(24) Well hast thou taught me all, as I desired, O Mind. And now, pray, tell me further of the nature of the Way Above as now it is [for me]. To this Man-Shepherd said: When the material body is to be dissolved, first thou surrenderest the body by itself unto the work of change, and thus the form thou hadst doth vanish, and thou surrenderest thy way of life, void of its energy, unto the Daimon. The body's senses next pass back into their sources, becoming separate, and resurrect as energies; and passion and desire withdraw unto that nature which is void of reason.

(2) He continued further in his discourse and said: "The third order is called Triple-faced Hekatē, and there are under her authority seven-and-twenty [arch]demons, and it is they which enter into men and seduce them to perjuries and lies and to covet that which doth not belong to them. "The souls then which Hekatē beareth hence in ravishment, she handeth over to her demons which stand under her, in order that they may torment them through her dark smoke and her wicked fire, they being exceedingly afflicted through the demons. And they spend one-hundred-and-five years and six months, being chastized in her wicked chastisements; and they begin to be dissolved and destroyed. "And thereafter, when the sphere turneth itself, and the little Sabaōth, the Good, he of the Midst, who is called in the world Zeus, cometh, and he cometh to the eighth æon of the sphere which is called the Scorpion, and when Boubastis, whom they call Aphroditē, cometh, and she cometh to the second æon of the sphere which is called the Bull, then the veils which are between those of the Right and those of the Left draw themselves aside and Zorokothora Melchisedec looketh out of the height; and the world and the mountains are agitated and the æons become alarmed. And he looketh on all the regions of Hekatē, so that her regions are dissolved and destroyed, and all the souls which are in her chastisements, are carried off and cast back anew into the sphere, because they are dissolved in the fire of her chastisements."

(6) "Now, therefore, if the time of that man is completed, first cometh forth the destiny and leadeth the man unto death through the rulers and their bonds with which they are bound through the Fate. "And thereafter the retributive receivers come and lead that soul out of the body. And thereafter the. retributive receivers spend three days circling round with that soul in all the regions and dispatch it to all the æons of the world. And the counterfeiting spirit and the destiny follow that soul; and the power returneth to the Virgin of Light. "And after three days the retributive receivers lead down that soul to the Amente of the chaos; and when they bring it down to the chaos, they hand it over to those who chastize. And the retributive receivers return unto their own regions according to the economy of the works of the rulers concerning the coming-forth of the souls. "And the counterfeiting spirit becometh the receiver of the soul, being assigned unto it and transferring it according to the chastisement because of the sins which it hath made it commit, and is in great enmity to the soul. "And when the soul hath finished the chastisements in the chaos according to the sins which it hath committed, the counterfeiting spirit leadeth it forth out of the chaos, being assigned unto it and transferring it to every region because of the sins which it hath committed; and it leadeth it forth on the way of the rulers of the midst. And when it reacheth them, [the rulers] question it on the mysteries of the destiny; and if it hath not found them, they question their destiny. And those rulers chastize that soul according to the sins of which it is guilty. I will tell you the type of their chastisements at the expansion of the universe.

(12) The souls of men, seeing their images in the mirror of Dionysus as it were, have entered into that realm in a leap downward from the Supreme: yet even they are not cut off from their origin, from the divine Intellect; it is not that they have come bringing the Intellectual Principle down in their fall; it is that though they have descended even to earth, yet their higher part holds for ever above the heavens.

Their initial descent is deepened since that mid-part of theirs is compelled to labour in care of the care-needing thing into which they have entered. But Zeus, the father, takes pity on their toils and makes the bonds in which they labour soluble by death and gives respite in due time, freeing them from the body, that they too may come to dwell there where the Universal Soul, unconcerned with earthly needs, has ever dwelt.

For the container of the total of things must be a self-sufficing entity and remain so: in its periods it is wrought out to purpose under its Reason-Principles which are perdurably valid; by these periods it reverts unfailingly, in the measured stages of defined life-duration, to its established character; it is leading the things of this realm to be of one voice and plan with the Supreme. And thus the kosmic content is carried forward to its purpose, everything in its co-ordinate place, under one only Reason-Principle operating alike in the descent and return of souls and to every purpose of the system.

