which is beyond Brahmâ.
This view of the Simonian Gnôsis 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 (δυναμις), in Incomprehensible Silence (σιγη ακαταληπτος). For on the “Tongue of the Ineffable” are many “Words” (λογοι), each Universe having its own Logos.
Thus then Simon speaks of the Logos of this Universe and calls it Fire πυρ). This is the Universal Principle or Beginning (των ολων αρχη), or Universal Rootage (ριζωμα των ολων). But this Fire is not the fire of earth; it is Divine Light and Life and Mind, the Perfect Intellectual (το τελειον νοερον). 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 (επινοια).”
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 (ο σκοτεινος), 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 (οχλολοιδορος)? 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 Kâma 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 (ποθος) and Erôs (ερως).
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 (ευαρεστησις, 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 (των απαντων αρχη) Intellectual Fire (πυρ νοερον), 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 Gîtâ, inclusive of Being (Sat), Non-Being (Asat), and That Which transcends them (Tatparam yat).
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” (εν παντα ειδεναι). Such an admission he calls, “Reflex Harmony” (παλιντροπος αρμονιη), 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 (κατα φυσιν).
He also declares that the Aeon, the Emanative Deity, is as a child playing at creation, an idea found in both the Hindû and Hermetic Scriptures. In the former the Universe is said to be the sport (Lîlâ) of Vishnu, who is spoken of in one of his incarnations as Lîlâvatâra, 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 Lîlâ-mânusha-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 (αφταρτος μορφη), Universal Mind (νους των ολων), and Great Thought (επινοια μεγαλη), synthesized as the Universal Logos, He who has stood, stands and will stand (ο εστως, στας, στησομενος).
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 Chaldæan 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 (το κρυπτον), 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 Israël; 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 Israël 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 Chaldæa 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 Chaldæan Oracles (λογια),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 (δυναμις) into Matter (υλη) 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 Gnôsis, we find this idea of the Great Silence referred to several times in the fragments of the Chaldæan Oracles. It is called “God-nourished Silence” σιγη θεοθρεμμων), 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 (μονοτης), 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 2n-1, the sum of n things taken 1, 2, 3... n, at a time. The Trinity being manifested, n here =3; and 23-1 = 7.
Thus Simon has six Roots and the Seventh Power, seven in all, as the type of the Aeons in the Plerôma. 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), 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-jvâla).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, Chaldæan, 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 (σγμαντικα) 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.
These “barbarous names” were regarded as of the greatest efficacy and sanctity, and it was unlawful to change them. As the Chaldæan 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.
And the scholiast119 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 (εικων εξ αφθαρτου μορφης κοσμουσα μονη παντα), also called The Spirit moving on the Waters (το πνευμα το επιφερουμενον επανω του υδατος) and The Seventh Power (η εβδομη δυναμις); Mind (νους) and Thought (επινοια), also called Heaven (ουρανος) and Earth (γη); Voice (φονη) and Name (ονομα),120 also called Sun (ηλιος) and Moon (σεληνη); Reason (λογισμος) and Reflection (ενθυμησις), also called Air (αηρ) and Water (υδορ).
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 Hindûs and Buddhists are Name (Nâma) and Form (Rûpa). (4) Simon says that the Great Power was not called Father until Thought (in manifestation becoming Voice) named (ονομασαι) 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 Vedântin 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 Âkâsha-Gangâ—the Ganges in the Akâshic Ocean of Space—and the rest of the Rivers in the Paurânic writings of the Hindûs.
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.
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 Brahmâ), Mûla-Prakriti (Root-Nature), and Supreme Îshvara, or the Unmanifested Eternal Logos, of the Vedântic Philosophers. The next stage is the potential unmanifested type of the Trinity, the Three in One and One in Three, the Potentialities of Vishnu, Brahmâ, 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 Rûpam or All-Form and the Param Rûpam or Supreme Form, in the Bhagavad Gîtâ spoken also of as the Param Nidhânam or Supreme Treasure-house,123 which Simon also calls the Treasure-house θησαυρος and Store-house αποθηκη, 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 Hindû scriptures. For instance, in the Vishnu Purâna,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 Pâdma) Kalpa, the divine Brahmâ, endowed with the quality of goodness, awoke from his night of sleep, and beheld the universe void. He, the supreme Nârâyana, the incomprehensible, the sovereign of all creatures, invested with the form of Brahmâ, the god without beginning, the creator of all things; of whom, with respect to his name Nârâyana, the god who has the form of Brahmâ, the imperishable origin125 of the world, this verse is repeated: “The waters are called Nârâ, because they were the offspring of Nara (the supreme spirit); and, as, in them, his first (Ayana)126 progress (in the character of Brahmâ) took place, he is thence named Nârâyana (he whose place of moving was the waters).”
