It’s often forgotten that, according to St Luke’s gospel, Simon Magus repented and begged forgiveness for his transgression of offering to pay the Apostles for spiritual gifts (Acts, VIII. 24). Thereafter Simon became the great prophet of Gnosticism, his brilliance evinced in his sophisticated metaphysical treatise Apophasis Megale and the insightful fragments attributed to him in the Clementine Recognitions. Yet his reputation remained stained for nearly two millennia, as he was relentlessly vilified by sell-out Romanized Christians, such as the Patristic heresiologists Irenæus, Epiphanius, Hippolytus, Justin, et al.  Even Dante Aligheri envisioned him as consigned to the eighth ring of Hell (Inferno, Canto XIX. 1-4a). Indeed, he is the eponymous figure behind the term simony, which is clearly a misnomer, for it denotes extorting indulgences for remission of sins rather than purchasing of spiritual powers.

If the story in Acts is not merely fabricated as an attack on a rival prophet and is to be believed, then Simon indeed had something to be sorry for. As my Gurudeva stated unequivocally: "There is no way that mantras can be sold and be effective." (Mahāṛishi Śivāya Subramuniyaswāmī, Yoga’s Forgotten Foundation, ch. 19 “Recitation”, p. 128). Vimalānanda declared, "A real guru doesn't care for money: he wants a disciple he can be proud of." (quoted in Robert E. Svoboda, Aghora: At the Left Hand of God, ch. 5 "Mentors")

But let us try to understand Simon’s perspective which led him into error by Luke’s account.  After the gruesome martyrdom of his master John the Baptist, the young Simon fled to Alexandria to study magick and metaphysics. In this metropolis it was de rigeur to pay for initiations, and throughout the world things have not changed at all since his day except for inflation and national economies going off the gold standard for totally make-believe fiat currency.

Some cases in point: To learn Bhuta Śuddhi from Sadhguru’s Isha Yoga locally will cost you $175.00—what a bargain, your subtle body elements purified for much less than the price of a 40 ounce dried ribeye at Bufon on Manhattan’s Lower East Side!  To receive the secrets of Kriyā Yoga from Lahiri Mahasaya's descendents, just bring a coconut to offer...plus $500.00 cash—competitive with what a high-priced call girl might charge for a night's services (minus the coconut). The Shambhala org decries "spiritual materialism" of other groups, alhough an online course with Pema Chodron will set you back a couple hundred. Keep chipping in your membership dues and one day you might even end up Grand Master of a Masonic Lodge. Scientology is only the most obvious of ‘religious’ pyramid scams. A chick with whom I went to high school now charges for one-hour telephonic sessions of astrological consultation, divination, and ancestral healing a hundred bucks--over four times the average hourly wage in this state....perhaps her familiar spirits could advise her clients to quit their jobs and get a Tarot deck, LLC shingle, business line, and four suckers per diem to more than double the status quo income.

We could go on and on enumerating fees demanded by greedy gatekeepers of gnosis, some of them disgustingly exorbitant. Such corruption in religion is nothing new under the sun, and so it was in Simon’s time: if you went to seminary, you coughed up the denari. In offering to imburse the Apostles, Simon was doing what he imagined was expected of him. Their rebuke, by the testimony of Luke, set him back on the right track.

        Simon was further condemned for originating the doctrines of Gnosticism, but sufficient evidence exists that Gnosticism might have been preached by Jesus himself and John the Baptist before him. Even within the canonical gospels we find blatantly Gnostic pronouncements by Jesus: "The kingdom of heaven is within you" (St Luke XVII. 21) "Ye are gods" (St John, X.34). The similarity of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas to the hypothesized gospel Q (for Quelle “Source”) introduces the possibility that Gnosis might have been the original esoteric teaching of Jesus. Certainly the codices of the Nag Hammadi Library, hidden in caves by Egyptian Gnostics to rescue their scriptures during persecution by Roman imperial Christians, make it abundantly obvious that Jesus, not Simon, was their Guru. Among the extant texts, many are presented as the secret teachings of Jesus and not a single one is attributed to Simon, although I would suggest some have a strong Simonian flavour and may have been written by him or his disciples (e.g,, “The Concept of Our Great Power”, “The Thunder: Perfect Mind” and “The Thought of Norea”). Despite these very early Gnostics citing Jesus as their Master and Saviour, the Roman Christian Patristics asserted that it was Simon who invented Gnosticism. The only sect of Gnostics to maintain unbroken continuity, the Mandaeans, insist that John the Baptist founded their religion.

