Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 4 In Chronological Order,...

How do Guardians participate in matter, and of what matter are they formed? This their matter is not corporeal, otherwise they would be animals with sensation. In fact, whether they have aerial or fire-like bodies,137 they must have had a nature primitively different (from pure Intelligence) to have ultimately united each with his own body, for that which is entirely pure could not have immediately united with a body, although many philosophers think that the being of every Guardian, as guardian, is united to an air-like or fire-like body. But why is the being of every Guardian mingled with a body, while the being of every deity is pure, unless in the first case there be a cause which produces the mingling (with matter)? This cause must be the existence of an intelligible matter,138 so that whatever participates in it might, by its means, come to unite with sense-matter.