Sir Wm. Jones translates this well-known verse of Manu127 as follows:
The waters are called Nârâh, 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 Nârâyana or moving on the waters.
Substantially the same statement is made in the Linga, Vâyu, and Mârkandeya Purânas, and the Bhâgavata 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 Purâna, again, Brahmâ, speaking to the Celestials, says:
I, Mahâdeva (Shiva), and you all are but Nârâyana.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 Nazaræus, the scripture of the Mandaïtes. 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; Achamôth; 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.
Irenæus 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 reäscending 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 (Prunîcus 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 Irenæus.
In these contradictory accounts we have a great confusion between the rôles 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 (θεσει), as opposed to action according to nature (naturaliter or φυσει)—evidently the same idea as the teaching of Heracleitus to act according to nature (κατα φυσιν) 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” (τα ενηχα), an idea remarkably confirmed by Psellus, 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 reïncarnation, the rebirth or Punarjanman of the Hindûs.
So much has been written on metempsychosis and reïncarnation of late that it is hardly necessary to dwell on a now so familiar idea. In its widest sense the whole process of nature is subject to this mode of existence, and in its more restricted sense it is the path of pilgrimage of the Soul in the desert of Matter. In treating of a philosophical conception, which has already been completely established as far as its “visible side” is concerned by the researches of Modern Science in the field of evolution, it is a waste of time to obscure the main issue by a rehashing of the superstitious belief that the human Soul might pass back to the brute. It may be that this superstition arose from the consideration that the body and lower vestures of the Soul were shed off and gradually absorbed by the lower creation in the alchemical processes of nature. This was the fate of the “Purgations” of the Soul, but the Soul itself when once it had passed from bodies of the lower kingdoms, to bodies in the man-stage, could not retrogress beyond the limits of that human kingdom.
By a glance at the Diagram, and regarding it from the microcosmic point of view, it is easy to see that the inner nature of man is more complex than the elementary trichotomy of Body, Soul, and Spirit, might lead us to suppose. Each plane of Being, for which the Soul has its own appropriate Vesture, is generated from an “indivisible point,” as Simon called it, a zero-point, to use a term of modern Chemistry; six of which are shown in the Diagram, and each plane of Being is bounded by such zero-points, for they are points like that of the Circle whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere.
To pass on to the soteriology of Simon. The general concept of this presents no difficulty to the student of Eastern Religions. The idea that the great teachers are Avatâras, incarnations, or descents, of the Supreme Being, appearing on earth to aid mankind, is simple enough to comprehend in itself, and would be open to little objection, were it not for the theological dogmas and mythological legends that are wont to be so busily woven round the lives of such teachers. In the present age it is hardly necessary for us, with the experience of the past before our eyes, to raise dissension as to whether such a manifestation is entirely divine, or entirely human, or perfectly human and divine at one and the same time, or neither or all of these.
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 Prajnâ-Pâramitâs, 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 Gnôsis. Not, however, that it was peculiar to this system, for several of the schools use the same symbology. For instance, in the Pistis-Sophia130 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 Hindû Shâstras, 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 Sanatsujátîya tells us. The passage we choose is from the Bhagavad Gîtâ, that marvellous philosophical episode from the Mahâbhârata, 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 Adyâya 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 reïncarnating 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 cathedrâ 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 reäction 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 Epoptæ 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 Porphyry136 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.
The great Master of Christendom is reported to have told his disciples that if they had but faith they should do greater works than even he had done. Either this was false or else the followers have been false to their Teacher. There is no escape from the dilemma. And such “works” are to be wrought by divine Magic alone, or if the term be disliked, by whatever name the great Science of the Soul and Divine things may be called.
For the last two hundred years or so it has been the fashion to deride all such matters, perhaps owing to a reäction against over-credulity on the part of those who held to the letter of the law and forgot its spirit; but to-day it is no longer possible to entirely set aside this all-important part of man’s nature, and it now calls for as strict a scientific treatment as the facts of the physical universe have been subjected to.