We may know this also by the concordance of the Souls with the ordered scheme of the kosmos; they are not independent, but, by their descent, they have put themselves in contact, and they stand henceforth in harmonious association with kosmic circuit- to the extent that their fortunes, their life experiences, their choosing and refusing, are announced by the patterns of the stars- and out of this concordance rises as it were one musical utterance: the music, the harmony, by which all is described is the best witness to this truth.

Such a consonance can have been procured in one only way:

The All must, in every detail of act and experience, be an expression of the Supreme, which must dominate alike its periods and its stable ordering and the life-careers varying with the movement of the souls as they are sometimes absorbed in that highest, sometimes in the heavens, sometimes turned to the things and places of our earth. All that is Divine Intellect will rest eternally above, and could never fall from its sphere but, poised entire in its own high place, will communicate to things here through the channel of Soul. Soul in virtue of neighbourhood is more closely modelled upon the Idea uttered by the Divine Intellect, and thus is able to produce order in the movement of the lower realm, one phase maintaining the unvarying march the other adopting itself to times and season.

The depth of the descent, also, will differ- sometimes lower, sometimes less low- and this even in its entry into any given Kind: all that is fixed is that each several soul descends to a recipient indicated by affinity of condition; it moves towards the thing which it There resembled, and enters, accordingly, into the body of man or animal.

(1) When, [then,] the soul’s departure from the body shall take place,—then shall the judgment and the weighing of its merit pass into its highest daimon’s power. And when he sees it pious is and just,—he suffers it to rest in spots appropriate to it. But if he find it soiled with stains of evil deeds, and fouled with vice,—he drives it from Above into the Depths, and hands it o’er to warring hurricanes and vortices of Air, of Fire, and Water.

(16) But if that Principle can never fall to evil and we have given a true account of the soul's entry or presence to body, what are we to say of the periodic Descents and Returns, the punishments, the banishment into animal forms? That teaching we have inherited from those ancient philosophers who have best probed into soul and we must try to show that our own doctrine is accordant with it, or at least not conflicting.

We have seen that the participation of things here in that higher means not that the soul has gone outside of itself to enter the corporeal, but that the corporeal has approached soul and is now participant in it; the coming affirmed by the ancients can be only that approach of the body to the higher by which it partakes of life and of soul; this has nothing to do with local entry but is some form of communion; by the descent and embodiment of current phrasing must be understood not that soul becomes an appanage of body but that it gives out to it something of itself; similarly, the soul's departure is the complete cessation of that communion.

The various rankings of the universe will determine various degrees of the communion; soul, ultimate of the Intellectual, will give forth freely to body as being more nearly of the one power and standing closer, as distance holds in that order.

The soul's evil will be this association, its good the release. Why? Because, even unmerged, a soul in any way to be described as attached to this universe is in some degree fallen from the All into a state of partition; essentially belonging to the All, it no longer directs its act Thither: thus, a man's knowledge is one whole, but he may guide himself by no more than some single item of it, where his good would lie in living not by some such fragment but by the total of his knowing.

That One Soul- member of the Intellectual kosmos and there merging what it has of partial into the total- has broken away, so to speak, from the All to the part and to that devotes itself becoming partial with it: thus fire that might consume everything may be set to ply its all-power upon some trifle. So long as the soul remains utterly unattached it is soul not singled out; when it has accepted separation- not that of place but that of act determining individualities- it is a part, no longer the soul entire, or at least not entire in the first sense; when, on the contrary, it exercises no such outward control it is perfectly the All-Soul, the partial in it latent.

As for the entry into the World of the Shades, if this means into the unseen, that is its release; if into some lower place, there is nothing strange in that, since even here the soul is taken to be where the body is, in place with the body.

But on the dissolution of the body?

