When the death determined by destiny occurred, the soul escaped from the body in which it was captive but kept its bodily form and appearance, and this simulacrum (εἴδωλον) appeared to men in dreams and after evocations. According to some Pythagoreans, this subtle form was distinct from the soul (ψυχή), which ascended immediately to the higher spheres. Others believed that, like a light garment, it wrapped the soul, which was for some time constrained to dwell here below.[67] After this shade had remained beside the body or somewhere near the tomb for a certain number of days, it rose in the atmosphere in which contended winds, water and fire, and was purified by the elements. This zone, the lowest circle of the world, was what fable had called hell (_Inferi_), and it was of this passage from one circle to that next it that poets spoke when they told of the Styx and Charon’s boat.[68] When the soul had been purified it was borne, uplifted by the winds, to the sphere of the moon. Here lay the boundary of life and death, the limit which divided the residence of the immortals, where all was harmony and purity, from the corrupt and troubled empire of generation. Thus the luminary of the night was the first dwelling of the Blessed, and there lay the Elysian Fields of the poets, Proserpina’s kingdom where rest the shades. And the Fortunate Islands, of which the ancients sung, were no other than the sun and the moon, celestial lands bathed by the waters of the ether.[69] The shade remained in the moon or was dissolved there, and pure reason rose to the sun whence it came forth, or even reached the summit of the heavens where reigned the Most High. A helpful escort, called by mythology Hermes the Soul-Guide, or _psychopompos_, led the elect to these Olympian peaks. There they regained their true country, and as birth had been to them a death, so their death was their rebirth. They enjoyed the contemplation of the luminous gods. They were rapt by the ravishing tune of the harmony of the spheres, that divine melody of which earthly music is but a feeble echo.[70]