Saint Symeon the Stylite and the Horror of Palmyra

Saint Symeon the Stylite (commemorated 1 September) is believed to have never descended from his pillar until the end of his days. In fact he descended from his pillar once, in secret, if we are to believe a curious text collected in Sosthenes the Monk's 12th century Gnomologion, from a now-lost Secret Works of Our Father Saint Symeon the Stylite:


There came a night when an evil wind wafted all over Syria, and Symeon, watching the stars, called his disciple Anthony to him, and said, "Brother, hasten and bring me a ladder, and let no man observe it." When Anthony brought the ladder, Symeon said to him, "I will descend now, and you must take my place tonight, that my absence should go unnoticed. God willing, I will return before the morning." Anthony said, "Abba, why do you hasten from the pillar, where you have struggled these many years?" To which the blessed ascetic replied, "I have read a warning in the stars, that in the old city of Palmyra, a dark power stirs awake tonight, which would lay waste the whole inhabited world, if I cannot turn it back.""Abba, let me accompany you on this," cried Anthony, but the saint refused him, saying, "You are not prepared for the horror that waits and wakes beneath those decrepit ruins. Remain here, and be sure no man knows of my journey, or its purpose. For the knowledge of this evil must be sealed away from all men." So Symeon descended the ladder and departed into the night, and Anthony ascended the pillar, and kept his gaze upon the south where Palmyra lay. Strange lights flashed in the horizon, and everywhere shadows seemed to crawl, and Anthony prayed upon the pillar, terrified, until, just before the dawn, Symeon returned, covered in dust and an indescribable odour. He ascended the pillar again and would say nothing of the night's ordeal.




The only other extant reference to this incident is a cryptic allusion from the 6th-century travelogue by the Ghassanid wine merchant Amr ibn Al-Khazen:




And my friends bade me go with them to ancient Palmyra, but I would not go, for the fearful hints that reach my ears about its secrets, and the evil rumours of that thing which Symeon once interred beneath the carven limestone columns.