THE MEDIUM AND DAYBREAK
APRIL 15, 1887.
GNOSTIC CHRISTIANI vs. HISTORICAL CHRISTIANITY.
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SIMON OF SAMARIA
By
GERALD MASSEY.
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"DO you believe in ghosts?" asked the old lady of Mr.
Coleridge. "No, ma'am," he replied, "I have seen too many of them
for that." In like manner if asked, "Do you believe in controls?"
some of us would have to answer, that we had tested too many of them for
that. Quite recently I saw a small collection of lectures: It
appeared that when they were delivered a question had been put to the
"controls" as to what they thought of the recent hypothesis of the
Mythical Christ? The answer recorded was, that they didn't think
much of it! I should think not. Had they thought at all?
Did they know anything about it? Could they discuss the facts or add
anything to them? Were they able to enlighten us in any way upon the
matter? Of this there was not a vestige of a sign.
I have seen reports of statements made on public platforms
concerning verifiable matters of ancient history so frightfully false as
to be calculated to discredit all the genuine facts of phenomenal
Spiritualism. For where the teaching is so provably untrue and
self-damnatory in matters concerning historic; facts known in this world,
no reliance will be placed upon it in regard to any other. Knowing,
too much then about "'controls," I seldom read their revelations, and so
it happens that my attention has only just been called to "Simon of
Samaria," by means of Dr. Buchanan's letter.
Turning back to the MEDIUM for March
11, I find it represented by "Spirit Messenger," that Simon of Samaria
when in the flesh was a sorcerer, a secularist, and a believer in this
world only. He is made to deny the doctrine of a future state.
It is said of him"In time, O my God! this soul was distinguished only
for his absolute denial of Thy Majesty!" He is made to say of
himself: "I deny a ruling power beyond human knowledge; deny a life
beyond the grave." So far as I can make out, Simon gets
converted and becomes a Christian at last through "Dean Stanley," who died
just in time to save the poor lost soul. Whereupon "Busiris, the
Ancient of Days," who (see Daniel) is surely nothing less than the Lord
God Almighty Himself, offers up a prayer from the rescued soul of Simon
now entering into a condition of immortality.
This is news indeed concerning the old Gnostic; but is it
true? Well, the representation has been put to the psychometrical
test by Dr. Buchanan, who, "knowing the power of psychometry to portray
any character, ancient or modern," tried it in this present case.
The measure of Simon's soul; his character, and belief, has been taken
over again, and the representation of the London medium is corroborated,
add guaranteed by the Boston psychometrist. "He did not believe
in any mediator or Supreme Being." "There may have been some
cabalistic and monastic people who believed. in a Supreme Being, but he
did not associate with them or with any class." This inclines
one to inquire with Hamlet:
"Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damned?
Bring'st with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell?
Thou com'st in such a questionable shape!" |
Simon of Samaria is a Gnostic friend of mine, in whom I feel a particular
interest, as one of those who have suffered (if mind can consciously
persist) for eighteen centuries from the falsehoods and forgeries that
helped to establish the demoralizing delusion of Historic Christianity.
If I were a believer in the re-incarnation of individual personality, I
might fancy that I am one of those same victims come back again
consciously to aid in avenging the great wrongs we have sorely suffered
for so long, like men made dumb through being buried alive. Dear
Mrs. Woodford did want to persuade me that I had passed this way several
times before, and that this was the last time of my incarnation or
re-incarceration on earth; but I do not solve the problem or explain the
facts of certain psychical experiences by such an interpretation.
Still, if there be any truth in spiritualism, I know something of Simon as
well as of Paul. But, that would not be evidence of a kind to bring
into court. Neither will I make appeal to the Clementine Homilies,
where Simon appears as the wicked Mage; because he is too much mixed up
there with Paul, to distinguish very clearly which blow is aimed at which
person, by the faction of Peter. But, if Gnostic Christianity can be
identified with any public founder whosoever, it is with Simon of Samaria.
The followers of Simon and of Marcion were known to Justin by name as the
Christiani. The name of the Christians as a known sect, so we
are told in the Book of Acts, was first heard at Antioch; and that lands
us upon Gnostic ground. Antioch was a stronghold of Gnosticism.
