Theosophy - Simon Magus - by Jules Doinel - Translated by Thos. Williams from La Revue Theosophique of February, 1890.
SIMON MAGUS
by JULES DOINEL
Translated by Thos. Williams from La Revue Theosophique for
February, 1890
reprinted
from “Theosophical Siftings” Volume - 3 -
[Page 14] THE
Magus of Samaria is the first doctor of the Gnosis. His
teaching contains the germ of that grand philosophy which
we, towards the end of this nineteenth century, after an
eclipse of several hundred years, recognise as the most
perfect and luminous expression of the absolute.
I say an eclipse, but in reality the Gnosis has never been
without its disciples and its apostles. Both, through persecution
and what is even worse, ridicule, have been obliged to protect
themselves by maintaining an inviolable silence, wrapt in
the obscurity of uncomprehended symbols.
A sovereign interest draws us towards the high priest of
Samaria. Not that he has invented the Gnosis, for it was
taught under another form in the temples of Egypt, in India
and Chaldea, the Gnosis being in fact as old as the Truth,
of which it is the mystic garment. But Simon was the first
to draw up its dogmas in their esoteric shape, and he is,
as his name indicates, the ancestor, the first parent of
the Gnosis posterior to Jesus Christ.
He was born at Gitta in Samaria, which, proud of his celebrity,
called him the Great Virtue of God. After having lived at
Tyre, where he met Helen, his lovely and mysterious companion,
he went to Rome and for a time rivalled the renown of the
Apostle Peter.
Simon was deeply
versed in Oriental and Greek culture. Empedocles and Stesechorus
were known to him, and he also was imbued with the ideal
philosophy of Plato. A contemporary of Philo the Jew, he
had frequented the school of Theosophy at Alexandria. He
knew anatomy, having written a celebrated treatise on the
circulation of the blood and the physical system of the
female body. He was equally well grounded in practical Theurgy.
Magus, littérateur, physiologist, mathematician and
orator, this great man was cut out for the performance of
some special mission.
Already celebrated in the early days of Christianity, Simon
devoted to the service of the Gnosis a soul grandly simple
and single-minded and of the purest honesty.
Many even of his
enemies have been obliged to acknowledge this, and M. Amélineau
proves this to be the case in his book on "Gnosticisme Égyptien".
Simon, being present at the wonders worked by the deacon
Philip, asked to be baptised. Like all Initiates, he only
saw in this ceremony a form of initiation. He in no wise
pretended to turn from the Gnosis.[Page
15]
In the
request he made to Peter to confer upon him the Holy Ghost
by the placing of hands, he never recognised a departure
from his original principles. Nor did he offer money to
buy the Holy Ghost, as the ignorant and the malicious say,
but simply the customary and legal price of initiative
societies for the possession of the symbolical degree,
which he wished to obtain. A European adept would act in
a precisely similar manner, if he wished to be admitted
to mysteries which were still unknown to him. In the division
which subsequently took place between the apostles and
the magi, the former were in the wrong, and Simon gives
a touching example of his humility and gentleness in the
words he addressed to the dark and bigotted Cephas: "Pray
for me, so that nothing of that which you predict for me
may happen".
Tradition says that Simon of Gittha made the acquaintance
of Helen in a brothel; that he reclaimed her and placed her
amongst the initiated. But there is a great deal more than
this meant by the tradition, for she was to him the symbol
and living image of the fall of thought into matter. Nobly
as was possible to such a man, did he love this woman, and
she requited his love with marvellous intelligence and profound
affection for him.
We know nothing as to his death. The fables which are told
concerning his end being apocryphal inventions of narrow-minded
Christians, based on the theurgical power of levitation often
possessed by theosophical adepts.
Simon wrote the "Anthiretica:
and the Great Apophasis of which the author of "Philosophumena" has
preserved some fragments. By the aid of these we may obtain
a fairly correct idea of the doctrine of the Samaritan
doctor. The Gnosis claims to explain everything. It is
active in every department of human thought, being equally
concerned with that which belongs to heaven as with that
which is of the earth. The Gnosis, as its name shows, is
Knowledge. God, man, the world, are the trinity of which
it is the grand synthesis.
Simon Magus places
Fire at the beginning, Fire having been the first cause
of the cosmos. God, says the initiate Moses, is a consuming
fire. This fire, very different from the earthly fire which
is merely its symbol, has a visible and a hidden existence.
