Magic

hands; therefore, he not only ‘‘believed and was baptized’’ but he asked
the apostles to sell him their special gift so that he could practice it too.
This is the typical attitude of the professional magician, and it illustrates
what has been said above. To Simon, the charisma of this new religion is a
kind of magic that can be purchased, for a price, and he is prepared to pay
for it as he probably had before for the kind of magic he had learned. The
sharp rebuke that he draws from Peter—and that he is flexible enough to
take in good grace—shows how the early Church drew a line between
itself and practitioners of magic such as Simon.π∑
We hear about a Simon again from Justin Martyr (e.g., Dialogue with
Trypho, ch. 120), who says that he was a magus born in Samaria, that his
followers worshiped him as the supreme God, and that a Phoenician
woman, a former prostitute called Helen, lived with him; she was consid-
ered the ‘‘primary notion’’ emanating from him, though in a di√erent
context. She was a fallen power for whose salvation he had appeared.
Justin also reports that in Rome a statue was erected in his honor on Tiber
Island, with the inscription simoni deo sancto, ‘‘To Simon, the Sacred
God.’’ By an amazing coincidence a monument bearing an inscription
that begins with the words semoni sanco deo was found in Rome, but
this was clearly a statue of a very old Italic deity known as Semo Sancus,
who had a cult on Tiber Island, perhaps nearly extinct by this time, and it
is possible that the followers of Simon used the old statue for their own
worship. Or perhaps Justin simply misunderstood the inscription semoni
sanco deo for simoni deo sancto.
According to other early Christian writers (e.g., Epiph., Adv. Haeres.
6.21.2√.), Simon established his own Trinity, in which he was the Father,
Jesus was the Son, and Helen was something like the Holy Spirit; but in
another sense, Simon really was all three. This remarkable bit of theology
would seem to show how skillfully Simon adapted the Gospel to his own
needs. Indeed, it looks as if he started out as a magus and then, inspired by
the example of Jesus, developed into a cult figure by borrowing from
Christianity whatever suited him. He and Helen were worshiped before
statues of Zeus and Athena; this, no doubt, was designed to make the
ritual more palatable to the Gentiles. The priests of Simon’s religion were
said by some early Christian writers to practice both magic and free
love—a combination of charges that appears throughout history.
From the testimonies that we have, Simon Magus emerges as a kind of
shaman, a practitioner of occult science (which he was supposed to have
learned in Egypt) with Christlike aspirations. Unlike Jesus, he used dae-
mons for his own purposes, practiced necromancy, and even claimed,
according to the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions,π∏ to have created a hu-
man being. The text may be corrupt, but on the whole the meaning

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seems clear: Simon claimed to have invoked the soul of an innocent boy
who had been murdered and commanded it to enter a new body that he
had made from air, thus forming a new human being. He boasts that this
was a far nobler achievement than the creation of Adam by God the
Father, ‘‘for he created a man from earth, but I from air—a much more
di≈cult thing.’’ When people demanded to see this homunculus, Simon
answered that he had already made him disappear into air again.
The moment of truth came when, according to Acts, Simon and Peter
challenged each other before the emperor Nero in Rome. Like earlier
confrontations between a mere magician and a true religious leader,ππ it
was a contest of spiritual powers. Simon actually managed to fly through
the air for a short time, impressing Nero, but Peter broke the spell and
made the magician crash to earth so badly that he never recovered. His
resurrection within three days, which he himself had predicted (provided
he was buried alive), never took place, ‘‘because he was not the Christ,’’
Hippolytus notes sarcastically (Haer. 6.20.3). The Simon of Acts is some-
times confused with the other Simon, also from Samaria, of the Pseudo-
Clementine Recognitions. It should be said that Acts is our only source for
our knowledge of the elder Simon.
The third magus of this period was Apollonius of Tyana, who was born
in Cappadocia a few years after Jesus, it seems, and survived into the reign
of Nerva (c. A.D. 97). About a century later, Flavius Philostratus wrote a
comprehensive Life of Apollonius of Tyana [see no. 28], which, though not
exactly trustworthy, is still our most important source.π∫ Philostratus, a
professional writer, was a protégé of the empress Julia Domna, mother of
the emperor Caracalla. This beautiful and cultured lady was interested in
philosophy, religion, and science; Galen, the great physician and medical
author, was another of her protégés. She owned a document that claimed
to be the memoirs of a certain Damis of Niniveh, a disciple of Apollonius;
this she gave to Philostratus as raw material for a polished literary treat-
ment. Philostratus complied, and from his biography, which is eminently
readable, the strange, ascetic, traveling teacher and wonder-worker called
Apollonius emerges. He is usually labeled a Neo-Pythagorean; actually
he is more like a new Pythagoras. He certainly represents, in a di√erent
age, the same combination of scientist, philosopher, and magus, even
though he explains his kind of ‘‘magic’’ as a science. A revival of Pythago-
reanism took place in the first century A.D.; its centers were Alexandria
and Rome. If we can trust his biographer, Apollonius traveled as far as
India, where he exchanged ideas with the Brahmins, who were consid-
ered to be true Pythagorean philosophers.
What we know of Apollonius’ teaching is fairly consistent with tradi-
tional Pythagorean doctrine. Animals have a divine soul, just like human

