Which first leaped forth from Mind, enveloping Fire with Fire, binding them together that it might interblend the mother-vortices,[[104]] while retaining the flower of its own Fire.[[105]]
This "flower" of Fire and the vorticle idea is further explained by the Oracle which says:
Thence a trailing whirlwind, the flower of shadowy Fire, leaping into the wombs (or hollows) of worlds. For thence it is that all things begin to stretch below their wondrous rays.[[106]]
Compare this with the teaching of Simon that the "fruit" of the Tree is placed in the Store-house and not cast into the Fire.
In his aeonology, Simon, like other Gnostic teachers, begins with the Word, the Logos, which springs up from the Depths of the Unknown—Invisible, Incomprehensible Silence. It is true that he does not so name the Great Power, He who has stood, stands and will stand; but that which comes forth from Silence is Speech, and the idea is the same whatever the terminology employed may be. Setting aside the Hermetic teachings and those of the later Gnôsis, we find this idea of the Great Silence referred to several times in the fragments of the Chaldæan Oracles. It is called "God-nourished Silence" σιγη θεοθρεμμων), according to whose divine decrees the Mind that energizes before all energies, abides in the Paternal Depth.[[107]] Again:
This unswerving Deity is called the Silent One by the gods, and is said to consent (lit. sing together) with the Mind, and to be known by the Souls through Mind alone.[[108]]
Elsewhere the Oracles demonstrate this Power which is prior to the highest Heaven as "Mystic Silence."[[109]]
The Word, then, issuing from Silence is first a Monad, then a Duad, a Triad and a Hebdomad. For no sooner has differentiation commenced in it, and it passes from the state of Oneness (μονοτης), than the Duadic and Triadic state immediately supervene, arising, so to say, simultaneously in the mind, for the mind cannot rest on Duality, but is forced by a law of its nature to rest only on the joint emanation of the Two. Thus the first natural resting point is the Trinity. The next is the Hebdomad or Septenary, according to the mathematical formula 2n-1, the sum of n things taken 1, 2, 3 ... n, at a time. The Trinity being manifested, n here =3; and 23-1 = 7.
Thus Simon has six Roots and the Seventh Power, seven in all, as the type of the Aeons in the Plerôma. These all proceed from the Fire. In like manner also the Cabeiric deities of Samothrace and Phoenicia were Fire-gods, born of the Fire. Nonnus tells us they were sons of the mysterious Hephaestus (Vulcan),[[110]] and Eusebius, in his quotations from Sanchuniathon, that they were seven in number.[[111]] The Vedic Agni (Ignis) also, the God of Fire, is called "Seven-tongued" (Sapta-jihva) and "Seven-flamed" (Sapta-jvâla).[[112]]
In the Hibbert Lectures of 1887, Prof. A.H. Sayce gives the following Hymn of Ancient Babylonia to the Fire-god, from The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia (iv. 15):