Simon Magus

For such are the heresies which have sprung forth from the Christian head, that of the mere names the roll would be immense.

For to pass over the heretics of the Jews, Dositheus, the Samaritan, the Sadducees, and the Pharisees, it were not long to enumerate how many grew up in the times of the apostles, Simon Magus, and Menander, and Nicolaus, and others hidden by an inglorious fame.

What again in later times were Ebion, and Apelles, and Marcion, and Valentinus, and Cerdo, and, not long after them, the Cataphrygians and Novatians, not to notice any recent swarms.

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figures,

like Elijah and Salome, and then came the Gnostic figures, Simon Magus or Philemon.

And so he listened to them and he engaged them.

He didn't identify with them, he didn't become them, but they had interesting dialogues and conversations and Jung paid attention.

and by consequence after the war began the hebrews and judea being strangers to timothy peter seems also to call rome babylon as well as with respect to the war made upon judea and the approaching captivity like that under old babylon as with respect to that name in the apocalypse and in writing to the strangers scoured throughout pontus galatia cappadocia asia and bithynia He seems to intimate that they were the strangers newly scattered by the Roman wars, for those were the only strangers there belonging to his care.

This account of things agrees best with history when duly rectified, for Justin and Irenaeus say that Simon Magus came to Rome in the reign of Claudius and exercised juggling tricks there.

clemens adds that he endeavoured there to fly but broke his neck through the prayers of peter whence eusebius or rather his interpolator jerome has recorded that peter came to rome in the second year of claudius but cyril bishop of jerusalem philastios sulpicius prosper maximus taurinensens and tegizibus jr placed this victory of peter in the time of nero indeed the ancienter tradition was that peter came to rome in the days of this emperor as it may seem in lactantius chrysostom tells us that the apostles continued long in judea and that then being driven out by the jews they went to the gentiles This dispersion was in the first year of the Jewish war, when the Jews, as Josephus tells us, began to be tumultuous and violent in all places.

For all agree that the apostles were dispersed into several regions at once, and Origen has set down the time, telling us that in the beginning of the Judaic war, the apostles and disciples of our Lord were scattered into all nations.

And when they entered Rome together, he, Paul, related to him, Peter, what great shipwreck he had endured when he was seeking them, and was brought thither to Rome as a captive.

And St. Peter related to him what machination and reproaches Simon the sorcerer had contrived.

Then they, Peter and Paul, gathered together their company against Simon the sorcerer.

And one accused them, the apostles, to Nero, and then they were summoned to appear before him.

and they greatly praised simon the sorcerer before the multitude of the people and livia nero's wife and agrippina the wife of agrippa turned so steadfastly to christ's love and faith that they would no longer seek marital intercourse and many men of the king's servants turned to christ's service through paul's preaching so that they would not return to his residence or household then was simon the sorcerer wholly stirred up against the apostles and affirmed that st peter said many evil things and was a deceiver and all those who had witnessed simon's wonderful deeds believed him for he had through magical craft made brazen serpents which moved of themselves and stone and brazen images which moved of themselves and appeared suddenly aloft in the air And in opposition to them, Peter, with a word, enabled the halt to walk, and blind men he yield with his prayers, so that they received their sight.

And he commanded the devils to depart from those possessed of them, and he raised the dead.

And he told all the people that Simon was a magician, and advised them to flee from his crafts.

And then it came to pass... that pious men shunned Simon the sorcerer, and pronounced him guilty.

That, for example, by absorbing the personalities of a certain number of his fellow creatures, an individual may gain a complete ascendancy over those orders of spiritual beings which control the elemental forces of our universe.

It is recorded of Simon Magus that he was able to fly in the air to become invisible, or to assume any form he pleased, by the agency of the soul of a boy, whom, to use a libelous phrase employed by the author of the Clementine recognitions, he had murdered.

I find it set down moreover with considerable detail in the writings of Hermes Trismegistus that similar happy results may be produced by the absorption of the hearts of not less than three human beings below the age of 12 years.

To the testing of the truth of this receipt, I have devoted the greater part of the last twenty years, selecting as the corpora miliae of my experiment such persons as could conveniently be removed without occasioning a sensible gap in society.

Well, it connects directly to the title card we get in a minute.

Dumb kids talking about Simon Magus-

Oh

... who was a magician, a sorcerer.