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beings; hence it is a sin to kill an animal, either to eat it or to use its fur or
skin for clothing or to o√er it to the gods as a sacrifice. Vegetarianism and
a pure, ascetic life in general are necessary. Apollonius also believed in the
transmigration of the soul and claimed to remember his own previous
existences, but he explicitly denied certain astonishing feats that were
ascribed to him by Philostratus (Life of Apollonius of Tyana 8.7)—for ex-
ample, that he had descended into the underworld and that he could raise
the dead. Since he was arrested on charges of magic twice, once under
Nero and again under Domitian, he must have had every reason to
reduce the miracles he was credited with to reasonable dimensions. His
disciples probably made him into more of a thaumaturge than he himself
wanted to be. In some ways Apollonius resembles Socrates: he enjoyed
lively philosophical debates and was very good at using an opponent’s
premises against him, leading him on ad absurdum. Like Socrates, he had a
daimonion [see no. 55]. Unlike Socrates and Jesus, he published; we know
of one treatise, On Sacrifices.
In the early fourth century A.D. a new e√ort was made to discredit the
Christians, perhaps in order to justify the persecutions ordered by Dio-
cletian. A high o≈cial in his administration, Hierocles of Nicomedia,
wrote an anti-Christian pamphlet entitled The Lover of Truth, in which he
tried to show that Apollonius ranked above Jesus both as a teacher and as a
miracle-worker. His thesis was rejected, probably soon after A.D. 310, by
the Church historian Eusebius, himself a survivor of the persecutions.πΩ
Apollonius was worshiped by his followers as a holy man or a divine
being, and he had a shrine in his birthplace, Tyana. At one time, a statue
of him stood in the private chapel of a Roman emperor, along with
statues of Abraham, Orpheus, Jesus, and others.∫≠ But even the enthusi-
asm of the empress Julia Domna and her son Caracalla and the fine
literary style of Philostratus could not spread his cult throughout the
empire. Julian, an earnest believer in theurgy and a defender of paganism,
never mentions Apollonius.
Something should be said about the spiritual movements of later an-
tiquity, which, although often not clearly distinguishable from one an-
other, were, at the time, di√erent. Although they were more like exclu-
sive theologies, and their followers did not necessarily practice magic,
they can be labeled ‘‘occult sciences.’’
First we shall discuss Gnosticism.∫∞ The term is derived from gnosis
‘knowledge’—not just any knowledge, but knowledge par excellence,
‘‘knowing God.’’ To the followers of this ideal, the highest goal in life was
to escape from the evil environment surrounding them, to ascend to the
realm of the good, which is, at the same time, the ultimate reality. To
escape from the visible world by ‘‘knowing God’’ is to be saved. To be a