Irenĉus tells us that another great Gnostic Teacher, "Saturninus, was of
that Antioch which is near Daphne. It was on this Gnostic ground at
Antioch that Paul withstood Peter to his face; and, as I maintain, he did
this as a Gnostic, and upon Gnostic grounds. "Elect Men," says Justin, "went
out from Jerusalem into all the earth to denounce the godless heresies of
the Christiani!" "What do you think of that, my Cat?" These Elect Men
are identified as the Apostles by Eusebius. They can be still further
identified with Peter and John and their opposition to the Gnostic Paul
and the Christiani at Antioch. The Gnostics were Spiritualist
Christians, who preceded as well as opposed Historic Christianity. At the
head of all, as leader, stands Simon of Samaria. He taught his doctrines,
and wrought his wonders long anterior to the Apostles of the later creed
or craze. We are shown in the Book of the Acts what a power he was before
the time of Philip and Paul. He was acknowledged by the people as the
"Great Power of God." He was a Gnostic Christian; and the other
Christianity began as Gnosticism, refaced with falsehoods concerning a
series of facts alleged to have been historical, which are demonstrably
mythical. By which I do not mean mythical as exaggerations or perversions
of truth, but belonging to the Egyptian Mythos. Of course the
setting up of this vast falsehood made all truth a blasphemy. "The
Gnostics," says Irenĉus, "have no gospel which is not full of blasphemy. They denied the Christ carnalized, and were anti-Christian because
they were ante-Christian. "If any one carefully examines all their
systems, he will find the Word of God is brought in by all of them, as not
having become incarnate (sine carne)." That is, their Christ could
not take flesh once for all; could only be evolved within as the higher
life of all.
There was no other special reason why "the disciples" should first have
been named as "Christians" at Antioch except that this was a great centre
of the Gnostic Christians,
who were previously identified with the teachings and works of the
wonderful mage of Samaria. Simon was the great Anti-Christ, in the eyes of
the founders of the belief in
Historic Christianity, for whom the ante-Christ was always and everywhere
the anti-Christ; and it was necessary to account for there being
Christians other than the believers in a Carnalized Christ. This was clumsily attempted in the "Acts" by
making Simon become a baptized convert to the new superstition, and then
backsliding: a common
mode of accounting for Gnostic heretics!
Irenĉus shall furnish us with a crucial instance of the Christian lying on
this subject. He tells us that the Gnostics, such as those who followed Valentinus and Marcion, in
the second century, had no existence before these later teachers (B. iii.,
Ch. 4, 3); whereas he had already stated in his first book that Simon of
Samaria was the first and
foremost of all the founders of Gnosticism, and the father of all its
heresies.
The establishers of the stupendous falsehood came to consider all truth a
blasphemy, if opposed to them. Every one who denied the coming of Jesus
Christ in the flesh was
damned forthwith and for ever; and chief amongst these was Simon. To those
who know the nature of the Gnostic Christ (see my lecture on the "Seven
Souls of Man, and
their culmination in Christ") and the tenets the Gnostics taught, the
account of Simon's conversion, baptism, and backsliding in the Book of
Acts is fool's work or puerile
child's play mixed up with knavery. It is intended to show that Simon the
Gnostic Christian acquired his name as such through becoming one of the
"historic" Christians, and
that afterwards the ante-Christian was only the anti-Christian. Simon is
identified by Irenĉus as the Father and founder of all Heresies, which is
to confess that the
so-called Gnostic heresies were pre-Christian doctrines, and not, as he
elsewhere asserts, perversions and distortions of historic facts. The
ignorance of some of these early
Fathers concerning the Gnostics, their origin, statue, and teachings, is
unfathomable, or else their misrepresentation is infernal. For example, Hippolytus, in quoting
Irenĉus on the subject of the Valentinian Tetrad, actually personifies
their doctrine of Kol-arbas or the fourfold nature, as "another of those
heretics whose name was
Colarbasus."
In mentioning this fact in my "Natural Genesis," I omitted to state that
Hippolytus was but echoing Irenĉus, who has a chapter (B. I., 12) on the
doctrines of the "followers
of Ptolemy AND Colarbasus," in which he says: "He (Colarbasus) affirms
this (of the Ogdoad) as confidently as if he had assisted at their birth." Both Justin Martyr and
Irenĉus assert that Simon of Samaria was honoured with a statue set up by
the Emperor Claudius Cĉsar, on account of his magical powers. Here
their ignorance
confounds the Sabine God, Semo Sancus, whose statue stood in Rome, with
Saint Simon of Samaria. This is the passage from Irenĉus, B. I., ch.
