Simon Magus

According to Apocrypha, Simon Magus was a contemporary of the Biblical apostles and an important religious figure. Biblical legend tells that Simon was trying to buy his way into the number of Apostles but got rejected by Peter. Later he started preaching as well and collected a group of adherents. In his book, G.R.S. Mead compares the deeds of Simon with those of Peter and Paul and casts a look on the Simonian ideas, which he believes are similar to the system of Theosophy popular in Mead's times.

This book is an exploration of the post-New Testament figure of Simon Magus spanning the patristic era, Middle Ages, and the early modern period as found in art, vernacular literatures, heresiologies, theological texts, hagiographies and homilies.

This latest comprehensive work on Simon Magus lends new impetus to the investigation of Early Christianity and questions surrounding the origin and nature of Gnosticism. Major contributions of this study include: (1), a departure from the traditional exegesis of Acts 8, 5-24 (the first narrative source of Simon), and the later following reports of ancient Christian writers; (2), an overview of the literature of Graeco-Roman antiquity to determine the contribution of "magic" and "the Magoi" in the development of perceptions and descriptions of Simon; and (3), the inclusion of social science explanation models and modern estimations of "identity", in a creative approach to questions surrounding the phenomenon of Simon.

This book about receptions of Simon Magus uncovers further facets of one who was held to be the evil archetype of heretics. Ephraim Nissan and Alberto Ferreiro explore how Simon Magus has been represented in text, visual art, and music. Special attention is devoted to the late medieval Catalan painter Lluís Borrassà and the Italian librettist and musician Arrigo Boito. The tradition of Simon Magus’ demonic flight, ending in his crashing down, first appears in the patristic literature. The book situates that flight typologically across cultures. Fascinating observations emerge, as the discussion spans flight of the wicked in rabbinic texts, flight and death of King Lear’s father and a Soviet-era Buryat Buddhist monk, flight and doom of the fool in an early modern German broadsheet, and more. The book explains and moves beyond extant scholarly wisdom on how the polemic against Mani (the founder of Manichaeism) was tinged with hues of Simon Magus. The novelty of this book is that it shows that Simon Magus’ receptions teach us a great deal about the contexts in which this archetype was deployed.

In 1995 forty year old Paul Michaelson makes a long overdue appointment seeking help from psychiatrist Dr. Morris Bornstein. He tells the doctor that he has been harboring a terrible secret for most of his life. At age 13 while playing with a ouija board he seemed to make contact with an entity who claimed to be the Biblical sorcerer Simon Magus. Instructed by the entity how to perform a secret ceremony he believed that he became possessed by the spirit. But did he? Was he really possessed by a spirit or was he sufferering from a serious mental illness? That is what he hopes the doctor can tell him. His life as a living Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has been a living Hell. In "The Shadow of Simon Magus" author Samuel Spulman explores the facts of this bizarre real life case and the story behind the story. For Paul believes that the entity which has enhabited his body came from the family's previous home. The one they moved away from when he was only 4 years old. Paul grew up listening to his mother's tales of that old place. Revealed here for the first time you will read of a house so haunted that it made all other haunted houses seem like a bed and breakfast!

In Rider Haggard and the Imperial Occult, Simon Magus explores the occult world of H. Rider Haggard through an analysis of his literary engagement with ancient Egypt, Romanticism and Theosophy.