Simeon and Mary

Meaning

Simeon speaks to Mary as mother of the heavenly cornerstone in the main treatise's chain of scriptural witnesses. His statement that Christ is appointed for the fall and rising of many and as a contradicted sign reinforces the paradox of a universally given gift received by relatively few. Mary identifies the address and Christ's human relation; the passage does not develop a separate Marian doctrine. Simeon's words are reported in support of the stone-of-stumbling motif, not as testimony about a physical alchemical stone.