23, 4, "The mystic
priests belonging to this sect both lead profligate lives (of course) and
practise magical arts, each one to the extent of his ability. They use
exorcisms and incantations;
love-potions too, and charms as well as those beings whom they call
Familiar Spirits (Paredri), and the senders of dreams (Oniropompi), and
whatever other
curious arts can be had recourse to. They also have an image of Simon
fashioned after the likeness of Jupiter, which they worship."
The Simonians, like all Gnostics, were Spiritualists, and Spiritualism
was, is, and ever will be, in opposition to the non-spiritual Agnostic
misinterpretations of mythology, called Historic Christianity. Simon wrote a work called the "Great
Announcement," a fragment of which is yet extant in a quotation made by Hippolytus. From this we learn
enough to know that he taught the fundamental doctrines of Gnostic
Christianity. He maintained the existence of a "Supreme Power," which he
termed the "Great Power,"
the highest power, invisible, ineffable, incomprehensible, which was the
"mind of the universe directing all things." The Power "who stands, has
stood, and will stand for
ever." Irenĉus says the same of Menander, the successor to Simon: "He
affirms that the Primary Power continues unknown to all; but manifests in
men like himself; that
was by mediumship, or as the ignoramuses put it, these men claimed to be
the Christ in person, and rejected the historical Jesus as a Saviour, of
whom they had no need. Irenĉus says the same of another Gnostic who followed Menander: "Saturninus, like Menander, sets forth one father unknown to all." Simon
further set forth that this
Supreme Power when figured anthropomorphically, was of a dual nature,
male and female, and the Christ, in man was their offspring; but this was
the Christ within; not any
personal Jesus. Hence he, like other Gnostics, including Paul, claimed and
proclaimed the Christ within; within the woman as well as the man. Hence
it was said that he
was a blasphemer who pretended to be the Christ, or greater than the
historic figment of the Christ. All who rejected the legend that was
literalized in Rome, and denied the
historic interpretation of the Mythos derived from Egypt, were damned as
blaspheming heretics by the A-Gnostic Christians who were headed by Peter. The Christ of Simon
was simply the immortal likeness or divine principle in man, considered
to be an emanation from the Supreme Being, the Gnostic Light, which
enlighteneth every man and
woman that cometh into the world. Justin speaks of Christians as those who
were illuminated through the Name of the Christ as an historical
character; whereas the Gnostic.
Christians said they were illuminated, through the Spirit within. When
Simon claimed to possess this principle, this interior light, they said he
claimed to be the Christ in
opposition to theirs, and set himself up as the anti-Christian and
anti-Jewish Messiah. As a Spiritualist, he of course denied the corporeal
resurrection of the Christ or
anybody else, which was hellish heresy to the orthodox Sarkolatrĉ, of
the Petrine Sect who could not understand a Christ that was not made
flesh in one single
personality, nor a resurrection that was not physical. And so poor Simon
was damned by his ignorant contemporaries; and now he is brought back to
us in the same
character of the accursed, to be led by the hand of two mediums towards
the light of Christianity, to "teach others that which he denied on
earth, but which he has received
in eternity;" having now "reached to that knowledge which (he) so
strenuously denied" when he was on earth. Here is a Gnostic adept if ever
there was one, not a mere
theoretical, but a practical and professional Spiritualist; a teacher and
demonstrator of the phenomenal facts of Spiritualism; a preacher who set
forth that the soul was inherently immortal, because it was an emanation, an embodied wave of the
deific motion, scintillating into visibility of life in mundane form. Of
this teaching we have historic
record; it is testified to by his deadly enemies; and now we find him
brought back like a prisoner in handcuffs, who has been captured after a
run of 1,800 years, on purpose
to tell us how he had "striven in time to make the promises of the
Almighty of none effect," by and through his denial of the soul's
immortality.
"It do, it do, indeed; it really do!"