        How to square these three versions of who was the Proto-Gnostic? The Coptic Christians believed it was Jesus. Later the heresiologists accused Simon. The Mandaeans have always named John and possess scriptures with teachings ascribed to him. When we consider that both Jesus and Simon were disciples of John the Baptist, using Occam’s Razor, we arrive at an easy solution to this controversy: John the Baptist taught Gnosis to both his pupils Jesus of Nazareth and Simon of Gittha. Did it actually originate with John? Quite possibly he was simply the heir to a lineage of masters orally transmitting a mystical version of Judaism, such as is conveyed by Cabalists, who acknowledge the provenance of their lore to just such an ancient oral tradition. A close examination of Mosaic scripture leaves no doubt that the same numerological coding methods of Cabala were consciously employed in the composition of the Torah. But whatever the origin, this conclusion indicates that Gnosticism was originally endemic to the Christian faith.

        Yet when Christianity was co-opted by the Roman Empire at the Council of Nicea, its Gnostic secret heart was eviscerated, its original message obscured. The Gnostics were branded as heretics and systematically exterminated, along with diehard Pagans in Roman territory, the false Christendom of the Empire.

            Despite his claim to having established himself as the Christ, Simon was reviled by generation after generation of Christians. Just as the Jews looked down on as Samaritans as racially inferior, so Jewish Jesus was valorized while the Samaritan Messiah Simon was defamed. The origin of the Faust legend in Simon’s story is a complicated subject warranting a separate essay unto itself. Suffice it to say, Simon was calumnied as the archetypal evil sorcerer and labeled (libeled) as “the father of all heresies”. His writings for the most part were lost, presumably destroyed by Romanized Christians. Gnosticism was forced underground, apart from the Mandæans, and eventually was perverted by the Templar mafia into crypto-Satanism. Simon’s icon was never venerated along with those of other saints, no sacraments were offered for him nor hymns composed to laud his glories, his mother Rachel never had any beautiful songs written for her like “Ave, Maria”, “Stella Maris”, the Greensleeves reboot, and “Mary, Did You Know?” and she was never coronated as Queen of Angels.

        On the up side for Simon, he was never flogged and crucified except in the papyrus press, there were never grisly genocides like the Crusades and Inquisitions committed for his sake, simony was long practiced in the name of Jesus NOT that of Simon, and none of his priests molested children to receive only a wrist-slap from the Papacy.  Yet the bad press stuck to Simon and not to his godbrother Jesus of the teflon halo. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century, with theosophist G. R. S. Mead’s fresh scholarly investigation into Simon’s surviving writings, that his long sullied rep was at last repristinated.

But that was just a lone champion of Simonian Gnosticism after many centuries of malicious slander, and not many other sympathetic voices have emerged since.

Bishop Hoeller has spoken positively of Simon, and although baptized and confirmed in his Ecclesia Gnostica, I eventually defected from Hoeller’s fold, for he preaches Manichæan dualism rather than the radical monism of Simon himself. The Manichæan demonization of Mother Nature is absolutely contrary to Simon’s teachings, for he made explicit the Divinity of Dynamis the Feminine Power (Sanskṛit Śakti) and Her non-duality with the Masculine Power Agathon (Sanskṛit Śiva). Simon’s consort Helen was worshipped by his followers as the Incarnation of Sophia, the Gnostic Goddess of Wisdom, which is why she was portrayed as Minerva rather than as Juno, even though Simon’s icon was fashioned to resemble that of Jove.

Among current scholars Tobias Churton is an outstanding proponent on Simon’s behalf.  He portrays Simon as a “superman” and Simonian Gnosticism as “a magical religion” which dares to put metaphysical theory into practice and exert a “will to power”, and which practices a “sexual alchemy” that he ventures was also privately taught by Jesus to his beloved disciples.[1]

“this Simonian tradition was advocating a form of sexual magic as the means of realizing the potential inner man, awakening abilities dormant in the soul and firing up the great hidden being of man to his proper dimensions: become the genius, or die!”[2]

“One aim of Simonian practices appears then to have been the generation of ‘supermen’ and we may assume ‘superwomen’ or rather the androgynous super-being.”[3]