Its occult and secret essence hides itself behind its material
manifestation or visible appearance; which latter again
withdraws itself into its hidden essence. In other words,
the invisible is visible to the initiate while the visible
is invisible to the profane, which means that the profane
are unable to recognise the spirit, disguised under its
outward form: the Vedas taught in earlier times this original
dogma when they treated of Agni, the supreme fire. This
fire of Simon is the same as that of Empedocles; it is
that of the fire-worshippers of [Page
16] Iran. It is the
burning thicket of Genesis. It represents the Intelligible
and the Sensible of the divine Plato, the Power and the Act
of the profound Aristotle; and it is also the flaming star
of the masonic Lodges.
In the external manifestation of the primordial fire we
have all the seeds of matter, while its interior manifestation
evolves the world of spirit. So that this fire containing
the absolute and the relative, matter and spirit, is at once
multiple and one, or God and that which emanates from God.
This fire, the eternal cause of all, expands by emanation.
It is eternally becoming. But while developing, it itself
remains stable and permanent. It is in fact that which is,
has been, and shall be, the immovable, the infinite, the
substance of all.
But while thus
immutable it is not inert. The Infinite may act because
it is intelligence and reason. From the potential it passes
to the active, and thought becomes an expression: the
word. Thus Intelligence becomes aware of itself and by
so doing acts, evolves, emanates. In formulating its thought,
Intelligence unites the moments of this thought and binds
its ideas one to another by the tie of reason, and as two
comes from one, because one in emanating must become two,
fire emanates by couples, of which one is active, the other
passive, one male, the other female, one he and one she.
The Gnosis calls this two-fold emanation the Eons. Thus the
sphere of the absolute, the superior world, was peopled by
six Eons, or six first emanations from God. Simon called
them Nous and Ennoïa (spirit and thought), Phone and
Onoma (the word and the name), Logismos and Enthumêsis
(reasoning and reflection), and in each of these six emanations
is God in a potential state.
"In each
of these roots", said the Sage, "the
Infinite Power was in its entirety. It had to be formulated
by a shape in order that it might appear in all its essence,
virtue, grandeur, and effects so that the emanations would
become equal to the infinite and eternal Power. If on the
other hand it were not to be manifested by a form, the Power
could not become active and would be lost for want of being
used; just as a man who having an aptitude for grammar and
geometry, if it is not used obtains no sort of benefit from
it and it becomes lost to him and he is just as if he had
never had those powers."
By this Simon meant that the Eons in order to be God-like
must create. So that just as God passed from the potential
to the active state, so the Eons must do likewise. And this
is required by the divine law of analogy, and thus the six
first emanations became the cause of six new emanations.
The Syzygies,
like the six first, continued to emanate male and female,
active and passive entities. " It is written",
says Simon, "that there are two kinds of Eons having
neither beginning nor end and issuing from one [Page
17] common root, the Silence (the great Sige) which
is the invisible and incomprehensible power", one of
these seems superior to the other; it is the great Power
characterised as the Intelligence of all things; it orders
everything and is male and positive, the other is inferior
and is called the great Thought or female Eon. These two
Eons are complementary and manifest between them the middle
region, the incomprehensible air which has had neither beginning
nor end.
See what a wonderful picture is presented to us in the divine
ladder which Jacob saw in a dream as he slept with his head
pillowed on the sacred stone of Bethel beneath the starry
firmament which spanned the Desert. The Eons mount and descend
this most mysterious ladder in pairs and constitute the links
in the chain which stretches from God to Earth and back again
to God, arid each two are male and female, associated forms
or united thoughts. They weave the woof of spirit and of
matter, realising God in things and carrying these back again
into God, and the law which knits and directs them elevates
and abases them and works as the sacred and primordial fire
which, as God, is infinite and absolute and as expressing
which in its highest expression may be called Love.
Next Simon opens to us the second world. It is peopled by
six Eons, the reflection of the first six and bearing the
same names.
The incomprehensible
air or second world is inhabited by the Father, he who
is, was and shall be, without beginning or end, male and
female living in one unity. He develops in the same way
as the fire of the first world, for he manifests by the
power of thought. The Father, which is the Power, and the
thought which it produces, are complementary, being in
reality one, as represented in the male which envelopes
the female, the Spirit in the idea, or Nous in the Epinoïa.
In other words, the Spirit has a thought which it proclaims
by the word or the name Father. This Father is also Σιγή or
silence.
Epinoïa, the female Eon, enticed by love, leaves the
Father and emanates angels and powers from which proceed
the world which we live in. These angels, forgetting the
existence of the Father, have wished to keep amongst themselves
Epinoïa, and from this cause we have their fall and
the necessity for a redemption.
Man is the product of one of these angels, the Demiurgus,
which the Bible calls God. By him man is made double, after
his own image and appearance. The image is the spirit which
circles the waters of the abyss of which Genesis speaks.
Spiritus Dei ferebatur super aqua. Man is an Eon, because
in him there is the likeness of the Father, and like the
Father, he will produce other beings. He will in fact reproduce
himself.
