Theosophical University Press Online Edition
The general doctrine of Reimbodiment or Rebirth is one of the most widely spread over the globe and among all peoples; and it is likewise one of the most ancient beliefs that the human soul has ever cast into systematic formulation. It has been taught in one or another of its various philosophical or religious presentations in every age and among every race of men; and, as a careful analysis of the history of the doctrine shows clearly, invariably it has been the greatest minds who have been drawn to it, and who have in consequence taught this wonderful doctrine as a part of the heart or core of their own respective philosophical or religious systems.
The general doctrine which embraces the entire scope of the antenatal and post-mortem history of the 'soul,' or preferably of the reimbodying ego, contains a number of differing mystical aspects or parts; and at different times one or more of these various forms or parts or aspects was especially emphasized in teaching. Sometimes, during the course of ages and because of the great background of essential esoteric philosophy was more or less lost sight of, one or another of these forms or aspects of the general doctrine, here called Reimbodiment, rose so high in importance as virtually to exclude the other forms or aspects thereof: a fact which brought about in virtually every individual historical case an obscuration or indeed an entire forgetting of the all-comprehensive root-teaching. This historical loss of the fundamental or general doctrine, with its usual accompaniment of an over-accentuation of one form or aspect of the general doctrine, accounts for the difference in form of presentation, and for the defects in substance, that the teaching concerning the post-mortem adventures of the human ego has taken in the various archaic literatures of the world.
In reading various religious and philosophical literatures as they are found imbodied in encyclopaedias, in learned books of various kinds, and even in some of our own Theosophical exoteric works, as well as when consulting dictionaries and lexicons on the subject of Reincarnation, Rebirth, etc., one finds in all these sources of information a number of words, relevant and partially relevant to the subject, which are used as if they actually all were synonymous. This custom of considering these different words as possessing a more or less perfect synonymy has been a convenience both to writers on the subject and to their readers; and there is, perhaps, no especial objection to enter against this custom when used in vague and general writing, provided, however, it be clearly understood that there are, nevertheless, specific meanings attached to or behind each one of these words: that is to say, that each such word, when accurately and precisely used, has its own particular or specific philosophic and religious meaning and reach, even though when speaking in a general and broad way we may use them for the comprehensive idea that living entities, so far as their intermediate nature is concerned, return into manifested life on Earth, after death with its subsequent devachanic period has given them a more or less prolonged interlude of rest and unutterable peace and joy in the post-mortem condition or state.
Certain ones of such words often employed as being virtually synonymous are:
1. Pre-existence
2. Reimbodiment
3. Rebirth
4. Palingenesis
5. Transmigration
6. Metempsychosis
7. Reincarnation
8. Metensomatosis, this last being as it were an appendix to the other seven.
Now while, as just said, these seven or indeed eight different words may be used in a loose sense as signifying synonymy, or as being practically significant of the same thing, nevertheless, not one of these eight words, when used with precision, means exactly what any other one of the series does; so that in accurate writing one has to be careful in his choice of these words, and to select that one of the series which most closely expresses the particular phase of the teaching which is at the time under discussion. Indeed, it is not too much to say that each of these words is, as it were, a key unlocking one of the portals of the compound and sevenfold Mystery-teaching which deals generally with the fascinating adventures that befall the excarnate ego after it has quitted its physical body, has left the Kama-loka, and has begun its peregrination through the spheres. It would seem both advisable and useful, therefore, to attempt at least a brief analysis and outline-sketch of these different words before proceeding to the other matters which are imbodied in the present and succeeding chapter.
The idea contained in the word Pre-existence is very easily explained, because its content and significance are simple and uninvolved. Pre-existence simply means that the human soul did not come into imbodiment or existence with its present birth into earth-life: in other words, Pre-existence means that the human ego existed before it was born on earth anew. This is all of the specific meaning that this word holds, although of course there are a number of nuances or shades of significance that even this simple idea contains.
The English Neo-Platonist of the seventeenth century, Henry More, in consequence of his philosophical views and outlook, naturally had his own ideas about a fore-existence or pre-existence of the soul and wrote about them. For example the following is found in his Philosophical Poems, in his Psychozoia : (267)
I would sing the pre-existency
Of human souls and live once o'er again
By recollection and quick memory
All that is passed since first we all began.
But all too shallow be my wits to scan
So deep a point, and mind too dull to climb
So dark a matter. But thou, O more than man!
Aread, thou sacred soul of Plotin dear,
Tell me what mortals are! Tell what of old we were!
Henry More here makes Plotinus, the great Neo-Platonic teacher, answer after this manner:
A spark or ray of the Divinity,
Clouded with earthly fogs, and clad in clay;
A precious drop sunk from eternity
Spilt on the ground, or rather slunk away.
For when we fell when we first 'gan t'essay
By stealth of our own selves something to
Uncentering ourselves from our one great stay,
Which rupture we new liberty did ween,
And from that prank right jolly wits ourselves did deem. (268)
Reimbodiment, the second word of the series hereinbefore named, in its turn simply means that the living entity, i. e., the reimbodying ego, takes upon itself a new body at some time after death, although this 'new body' by no means necessarily signifies that the reimbodying ego assumes it on this earth to the exclusion of imbodiment on other and invisible planes. In other words, its meaning is that the reimbodying ego can assume bodies elsewhere than on earth. It teaches something more than that the soul merely pre-exists, the idea here being in addition to this that the soul takes unto itself a new body. But this particular aspect or form of the general doctrine of the migration or peregrination of living entities tells us not what kind of body the reimbodying ego thus newly assumes, nor whether that body be taken here on earth or elsewhere: that is to say, whether the new body is to be a visible physical body or an invisible one in the invisible realms of Nature. It states only that the life-center, the reimbodying ego or Monad, reimbodies itself; and this thought is the essence of the specific meaning of this word.
Rebirth, the third of the listed words, is a term of larger and more generalized significance. Its meaning is merely the coming into birth again, the term thus excluding specific explanations or details as to the type or kind of Reimbodiment. The likeness between the idea comprised in this word and that belonging to the term Reincarnation is very close, yet the two ideas are quite distinct.
