Note 206 — BOOK VI SIMON MAGUS, VALENTINUS, AND THEIR FOLLOWERS

The primitive Church attributed great power to the ritual utterance of the word Amen. Thus Ignatius’ second Epistle to the Ephesians: “There was hidden from the ruler of this world the virginity of Mary, and the birth of our Lord, and the three mysteries of the shout ... and hereby ... magic began to be dissolved and all bonds to be loosed and the ancient kingdom and the error of evil, is destroyed” (Cureton’s translation, London, 1845, p. 15); but Lightfoot would read κήροξις, “proclamation,” for κραυγή, “shout.” In the Pistis Sophia the word Amen is used to denote a class of Powers concerned apparently with the organization of the Kerasmos or semi-material world and called sometimes “the Three” and sometimes “the Seven Amens.”