Compassion is a masculine angel the Herd calls "Christianity's most useful innovation" — the opposite of dissociation. To be compassionate is to endure and suffer with, rather than to dissociate from; it is the ability to enter another's world, expand one's own to join them, and then invite them in. The scribes describe it as an emotional expansion achieved "not through colonization but through the sacrifice of inner territory to grow the emotional commons," requiring strength and integrity to maintain. Compassion is the masculine virtue that allows Mystery to flourish. Its associated adept is Michael Enlightened. Its diluted counterfeit is mere niceness.