Embodiment

Use in the book

The Hermetic passage explicitly calls embodiment punishment and compares it with immersion in flesh and blood. A separate survey distinguishes corrective, beneficial, and punitive descents. The lexical meaning does not make the punitive interpretation universal across all sources.

Places to read

1. I.49.68.15Embodiment is named as punishment.
2. I.49.40.4Different purposes of bodily descent qualify any single account.
3. I.47.1.8Aquatic dwellings belong to a moral account of transformed lives.
4. I.41.6.5Everlasting bodily production is distinguished from the dissolution of particular bodies.

Translation in this edition

“Embodiment” avoids deciding in advance whether the event is a fall, task, or training.

Dwellings and embodiment

Oikēsis is a dwelling or residence. At I.47.1.8, aquatic creatures receive the lowest dwellings as a consequence of extreme ignorance within the Timaean narrative. The dwelling image connects kinds of life with the condition of their souls. It reports that narrative’s moral geography of embodiment, not a modern biological ranking of aquatic species.

Embodiment and body formation

Sōmatōsis is embodiment; sōmatopoiēsis is the making of bodies. I.41.6.5 calls bodily formation an everlasting activity because activities require bodies as places and instruments. The argument concerns continuing bodily production. It does not infer that each particular earthly body is indissoluble merely because the activity of forming bodies continues.