mind will not be distressed at the thought that the body is an appearance or mask of the real man, and that it forms no part of his eternal possession.  None the less the body is real to us here, for we all have bodies of a like nature, and appearances are real to appearances.  Yet this does not invalidate the further consideration that there are other bodies, vestures, or vehicles of consciousness, besides the gross physical “coat of skin,” for the use of the spiritual man, each being an “appearance” in comparison to the higher vehicle, which is in its turn an “appearance” to that which is more subtle and less material or substantial than itself.

Thus, in the descent from the Divine World, the Soul transforms itself, or clothes itself in forms, or bodies, or vestures, which it weaves out of its own substance, like to the Powers of the Worlds it passes through, for every Soul has a different vehicle of consciousness for every World or Plane.

But the doctrine of the Soter, or Saviour, does not apply until the Christ-stage or consummation is reached.  Following the idea of rebirth, there is a spiritual life cycle, or life-thread, on which the various earth-lives are strung, as beads on a necklace, each successive life being purer and nobler, as the Soul gains control of matter, or the driver control of the chariot and steeds that speed him through the experiences of life.  As the end of this great cycle approaches, an earthly vehicle is evolved that can show forth the divine spirit in all the fulness possible to this world or phase of evolution.

Now as the problem can be viewed from either the internal or external point of view, we have the mystery of the Soul depicted both from the side of the involution of spirit into matter and of the evolution of matter into spirit.  If, on the one hand, we insist too strongly on one view, we shall only have a one-sided conception of the process; if, on the other, we neglect one factor, we shall never solve the at present unknown quantity of the equation.  Thus the Soul is represented as the “lost sheep” struggling in the meshes of the net of matter, passing from body to body, and the Spirit is represented as descending, transforming itself through the spheres, in order to finally rescue its Syzygy from the bonds that are about her.

The Soul aspires to the Spirit and the Spirit takes thought for the Soul; as the Simonians expressed it: 

The male (Heaven, i.e., the Nous or Christ, or Spiritual Soul) looks down from above and takes thought for its co-partner (or Syzygy); while the Earth (i.e., the Epinoia or Jesus, or Human Soul) from below receives from the Heaven the intellectual (in the spiritual and philosophical sense, of course) fruits that come down to it and are cognate with the Earth (i.e., of the same nature essentially as Epinoia, who is essentially one with Nous).

When this mystery is represented dramatically, so