The fourth form or aspect of the general doctrine is Palingenesis. This is a Greek compound which means 'coming again into being' or 'becoming again.' The idea included in it may be illustrated, as it is found in the philosophical literatures of the ancients who lived around the Mediterranean Sea, by the example of the oak which produces its seed, the acorn, the acorn in its turn producing a new oak containing the same life that was passed on to it from the mother-oak -- or father-oak. Thus this transmission of an identic life in cyclical recurring phases is the specific meaning of the word Palingenesis. Perhaps the specific meaning contained in this word could also be stated thus: it signifies the continuous transmission of an identic life, producing at each transformation a new manifestation or result, these several results being in each case a palingenesis or 'new becoming' of the same life-stream.
In order to avoid confusion because of the close similarity of many of these words listed above, it may be as well perhaps to state here clearly, as indeed was stated above, that all these words signify aspects or phases of the general doctrine of reimbodiment; so that the post-mortem destiny or adventure of the reimbodying ego actually includes not merely one of these phases, but indeed all of them. The same can hardly be said, however, of the monads imprisoned in some of the lower kingdoms of Nature, because to these monads, in view of their less evolved character, only certain phases or forms or aspects are to be ascribed.
The fifth word is Transmigration: a word which has been grossly misunderstood in the modern Occident, which has also been the fate, by the way, of the next word, Metempsychosis. Both these words because of the common misunderstanding of the ancient literatures, are modernly supposed, or rather mistaken, to mean that the human soul at some time after death migrates into the beast-realm (especially if its karman during physical life be a heavy or evil one), and afterwards is reborn on Earth in a beast-body. The real meaning of this statement in the ancient literatures, refers, however, to the destiny of the life-atoms; but it has absolutely no reference to the destiny of the human soul as an entity. The misunderstanding of this doctrine by Europeans has been partly caused by the fact that it was considered an esoteric teaching by Oriental, Latin, and Greek writers, and therefore never was fully divulged in exoteric literature.
The human soul can no more migrate over and incarnate in a beast-body than can the psychical apparatus of a beast incarnate upwards in human flesh. Why? Because in the former case, the beast-vehicle offers the human soul no opening at all for the expression of the distinctly human powers and faculties and tendencies which in their aggregate, and because of their evolved characteristics, make a man human. Nor, conversely, can the soul of a beast enter into a human body, because the impassable gulf, of a psychical and intellectual nature, which separates the two kingdoms, the Human Kingdom and the Beast Kingdom, prevents any such passage or transmigration from the one up into the other, which is so much its superior in all respects. In the former case, there is no attraction for the normal man beastwards; and, in the latter case, there is the impossibility that the imperfectly developed beast-mind and beast-soul can find a proper lodgment in what to it is truly a godlike sphere which in consequence it cannot enter. It is against natural law, for the same reason that figs do not grow of thistles, nor does one pluck grapes from a cherry-tree. A human soul, or rather the human reimbodying ego, seeks incarnation in a human body, in a human encasement, because there is no attraction for it elsewhere. Human seed produces human bodies; human souls reproduce human soul -- i. e., themselves.
Transmigration, however, has a specific meaning as follows, when the word is applied to the human soul: the living entity migrates or passes over from one condition to another condition or state or plane, as the case may happen to be, whether these latter be in the invisible realms of Nature or in the visible realms, and whether the state or condition be high or low. The specific meaning of this word, therefore, implies nothing more than a change of state or of condition or of plane: a migrating of the living entity from one state or condition or plane to another. It contains in fact the combined meanings of Evolution and Karman: in other words, karmic evolution, as signifying the path followed by the Monad in migrating from sphere to sphere, from spirit to matter and back again to spirit, and in the course of its pilgrimage entering into vehicle or body after vehicle or body.
In the application of this word to the life-atoms, to which particular sense are to be referred the observations of the ancients with regard to the lower realms of Nature, it means, briefly, that the life-atoms which in their aggregate compose man's lower principles, at and following the change that men call death, migrate or transmigrate or pass into other bodies to which these life-atoms are psycho-magnetically attracted, be these attractions high or low -- and they are usually low, because their own evolutionary development is as a rule far from being advanced. Nevertheless, it should be remembered that these life-atoms compose man's inner -- and outer -- vehicles or bodies, and that in consequence there are various grades or classes of these life-atoms, from the physical upwards (or inwards) to the astral, then the purely vital, then the emotional, then the mental and psychical. This is, in general terms, the meaning of Transmigration. The word has no more than the specific meanings just outlined, and stops there.
But the teaching concerning the destiny of the entity is continued and developed in the next word, Metempsychosis. It is a Greek compound vocable which may be rendered briefly by 'insouling after insouling,' or 'changing soul after soul.' It signifies that the monadic essence or the life-consciousness-center, or Monad, not merely is pre-existent to physical birth, nor merely that the soul-entity reimbodies itself, but also that the Monad, during the course of its aeonic Pilgrimage through the Spheres or Worlds, clothes itself with, or makes unto itself for its own self-expression, various ego-souls, which flow forth from it; that they have each one its characteristic and individual life or 'soul,' which, when its life-period is completed, is gathered back again into the bosom of the Monad for its period of rest, at the completion of which it reissues forth therefrom upon a new cyclical pilgrimage. It is the adventures which befall this entity in its assumption of, or assuming, 'soul' after 'soul,' which in their aggregate are grouped together under this word Metempsychosis.
It should be added here that the term Metempsychosis contains a good deal more than is set forth in the preceding observations, but this latter portion of the teaching, which is not here given, pertains to the hid or secret or esoteric part of the Ancient Wisdom, and obviously cannot be imbodied in a published work.
It is of course evident that all these words given in the list above have strict and intimate relations with each other, as, for instance, every soul in its metempsychosis also obviously transmigrates in the particular sense of this last word; and, likewise, every transmigrating entity also has its metempsychoses or soul-changings, etc. But these connexions or interminglings of meanings must not be confused with the specific significance belonging to each one of these different words. The essential meaning of metempsychosis can perhaps be briefly described by saying that a Monad during the course of its evolutionary peregrinations through the Spheres or Worlds throws forth from itself periodically a new 'soul-garment' or 'soul-sheath,' and this production and use of 'souls' or 'soul-sheaths' as the ages pass is called Metempsychosis.
