According to this myth, which was the center of Simonian religion, in the beginning God had his first thought, his Ennoia, which was female, and that thought was to create the angels. Justin Martyr (in his Apologies, and in a lost work against heresies, which Irenaeus used as his main source) and Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses) recount the myth of Simon and Helene. The Apostles Peter and Paul pray to God to stop his flying, and he stops mid-air and falls to his death. In order to prove himself to be a god, he flies up into the air. Simon is performing magic for the Roman Emperor Claudius Caesar in the forum. The apocryphal Acts of Peter gives a legendary tale of Simon Magus' death. There were accusations that Simon was a demon in human form, with the story of Simon the wizard as the cultural equivalent of Merlin during the medieval times. Simon Magus was the preacher of ancient metaphysical teachings according to his own ideas of occult matters. He is specifically said to have possessed the ability to levitate and fly at will. This Simon was also the founder of witchcraft in old asia in which he was proclaimed as a god in his own way. He is also supposed to have written several treatises, two of which allegedly bear the titles The Four Quarters of the World and The Sermons of the Refuter, but are lost to us. There are small fragments of a work written by him (or by one of his later followers using his name), the Apophasis Megale, or Great Pronouncement. Some believe that the story of Simon Magus here is actually a coded Ebionite attack on Paul of Tarsus, with Simon used to represent Paul. (This led to the word "simony".) Many scholars have questioned whether this Simon is the Simon intended to be refered to in legends concocted later, or a different one. This tells of Simon Magus practicing magic in the city of Sebaste in Samaria, being converted to Christianity by Philip the Evangelist and working as a missionary, but then trying to buy from the Apostles the power of conveying the Holy Spirit. Assuming all references are to the same person, the earliest reference to him is the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 8. The different sources for information on Simon contain quite different pictures of him, so much so that it has been questioned whether they all refer to the same person. Almost all of the surviving sources for the life and thought of Simon Magus are contained in Christian works: in the Acts of the Apostles, in patristic works (Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Hippolytus) and in the apocryphal Acts of Peter. The ancient Gnostic sect of Simonianism believed that he was God in human form. Simon Magus, also known as Simon the Magician, Simon the Sorcerer and Simon of Gitta, was a Samaritan (Proto-)Gnostic.
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