Chapter 8 presents angelification in the Christian apocalypse Zostrianos. Zostrianos is the mysterious reputed author of the longest tractate in the Nag Hammadi library (NHC VIII,8.1). The first known reception of this text was by Christians, one-time friends of Plotinus who tried to fit into his philosophical circle at Rome. Zostrianos ascends into four extra-cosmic dimensions in which he experiences successively higher forms of angelification. The text of Zostrianos is designed to lead its readers into contemplative ascent prefaced by a life of purifying virtues. These virtues completely cut one off from the structures of civic society in an effort to generate an angelic subjectivity on earth.

Chapter 7 turns to daimonification in the founder of Neoplatonism, Plotinus (205–270 CE). Porphyry presented Plotinus as already a daimon while on earth. This presentation partially depends on Plotinus’s own teachings: the one who becomes a daimon in heaven already was one on earth. This presentist focus was shaped by a reading of Empedocles and Plato – the daimon is one’s higher consciousness into which one lives. In his theory of daimonification, Plotinus emphasized ethical and contemplative practices. Purifying virtues disengaged the higher consciousness from the “conglomerate” of the body and the lower mind. When one’s higher mind is free from bodily images, one can live at the level of the daimon.