In the Hebrew Qabbalah, there is an old mystic aphorism which tells us that "a stone becomes a plant, a plant becomes a beast, a beast becomes a man, and a man becomes a god." This does not refer to the bodies of each stage; for how would it be possible for a human physical body to become a god? The very profound idea behind this aphorism is that the evolving entity within the physical encasement learns and grows and passes from house to house of life, from encasement to encasement, each time entering a better house of life, a nobler temple, and learning in each more glorious house that it finds itself in, newer and nobler lessons than it had learned in its previous life and lives. Further reflexion upon this shows us that the bodies themselves likewise grow and change and evolve as far as they can, pari passu with the evolving ego or soul: in other words, that while the inner ego or soul advances and evolves along its own spiritual and intellectual and psychic courses, so also do the various bodies in which it finds its many dwelling-places feel the impulse or urge of the indwelling evolutionary fire, and, responding to it, themselves unfold or evolve into greater perfection.
The Persian mystic poet, a Sufi, Jalalu'd-Din Rumi, writing on this subject, speaks as follows:
I died from the mineral, and became a plant;
I died from the plant and reappeared as an animal;
I died from the animal and became a man;
Wherefore then should I fear?
When did I grow less by dying?
Next time I shall die from the man
That I may grow the wings of angels.
From the angel, too, must I seek advance:
. . . . . .
Once more shall I wing my way above the angels;
I shall become that which entereth not the imagination. (268a)
It is a profound thought that this wonderful Sufi poet here gives to us: endless progress, no finalities, no ends, no jumping-off place and final and absolute stoppages; but always and for ever onwards.
The next word in the list is Reincarnation -- a modern word of Latin derivation, meaning 'reinfleshment.' The significance of this word is simply that the human soul imbodies itself in a human body of flesh on this Earth after a more or less prolonged period of post-mortem repose, rest, and bliss in the Devachan, taking up in the new body the links of physical life on this Earth and the individual earthly destiny which were pro tempore interrupted here at the ending of the reimbodying ego's last physical incarnation in earth-life. It differs generally from Rebirth in this: that the former word simply means rebirth in human bodies of flesh on this Earth; while the latter term contains the implication, tacit if not expressed, of possible imbodiments on Earth by beings who have finished their earthly pilgrimage by evolution, but who nevertheless sometimes return to this Earth in order to aid their less evolved brothers.
The eighth and last word in the list is Metensomatosis, which is also a compound Greek word of which the significance may perhaps be rendered thus: 'changing body after body' -- not necessarily always using human bodies of flesh, in which point it closely resembles Rebirth, but bodies of appropriate but different physical material concordant with the evolutionary stage which the human race may have reached at any time. The meaning involved in this word is very difficult to explain or even adequately to hint at in a few lines; but it may perhaps be made more clear by the following observation: In far past ages the human race had bodies indeed, but not bodies of flesh, as now the race has; and in far distant ages of the future, the human race will likewise have bodies, but not necessarily bodies of flesh. Actually the teaching in this respect is that in those far-distant periods of the future, 'human' bodies of that time will be compact of ether, or, what comes to much the same thing, of luminous matter which may very properly be called concreted light.
The point of emphasis or of particularity of meaning which the term Metensomatosis contains and implies, is that of 'body'; and the essential meaning of the term may therefore be rendered, somewhat quaintly perhaps, as 'bodifying' -- the emphasis thus being seen to be placed squarely on the idea of bodies. When the student recollects that the Esoteric Philosophy teaches that the assumption or assuming of bodies by reincorporating entities takes place whenever and wherever experience is to be gained in and on any World or Plane, visible or invisible, it becomes evident that such bodies are only occasionally bodies of flesh such as the human race at present is using. Metensomatosis as a term can thus apply in its general significance to the assumption of bodies of any kind, whether of light or of ether, or of spiritual substance, or of physical matter.
When these eight terms are all used with careful distinction and choice, as among their respective and several meanings, and therefore used properly, one is enabled to express the general doctrine of 'Coming Back into Manifested Life' with elegance, precision, and completeness. Further, every one of these words, as before stated, deals with one aspect or portion or phase of the general course of the destiny of the human entity, both outer and inner, as well as with entities other than human; and it should be evident enough that the application of them is more largely to the inner and invisible adventures of the migrating or evolving and revolving entities, than to their physical earthly life on this our globe Terra.
It were, however, a mistaking of their respective meanings to consider any one of them, or indeed all of them, as having no application, or only an application in the cases of a few of them, to the various imbodiments of the human ego; because, as a matter of fact, every single one of these eight terms, and all of them, are applicable, each with its own particular significancy of meaning, to different parts or events of the history -- antenatal as well as post-mortem -- of the human soul. Thus: the human soul not only 'pre-exists' but it 'reimbodies' itself, and in doing so takes 'rebirth' on this Earth, and it does so by means of psycho-astral 'palingenesis,' accomplished by means of its own particular manner of 'transmigration,' the whole process largely being marked by the 'metempsychosis' through which it passes, bringing about 'reincarnation' or returning to human fleshly bodies on Earth, thus filling its need for 'bodifying' its faculties and attributes in this sphere.
The general doctrine included under these terms is wonderful beyond ordinary human supposition or imagination; and the more one studies these terms and becomes acquainted with the specific characteristics appertaining to the doctrine which each one elucidates, the more one sees the philosophical and scientific marvel of them, and the more do their philosophical beauty and coherency appeal. Indeed, not one of these terms is fully comprehensible apart from the others; and one must take all into proper consideration if one desire an adequate mental grasp of the General Doctrine, each one of these terms in its philosophical meaning leading on, as it were, to a fuller comprehension of the specific significancies of all the others, the mind thus being gradually led into ever-expanding and more comprehensibly enlarging view. The mental process involved is somewhat like a traveler who is climbing a high mountain, and who, on reaching its summit, sees all the minor hills and valleys below him which he has passed; and, furthermore, sees still higher mountains beyond where he now stands, touched with the rays of the sun, mountains which seem to him to be on the rim of the world.
One or another or indeed several of these various forms of 'Coming anew into Life' on Earth has or have been taught by so many eminent men, not only of the archaic past but also of the early periods of more recent world-history, that a collection of their various teachings would make fascinating reading and an absorbing study for any thoughtful mind. From the most northern regions of the inhabited globe to the most southern, and from farthest East to farthest West, and circling the globe in every direction, the inquisitive researcher cannot find a single country where this noble doctrine, this religio-philosophical interpreter and solver of the riddles of human life, was ignored and not taught. It has, however, been taught and delivered in the various ages and countries or races with varying degrees of explicitness or implication; for a very large part of the complete doctrine has always been held as esoteric, and therefore communicated in its fulness only to the chosen few who were capable of understanding it and of intellectually and morally profiting by it.
