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Soul, Not Self

In Hermeticism, it should be remembered that, while we have our day-to-day monkey-mind-generated notion of "self", this social construction of "identity", we should remember that that is not what we really are. Rather, we should remember that we *are* souls. Rather than thinking of ourselves as bodies that have souls or identities that have souls, where "soul" is just some object we possess, we should rather think of it the other way around: that we are *souls* that ride around in bodies as vehicles and put on identities as masks.

In CH I.12, the essential human is made in the likeness of God, with our essence being the soul (along with mind, which may or may not be something received separately). The body came along afterwards (CH I.14), giving rise to our twofold nature: immortal as soul, mortal as body. In CH I.18—19, God gave a holy speech saying "let him who is mindful recognize that he is immortal", with the result that "the one who recognized himself attained the chosen good". This is getting to the idea that, when we recognize what we *really are*, i.e. souls not bodies, that's when we can begin the process of living properly in a right relationship with all else. It's when we confuse ourselves with things that we're not—i.e. the body or the bodily energies of drive and desire that give rise to the ego—that we go astray and get into problems.

Once we get used to this framing of considering ourselves and dwelling on that idea, that's when we can really start to put things in place regarding how to develop a right relationship with God, the gods, the cosmos, and all else that exists. To that end, rather than visualizing your soul as something metaphorical or cosmic, I would rather suggest that we do the work needed to see and know our souls for what they really are as they are on their own terms—for what *we* really are, as *we* are on *our* own terms.