found in the patristic writings and legendary records; and various
theories have been put forward, not the least astonishing being the
supposition that Simon was an alias for Paul, and that the Simon and
Peter in the accounts of the fathers and in the narrative of the legends
were simply concrete symbols to represent the two sides of the Pauline
and Petrine controversies.

The first reason why I have ventured on this present enquiry is that
Simon Magus is invariably mentioned by the heresiologists as the founder
of the first heresy of the commonly-accepted Christian era, and is
believed by them to have been the originator of those systems of
religio-philosophy and theosophy which are now somewhat inaccurately
classed together under the heading of Gnosticism. And though this
assumption of the patristic heresiologists is entirely incorrect, as may
be proved from their own works, it is nevertheless true that Simonianism
is the first system that, as far as our present records go, came into
conflict with what has been regarded as the orthodox stream of
Christianity. A second reason is that I believe that Simon has been
grossly misrepresented, and entirely misunderstood, by his orthodox
opponents, whoever they were, in the first place, and also, in the
second place, by those who have ignorantly and without enquiry copied
from them. But my chief reason is that the present revival of
theosophical enquiry throws a flood of light on Simon's teachings,
whenever we can get anything approaching a first-hand statement of them,
and shows that it was identical in its fundamentals with the Esoteric
Philosophy of all the great religions of the world.

In this enquiry, I shall have to be slightly wearisome to some of my
readers, for instead of giving a selection or even a paraphraze of the
notices on Simon which we have from authenticated patristic sources, I