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Thus Hypatia’s students always feel the presence of her “divine spirit”51. Not just Hypatia’s soul is holy; all of her being is sanctified; even her hands, which receive Synesius’ letters, are “sacred” (Ep. 133). As Plato’s successor she is blessed with charisma that enables her to teach others, and she fulfills her vocation with devotion, as if god himself had called her to this purpose. Zealously disclosing to her students the “sacred” sense of philosophic inquiry, she is regarded as a “genuine guide in the mysteries of philosophy” (gnesia kathegemon ton philosophias orgion) (Ep. 137). The appellation of guide along the avenues of “genuine" sacred philosophy was accorded in Hypatia’s time only to those Neoplatonists who distinguished themselves though a sort of personal holiness, though fame on account of their wisdom and spiritual authority.52 At the side of so elevated a teacher students consider themselves Fortune’s darlings. They surround her joyfully, like choristers to a leader. Writing in 402 to his brother Euoptius, who was probably still studying with Hypatia, Synesius asks him to extend salutations to “the fortunate chorus that delights in her oracular utterance,” or more precisely, “her divinely sweet voice” (Ep. 5).

— Hypatia of Alexandria (Revealing Antiquity , No 8) by Maria Dzielska (Page 48)

It is an attempt to use my own doppelgänger experience—the havoc wreaked and the lessons learned about me, her, and us—as a guide into and through what I have come to understand as our doppelgänger culture. A culture crowded with various forms of doubling, in which all of us who maintain a persona or avatar online create our own doppelgängers—virtual versions of ourselves that represent us to others. A culture in which many of us have come to think of ourselves as personal brands, forging a partitioned identity that is both us and not us, a doppelgänger we perform ceaselessly in the digital ether as the price of admission in a rapacious attention economy.

— Doppelganger by Naomi Klein (4% - 5%)

We often think of dress as a costume: something that we put on over our internal self, which might reflect or obscure our true identity, but never reshape it. But while the distinction between ‘gender identity’ and ‘gender expression’ is a useful teaching tool, helping to underscore the point that we can’t tell anyone’s gender just from looking at them – I use it myself every time I deliver trans awareness training – the reality of our experience is often more complex. My own dress both reflects and reshapes my gender: sometimes it’s the case that I put on jewellery and a bright, fitted cardigan because I’m feeling less male and more non-binary on that particular morning, but sometimes the reverse is true. Both kinds of gendered experience are equally true for me: my gender isn’t less authentic because a pair of dangly earrings can change how it feels.

— Before We Were Trans by Kit Heyam (Page 149)