The Doctrine is taught today, but in always more or less imperfect and incomplete forms, among more than three-quarters of the world's population. In fact, the time was when it was absolutely universal; even at so short a period of time as two thousand years agone, the entire world believed in it in one form or in another. The Brahmanas and the Buddhists of India, and the peoples of Farther and Northern Asia, always were and now are 'reincarnationists'; and such are today and also were in past times the Taoists of China. (269)
Among a very large part of the ancient Greeks and Romans the general doctrine of Reimbodiment or of Rebirth, in one or other form or perhaps indeed in all its various forms, was accepted and taught with varying degrees of philosophical accuracy. Yet there did exist among the old Greeks and Romans certain schools of materialistic bias in thought, and Schools of Cynics and Skeptics -- even as such, after their own fashion, exist among us today -- who prided themselves on their disbelief in the other-than-physical reality of anything whatever. Such minds have existed in all ages; and in those times of spiritual darkness, or spiritual barrenness, that the great Greek Plato wrote of and taught as succeeding eras or epochs of spiritual fertility or illumination -- thereby proving himself to have known the Ancient Wisdom, or what comes to the same thing, to have been an initiate -- men of this skeptical and doubting type had little difficulty in winning adherents and establishing their own schools.
But just as it has been and is among ourselves today, these ancient skeptical thinkers produced nothing in proof of their disbelief in forces and worlds superior to the physical-material sphere, which causatively inspired and moved the latter and guided it -- except assumptions and asseverations. If these propagandists of non-entity were asked for some positive and convincing, or at least probable and truly reasonable, proof of their theories, they had no proof to advance beyond that of generalizations, and an appeal to the obvious fact that the professors and students of the different mystical and philosophical systems themselves failed to agree, even at times upon what seemed to be essentials. This is an old dodge of skeptical reasoning, and it is obviously a weak argument, because the skeptics themselves are usually at loggerheads; and if divergences and differences of opinion are a valid argument against the truth of a theory, the same argument applies with equal validity and force to that of the position assumed by the skeptics themselves. In other words, the skeptics' argument can be retorted back upon the skeptics, and as it is usually their most effective argument, it is equally effective against those who advance it.
As a matter of simple fact, how could the doctrine of materialism or of spiritual non-entity be proved, even on its own grounds of denial? Matter cannot prove its own non-entity, for it indubitably exists, as all know; nor, on the other hand, can it prove or disprove the existence or non-existence of something else which, ex hypothesi, it knows nothing about at all. The argument thus leads us into a vicious circle. We assuredly cannot be expected to take the biased writings that have been composed in a spirit of enthusiastic partisanship for other than what they are: special pleadings of the different sects of Deniers; and, quaintly enough, there always have been, by the way, Deniers of another type, who deny that matter itself exists!
Beginning with Orpheus, whose influence in ancient times was immense and very profound in the Greek world -- an influence felt, although largely unrecognised, by moderns, even in the various types of mystical thought that have prevailed in Europe -- the greatest and most intuitive minds in old Greece and Rome were 'reincarnationists,' or followers of the general doctrine of Reimbodiment, in one form or another thereof, according to the different particularities of teaching that prevailed at different times. The Pythagoreans and Platonists, with their own different respective shades of interpretation, all held the doctrine; and among the Romans who followed in their lead, many great names are known to us, as for instance the early and very famous Calabrian poet and philosopher Ennius, of whose works, alas! nothing remains to us today except a few scattered quotations preserved by fellow-poets and other writers at different times; yet from these scattered citations, we gather a little knowledge of what that great ancient taught. Then later, Vergil, in his wonderful works, especially in the Aeneid; (270) and still later, in other countries bordering the Inland Sea of Europe, Iamblichus, Plotinus, and indeed all the luminous line of the Neo-Platonic philosophers -- all of them great men; and belonging to this line were some great women also -- all were reincarnationists.
The ancient Persians; the Chaldaeans; and Babylonians; the ancient Teutons; the Druids of Western Europe, and the Celtic races generally, were all 'reincarnationists' -- holding, just as elsewhere was the case, the General Doctrine in one form or in another, and different individuals understanding and interpreting the various phases of the General Doctrine each one according to his own insight and philosophical capacity.
It is customary among some modern scholars to aver that the ancient Egyptians did not believe in any form of Reincarnation, and this modern opinion seems to be based solely upon the fact that the studies of European Egyptologists have been so largely devoted to the deciphering of monumental relics and manuscript-documents found in the tombs, that, as the saying goes, they do not see the wood on account of the individual trees; in other words, the details of the splendid researches in Egyptology begun by Young and Champollion have so blinded the vision of Egyptologists to the more general view, that they do not yet see that it is absolutely necessary, both from the philosophical and religious standpoint, to presume its existence as a popular belief among both priests and multitude, in order to account for and to explain the archaeological remnants that are the object of their study.
In this the Egyptologists are entirely wrong, and one may venture to state the belief that time will prove this fully, to the confusion of some at least of the more dogmatic scholars among them. It had always been accepted as a fact among European scholars, prior to Young and Champollion, that the ancient Egyptians did indeed hold a belief of some kind in the General Doctrine of Reimbodiment -- probably, as we may say, under one of its forms of metempsychosal Reincarnation, and ancient Egyptian manuscripts, both of the older Dynasties and of the later Alexandrian Greek period, when read with an eye to the universally accepted ideas prevalent in the countries around the Mediterranean, fully substantiate this belief. The formerly accepted opinion among Europeans that the ancient Egyptians were 'reincarnationists,' was very largely, but perhaps not wholly, based upon the statements and rather reticent declarations of the great Greek philosopher and historian, Herodotus -- a man who at one time was in ignorance called 'the Father of Lies,' but who is now often called 'the Father of History' because modern research has shown how keen was his observation, and how accurate his descriptions generally were.