So long as the image-soul has not been discarded, clearly the higher will be where that is; if, on the contrary, the higher has been completely emancipated by philosophic discipline, the image-soul may very well go alone to that lower place, the authentic passing uncontaminated into the Intellectual, separated from that image but nonetheless the soul entire.

Let the image-offspring of the individuality- fare as it may, the true soul when it turns its light upon itself, chooses the higher and by that choice blends into the All, neither acting now nor extinct.

But it is time to return to our main theme:

(24) Now comes the question of the soul leaving the body; where does it go?

It cannot remain in this world where there is no natural recipient for it; and it cannot remain attached to anything not of a character to hold it: it can be held here when only it is less than wise, containing within itself something of that which lures it.

If it does contain any such alien element it gives itself, with increasing attachment, to the sphere to which that element naturally belongs and tends.

The space open to the soul's resort is vast and diverse; the difference will come by the double force of the individual condition and of the justice reigning in things. No one can ever escape the suffering entailed by ill deeds done: the divine law is ineluctable, carrying bound up, as one with it, the fore-ordained execution of its doom. The sufferer, all unaware, is swept onward towards his due, hurried always by the restless driving of his errors, until at last wearied out by that against which he struggled, he falls into his fit place and, by self-chosen movement, is brought to the lot he never chose. And the law decrees, also, the intensity and the duration of the suffering while it carries with it, too, the lifting of chastisement and the faculty of rising from those places of pain- all by power of the harmony that maintains the universal scheme.

Souls, body-bound, are apt to body-punishment; clean souls no longer drawing to themselves at any point any vestige of body are, by their very being, outside the bodily sphere; body-free, containing nothing of body- there where Essence is, and Being, and the Divine within the Divinity, among Those, within That, such a soul must be.

If you still ask Where, you must ask where those Beings are- and in your seeking, seek otherwise than with the sight, and not as one seeking for body.

(19) The soul in man, however - not every soul, but one that pious is - is a daimonic something and divine. And such a soul when from the body freed, if it have fought the fight of piety - the fight of piety is to know God and to do wrong to no man - such a soul becomes entirely mind. Whereas the impious soul remains in its own essence, chastised by its own self, and seeking for an earthly body where to enter, if only it be human. For that no other body can contain a human soul; nor is it right that any human soul should fall into the body of a thing that doth possess no reason. For that the law of God is this: to guard the human soul from such tremendous outrage.

(1) [Asclepius] Rightly and truly, O Thrice-greatest one, thou speakest. This is the prize for those who piously subordinate their lives to God and live to help the world.

[Trismegistus] [To those], however, who have lived in other fashion impiously,—[to them] both is return to Heaven denied, and there’s appointed them migration into other bodies unworthy of a holy soul and base; so that, as this discourse of ours will show, souls in their life on earth run risk of losing hope of future immortality.

(7) Tat: Made like to God? What dost thou, father, mean? Hermes: Of every soul apart are transformations, son. Tat: What meanest thou? Apart? Hermes: Didst thou not, in the General Sermons, hear that from one Soul - the All-soul - come all these souls which are made to revovlve in all the cosmos, as though divided off? Of these souls, then, it is that there are many changes, some to a happier lot and some to [just] the contrary of this. Thus some that were creeping things change into things that in the water dwell, the souls of water things change to earth-dwellers, those that live on earth change to things with wings, and souls that live in air change to men, while human souls reach the first step of deathlessness changed into daimones. And so they circle to the choir of the Inerrant Gods; for of the Gods there are two choirs, the one Inerrant, and the other Errant. And this is the most perfect glory of the soul.

(1) You say, therefore, “ that according to many of the Egyptians, that which is in our power depends on the motion of the stars .” What the truth, however, is respecting this, it is necessary to unfold to you from the Hermaic conceptions. For man, as these writings say, has two souls. And one, indeed, is derived from the first intelligible, and participates of the power of the Demiurgus; but the other is imparted from the circulation of the celestial bodies, to which the soul that sees God returns. These things, therefore, thus subsisting, the soul that descends to us from the worlds follows the periods of the worlds; but that which is intelligibly present from the intelligible, transcends the genesiurgic motion, and through this a liberation from fate, and the ascent to the intelligible Gods, are affected. Such theurgy, likewise, as leads to an unbegotten nature is perfected conformably to a life of this kind.

