n in the alchemical processes
of nature. This was the fate of the "Purgations" of the Soul, but the
Soul itself when once it had passed from bodies of the lower kingdoms,
to bodies in the man-stage, could not retrogress beyond the limits of
that human kingdom.

By a glance at the Diagram, and regarding it from the microcosmic point
of view, it is easy to see that the inner nature of man is more complex
than the elementary trichotomy of Body, Soul, and Spirit, might lead us
to suppose. Each plane of Being, for which the Soul has its own
appropriate Vesture, is generated from an "indivisible point," as Simon
called it, a zero-point, to use a term of modern Chemistry; six of which
are shown in the Diagram, and each plane of Being is bounded by such
zero-points, for they are points like that of the Circle whose centre is
everywhere and circumference nowhere.

To pass on to the soteriology of Simon. The general concept of this
presents no difficulty to the student of Eastern Religions. The idea
that the great teachers are Avataras, incarnations, or descents, of the
Supreme Being, appearing on earth to aid mankind, is simple enough to
comprehend in itself, and would be open to little objection, were it not
for the theological dogmas and mythological legends that are wont to be
so busily woven round the lives of such teachers. In the present age it
is hardly necessary for us, with the experience of the past before our
eyes, to raise dissension as to whether such a manifestation is entirely
divine, or entirely human, or perfectly human and divine at one and the
same time, or neither or all of these.

Eastern philosophy, regarding not only the external phenomenal world as
ever-changing and impermanent, but also all appearance or
manifestation--no matter how subjective it may be to us now--as not the
one Truth in itself, which it claims alone to be without change, it is
easy to see the reason why the Gnostic Philosophers for the most part
held to Doceticism--that is to say that the body of a Saviour was not
the Saviour himself, but an appearance. The heat of polemical
controversy may have led to exaggerated views on both sides, but the
philosophical 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 t