Metempsychosis was central to Simon Magus’ teachings (especially with regard to Helena’s redemption), and his dying promise to his disciples that he would return was honored via these means. Throughout most of Simon’s reIncarnations over the past 2000 years he never openly declared himself established as the Christ. Martyrdom by the Catholic Church would’ve been almost instantaneous if he'd had. As St. Symeon the New Theologian he was able again to present gnosis under the guise of theoria, literally “seeing” or “mystically contemplating”, yet referring to a direct realization of Divinity within oneself. Ironically in that lifetime he ended up canonized by the same church that had condemned his prior vessel, although St. Symeon is not widely known to Christians today, especially in the West.

The Avatar couldn't stay hidden forever, and the aftermath of the French Revolution prepared the way for the rebirth of 'the Standing One' and full revelation of his Divine Identity. Not much is known of the Magus Simon Ganneau prior to his announcement in 1838 of being Mapah, the Mother-Father Incarnation of what he called "the great EVADAH", referred to by the first Simon as Dynamis-Agathon, our Shakti-Shiva. As well as an occultist, Ganneau was a sculptor who produced hermaphroditic figures in plaster. Several key features are shared by the cults of the 1st century and the 19th century Magi Simons:

* Radical Non-dualism: All is sacred.

* The Supreme Divinity is imagined as an Hermaphrodite (as in the Corpus Hermeticum)

* 'Proto-feminist' equality of the sexes

* Rite of Baptism practiced

* Theurgic Magick practiced

* Sacred sex practiced

* Charismatic Leader Self-Realized as Divine

Unfortunately the movements also shared a short life and resultant paucity of surviving scriptures and rites. Simon’s public Second Coming as The Mapah was, at the time, considerably less than world-shaking. The era’s critics lampooned him as ridiculous and made unflattering caricatures in the press. His cult did not advance far beyond the bourns of his Parisian salon. His egalitarian feminist and humanist version of religion, while recapitulating original Simonian Gnosticism, was in a way ahead of its time. The hermaphroditic image of God/dess he presented did not elicit the universal devotion he had hoped to attract. As Ramakrishna Paramahamsa pointed out, "Ordinary people do not recognize the advent of an Incarnation of God. He comes in secret. Only a few of His intimate disciples can recognize Him" (quoted in The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Sunday, 11 March, 1883 entry). The Mapah's most famous disciple, Eliphas Levi, grandfather of modern magick, spoke of Ganneau with much fondness but also patronizingly snickered at his “overly poetic nature”.

As Simon's current incarnation I feel blessed with a privileged position from which to resuscitate the monistic Gnosticism preached by Simon, his master John, and his godbrother Jesus--a gospel which constitutes original Christianity much more than its current mutations in the Eastern Orthodox, Roman, and Protestant Churches. Never in this lifetime have I paid or charged for initiation, and all my teaching is free and motivated only by big big LOVE, baby, to heal souls and evolve humanity--which should be the case with EVERY spiritual preceptor. In this Third—and, Deo concendente, final—Coming publicly as Gnostic Prophet, I hope to achieve what my preceding incarnations could not: the expansion of EVADAH Monistic Gnosis into a world religion. With rampant environmental pollution and habitat destruction by humans being at its present dire state, return of religion that recognizes the intrinsic sanctity of the physical world and its Oneness with ourselves is critical. Those who accept the doctrine that each of us can Divinely embody the Cosmic Christ, and who resonate with a Gnosticism that is not ascetic and Nature-hating but rather sex-positive and Gaia-nurturing, I invite to join our congregation. With the global media technology available today and the increased receptivity to androgyny, hermaphroditism, anarchic communal equality, occult magick, Nature worship, Tantra, and Self-Realization, together we could quite conceivably actualize The Mapah’s dream of making EVADAḤ a timely religion for healing a poisoned planet and wasteland culture.

Praised be the Great EVADAḤ MaryChrist:

Auṁ Namaḥ Śivāyai cha Auṁ Namaḥ Śivāya!

Jay Gaṇeś!

With L♡VE, your servant, the Mousenger,

RĀJ ṚiSHI

Soma-Rudra dās Gaṇu

[1] Churton, Tobias. Gnostic Mysteries of Sex, ch. 3,pp. 72-73

[2] Ibid, p. 79

[3] Ibid., p. 84