One may prefer to believe in Herodotus, who spent a fairly long time in Egypt, and who therefore knew the Egyptians themselves well and, according to his own statements, had conversed not only with the priests, but with the people -- whether through interpreters or not is a matter of no consequence whatsoever as regards the point of his receiving from them fairly accurate ideas as to the religious and philosophical opinions of those he met; although it is of course obviously true that being himself a Greek he interpreted what he heard, at least to some extent, according to his own Greek prejudices and religio-philosophical outlook.
In a general way it may be said that the more we uncover of ancient history, the more does our research prove the general, and often the particular, truth of the statements in Herodotus' interesting but often rather quaintly written work.
The writers in The Encyclopaedia Britannica say of Herodotus:
At all the more interesting sites he took up his abode for a time; he examined, he inquired, he made measurements, he accumulated materials. Having in his mind the scheme of his great work, he gave ample time to the elaboration of all its parts, and took care to obtain by personal observation a full knowledge of the various countries. (271)
Other writers, as for instance in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, say only the truth of Herodotus when the following statement is made:
He saw with his own eyes all the wonders of Egypt, and the accuracy of his observations and descriptions still excites the astonishment of travellers in that country. (272)
When we remember that this great Greek spent a long time in Egypt, as has already been said, and mixed not only familiarly with the people, but was given free entry, as his own work tells us, into the temples, and conversed upon esoteric and recondite matters with the learned priests themselves, we have reason to believe that when he tells us that the Egyptians accepted what we would call a form of metempsychosal Reincarnation, he knew better what he was talking about than do scholars of some twenty-four hundred years later, whose only argument against Herodotus' assertion is that they have not yet found proof of what Herodotus said existed there. We prefer to believe the man who lived familiarly among the Egyptians and who therefore knew them, rather than the modern theories based on a mere petitio principii -- a mere begging of the question.
It would be an amazing thing if the Egyptians, so great and marvelous a people in their own lines of scientific and literary and ethical and historic as well as religious and philosophical thought and work, should have been ignorant of, or should have rejected, a doctrine which was not only once universal, but, as common sense and reflexion show, must have lain at the very basis of the psychological part of their own extremely mystical body of various religious dogmata.
The truth of the matter is that modern scholars do not understand the meaning, nor in consequence the import, of the ancient philosophies and religions, at least in most cases, unless that meaning be superficial, i. e., on the surface and easily discernible and therefore easily understood -- that is, when it lies so clearly upon the surface and is so openly expressed, that only an imbecile could succeed in misunderstanding it.
The following are Herodotus' words as translated from the original Greek:
It was the Egyptians who first gave utterance to the following doctrine, to wit: that the soul [Herodotus here uses the word psyche] is immortal and that when the physical body decays, the soul enters into another living being (273) which at the moment is ready for and appropriate to it. After it has passed through all the terrestrial and aqueous and aerial forms of life, it clothes itself anew with the body of a man then becoming ready for it. This wandering or transmigration it passes through in some three thousand years. There are a number of Hellenes also who follow this same doctrine, some of olden time and some of later days, giving it forth as their own. Although I know the names of these I do not here write them down. (274)
And Herodotus was a wise man in not doing so, because, as an initiate of the Mysteries, he knew perfectly well that after what he had just said concerning this belief of the Egyptians he could not designate who the Greek philosophers were and what their particular forms of teaching were without immediately giving the key to esoteric aspects which he had no right to divulge. That he was an initiate we know from his own words, and from the several places where he speaks of the necessity of holding the tongue.
As a matter of fact, the belief which Herodotus here ascribes to the Egyptians is not the teaching of Reincarnation, per se, as is obvious from what has already been said in the present chapter, nor is it the true teaching of Metempsychosis as the latter was taught in the Mysteries, although unquestionably the Egyptians knew both these true teachings as well as other ancient nations did. It would be downright unreasonable to suppose that they did not, for the knowledge of one or two or more phases or portions of the general doctrine implies that at least the philosophers among them knew the other phases or portions. The particular and peculiar doctrine to which Herodotus here pointedly alludes, as being obviously especially popular among the Egyptians, is the cyclical destiny of the psycho-vital parts of the human soul: in other words, of the lower half of the Intermediate Duad as this Duad is outlined in the schematic diagram given elsewhere in this book. (275)
This is but another way of saying that this particular Egyptian belief refers solely to the transmigration of the life-atoms forming the psycho-vital part of man's intermediate nature, which, precisely as elsewhere set forth, reassemble or re-collect or come together again in a succeeding reincarnation of the evolving soul-entity, or reimbodying ego.
It is of no small interest here to call attention to the fact that this particular Egyptian doctrine, which formed part of the mystery-teaching in other countries, although in these other countries it was less strongly emphasized, lay at the back of the custom which the Egyptians had, in common with some other peoples both of the ancient and modern world, of mummifying their dead. The entire object of mummification, as the Egyptians practised it, was, at least in some respects and as popularly understood, a rather pathetic attempt to restrain, as far as was physically possible, the transmigration of the life-atoms of the human Intermediate Duad and of the Lower Triad through the lower spheres of life, by preserving as long as was possible the physical body from decay. How such a belief could have taken so firm a hold of the imagination and of the religious emotions of the Egyptian people is in itself an interesting and, as just stated, rather pathetic psychological study. Unquestionably the priests knew that the custom of mummification was but an imperfect preventive -- if indeed a successful preventive at all -- of such transmigration; but owing to some reasons at present only imperfectly known, the custom became so firmly established both in its rite and function and in popular habit, as to become one of the marked characteristics of Egyptian civilization.
It might as well be pointed out before passing on, that the practice of mummification was in its origin unquestionably of late Atlantean derivation; and whether found in Egypt or in Peru, or elsewhere on the globe, it is to these early and now virtually forgotten psycho-physical reasons which governed the practice, and which were part and parcel of late Atlantean civilization, that we must look for its origin. It is sufficient to state here that the practice demonstrates the clinging even after death, so to speak, to material life, and the complex emotional and mental factors involved in this clinging, which was so typically characteristic of the loss of spirituality and of the heavy material psychological atmosphere of Atlantis in its decay.
