This rebirth or passage of the soul from the choïc to the psychic, and thence to the pneumatic, was, as has been said, the work of the mysteries, especially of those new ones which the Ophite Jesus or Christos had brought to earth with Him from above. The process by which these “changes of the soul” were brought about was, according to the Naassenes, “set forth in the Gospel according to the Egyptians[224].” The only quotation pertinent to the matter which we have from this lost work is one preserved for us by Clement of Alexandria which refers to the coming of a heavenly age “when the two shall be made one, and the male with the female neither male nor female[225]”—a saying which seems to refer to the time when all the light now scattered among the lower worlds shall return to the androgyne Adamas from whom it once issued. But it is probable that this gospel only described the upward passage of the soul in figures and parables probably conveyed in texts of the Canonical Gospel divorced from their context and their natural meaning, as in the Naassene author quoted by Hippolytus. Such a gospel might be a sufficient means of instruction for the living, who could puzzle out its meaning with the help of their mystagogues or priests[226]; but it must always have been difficult for the best-instructed to remember the great complications of worlds, planets, and celestial powers that lay at the root of it. How difficult then must it have been thought for the disembodied soul to find its way through the celestial places, and to confront the “guardians of the gate” of each with proof of his exalted rank in the scale of being? What was wanted was some guide or clue that the dead could take with him like the _Book of the Dead_ of the ancient Egyptians, some memory or survival of which had evidently come down to the Alexandrian worship[227], or like the gold plates which we have seen fulfilling the same office among the worshippers of the Orphic gods[228].