Hypnotism, Mesmerism, Spiritualism and Psychical Research, are the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand that is forcing the facts of Magic again on the attention of both the theological and scientific world. Hypnotism and Psychical Research are already becoming respectable and attracting the attention of the generality of men of science and of our clergy. Spiritualism and Mesmerism are still tabooed, but wait their turn for popular recognition, having already been recognized by pioneers distinguished in science and other professions.
Of course I speak only of the facts of these arts, I do not speak of the theories put forward.
All these processes are in the very outermost court of the Temple of True Magic, even if they are not outside the precinct. But they are sufficient for our purpose, and should make the serious thinker and unprejudiced enquirer pause before pronouncing the words, superstition and hallucination, in too confident a tone, for he now must see the necessity of having a clear idea of what he means by the terms.
It is not uncommon of late to hear the superficially instructed setting down everything to “suggestion,” a word they have picked up from modern hypnotic research, or “telepathy,” a name invented by psychical research—the ideas being as old as the world—forgetting that their mind remains in precisely the same attitude with regard to such matters as it was in previously when they utterly denied the possibility of suggestion and telepathy. But to the earnest and patient student hypnotism and the rest are but the public reäppearance of what has always existed in spite of the denial of two hundred years or so, and instead of covering the whole ground is but the forward spray from the returning wave of psychism which will sweep the nations off their feet and moral balance, if they will not turn to the experience of the past and gain strength to withstand the inrush.
The higher forms of all these things, in the Western World, should have now been in the hands of the ministers of the Church, in which case we should not have had the reäppearance of such powers in the hands of vulgar stage exhibitions and mercenary public mediumship.
But so it is; and in vain is it any longer to raise the cry of fraud and hallucination on the one hand and of the devil on the other. This is a mere shirking of responsibility, and nothing but a reasonable investigation and an insistence on the highest ideals of life will help humanity.
I do not intend to enter into any review of the “wonders” attributed to Simon, neither to deny them as hallucinations, nor attribute them to the devil, nor explain them away by “suggestion.” As a matter of fact we do not even know whether Simon did or pretended to do any of the precise things mentioned. All we are competent to decide is the general question, viz., that any use of abnormal power is pernicious if done for a personal motive, and will assuredly, sooner or later, react on the doer.
Here and there in the patristic accounts we light on a fact worthy of consideration, as, for example, when Simon is reported to have denied that the real soul of a boy could be exorcised, and said that it was only a daemon, in this case a sub-human intelligence or elemental, as the Mediæval Kabalists called them. Again the Simonians are said to have expelled any from their Mysteries who worshipped the statues of Zeus or Athena as being representatives of Simon and Helen; thus showing that they were symbolical figures for some purpose other than ordinary worship; and probably the sect in its purity possessed a body of teaching which threw light on many of the religious practices of the times, and gave them a rational interpretation, quite at variance with the fantastic diabolism which the Fathers have so loudly charged against them.
The legends of magic are the same in all countries, fantastic enough to us in the nineteenth century, in all conscience, and most probably exaggerated out of all correct resemblance to facts by the excited imagination of the legend-tellers, but still it is not all imagination, and after sifting out even ninety-nine per cent of rubbish, the residue that remains is such vast evidence to the main facts that it is fairly overwhelming, and deserves the investigation of every honest student.
But the study is beset with great difficulty, and if left in the hands of untrained thinkers, as are the majority of those who are interested in such matters in the present day, will only result in a new phase of credulity and superstition. And such a disastrous state of affairs will be the distinct fault of the leaders of thought in the religious, philosophical, and scientific world, if they refuse the task which is naturally theirs, and if they are untrue to the responsibility of their position as the directors, guardians, and adjusters of the popular mind. Denial is useless, mere condemnation is of small value, explanation alone will meet the difficulty.
Thus when we are brought face to face with the recital of magical wonders as attributed to Simon in the patristic legends, it is not sufficient to sweep them on one side and ticket them with the contemptuous label of “superstition.” We must recognize that whether or not these things were actually done by Simon, the ancient world both Pagan and Christian firmly believed in their reality, and that if our only attitude towards them is one of blank denial, we include in that denial the possibility of the so-called “miracles” of Christianity and other great religions, and therewith invalidate one of the most important factors of religious thought and history. That the present attitude of denial is owing to the absurd explanation of the phenomena given by the majority of the ancient worthies, is easily admissible, but this is no reason why the denial of the possibilities of the existence of such things should be logical or scientific.
