Pythagoreans Divide Man’s Astral Spirit Into Two Entities: Aerial and the Aethereal

Pythagoras once said, “the whole air is filled with souls” and he divided these spirits into the astral spirit of man after its exit from the body into two distinct entities: the “aerial” and the “aethereal vehicle.”

The word astral comes from the Latin astralis and astrum, meaning ‘star’.When I say that Pythagoras divided man’s ‘astral spirit,’ what I mean is the very alchemical makeup of our being which they believed came from the heavens.

As I had written previously, the origins of the word spirit comes to us the from Latin spiritus “breath, spirit,” from spirare “breathe.” It was an ancient belief for thousands of years that supernatural beings or things fly and float in the air and they could enter a person’s body simply by being in the company, touching and breathing in these beings or things.

These flying spirits in the air have been known over the last few thousand years by various names such as “elementals, demons, devils, succubi, incubi, ghosts, specters, phantoms, unclean and impure spirits” to name a few.

Pythagorean Duality

Pythagoras was also the first teacher who proclaimed “All is Number!” and these same said numbers could explain the unseen spirit world, human nature, the material world, and the entirety of this Secret Doctrine that we know of today as “Gnostic Duality”. 

This is why they used math to divide man as coming from the two sources –  “aerial and the “aethereal.”

This is the Human (Spiritual) Law of the numbers One (1) and Two (2). One (1) was a “good spirit” and the other, Two (2) was a “bad spirit.”

This bad spirit would be the aerial vehicle and is also called the “airy body, material body, shadow, false self and or ego.”

These teachings on the aerial vehicle later became part of the mythical teachings of Gnosticism as the “counterfeit spirit or counterfeit daemon,” which the Pistis Sophia (ie: Faith Wisdom) describes as a small power and soul which has power over our flesh and gains power by the sins and evil we commit. It gathers itself out of the portion of evil (ie: sins/lusts?passions) that resideth in the body.

The aethereal vehicle is from what they called the ether and in truth is the chemical energy called phosphorus which is the mysterious substance that our souls are derived.

It is important that you understand that Pythagoras held our souls come from the number One (1) which is derived from the first principles and assigns God and the soul to the number One.

This is our soul’s connection to the One Monad, which is God and the good, which is the origin of the One, and is itself intelligence, reason and its end result, immortality (ie: True Gnosis – One With Christ in the Head). These they called Divine spirits [δαιμονες] who are psychical beings (ie: real people with purified souls).

However, Pythagoras taught that when the One becomes two, it becomes the “undefined dyad (ie: Duality or something consists of two elements or parts)” which is a divinity and the bad, surrounding which is the mass of matter. We can say that this is a man divided against himself, imbalanced and is ignorant (ie: No Gnosis) of these Sacred Laws.

This is known as a second class of people are who he calls heroes and these are souls separated from bodies (ie: No Gnosis – Not Gnostics), good heroes are good souls, bad heroes are bad souls (ie: Most Humanity). These are the majority of people on earth who do not have the knowledge (Gnosis) of the connection to the One Monad, which is God and the good, and thus they are tossed to and fro in the “undefined dyad” – the Duality of the Left and Right brain of their very own natures.

They live in Chaos and as the Masons try to raise man from their fallen states say as their motto, “ORDO AB CHAO” (Order Out of Chaos).

Pythagoras taught that the soul has a body, which is given to it according to its good or bad nature, by the interior labor of its faculties. He calls this body the subtle car of the soul, and says that the mortal body is only a gross envelope.”

This Pythagorean doctrine of Duality was nicely defined by P. V. Renouard M.D. is the History of Medicine;

“Man, in this system, was considered as holding the middle between intellectual and sensible things, the last of superior and the first of inferior beings, free to move upward or downward, as influenced by the passions that control the power of the will to ascend or descend.

Sometimes they bring him into union with immortals, and, by his return to virtue, enable him to recover his proper position; and again, sometimes replunging him into mortal association, and by transgression of the divine laws, cause him to be stripped of his dignity.

It is based on this rule, that we find everywhere, though differently explained, the foundation of the dogma of the transmigration of souls. This dogma, explained in the mysteries of antiquity, and received by all the people, has been so disfigured by what the moderns have called metempsychosis, that it would surpass very much the limits of these comments to give it an explanation that could be understood.”

Plutarch later develops this doctrine to claim that by right reason, demons are exalted into gods. According to Plutarch, “that according to a divine nature and justice, the souls of virtuous men are advanced to the rank of daemons; and that from demons, if they are properly purified, they are exalted into gods, not by any political institution, but according to right reason.”

We can say that the duality (ie: not mastering the Left and Right Brain Hemispheres) in the Ancient Gnostic sense is that we are all born imprisoned (ie: flesh ruling the spirit) in the Labyrinth (ie: the material world) and we must defeat the Minotaur (Ie: their animal self) in order to win our souls.

In the Christian Scripture, we find these Gnostic doctrines encoded in the story of Satan is divided against himself for it is said in Luke 11:18: “If Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand?” and in Matthew 12:26: “If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. His own kingdom will not survive.”

In a more modern Gnostic sense, the ultimate result is the fallen man (ie: the sinner or bad person) now stands (ie: unfallen or a good person). A person who now uses their 5 senses, study the 7 arts, and the ways of world with the use of both our Right and Left Hemispheres of our brains with the help of the two great mediators – our Corpus Callosum (Christ in the Head) and our hearts to connect our souls the number One, which is God and the good.

Then by doing so, we must think, talk and act well in every thought and action to remain good. Hence, we go from being bad demons and devils on earth to Divine spirits [δαιμονες] and Shepherds to the “fallen ones.”

As I mentioned above, Pythagoras had claimed “the whole air is filled with souls” and what he meant by this was that the air was full of the Spirits (Geni) he called Demons and Heroes, whom he regarded as the Ministers of the Supreme God. He said these Spirits were the seat to Men and even to Animals, who administer their Dreams, Sins, Diseases, and their Health.

In other words, these Spirits of men and animals controlled the material or what we could simply call “the world”.

To the Pythagoreans, to conquer yourself and the world was to also conquer the demon spirits in the air.