"Hermes. Concerning Soul and Body, son, we now must speak; in what way Soul is deathless, and whence comes the activity (in composing and dissolving Body). For there’s no death for aught of things (that are); the thought (this) word conveys is either void of fact, or (simply) by the knocking off a syllable what is called “death” doth stand for “deathless.” For death is of destruction, and nothing in the Cosmos is destroyed. For if Cosmos is second God, a life (that cannot die), it cannot be that any part of this immortal life should die. All things in Cosmos are parts of Cosmos, and most of all is man, the rational animal. For truly first of all, eternal and transcending birth, is God the universals’ Maker. Second is he “after His image,” Cosmos, brought into being by Him, sustained and fed by Him, made deathless as by His own Sire, living for aye, as ever free from death. Now that which ever-liveth differs from the Eternal; for He (hath not been brought to being by another), and even if He have been brought to being, He hath not been brought into being by Himself, but ever is brought into being. For the Eternal, in that It is eternal, is the All. The Father is Himself eternal of Himself, but Cosmos hath become eternal and immortal by the Father. And of the matter stored beneath it, the Father made of it a universal body, and packing it together made it spherical — wrapping it round the life — a sphere which is immortal in itself, and that doth make materiality eternal. But He, the Father, fulfilled with His ideas, did sow the lives into the sphere, and shut them in as in a cave, willing to order forth (the life with every kind of living). So He with deathlessness enclosed the universal body, that matter might not wish to separate itself from body’s composition, and so dissolve into its own (original) unorder. For matter, son, when it was yet incorporate, was in unorder. And it doth still retain down here this (nature of unorder), enveloping the rest of the small lives — that increase-and-decrease which men call death. It is round earthly lives that this unorder doth exist. For that the bodies of the heavenly ones preserve one order allotted to them from the Father as their rule; and it is by the restoration of each one (of them) this order is preserved indissolute. The “restoration” then of bodies on the earth is (thus their) composition, whereas their dissolution restores them to those bodies which can never be dissolved — that is to say, which know no death. Privation, thus, of sense is brought about, not loss of bodies." - Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 2, by G.R.S. Mead