This book is an exploration of the post-New Testament figure of Simon Magus spanning the patristic era, Middle Ages, and the early modern period as found in art, vernacular literatures, heresiologies, theological texts, hagiographies and homilies.

This latest comprehensive work on Simon Magus lends new impetus to the investigation of Early Christianity and questions surrounding the origin and nature of Gnosticism. Major contributions of this study include: (1), a departure from the traditional exegesis of Acts 8, 5-24 (the first narrative source of Simon), and the later following reports of ancient Christian writers; (2), an overview of the literature of Graeco-Roman antiquity to determine the contribution of "magic" and "the Magoi" in the development of perceptions and descriptions of Simon; and (3), the inclusion of social science explanation models and modern estimations of "identity", in a creative approach to questions surrounding the phenomenon of Simon.

"I am Simon Magus the stitcher of past and future. I ply my trade where the tired, the old, the dispossessed of the world are wound on the great loom of Government. They come before me, their lives a tangled skein of memory. Mother and father, friends and loved ones have fallen by the way; the past has faded; the things that were left behind have moldered and are scattered. The mind of a son, a daughter sitting before me dims. The thread is lost. Oblivion." So begins this extraordinary story of love and mystery, courage and despair set in the streets of New Orleans. Simon Magus is a bureaucrat, an expert in navigating the twists and turns of other peoples' lives. But now, falling into the emotional hell of his own failed marriage, torn by dreams of his lost children, he reaches out to beauty and love to save himself, and he is drawn into a world he cannot control, into the slow motion agony of drugs: this is the world laid bare by Simon Magus. This is the world of his redemption.

According to Apocrypha, Simon Magus was a contemporary of the Biblical apostles and an important religious figure. Biblical legend tells that Simon was trying to buy his way into the number of Apostles but got rejected by Peter. Later he started preaching as well and collected a group of adherents. In his book, G.R.S. Mead compares the deeds of Simon with those of Peter and Paul and casts a look on the Simonian ideas, which he believes are similar to the system of Theosophy popular in Mead's times.

In Rider Haggard and the Imperial Occult, Simon Magus explores the occult world of H. Rider Haggard through an analysis of his literary engagement with ancient Egypt, Romanticism and Theosophy.

In 1995 forty year old Paul Michaelson makes a long overdue appointment seeking help from psychiatrist Dr. Morris Bornstein. He tells the doctor that he has been harboring a terrible secret for most of his life. At age 13 while playing with a ouija board he seemed to make contact with an entity who claimed to be the Biblical sorcerer Simon Magus. Instructed by the entity how to perform a secret ceremony he believed that he became possessed by the spirit. But did he? Was he really possessed by a spirit or was he sufferering from a serious mental illness? That is what he hopes the doctor can tell him. His life as a living Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has been a living Hell. In "The Shadow of Simon Magus" author Samuel Spulman explores the facts of this bizarre real life case and the story behind the story. For Paul believes that the entity which has enhabited his body came from the family's previous home. The one they moved away from when he was only 4 years old. Paul grew up listening to his mother's tales of that old place. Revealed here for the first time you will read of a house so haunted that it made all other haunted houses seem like a bed and breakfast!