And if this be Simon, what has become of poor Helena, who personated the
"lost sheep" that Simon sought to save? The Christian Theodoret swears
that Simon bought a
public prostitute called Selene or Helena, and travelled about with her in
public, and committed all sorts of crimes with her in secret. He
exhibited her as the female
counterpart of himself. This Selene or Helen he called the Mother-Nature,
and sometimes the Holy Ghost. The statement opens up a chasm of ghastly
ignorance. The divine
Selene is confounded with a woman, a harlot at that! as was the human
Simon with a deity. Simon was one of those Gnostics who maintained that
the Supreme Being
included both sexes. Some of them considered the First Intelligence
female, because the mother on earth was first recognised as the breather
or inflator of a soul; whence
the feminine type of the Holy Ghost, ultimated at last in Mary. Some of
the Christian founders maintained that woman qua woman had no soul, and
that deity was solely
male; she merely represented matter flowing away in dissolution; with her
issue of blood from the wound in nature. She could only be saved by
laying hold of the skirts of the
male Christ, and drawing virtue out of him. Here the story in the Gospels
should be read by means of the Gnostic version, enough of 'which is given
by Irenĉus
(Ante-Nicene Library). Even Paul taught or at least the teaching is to be
found in his Epistles (1 Tim., ii., 15), that woman is to be saved by her
child-bearing. Having no
souls themselves, the poor creatures were told to come to the male Jesus,
who alone could give them one of his grace. The time was when women, were
disqualified
because no female could receive the mystic
or Seal of Circumcision!
I hold a letter in my hand from a lady friend of mine who writes: "A
clergyman, told me the other day, that no woman was destined as a woman to
reach immortality; to do
this she must become a man." The poor blockhead did not know how to handle
his weapon. He should have pointed to Jesus as the female mode of getting
maled for
heaven! To use a slang phrase, Isn't that a "lovely wheeze" for womankind! Well, Simonin opposition to the Contemporary Idiots or
idiotaitaught
that the soul, as image of his supreme being, was female as well as male; and I know women who will
help to make up a heaven for all such Simonians? As Helen or Selene was a
Goddess, a
feminine form of the lunar Logos, perhaps that may account for her
non-appearance with Simon the Samaritan? Evidently then, we have not
got at the real Simon Pure,
and it would be supremely interesting to know what this damnable
misrepresentation means, and whence it arises. Is it the result of
unconscious ignorance on this side, or
of conscious lying on the other? Is it a mixture of both, and doubly
delusive in consequence? In the case of A.T.T.P. there can be no bias nor
unconscious prejudice in favour
of misrepresenting an opponent of Historic Christianity. Of the medium's
mind or predilections I know nothing. But I do know that someone,
somewhere, is responsible for a
representation of Simon, which is as false now as it was in the time of
Irenĉus, or Justin, or Peter. Is it that those who were impostors or
imposed upon in this life are
desirous of keeping up the delusion, and still seek to make new converts
here for the sake of companionship hereafter, now they find themselves
upon the losing side? What
is the inevitable inference, but that the knowledge of Simon is limited
mainly to the Christian misrepresentation of the man, as we have it extant
in the Book of Acts? That
version, at the very least, was more or less known to the four minds
involved in this portrait of Simon, through which we have the same old
lying likeness of him put into the
new frame. "Simon the Sorcerer" is a nick-name that identifies itself with
the Christian report. Simon the knower, Simon the wise, Simon the
Spiritualist, Simon the worshipper of the Supreme Being, Simon the teacher
of immortality: that would have called up quite a different image in the
seer's glass. Let them try again, and present a
portrait of the real Simon as known to history on the other side of the
house, and more or less to me. The mirror of mediumship has been so
darkened by the shadows of the
Christian falsifications, that the other world can be shown no true
reflections of its face, if it comes to look, and we can see no veritable
likeness in it. A new, a natural, a
gnostic, a truthful education is absolutely necessary for mediums before
we can expect to see with any clearness where we now perceive so dimly.
There is a dark shadow ever hanging overhead and haunting the Chriatiani
like a cloud made up of the frowning souls of maligned and murdered men,
women, and little
children, whose bodies were tortured and trodden underground or scattered
in ashes from the fires of martyrdom. If Simon comes back at all, it will
be in the cloud of these
that will blast where it breaks and lightens with mental melinite; and
not as a whimpering delinquent who seeks to be taken in now by that false
system of salvation; which
he rejected of old because he was a Gnostic; one of the enlightened who
knew better. |