Simonian

It is no coincidence that the Gospel of John portray's Jesus in terms analogous to the Simonians' depiction of Simon. Could the first converts among the Children of LIght have been Simonians who transferred their Gnostic mythology from Simon Magus to Jesus?

The church fathers who attacked heresies took this up and made Simon Magus not only the founder of the Simonians, but of gnosis as a whole

Simonians used sex to pollute women in imitation of their founder .

The Simonians did not truly follow the Roman gods, but instead venerated their order's founders—Simon and his wife, Helena—in the guises of Zeus and Minerva.

He considered the Simonian veneration of Simon to be blasphemy. He never seems to have examined why Simonians honored Simon's reputed icon.

Simonians associate Helena, Simon's consort, with Athena, who sprung from the head of Zeus, just as Thought, particularly associated with Helena, emanates from Mind..

The Justin account is the nucleus of the huge Simonian legend which was mainly developed by the cycle of Pseudo-Clemenine literature of the third century, based on the second century Circuits of Peter.

If we agree that HSim was not a forgery, it remains to ask whether it is actually Simonian. For this question the identity and teachings of the historical Simon Magus — in any case irrecoverable —are not important.

The amalgam of paganism and Christianity, especially obvious in the Simonian system , is readily explicable in the teachings of Simon Magus.

Yet it must be acknowledg'd, that although a Pagan-like Mundane Magistracy of the Holy Angels was entertain'd by several of the Learned Theologers of the three first Ages of the Church, yet no such thang as Church-Demonolatry appeareth in those early Days, save only amongst the Simonian Gnosticks and the ancient Angelici or Angelits condemn'd by S Paul (Col. 2.18), which I suppose to have been a distinct sort of Gnosticks from the Simonian, who had their origin from Simon Magus.