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Gnostic meant to rise above all earthly things and thereby to lose interest
in the body, its needs, functions, and emotions. Everything else followed
from this; hence it was not necessary to design a system of ethics for the
problems of everyday life, as imperial Stoicism and the early Church did.
It has been suggested that Gnosticism derived from Orphism but was
also influenced by Babylonian astral religion and by Hermeticism. This
is hard to prove, however, because by that time Orphism, like Pythago-
reanism, had lost much of its original character.
Some Gnostic leaders—for instance, Carpocrates of Alexandria (c.
A.D. 120)—apparently used incantations, drugs, and messages from spirits
or daemons, but since much of this information has come down to us
through Christian authors who were hostile to the Gnostics, it is not
considered reliable. There seems to have been a genuine interest within
Gnosticism to reconcile Christianity with contemporary philosophy and
occult science, but on the whole the Gnostics were more concerned
about understanding how the cosmic mechanisms worked than about
switching them on and o√.∫≤
Hermeticism is a related movement. We have a considerable body of
Hermetic writings that promise mankind deeper knowledge of and con-
trol over nature.∫≥ Magic, astrology, and alchemy were all part of Her-
meticism. The name itself is derived from Thoth, the Egyptian mani-
festation of the Greek god Hermes, who is for some the most important
god of Greece, Rome, and Egypt around the time of the birth of Christ
and is therefore honored by the title Trismegistus, ‘‘the thrice greatest.’’
In an attempt to draw in Jewish proselytes, he was even associated with
Moses (Euseb., Praep. Evang. 9.27.3).∫∂ Here we observe the tendency to
elevate a relatively minor Greek god to the highest possible rank and
enrich his image, so to speak, with features borrowed from other reli-
gions, especially the most ancient and venerable ones. Such a composite
god would be a powerful rival to the popular goddess Isis.∫∑
There must have been a good deal of rivalry and competition among
these groups. They clearly had much in common, but each one had to
have a distinctive feature that demanded total commitment on the part of
the neophyte. At this distance it is di≈cult to see the distinctive features
except through the polemic of Christian authors, which helped define
the essence of Christianity.
The Natural History of Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23/24–79) is a volu-
minous survey of science, pseudoscience, art, and technology. Reflecting
the state of knowledge of the late Hellenistic era, it is based on a hundred
or so earlier authorities. This huge compilation deals with cosmology,
geography, anthropology, zoology, botany, pharmacology, mineralogy,
and metallurgy and their uses in ancient art. It is a mine of information

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and misinformation, but because almost all the sources that Pliny used are
lost, it is of considerable value to us, and it had great influence on later
scientific thought. Pliny himself was neither a philosopher nor a trained
scientist in the modern sense of the word, but he had read a great deal,
always taking notes, and had developed a philosophy, partly derived from
Middle Stoics such as Posidonius, in which there was room for the forces
of religion as well as those of popular and advanced magic. His attitude,
his general curiosity, may be compared with that of Apuleius. He be-
lieved in ancient traditions and was convinced that the power of certain
herbs or roots was revealed to mankind by the gods, although he also
recognized the role of chance. Men stumbled upon the truth by accident;
then they tested it by experiment. The divine powers, in their concern
for the welfare of mankind, have ways of making us discover the secrets of
nature, and this is really what is called progress today. In their wisdom and
love, the gods bring us gradually closer to their own status; this is the
Faustian aspiration of ‘‘being like the gods.’’ There will always be progress
of this kind, according to Pliny.∫∏ How it works in the short term is not so
important; in the long term it emanates from benevolent powers. This
concept is firmly rooted in Middle Stoicism: here we have a ‘‘cosmic
sympathy’’ that, if properly understood and used, operates for the good of
mankind.
With all his learning, Pliny preserved many religious and magical
beliefs and practices, and much of this tradition was folklore with a
scientific pretense. He did not believe in the e√ectiveness of all magical
arts; in fact, he felt that most claims of the professional sorcerers were
exaggerated or simply false (25.59, 29.20, 37.75). The sorcerers would
not have written down their spells and recipes unless they despised and
hated mankind (37.40). If their promises were worth anything, the em-
peror Nero, who studied magic with the best teachers and had access to
the best books, would have been a formidable magician, but in fact he did
nothing extraordinary (30.5–6). Pliny’s conclusion, however, is cautious:
though magic is ine√ective and infamous (intestabilis), it nevertheless
contains at least ‘‘shadows of truth’’ (veritatis umbras) that are due to the
‘‘arts of making poisons’’ (veneficae artes). Hence, it is the drugs that really
work, not so much the hocus-pocus of spells and ritual. Yet, Pliny states,
‘‘there is no one who is not afraid of spells’’ (28.4), and he seems not to
exclude himself. The amulets and charms that people wore as a kind of
preventive medicine he neither commends nor condemns. It is better to
err on the side of caution, for, who knows, a new kind of magic, a magic
that really works, may be developed somewhere this very minute. This is
why the professional magicians, as we have seen, were always on the
lookout for new ideas.

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