A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Mirrors

§ 21. The Earlier Gnostics: Gnosticism in General 93range of magic art, that he might the better bewilder the multitudeof men. Such was his procedure in the reign of Claudius Cæsar,by whom also he is said to have been honored with a statue onaccount of his magic. This man, then, was glorified by many asa god, and he taught that it was he himself who appeared amongthe Jews as the Son, but descended in Samaria as the Father,while he came to other nations in the character of the Holy Spirit.He represented himself as the loftiest of all powers, that it is hewho is over all as the Father, and he allowed himself to be calledwhatsoever men might name him.Now this Simon of Samaria, from whom all heresies derivetheir origin, has as the material for his sect the following: Havingredeemed from slavery at Tyre, a city of Phœnicia, a certainwoman named Helena, 38 a prostitute, he was in the habit ofcarrying her about with him, declaring that she was the firstconception [Ennœa] of his mind, the mother of all, by whomhe conceived in his mind to make the angels and archangels.For this Ennœa, leaping forth from him and comprehending thewill of her father, descended to the lower regions and generatedangels and powers, by whom, also, he declared this world wasmade. But after she had generated them she was detained bythem through jealousy, because they were unwilling that theyshould be regarded as the progeny of any other being. As tohimself, he was wholly unknown to them, but his Ennœa wasdetained by those powers and angels who had been produced by [080]her. She suffered all kinds of contumely from them, so that shecould not return upward to her father, but was even shut up in ahuman body and for ages passed in succession from one femalebody to another, as from one vessel to another vessel. She wasin that Helen on whose account the Trojan War was undertaken;wherefore also Stesichorus was struck blind, because he cursedher in his poems; but afterward, when he had repented and38 For a discussion of this Helena, see Bousset, Die Hauptprobleme derGnosis, 1907, pp. 77 ff.