(3) He continued and said: "The fourth order is called Parhedrōn Typhōn, who is a mighty ruler, under whose authority are two-and-thirty demons. And it is they which enter into men and seduce them to lusting, fornicating, adultery and to the continual practice of intercourse. The souls then which this ruler will carry off in ravishment, pass one-hundred-and-twenty-and-eight years in his regions, while his demons torment them through his dark smoke and his wicked fire, so that they begin to be ruined and destroyed. "It cometh to pass then, when the sphere turneth itself and the little Sabaōth, the Good, he of the Midst, who is called Zeus, cometh, and when he cometh to the ninth æon of the sphere which is called the Archer, and when Boubastis, who is called in the world Aphroditē, cometh, and she cometh to the third æon of the sphere which is called the Twins, then the veils which are between those of the Left and those of the Right, draw themselves aside, and there looketh forth Zarazaz, whom the rulers call with the name of a mighty ruler of their regions 'Maskelli,' and he looketh on the dwellings of Parhedrōn Typhōn, so that his regions are dissolved and destroyed. And all the souls which are in his chastisements are carried and cast back anew into the sphere, because they are reduced through his dark smoke and his wicked fire."

(5) Now the third life - Man, after the image of the Cosmos made, [and] having mind, after the Father's will, beyond all earthly lives - not only doth have feeling with the second God , but also hath conception of the first; for of the one 'tis sensible as of a body, while of the other it conceives as bodiless and the Good Mind. Tat: Doth then this life not perish? Hermes: Hush, son! and understand what God, what Cosmos [is], what is a life that cannot die, and what a life subject to dissolution. Yea, understand the Cosmos is by God and in God; but Man by Cosmos and in Cosmos. The source and limit and the constitution of all things is God.

(12) Hermes: This dwelling-place through which we have just passed circle of the twelve types-of-life, this being composed of elements, twelve in number, but of one nature, an omniform idea. For man's delusion there are disunions in them, son, while in their action they are one. Not only can we never part Rashness from Wrath; they cannot even be distinguished. According to right reason (logos), then, they naturally withdraw once and for all, in as much as they are chased out by no less than ten powers, that is, the Ten. For, son, the Ten is that which giveth birth to souls. And Life and Light are unified there, where the One hath being from the Spirit. According then to reason (logos) the One contains the Ten, the Ten the One.

(1) [Hermes:] Concerning Soul and Body, son, we now must speak; in what way Soul is deathless, and whence comes the activity in composing and dissolving Body. For there's no death for aught of things [that are]; the thought this word conveys, is either void of fact, or [simply] by the knocking off a syllable what is called "death", doth stand for "deathless". For death is of destruction, and nothing in the Cosmos is destroyed. For if Cosmos is second God, a life that cannot die, it cannot be that any part of this immortal life should die. All things in Cosmos are parts of Cosmos, and most of all is man, the rational animal.

(4) Again he continued in the discourse and said unto this disciples: "The fifth order, whose ruler is called Yachthanabas, is a mighty ruler under whom standeth a multitude of other demons. It is they which enter into men and bring it about that they have respect of persons,--treating the just with injustice, and favour the cause of sinners, taking gifts for a just judgment and perverting it, forgetting the poor and needy,--they [the demons] increasing the forgetfulness in their souls and the care for that which bringeth no benefit, in order that they may not think of their life, so that when they come out of the body, they are carried in ravishment. "The souls then which this ruler will carry off in ravishment, are in his chastisements one-hundred-and-fifty years and eight months; and he destroyeth them through his dark smoke and his wicked fire, while they are exceedingly afflicted through the flames of his fire. "And when the sphere turneth itself and the little Sabaōth, the Good, who is called in the world Zeus, cometh, and he cometh to the eleventh æon of the sphere which is called the Water-man, and when Boubastis cometh to the fifth æon of the sphere which is called the Lion, then the veils which are between those of the Left and those of the Right, draw themselves aside, and there looketh out of the height the great Iaō, the Good, he of the Midst, on the regions of Yachthanabas, so that his regions are dissolved and destroyed. And all the souls which are in his chastisements are carried off and cast back anew into the sphere, because they are ruined in his chastisements. "These then are the doings of the ways of the midst concerning which ye have questioned me."