The earliest Egyptians, who first colonized the beginnings of the geologic formation of the delta of the Nile, were immigrants to this slowly forming part of North Africa from the remnant of the Atlantic continent of which Plato speaks and which has been called Poseidonis; while the later Egyptians were formed from a series of immigrating colonizing waves from what is now Southern India and possibly Ceylon. Ceylon itself, called Lanka in the archaic Sanskrit writings, was, ages ago, the northernmost headland of the great Island contemporaneous in its own heyday with the efflorescence of Atlantean civilization; and although this great island had, at the time of the last colonizing waves reaching Egypt from it, already largely sunken beneath the waves, this fact likewise shows that these later immigrants from the East into the Egyptian delta were themselves late Atlanteans of Oriental stock, but who had by then become integral portions of the rising 'Aryan' or what in modern Theosophy is called the Fifth Root-Race. Thus it is seen that the Egyptians were Atlanteans both in origin and in type of civilization, albeit their colonizing of Egypt, whether from West or East, took place at a time when Atlantis had already become a system of continents and islands of legendary history, and their inhabitants were already virtually 'aryanized.'
The great Hindu epic, the Ramayana, is a legendary record, whatever be the date of its committing to writing, of an era when Lanka or Ceylon was still part of the great Atlantean island in the Pacific, inhabited by the late Atlanteans whom the Aryans of the north called Rakshasas, commonly rendered in translation as 'demons' -- a title or indeed idea descriptive of Atlantean wickedness rather than accurately giving the translation of the word. As the later Aryan Race in its historical and legendary records eloquently testifies, the Atlanteans, even in those late days, were known as a race of magicians and even sorcerers, great and otherwise, and knowledge of the post-mortem destiny of man was as familiar in all its phases to the then initiated priests of that forgotten people as it was to both the early and later Egyptian priesthood. Just as the Atlanteans were spoken of as a race of sorcerers, evil and wicked, or as a race of magicians of questionable repute, so likewise did Egypt and its inhabitants bear among all the peoples inhabiting the border of the Mediterranean Sea the reputation of being a "land shadowing with wings," (276) and their people as being a race of magicians -- both good and bad -- likewise.
Another writer in The Encyclopaedia Britannica, under the title 'Metempsychosis' shows the usual modern, and to the Theosophist most lamentable, ignorance of the real meaning of the highly esoteric teaching about which he writes; for, as his article discloses, he confuses Metempsychosis with Transmigration, and these again with Reincarnation. The writer opens his article by saying:
Metempsychosis, or Transmigration of the Soul, the doctrine that at death the soul passes into another living creature, man, animal, or even plant.
He continues with the self-assurance so common -- and so fallible:
Till full investigation of Egyptian records put us in possession of the facts, it was supposed that the Egyptians believed in metempsychosis, and Herodotus (xi. 123) explicitly credits them with it. We now know that he was wrong. (277)
We know nothing of the sort. All that we do know is that modern scholars have not found references to this doctrine sculptured on the monuments or painted on the papyri; and therefore modern scholars say that the teaching did not prevail in ancient Egypt, although we have the testimony, direct and explicit, of Herodotus, one of the greatest and least imaginative of the ancient Greeks, who tells us definitely and precisely the contrary of the modern and mistaken theory; and, as he had lived among the ancient Egyptians and had had access to as much of their knowledge, apparently, as he desired to have, his single statement, being that of an eye-witness and one who lived on the spot and had had intimate converse with Egyptian priests and educated men, is alone worth more than all modern merely speculative theory on the subject.
The Jews, also -- a people whom one would perhaps not suspect of teaching the doctrine of Reimbodiment or Reincarnation in one or other of its various forms -- taught it through the media of the doctrines which the Pharisees of ancient Judaea held; and it is likewise taught as a main pillar of esoteric thought imbodied in the Jewish Qabbala, the most mystical and secret teaching of the Jews -- interpolated and modified as the Qabbalah certainly has been by later and probably Christian hands. They even believed in the pre-existence and reimbodiment of worlds as well as of human souls, precisely as some at least of the most eminent of the early Christian Fathers themselves did, as for instance Clemens Alexandrinus and Origen. They also taught, as did Plato, that the consciousness and knowledge of man in any one life are but reminiscences of the consciousness and the knowledge of former lives. (278)
The Christian New Testament is on the whole unjust to the ancient Jewish Pharisees in the various accusations and strictures which it makes against them, more often by hint than otherwise; so that the modern reader of the Christian New Testament has a truly distorted and therefore wrong idea as to who and what the Pharisees actually were. There were, as in all classes of human society, great and good men among them; they were not all hypocrites by any means, nor were they always merely lazy sectarians living upon a trusting populace that followed their lead more or less blindly; although it is true that, being the greatest and most numerous of the Jewish sects, and the most vocal and positive in statement of all the three sects as Josephus describes them to us, it is obvious that their influence in Palestine, or at least among the people of Jerusalem, was very great and profound.
Josephus, one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest, of Jewish historians, was himself a convinced and unvarying Pharisee in his religious convictions. (279) He tells us that the Pharisees were believers in Reincarnation (as they understood it); and in fact he has several long passages dealing with the metempsychosal reincarnational beliefs of the Jews of his time as these beliefs were imbodied in the doctrines of the Pharisees. He tells us that in his day in the first century of the Christian Era, the Jews had three classes of religionists, or three sects, which he enumerates as follows: first, the Pharisees, the most numerous, the most powerful, and the most popular sect of all, and the most widely held in public estimation and respect; second, the Essenes, a very mystical body but of limited number, who followed a course of life that in modern times would be called monastic; and third, the Sadducees, who were a body of people of limited number, not so much a sect as a corporation of thinkers of free-thinking tendency, as it were, who opposed and denied much of what was taught by the Pharisees, and who apparently proclaimed themselves as being the true depositaries of ancient Jewish thought of a Mosaic character. As the passages found in Josephus and just mentioned above contain matter which is pertinent to the theme of this chapter, and include interesting observations not easily accessible to the general reader, they are reproduced here. The first quotation is taken from The Antiquities of the Jews:
As for the Pharisees, they live simply, and despise delicacies, and follow the guidance of reason, as to what it prescribes to them as good, and think they ought earnestly to strive to observe its dictates. They also pay respect to such as are in years; nor are they so bold as to contradict them in anything which they have introduced. And when they say that all things happen by fate, they do not take away from men the freedom of acting as they think fit; since their notion is, that it has pleased God to mix up the decrees of fate and man's will, so that man can act virtuously or viciously. They also believe, that souls have an immortal power in them, and that there will be under the earth rewards or punishments, according as men have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and the latter souls are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but the former will have power to live again. On account of these doctrines they have very great influence with the people, and whatever they do about divine worship, or prayers, or sacrifices, they perform according to their direction. Such great testimony do the cities bear them on account of their constant practice of virtue, both in the actions of their lives, and in their conversation.
