SIMONIANS, in church-history, a sect of ancient heretics, so called from their founder Simon Magus or the magician. The heretics of Simon Magus were principally his pretending to be the great power of God, and thinking that the gifts of the Holy Ghost were venal, and to be purchased with money. He is said to have invented the Aëons, which were so many persons of whom the Godhead was composed. His concubine Helen, he called the first intelligence, and mother of all things; and sometimes he called her Minerva, and himself Jupiter. Simon Magus gained a great many proselytes, who paid himself and his concubine divine worship; these were the earliest heretics, and those that St. John, St. Peter, and St. Paul, in their epistles, so often warn the Christians against.