(1) Moreover, after it has conjoined the soul to the several parts of the universe, and to the total divine powers which pass through it; then it leads the soul to, and deposits it in, the whole Demiurgus, and causes it to be independent of all matter, and to be counited with the eternal reason alone. But my meaning is, that it peculiarly connects the soul with the self begotten and self-moved God, and with the all-sustaining, intellectual, and all-adorning powers of the God, and likewise with that power of him which elevates to truth, and with his self-perfect, effective, and other demiurgic powers; so that the theurgic soul becomes perfectly established in the energies and demiurgic intellections of these powers. Then, also, it inserts the soul in the whole demiurgic God. And this is the end with the Egyptians of the sacerdotal elevation of the soul to divinity.

(3) Jesus said: "If the time of such an one is completed through the sphere, the receivers of Bainchōōōch, who is one of the triple-powered gods, come after his soul and lead his soul with joy and exultation and spend three days circling round with it and instructing it concerning the creations of the world with joy and exultation. "Thereafter they lead it down into the Amente and instruct it concerning the instruments of chastisement in the Amente; but they will not take vengeance on it therewith. But they will only instruct it concerning them, and the smoke of the flame of the chastisements catcheth it only a little. "Thereafter they carry it up unto the way of the midst and instruct it concerning the chastisements of the ways of the midst, the smoke from the flame catching it a little. "Thereafter they lead it unto the Virgin of Light, and she judgeth it and depositeth it with the little Sabaōth, the Good, him of the Midst, until the sphere turneth itself, and Zeus and Aphrodite come in face of the Virgin of Light, while Kronos and Arēs come behind her. "At that hour she taketh that righteous soul and handeth it over to her receivers, that they may cast it into the peons of the sphere. And the servitors of the sphere lead it forth into a water which is below the sphere; and a seething fire ariseth and eateth into it until it purifieth it utterly. "Thereafter cometh Yaluham, the receiver of Sabaōth, the Adamas, who giveth the cup of forgetfulness unto the souls, and he bringeth the water of forgetfulness and handeth it to the soul; [and it drinketh it] and forgetteth all things and all the regions to which it had gone.

(14) Tat: Tell me, O father: This Body which is made up of the Powers, is it at any time dissolved? Hermes: Hush, [son]! Speak not of things impossible, else wilt thou sin and thy Mind's eye be quenched. The natural body which our sense perceives is far removed from this essential birth. The first must be dissolved, the last can never be; the first must die, the last death cannot touch. Dost thou not know thou hast been born a God, Son of the One, even as I myself?

(1) If, however, it be requisite to unfold to you the truth concerning the peculiar dæmon, we must say that he is not distributed to us from one part of the heavens, or from some one of the visible elements; but that from the whole world, the all-various life contained in it, and the all-various body through which the soul descends into generation, a certain peculiar portion is distributed to each of the parts in us, according to a peculiar prefecture. This dæmon, therefore, is established in the paradigm before the soul descends into generation; and when the soul has received him as its leader, the dæmon immediately presides over the soul, gives completion to its lives, and binds it to body when it descends. He likewise governs the common animal of the soul, directs its peculiar life, and imparts to us the principles of all our thoughts and reasonings. We also perform such things as he suggests to our intellect, and he continues to govern us till, through sacerdotal theurgy, we obtain a God for the inspective guardian and leader of the soul. For then the dæmon either yields or delivers his government to a more excellent nature, or is subjected to him, as contributing to his guardianship, or in some other way is ministrant to him as to his lord.