Now, let me put this doctrine into a nested format.

At first, one would think that the spirit-descent is what puts the soul and body into context.  That is, it belongs to thirdness.  Then the “soul” belongs to the realm of possibility and “body” belongs to the realm of actuality.  The nested result is:

Spirit-descent (body (soul))

I prefer an alternate to the obvious.  The “soul as animating principle of the body” puts the “body” into context.  Then the “spirit-descent” is the possibility that makes the “body” possible.  The nested result is:

Soul(body(spirit-descent)

I prefer this alternative because it captures the sensibilities of many Pagan traditions.  For example, the Stoics tried to train the soul to discipline the body.  Why did the body need to be disciplined?  The flawed nature of the body was made possible by its descent.  Similarly, some Ascetics attempted to “peel the soul away from the body” through various techniques, thereby undoing the attachments to the body accrued by the descent.

In sum, instead of spirit-descent acting to bring the soul into the body, spirit-descent makes the accrual of the material body by the immaterial soul possible.  The spirit-descent acts like trapdoor that sends the good blissful soul crashing down to earth.  The spirit-descent is as unpredictable as any natural or divine phenomena.

And more horrifying, the spirit-descent defines the person’s fate.