Simon Magus | Page 6

of which the Universal Root is
the foundation_."[13]
And he says that man here below, born of blood, is the Dwelling, and
that the Boundless Power dwells in him, which he says is the Universal
Root. And, according to Simon, the Boundless Power, Fire, is not a
simple thing, as the majority who say that the four elements are simple
have considered fire also to be simple, but that the Fire has a twofold
nature; and of this twofold nature he calls the one side the concealed
and the other the manifested, (stating) that the concealed (parts) of the
Fire are hidden in the manifested, and the manifested produced by the
concealed.
This is what Aristotle calls "in potentiality" and "in actuality," and
Plato the "intelligible" and "sensible."
And the manifested side of the Fire has all things in itself which a man
can perceive of things visible, or which he unconsciously fails to
perceive. Whereas the concealed side is everything which one can
conceive as intelligible, even though it escape sensation, or which a
man fails to conceive.
And generally we may say, of all things that are, both sensible and
intelligible, which he designates concealed and manifested, the Fire,
which is above the heavens, is the treasure-house, as it were a great
Tree, like that seen by Nabuchodonosor in vision, from which all flesh
is nourished. And he considers the manifested side of the Fire to be the
trunk, branches, leaves, and the bark surrounding it on the outside. All
these parts of the great Tree, he says, are set on fire from the
all-devouring flame of the Fire and destroyed. But the fruit of the Tree,
if its imaging has been perfected and it takes the shape of itself, is
placed in the storehouse, and not cast into the Fire. For the fruit, he
says, is produced to be placed in the storehouse, but the husk to be
committed to the Fire; that is to say, the trunk, which is generated not
for its own sake but for that of the fruit.

10. And this he says is what is written in the scripture: "For the
vineyard of the Lord Sabaôth is the house of Israel, and a man of Judah
a well-beloved shoot."[14] And if a man of Judah is a well-beloved
shoot, it is shown, he says, that a tree is nothing else than a man. But
concerning its sundering and dispersion, he says, the scripture has
sufficiently spoken, and what has been said is sufficient for the
instruction of those whose imaging has been perfected, viz.: "All flesh
is grass, and every glory of the flesh as the flower of grass. The grass is
dried up and the flower thereof falleth, but the speech of the Lord
endureth for the eternity (aeon)."[15] Now the Speech of the Lord, he
says, is the Speech engendered in the mouth and the Word (Logos), for
elsewhere there is no place of production.
11. To be brief, therefore, the Fire, according to Simon, being of such a
nature--both all things that are visible and invisible, and in like manner,
those that sound within and those that sound aloud, those which can be
numbered and those which are numbered--in the Great Revelation he
calls it the Perfect Intellectual, as (being) everything that can be
thought of an infinite number of times, in an infinite number of ways,
both as to speech, thought and action, just as Empedocles[16] says:
"By earth earth we perceive; by water, water; by aether [divine], aether;
fire by destructive fire; by friendship, friendship; and strife by bitter
strife."
12. For, he says, he considered that all the parts of the Fire, both visible
and invisible, possessed perception[17] and a portion of intelligence.
The generable cosmos, therefore, was generated from the ingenerable
Fire. And it commenced to be generated, he says, in the following way.
The first six Roots of the Principle of generation which the generated
(sc., cosmos) took, were from that Fire. And the Roots, he says, were
generated from the Fire in pairs,[18] and he calls these Roots Mind and
Thought, Voice and Name, Reason and Reflection, and in these six
Roots there was the whole of the Boundless Power together, in
potentiality, but not in actuality. And this Boundless Power he says is
He who has stood, stands and will stand; who, if his imaging is
perfected while in the six Powers, will be, in essence, power, greatness

and completeness, one and the same with the ingenerable and
Boundless Power, and not one single whit inferior to that ingenerable,
unchangeable and Boundless Power. But if it remain in potentiality
only, and its imaging is not perfected, then it disappears and perishes,
he says, just as the potentiality of grammar or geometry in a man's