To this list of wonders the Homilies add making stones into loaves, melting iron, the production of images of all kinds at a banquet; in his own house dishes are brought of themselves to him (H.I. xxxii).  He makes spectres appear in the market place; when he walks out statues move, and shadows go before him which he says are souls of the dead (H.  IV. iv).

On one occasion Aquila says he was present when Luna was seen looking out of all the windows of a tower on all sides at once (R.  II. xi).

The most peculiar incident, however, is the use Simon is said to have made of the soul of a dead boy, by which he did many of his wonders.  The incident is found in both accounts, but more fully in the Homilies (I. xxv-xxx) than in the Recognitions (II. xiii-xv), for which reason the text of the former is followed.

Simon did not stop at murder, as he confessed to Nicetas and Aquila “as a friend to friends.”  In fact he separated the soul of a boy from his body to act as a confederate in his phenomena.  And this is the magical modus operandi.  “He delineates the boy on a statue which he keeps consecrated in the inner part of the house where he sleeps, and he says that after he has fashioned him out of the air by certain divine transmutations, and has sketched his form, he returns him again to the air.”

Simon explains the theory of this practice as follows: 

“First of all the spirit of the man having been turned into the nature of heat draws in and absorbs, like a cupping-glass, the surrounding air; next he turns the air which comes within the envelope of spirit into water.  And the air in it not being able to escape owing to the confining force of the spirit, he changed it into the nature of blood, and the blood solidifying made flesh; and so when the flesh is solidified he exhibited a man made of air and not of earth.  And thus having persuaded himself of his ability to make a new man of air, he reversed the transmutations, he said, and returned him to the air.”

When the converts thought that this was the soul of the person, Simon laughed and said, that in the phenomena it was not the soul, “but some daemon[69] who pretended to be the soul that took possession of people.”

The coming controversy with Simon is then explained by Peter to Clement to rest on certain passages of scripture.  Peter admits that there are falsehoods in the scriptures, but says that it would never do to explain this to the people.  These falsehoods have been permitted for certain righteous reasons (H.  III. v).

“For the scriptures declare all manner of things that no one of those who enquire unthankfully may discover the truth, but (simply) what he wishes to find” (H.  III. x).

In the lengthy explanation which follows, however, on the passages Simon is going to bring forward, such as the mention of a plurality of gods, and God’s hardening men’s hearts, Peter states that in reality all the passages which speak against God are spurious additions, but this is to be guarded as an esoteric secret.