As to the wonders ascribed to Simon, though extraordinary, they are puerile compared to the ideals of the truly religious mind, and if Simon used such marvels as proofs of the truth of his doctrine, he unduly took advantage of the ignorance of the populace and was untrue to his better nature.
Again, setting aside all historical criticism, if Simon, as the Acts report, thought to purchase spiritual powers with money, or that those who were really in possession of such powers would ever sell them, we can understand the righteous indignation of the apostles, though we cannot understand their cursing a brother-man. The view of the Christian writer on this point is a true one, but the dogma that every operation which is not done in the name of the particular Master of Christendom is of the Devil—or, to avoid personifications, is evil—can hardly find favour with those who believe in the brotherhood of the whole race and that Deity is one, no matter under what form worshipped.
Finally, to sum up the matter, we have cited our authorities, and reviewed them, and then endeavoured to sift out what is good from the heap, leaving the rubbish to its fate. Removed as we are by so many centuries from the fierce strife of religious controversy which so deeply marked the rise of Christianity, we can view the matter with impartiality and seek to redress the errors that are patent both on the side of orthodoxy and of heterodoxy. It is true we cannot be free of the past, but it is also true that to identify ourselves with the hates and strifes of the ancients, is merely to retrogress from the path of progress. On the contrary, our duty should be to identify ourselves with all that is good and beautiful and true in the past, and so gleaning it together, bind it into a sheaf of corn that, when ground in the mills of common-sense and practical experience, may feed the millions of every denomination who for the most part are starving on the unsatisfying husks of crude dogmatism. There is no need for a new revelation, in whatever sense the word is understood, but there is every need for an explanation of the old revelations and the undeniable facts of human experience. If the Augean stables of the materialism that is so prevalent in the religion, philosophy and science of to-day, are to be cleansed, the spiritual sources of the world-religions can alone be effectual for their cleansing, but these are at present hidden by the rocks and overgrowth of dogma and ignorance. And this overgrowth can only be removed by explanation and investigation, and each who works at the task is, consciously or unconsciously, in the train of the Hercules who is pioneering the future of humanity.
Notes
96 Julius Caesar, III. ii. 106-8.
97 Op. cit. i. 4. Compare the Diagram and explanation of the Middle Distance infra. The Moon is the “Lord” of the lower plane of the Middle Distance, the Astral Light of the medieval Kabalists. This is a doctrine common to the Hermetic, Vedântic, and many other schools of Antiquity.
xi. 37.
99 Philos., ix. 10.
100 Zohar, i. 50b, Amsterdam and Brody Editions: quoted in Isaac Myer’s Qabbalah, pp. 376, 377.
101 See Cory’s Ancient Fragments, 2nd ed.; not the reëdited third edition, which is no longer Cory’s work.
102 εισι παντα πυρος ενος εκγεγαωτα—Psell. 24—Plet. 30.
103 Proc. in Theol. 333—in Tim. 157.
104 πηγαιους κρατηρας—I have ventured the above translation for this difficult combination from the meaning of the term πηγη, found elsewhere in the Oracles, in the metaphorical sense of “source” (compare also Plato, Phæd. 245 C., 856 D., πηγη και αρχη χινησεως—“the source and beginning of motion”), and also from the meaning of κρατηρ (cratêr), as “a cup-shaped hollow.”
The idea of this Crater is interestingly exemplified in the Twelfth Book of Hermes Trismegistus, called “His Crater, or Monas,” as follows:
“10. Tat. But wherefore, Father, did not God distribute the Mind to all men?
“11. Herm. Because it pleased him, O Son, to set that in the middle among all souls, as a reward to strive for.
“12. Tat. And where hath he set it?
“13. Herm. Filling a large Cup or Bowl (Crater) therewith, he sent it down, giving also a Cryer or Proclaimer.
“14. And he commanded him to proclaim these things to the souls of men.
“15. Dip and wash thyself, thou that art able, in this Cup or Bowl: Thou that believeth that thou shalt return to him that sent this cup; thou that acknowledgest whereunto thou wert made.
