Chapter Xb

The material body viewed as a prison, tomb, or source of error that hinders spiritual knowledge and return.

The passage argues that human agency cannot extend to the causes of dæmons or their nutriment, implying a limitation of human power over higher cosmic forces.

Ontological opposition between two primal principles (light/darkness, truth/lie, spirit/matter) as the fundamental structure of reality.

The distinction between human causes and divine dæmons implies an ontological separation between human agency and higher cosmic beings.

The supreme God's radical concealment beyond ordinary knowledge or perception; the Hidden Father.

The text asserts that humans cannot be the primordial causes of dæmons, indicating a radical concealment of divine causality from human understanding.

Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.

By denying humans are the causes of dæmons' nutriment, the passage implies that evil or deficiency in human causality is a lack rather than a positive being.

Using apparent contradiction, reversal, or riddle to destabilise ordinary understanding and induce insight.

The statement 'impossible that we should be the causes of dæmons' uses logical contradiction to establish a metaphysical limitation on human agency.

The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.

The impossibility of humans being causes suggests an ontological distance from the divine origin of dæmons.