Simon Magus and Helena - a long story, and no pictures, but worth reading!

Question: Can you tell us about a couple who experienced and embodied the Sacred Marriage?

Yes! Here is a story about Simon Magus and 'Helena'.

Simon, known as the Magus/Magician/Sorcerer lived in the 1st century C.E. According to the Acts of the Apostles (8.9-24) Simon boasted that he was 'someone great', amazed people in Samaria by his sorcery, and was acclaimed by them as 'the Great Power of God'. Some sources say he had the ability to levitate and to fly at will. According to Justin (2nd century Samaritan) nearly all the Samaritans were adherents of Simon of Gitta (or Getta), and Irenaeus claimed him to be one of the founders of Gnosticism as well as the leader of the Simonians.

When Philip, the Christian evangelist, visited Samaria, proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God, many people believed and were baptised, including Simon, who then 'followed Philip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw'. Peter and John, leaders of the Christians in Jerusalem, then came to Samaria, having heard of Philip's success, and followed up the baptisms with the laying on of hands, for the receiving of the Holy Spirit. This so impressed Simon that he offered them money in exchange for their God-given power; but Peter told him his heart was not in the right place, and that Simon must repent of 'this wickedness' and pray for forgiveness. Simon then asked Peter to pray for him so that 'nothing you have said may happen to me'. It is from this incident that the word 'simony' comes, meaning to pay for position and power within the church.

Simon's mistaken enthusiasm had such an impact that he was accused of 'lawlessness' (subsequently known as antinomianism - literally, 'against law') two hundred years later in the Apostolic Constitutions (375-380 C.E.) of Antioch. And he is also mentioned, in the context of a debate with Peter, in the 'Recognitions' - part of the Clementine Literature dating from around the 3rd to 4th century. Simon was even regarded by some as the source of all heresies - so there's power and influence!

Josephus, the 1st century Romano-Jewish historian, mentions a magician known as Atomus or Atomos in the Greek text, and translated as Simon in the Latin manuscripts, who acts as a go-between for the procurator Felix, to persuade King Agrippa's sister Drusilla to marry him (Felix) and not the man she was engaged to. This may or may not have been Simon Magus, who is believed to have been Samaritan rather than Jewish. Simon is also mentioned in various apocryphal documents.

After Simon was spurned by Peter et al, he is said to have gone to Rome, where he both performed magic acts and let it be believed that it was he himself who appeared among the Jews as the Son, in Samaria as the Father, and to 'other nations' as the Holy Spirit. The Romans were convinced, regarded him as a god, and honoured him with a statue on an island in the Tiber, inscribed 'To Simon the Holy God'.

While he was in Rome, Simon was accompanied by a 'profligate woman' named Helena. According to the Simonian myth, recounted by both Justin and Irenaeus, in the beginning God's first thought or Ennoia ('divine mind' ) was female, and by her the angels were created. But they rebelled against her 'out of jealousy' and created the world as her prison, incarcerating her in a female human body. An alternative version of the myth, told by Epiphanius, claims that Ennoia was 'sent down' in order to rob the Archons, the framers of this world, of their power by enticing them with her beauty and setting them 'in hostility to one another'. The imprisoned Ennoia was reincarnated many times, including as Helen of Troy, and finally she was incarnate as Helena, a slave and prostitute in Tyre, until she was rescued by Simon Magus. This was the purpose, it was believed, for which he had 'come down' - for 'the lost sheep... she who is also called Prunikos and Holy Ghost' - and to confer salvation by knowledge of himself.

This Simonian myth closely resembles other myths of the participants in the Heiros Gamos, telling how the work of creation was assigned to the female principle, who descends into the 'lower realms' and is unable to return until she is 'rescued' by the King/Bridegroom/Lover. The sceptical 3rd century Roman theologian Hippolytus suggested that Simon had invented this story and was claiming that Helena was Sophia, the Mother of All, in order to excuse his being enamoured of a prostitute whom he had bought and taken to wife.

Hippolytus also records a folk-tradition which told how, having fallen foul of the Christian Apostles and come to Rome, Simon had several more disputes with Peter. At last, on the point of 'being shown up' again, Simon, in order to gain time, said that if he were buried alive he would rise again on the third day: 'So he bade that a tomb should be dug by his disciples and that he should be buried in it. Now they did what they were ordered, but he remained there until now: for he was not the Christ.'