But the doctrine of the Sadducees is that souls die with the bodies; nor do they pretend to regard anything but what the law enjoins on them; for they think it virtue to dispute with the teachers of the philosophy which they follow, and their views are received by only a few, but those are of the highest rank. But they are able to do hardly anything so to speak, for when they become magistrates, as they are unwillingly and by force sometimes obliged to do, they addict themselves to the notions of the Pharisees, because the people would not otherwise put up with them. (280)
The reference here to one portion of human 'souls' as being detained because of vicious living in an "everlasting prison," which could be better translated as aeon-long punitional purgation, is the same thought that is found in all other countries of ancient times dealing with souls addicted to vice; whereas the reference to the former class of souls, those living virtuously, is that they will have "power to live again," which is the doctrine of Reimbodiment, here but briefly stated. Josephus states it more clearly elsewhere as will be shown:
As to the two other sects first mentioned, the Pharisees are esteemed most skilful in the exact interpretation of their laws, and are the first sect. They ascribe all things to fate and God, and yet allow that to do what is right or the contrary is principally in men's own power, although fate co-operates in every action. They think also that all souls are immortal, but that the souls of good men only are removed into other bodies, while the souls of bad men are punished with eternal punishment. But the Sadducees, the second sect, take away fate entirely, and suppose that God is not the cause of our doing or not doing what is bad, and they say that to do what is good or bad lies in men's own choice, and that the one or the other so belongs to every one, that they may act as they please. They also take away belief in the immortality of the soul, and in punishments and rewards in Hades. Moreover, the Pharisees are friendly to one another, and cultivate concord for the general utility, but the behaviour of the Sadducees to one another is rather rude, and their intercourse with those of their own party is as bearish as if they were strangers to them. (281)
And finally, in the address by Josephus to the mutinous soldiers under his command during their fighting against the Roman troops under Vespasian, when they were contemplating suicide both for himself and themselves as preferable to surrendering to the Roman arms, he said:
"What are we afraid of that we will not go up to the Romans? Is it death? If so, shall we inflict on ourselves for certain what we are afraid of, when we but suspect our enemies will inflict it on us? But some one will say that we fear slavery. Are we then altogether free at present? It may also be said that it is a manly act to kill oneself. No, certainly, but a most unmanly one. . . . Indeed suicide is unknown to the common nature of all animals, and is impiety to God our Creator. For no animal dies by its own contrivance, or by its own means. For the desire of life is a strong law of nature with all. . . . And do you not think that God is very angry when a man despises what he has bestowed on him? For it is from him that we have received our being, and we ought to leave it to his disposal to take that being away from us. The bodies of all men are indeed mortal, and created out of corruptible matter; but the soul is ever immortal, and is a part of God that inhabits our bodies. Besides, if any one destroys or misuses deposit he has received from a mere man, he is esteemed a wicked and perfidious person; and if any one cast out of his own body the deposit of God, can we imagine that he who is thereby affronted does not know of it? . . . Do not you know that those who depart out of this life according to the law of nature, and pay the debt which was received from God, when he that lent it us is pleased to require it back again, enjoy eternal fame; that their houses and posterity are sure, and that their souls are pure and obedient, and obtain the most holy place in heaven, from whence, in the revolution of ages, they are again sent into pure bodies; while the souls of those whose hands have acted madly against themselves, are received in the darkest place in Hades, and God, who is their father, punishes those that offend against either soul or body in their posterity." (282)
The evidential force of the above citation will be at once seen because of the natural and easy manner in which the reference to the particular kind of metempsychosal reincarnation that Josephus had in mind is introduced into the flow of his narrative. There is here no argument about a doctrine which the orator lugs awkwardly into his discourse as being something foreign and new, in other words, a religious and philosophical novelty, to his hearers; but in each case the reference to the assumption of new bodies is made as being commonplace to his hearers or to his readers, and hence as being part of the psychology in which they lived. It is obvious that had the doctrines been unknown, or unorthodox, or outlandish and strange, they would not have been introduced at all, because weakening to his argument.
Philo Judaeus, or Philo the Jew, the great Platonizing Jewish philosopher, whose writings exercised a tremendous influence in their way over not only contemporary and later Jewish thought, but likewise on the beginnings of the Christian theology and therefore on the minds of many of the Church-Fathers, on a number of occasions speaks very strongly in favor of that particular form of metempsychosal Reincarnation which had the greatest philosophical and religious appeal to himself, and which actually had close links of similarity with parallel ideas held by Plato, his great Greek predecessor, and, in fact, his philosophical model and pattern.
Philo, who lived during the first century of the Christian Era, was an Alexandrian by birth, and of course was very largely affected by the syncretistic spirit of Alexandrian philosophy and metaphysic, which spirit was so noticeable even during his time. The entire purpose of Philo's writings was to show the common grounds of mystical and theological thinking that, according to him, existed between the Platonic doctrines and the sacred books of the Jews. It has been commonly said of him by modern scholars that he held the idea that Plato Mosaicized -- i. e., that the great Greek drew the bulk and possibly the substance of his ideas from the Hebrew law-giver, Moses; although one could argue with equal grounds of likelihood, and indeed with far stronger logic of probability, that Philo in his own heart believed that there existed a common archaic Wisdom-Religion of mankind, of which both Moses and Plato were more or less perfect -- or imperfect -- exponents and teachers, each in his own way; and that in Philo's own opinion and in his desire to bring the Jewish sacred writings to the favorable attention of the Greeks, he devoted himself to proving, as best he could, the similarities or identities which he found in the writings of both Plato and Moses.
Philo's argument of course is, more or less, that the Logos or Divine Spirit, working in and through humanity, infused common ideas into human minds irrespective of race or time-period; and also he seems to argue in places that such great men as Plato, and, generally speaking, those who promulgated 'the wisdom of the Greeks,' derived what natural truth they possessed from inspiration having its origin in the Jewish scriptures. This idea is of course preposterous, and, as above stated, it was an attitude probably adopted by the great Jewish Platonizing philosopher in order to render his literary work in this case more acceptable to men of his own race and religion.
