By Water & Blood

On Marcus the magician

Marcus also practiced sorcery, and by performing certain marvels through enchantment he deceived many of the easily caught. This man, inventing a certain long myth, said that Silence had said this to him; and he is not ashamed of making Silence a babbler. He also likened the Aeons to the twenty-four letters, and named some mute, some half-voiced, and some vowels. These men, composing a multitude of falsely named and bastard books, attempt through these to astonish the senseless. And when baptizing those who are deceived they are accustomed to recite: “Into the name of the unknown Father of all things, into Truth mother of all, into the one who came down into Jesus, into union and redemption and communion of the powers.” They also mix in Hebrew names, terrifying those being initiated, of which I judged it superfluous to make mention. From these, after the growth of the wild crop, very many heresies sprang up; and a portion of these, they say, are those called by some Ascodrutae, and by some Ascodrupitae.