WE also urge that you study the article carefully. Such things cannot be merely read. Take each sentence alone and stay with it until its meaning is clear, before passing on to the next. If you do, the reward will be past telling.—THE EDITOR.

WHEN we elevate the concerns of the body above those of the inner nature, we consequently threaten the integrity of our soul life, and thereby endanger our rationality. The second death of theology is the death of the soul, at which time the individual’s astral-light body is disintegrated back into the Anima Mundi which is the soul of God. These then are the major elements in the occult constitution of man:

(1) The Spirit, which is the eternal foundation and the abiding reality, by virtue of which man is immortal, superior to both beginnings and ends, and eternal in his own heavenly nature;

(2) The soul, which is the intermediary by which the life in each is mingled with the starry life in all, and the qualities in the sidereal bodies are communicated to each individual, who thus manifests through vices and virtues the states of excess and temperance existent in the sidereal nature;

(3) The body, which, being of the earth, earthy, is the outer framework wherein the higher nature is imprisoned as within a cage during the period of its exile in the material universe.

All bodies partake of the qualities of the principle of Body and are manifestations of it; all souls partake of the principle of Soul; and all beings partake of the principle of Being.

—From “Ancient Philosophy.”