Again, this echoes the tales of the death of the King/Bridegroom, the search for him by his Bride, the Goddess, and her restoration of him to life. However, an alternative death is also ascribed to Simon: that he fell from the top of the Forum in Rome while attempting to demonstrate his ability to fly.

Hippolytus also comments on how a variety of magic arts were practiced by the Simonians, and that they had images of the 'lord' and 'lady', Simon and Helena, 'under the forms of Zeus and Athena' and/or Jupiter and Minerva - couples who also manifest God and Goddess and particpate in the Heiros Gamos. Celsus records the honour paid to Helena by the Simonians, who were also called Heleniani. It is worth noting that, in the Clementine Recognitions, the companion of Simon is called Luna - the Moon, sacred to and symbol of, the Goddess. Also in the Clementine Homilies, Helena is both identified with the Syro-Phoenician woman who had a theological debate with Jesus (Mark 7.24-30) and yet also referred to as Justa, a woman whose daughter was healed by Jesus, and whose adopted sons were educated alongside Simon Magus, being subsequently warned against him and instead became close to Zacchaeus, the man who climbed the tree to see Jesus.

Another 'pseudonym' of Helena was Martha, sister of Mary Magdalene (the wife of Jesus) and of Simon Magus - who was also Lazarus! While this introduces the ancient concept of the sister/bride and brother/lover, this seems a little unlikely, even given the associated concept that Simon and Jesus were the Priest and the King respectively.

Helena was also referred to in some accounts as Sapphira, and was thus associated with Simon as Ananias (Acts 5.1-11), and again as Salome, the daughter of Herodias (Mark 6.21-29) who asked for the 'head' (supposedly meaning the 'papal crown') of John the Baptist. It has conversely been claimed that she was a disciple of John the Baptist, and was known, as noted above, as Luna: she was thus the Moon to John's Sun (since the Zadokites followed the solar calendar). After the Baptist's death, Simon (Simon Magus, remember him?!) succeeded against a rival (Dositheus) as the leader/Sun and took Luna, the Moon, to himself.

A further variant is based around Eusebius' claim that Helena was, as noted earlier, a former prostitute from Tyre. Tyre is in Phoenicia, the ancestral territory of the tribe of Asher, within which an ascetic order was set up for women by 'Salome', an early 1st century Queen, and into which some Gentiles were admitted. 'Salome' was not a name but a title for the Head of the Order, and was conferred on Helena, who, known as Salome, was the mother of Jesus' disciples James and John, sons of Zebedee. (Does this mean that Simon Magus was also Zebedee?) This Salome may have been the sister of Mother Mary, who was present at the crucifixion of Jesus.

Eusebius' claim that Helena was a whore - a parallel with the latterly repudiated claim that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute - became part of the argument for 'Herodian sexual licence' with the 'Chief Woman' (Salome) in which role Helena was succeeded by Bernice/Berenice (aka Julia Berenice), daughter of Agrippa I, widow firstly of the Egyptian alabarch Marcus Julius Alexander (who was the nephew of Philo) and then of her uncle/husband Herod of Chalcis, sister of Drusilla (who Felix wanted to marry), and twin sister and queen consort of Agrippa II. Yes, Sister and Queen Consort... Hmm!

According to Acts 25-26 - when Paul was being tried by the Roman governor of Judea - Agrippa and Bernice went to Caesarea. Bernice is said to have taken the part of the captive Jewish soldiers who were being cruelly treated, but the procurator, rather shockingly considering who she was, turned his soldiers on her, and she was forced to take refuge in the palace in Jerusalem. At the time Bernice was reputedly under a Nazirite vow, and she went barefoot before the Roman tribunal and made supplication to Gessius Florus (the procurator) - but with no good effect. However, Bernice remained politically active, and became the mistress of Titus (who later became Emperor) in anticipation of marriage - but he sent her away when he became aware of her unpopularity with the Romans. Shame on him.

In AD 44, when Agrippa I died, his house allied itself with the Christians, while Bernice's house followed Magian/Simonite ways, as a result of which she has since been regarded as the 'Whore of Babylon', the woman 'clothed in purple and scarlet', paralleled by the Beast/666 - no less a person than Simon Magus himself.

What a tangled web, but how fascinating, all the ins and outs and echoes and parallels, the inter-weaving of myth, the commonalities, across cultures and centuries.