This brings us
to the anthropological doctrine of the Samaritan Magus.
Fire is the principle of the act of generation, for to
desire to be [Page 18] united
to a woman is called "to
be on fire" (πυροûσθαι).
This fire is one in itself but double in its effects. Man
transmits in the seed the hot red blood, while the woman
becomes the laboratory where the blood is turned into milk.
It was thus that the sword of Fire which flashed before the
gates of Eden in the hands of the Archangel typified by the
quivering of its living flame the transformation of blood
into seed and milk. Without this circulation of blood the
tree of Life would die and the icy hand of death would congeal
the World.
Continuing his
subtle and profound analysis, Simon explained the development
of the foetus after its conception.
Interpreting the
words addressed to Jeremiah, "I have
formed thee in the bosom of thy mother", he explained
that man in Eden meant the foetus in the matrix, and he saw
in the four rivers which fertilised the terrestrial paradise
the ducts which adhere to the child and bring him nourishment.
How strange and
original a conception of a great mind is this inspiration
of genius drawn from the physiological meditations of a
superior man in a primitive age. Let us now return to Epinoïa
which the Angels, the ancestors of man, have retained captive.
The Power of Thought drawn backwards by its celestial instincts
is ever sighing after Sige and striving to return to the
Father. The Angels hold it fast, however, and make it suffer
that they may keep it amongst them, and finally they succeed
in imprisoning it in a human body. This is the commencement
of that long pilgrimage which the divine exile makes through
a series of transmigrations and long ages of suffering.
This fall of Intellect into matter is the origin of evil.
It is forfeiture and to such there must be redemption;
Enoïa transmigrates from woman to woman
through the ages like a scent which passes from vase to vase.
The day on which Simon penetrated into the syrien den he
met the migratory "thought'' in the form of this Helen,
of this prostitute whom he loved and whom he transfigured
by his love. Loving her he applied with practical exactness
the parable of the lamb who was lost and found. Thus runs
the allegory. Just as Simon saved Helen from final degradation
in taking her from the slough into which she had fallen,
the Saviour sent by the Father descended to the world and
delivered Thought from the tyranny of the lower Angels. In
order to accomplish this act of infinite love Soter, the
Saviour, the Son left the One, the Silence, the Fire, and
passed through the first world down to the second where he
incarnated in the world of Bodies, burying himself in the
Astral Form or Perisprit. In Judea he was called the Son.
In Samaria the Samaritans called him the Father. With the
Gentiles he was the Holy Ghost. He was in fact the Great
Virtue of God and Simon Magus knew himself in Him.
Just as Simon
set himself to seek Helen, so the Saviour seeks the [Page
19] human Soul. He found her in a house of ill-fame,
that is to say in Evil, and as Simon married Helen so the
Saviour married the Soul. "In truth",
says the wise Amélineau, " this myth of
Epinoïa is very beautiful. The divine Thought held in
bondage by inferior beings who owe it their very life and
who wish to become its equal; degraded by these Angels and
debased to the lowest degree, it forms a sublime allegory
of the futile efforts of the human soul struggling towards
God, of which it is the image, and falling from one abyss
to another, from crime to crime, held in control by jealous
spirits who, full of envy, endeavour to impede its upward
progress towards him whom it resembles ".
Each one of us,
for we are Eons, may become the Simon to a Helen or, reversing
the parts, a Helen to a Simon. In order to fulfil our mission
of Saviour, we, the initiates of the Gnosis, must appear
to the profane as similar in form to them but their superior
in spirit. Simon and Helen have taught us, and we in our
turn must teach, the liberating power of the Gnosis, the
illuminating science, the law or the lost Word of the Rosicrucians.
We will deliver our brothers and our sisters from the yoke
of ignorance and superstition, of gross materialism and
haughty scepticism. We will dress them in the white robes
of Initiation. No matter where the seed is sown, so long
as it is sown; saved by the Gnosis we become saviours,
happy if we possess, perhaps not the genius of Simon Magus,
but his great heart and wide charity.
Man comprises
all three principles; the principle of darkness or fire,
from which originates his soul; the principle of light,
from which his spirit originates; and the third principle,
which is the basic element of his body.
In the life of
man there are three states to be distinguished from each
other — first, the innermost, that is to say,
God being eternally hidden within the fire; secondly, the
middle part, which from eternity has stood as an image or
likeness in the wonders of God, comparable to a person seeing
himself in a mirror; thirdly, has this living image received
still another mirror in creation, wherein to behold itself,
namely the spirit of the eternal world, or the third
principle,
which is also a form (state) of the eternal.
Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme, by FRANZ HARTMANN, M.D