“16. As many, therefore, as understood the Proclamation, and were baptized, or dowsed into the Mind, these were made partakers of knowledge, and became perfect men, receiving the Mind.”
This striking passage explains the mystic “Baptism of Fire,” or Mind, whereby man became one with his Divine Monas, which is indeed his “Mother Vortex” or Source.
105 Proc. in Parm.
106 Proc. in Theol. Plat., 171, 172.
107 Proc. in Tim., 167.
108 Proc. in Theol., 321.
109 Proc. in Crat.
Dionys., xiv.
111 Præp. Evan., i. 10.
112 The names of these seven flames of the Fire, with their surface translations, are as follows: Kâlî, Dark-blue; Karâlî, Terrible; Mano-javâ, Swift as Thought; Su-lohitâ, Deep-red colour; Su-dhûmra-varnâ, Deep-purple colour; Ugrâ or Sphulinginî, Hot, Passionate, or Sparkling; Pradîptâ, Shining, Clear. These are the literal meanings; the mystic meanings are very different, and among other things denote the septenary prismatic colours and other septenaries in nature.
113 Hibbert lectures, 1887: “Lecture on the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians,” pp. 179, 180.
114 See Schwartze’s Pistis-Sophia and Amélineau’s Notice sur le Papyrus Gnostique Bruce.
115 De Mysteriis Liber, vii. 4.
116 Compare also Herodot. ii, 54—φονη ανθρωπηιη.
Lib. v.
Psel. 7.
119 Psel. Schol. in Orac. Magic, p. 70.
120 Theodoret gives εννοια.
121 A. Aphthartos Morphê. B. Nous tôn Holôn. c. Epinoia Megalê. D. Eikôn. a. Nous. b. Phônê. c. Logismos. d. Enthumêsis. e. Onoma. f. Epinoia.
xi. 47.
123 Ibid., xi. 18, 38.
124 Wilson’s Trans. i. pp. 55 et seqq.
125 Prabhavâpyaya: Pra-bhava=the forth-being or origin, and Apy-aya=the return or reabsorption. It is the same idea as the Simonian Treasure-house.
126 Ayana simply means “moving.”
127 Mânava-Dharma Shâstra, i. 10.
128 Op. cit., iv. 251.
14.
130 This Gnostic gospel, together with the treatises entitled, The Book of the Gnoses of the Invisible and The Book of the Great Logos in each Mystery (the Bruce MSS.), is especially referred to, as, with the exception of the Codex Nazaræus, being the only Gnostic works remaining to us. All else comes from the writings of the Fathers.
131 xv, 1, 2
132 The most advanced theory, however, is that the foetus derives nourishment from the amniotic fluid, and Dr. Jerome A. Anderson sums up his highly interesting paper on the “Nutrition of the Foetus” in the American Journal of Obstetrics, Vol. XXI, July, 1888, as follows:
“To briefly sum up the facts supporting amniotic nutrition:
“1st. The constant presence of nutritive substances in the amniotic fluid during the whole period of gestation.
“2nd. The certainty of the absorption by a growing, almost skinless, foetus of any nutritive material in which it is constantly bathed.
“3rd. The permeability of the digestive tract at an early period, and the necessary entrance therein, according to the laws of hydrostatics, of the albuminous amniotic fluid.
“4th. The presence of, as it seems to me, bonâ fide débris of digestion, or meconium, in the lower intestine.
“5th. The presence of urine in the bladder, and bile in the upper intestine; their normal locations.
“6th. The mechanical difficulties opposing direct nutrition through the placenta, and the impossibility of nourishment by this method during the early stages of embryonic life previous to the formation of the placenta or umbilical vesicle.
“7th. The evident material source of the fluid, as shown by the hydrorrheas of pregnancy, as well as in the exhaustion the mother experiences, in some cases, at least, under its loss and rapid reproduction.
“8th. The entire absence during gestation of any trace of the placenta in certain animals, notably the salamander.”
133 Oratio V, In Matrem Deorum.
134 De Defectu Oraculorum, xxi.
135 Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, art. “Four Rivers, The.”
136 The Homeric Cave of Nymphs, περι του εν Οδυσσεια των Νυμφων αντρου.
137 λεγουσιν εκ πετρας γεγεννησθαι αυτον—Just. Mart. Dial. cum. Tryph.
138 Cabiri, ii, 363.