Симон Волхв

Simon Magus AKA Simon the Sorcerer AKA Simon the Magician AKA Simon of Gitta Samarita (Northern Judea) @ 50 - 100 CE Teachers: Philip the Evangelist; Students: his disciple Cerinthus; Goethe; Christopher Marlowe; Francis Barrett; Cornelius Agrippa; Mug Ruith, Irish mythological hero; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Hans Jonas; Umberto Eco; Robert A. Heinlein; Philip Mason Palmer; Robert Pattison More; Manly P. Hall; GRS Mead; Hippolytus; Friends: Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860); Enemies:Saint Irenaeus; Justin Martyr; Hippolytus; Epiphanius; Dante Alighieri; St. Augustine of Hippo; Charles Williams, member of the Inklings with J. R. R. Tolkien; Organizations: Gnostic leader; inspired Manichaeans; Author: Apophasis Megale, or Great Declaration ; lost texts The Four Quarters of the World ; The Sermons of the Refuter; Comments: Gnostic; Magician converted to Christianity; sin of "simony" aka paying for a position and in the church, is named for him; one of the founders of Gnosticism ; appears in Christian apocryphal works including the Acts of Peter, Pseudo-Clementines, and the Epistle of the Apostles; Commanded Air Spirits, which Saint Peter dispersed; "Simonianism, including a system of divine emanations and interpretations of the Old Testament" ; "In the beginning God had his first thought, his Ennoia (SOPHIA / Goddess), which was female, and that thought was to create the angels. The First Thought then descended into the lower regions and created the angels. But the angels rebelled against her out of jealousy and created the world as her prison, imprisoning her in a female body. Thereafter, she was reincarnated many times, each time being shamed. Her many reincarnations included Helen of Troy, among others, and she finally was reincarnated as Helen, a slave and prostitute in the Phoenician city of Tyre. God then descended in the form of Simon Magus, to rescue his Ennoia, and to confer salvation upon men through knowledge of himself." Quotes: "To you, therefore, I say what I say, and write what I write. And the writing is this. Of the universal Æons there are two shoots, without beginning or end, springing from one Root, which is the power invisible, inapprehensible silence. Of these shoots one is manifested from above, which is the Great Power, the Universal Mind ordering all things, male, and the other, [is manifested] from below, the Great Thought, female, producing all things. Hence pairing with each other, they unite and manifest the Middle Distance, incomprehensible Air, without beginning or end. In this is the Father Who sustains all things, and nourishes those things which have a beginning and end." Resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Magus; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Magus_in_popular_culture;