Clementine Recognitions Helena is called Luna, which may mean that the images were allegorical representations of the sun and moon. The writer of the pseudo-Cyprian De Rebaptismate says that on the strength of the words of John, that "we were to be baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire," the Simonians maintained that the orthodox baptism was a mere form, and that they had the real baptism, for, as soon as their neophytes went down into the water, a fire appeared on it. The writer does not dispute the fact, but is at a loss what to make of it. Was it a bit of jugglery, or a natural phenomenon, or a piece of self-deception, or an effect of magic? In advocacy of this baptism, we are told, there was composed by the same heretics a book which was inscribed the Preaching of Paul. In The Testimony of Truth Outside of these patristic sources, the Simonians are briefly mentioned in the Testimony of Truth (58,1-60,3) from the Nag Hammadi Library, wherein the Gnostic author seems to include them among a long list of "heretics": Translator Birger A. Pearson notes that these passages probably deal with the practices of libertine Gnostic sects, but from the fragmentary state of the text, it is impossible to know to what groups are being referred. The staunchly ascetic author may have had no more issue with the Simonians than their marrying and having children. However, Epiphanius also accuses the Simonians of having "enjoined mysteries of obscenity and—to set it forth more seriously—of the sheddings of bodies, emissionum virorum, feminarum menstruorum, and that they should be gathered up for mysteries in a most filthy collection; that these were the mysteries of life, and of the most perfect gnosis." See also List of Gnostic sects Notes References Sources External links Hippolytus, Philosophumena (Book VI) The Testimony of Truth Translation to English by Søren Giversen and Birger A. Pearson Schaff's History of the Christian Church, volume II, chapter XI Simon Magus and the Simonians Catholic Encyclopedia: Simon Magus Jewish Encyclopedia: Simon Magus Gnosticism 2nd century in religion