He argued the theme with undoubted ability, and actually succeeded in proving to any impartial and thoughtful mind that in all probability the Jews derived their 'wisdom' from the same archaic Source, the Esoteric Tradition, or the Esoteric Philosophy, from which the other nations surrounding the Jewish people likewise drew their early religious and philosophical and mystical inspiration, such as the great Greek philosophers of different periods, and the Egyptians, and the peoples of the basins of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers -- not to mention here more precisely, although the point is pregnant with truth, the great philosophical peoples in the Far East; for it is almost a certainty that the influence exerted by Hindu thought had been operative on the peoples to the west of the great Hindu peninsula for ages, and that Indian thought had been percolating into and slowly permeating Mesopotamian and Syrian as well as Egyptian and Greek speculations for an equal length of time. This Indian influence became both strong and to the modern scholar clearly perceptible during the time when Philo lived, and probably had been silently at work for centuries before. Alexandria was a real metaphysical alembic of religious and philosophical ideas, and no competent scholar today doubts that Oriental influence, whether of Brahmanic or Buddhistic character, and probably both, colored Alexandrian thought in no small degree.
In fact, whatever Philo's real objective may have been, he succeeded in proving rather that the same essential, fundamental, Universal System was at the foundation of Judaism even as it was the Root of all other ancient religious and philosophic systems, than that other peoples, such as the philosophical Greeks, in the persons of their greatest philosophers, as for instance Plato, had drawn their inspiration from the philosophically weak and mystically intricate Books of 'Moses.' In any case, the great Alexandrian Jewish philosopher, who really was a Platonizing Hebrew, left to posterity some admirable mystical and philosophical writings which are also invaluable in places for the quotations that he has made from faiths other than his own natal belief.
Philo, in setting forth his own particular form of the teaching of metempsychosal Reincarnation which he favored, does so in very clear words; and they are interesting, outside of their corroborative value to the present historical review, in that they show the wide extent in which the General Doctrine of Reimbodiment, in one form or another, was held in his own period. He speaks of the various kinds of 'souls' which infill the universe, and of the celestial bodies as being animate entities, quite in common with the general teaching of antiquity, a doctrine which likewise was accepted by many if not most of the early Christians as is evidenced by the writings of Clement of Alexandria and of Origen.
In his tractate, On the Doctrine that Dreams are Sent from God, Philo quotes the passage in Genesis (283) in which is mentioned the cosmic Ladder of Life reaching from earth to heaven, and of the angels of God ascending and descending along it, and comments upon the matter as follows:
By the ladder in this thing, which is called the world, is figuratively understood the air, the foundation of which is the earth, and the head is the heaven; for the large interior space, which being extended in every direction, reaches from the orb of the moon, which is described as the most remote of the order in heaven, but the nearest to us by those who contemplate sublime objects, down to the earth, which is the lowest of such bodies, is the air. The air is the abode of incorporeal souls, since it seemed good to the Creator of the universe to fill all the parts of the world with living creatures. On this account he prepared the terrestrial animals for the earth, the aquatic animals for the sea and for the rivers, and the stars for the heaven; for every one of these bodies is not merely a living animal, but is also properly described as the very purest and most universal mind extending through the universe; so that there are living creatures in that other section of the universe, the air.
. . . For not only is it not alone deserted by all things besides, but rather, like a populous city, it is full of imperishable and immortal citizens, souls equal in number to the stars.
Now of these souls some descend upon the earth with a view to being bound up in mortal bodies, those namely which are most nearly connected with the earth, and which are lovers of the body. But some soar upwards, being again distinguished according to the definitions and times which have been appointed by nature. Of these, those which are influenced by a desire for mortal life, and which have been familiarised to it, again return to it. But others, condemning the body of great folly and trifling, have pronounced it a prison and a grave, and, flying from it as from a house of correction or a tomb, have raised themselves aloft on light wings towards the aether, and have devoted their whole lives to sublime speculations. . . .
Very admirably therefore does Moses represent the air under the figurative symbol of a ladder, as planted solidly in the earth and reaching up to heaven. (284)
Again, and now more particularly with reference to Philo's ideas concerning the celestial bodies as being animate entities, or celestial souls:
Those beings, whom other philosophers call demons [i. e., daemones], Moses usually calls angels; and they are souls hovering in the air. And let no one suppose, that what is here stated is a fable, for it is necessarily true that the universe must be filled with living things in all its parts, since every one of its primary and elementary portions contains its appropriate animals and such as are consistent with its nature; . . . and the heaven containing the stars; for these also are entire souls pervading the universe, being unadulterated and divine, inasmuch as they move in a circle, which is the kind of motion most akin to the mind, for every one of them is the parent mind. (285)
Similarly, in his Tractate entitled About the Planting of Noah:
For those who have studied philosophy pronounce the stars also to be animals [i. e., 'animals' in the sense of being living or animate beings], being endowed with intellect and pervading the whole universe; some being planets, and moving by their own intrinsic nature; and others, that is the fixed stars, being borne along with the revolutions of the universe; so that they likewise appear to change their places. (286)
There are a number of other passages in the voluminous writings of Philo Judaeus, who, by the way, was a contemporary of Josephus, the Jewish historian, which have pertinent and direct reference to the General Doctrine of Reimbodiment, which Philo naturally understands, and therefore writes of, according to his own particular form of metempsychosal Reincarnation. We have here, just as it was seen to be the case in the extracts taken from Josephus, the same atmosphere of familiarity with the doctrine of Reimbodiment which called for no particular elucidation or elaboration, but which is mentioned in his different writings as being a teaching familiar to his readers, and therefore requiring on his part no especial explanatory comments. This fact is indeed highly significant.
FOOTNOTES:
267. The Psychozoia is the first Book or Poem in a series of four poems, the entire volume being entitled Platonica, or A Platonical Song of the Soul. (return to text)
268. What Origen and others had to say about Pre-existence, will be found briefly stated in later pages of the present or succeeding chapter of this work. (return to text)
268a. Masnavi-i-Maulana. (return to text)
269. Taoism is, by the way, one of the noblest and most mystical faiths that the Asiatic mind has ever given birth to: genuine Taoism, that is. A proper understanding of Taoism is a very rare thing, because most Occidental students, at least as a rule, take all that they study or hear of in the matter of religious and philosophical beliefs very literally. All old faiths have been subject to decay and more or less of degeneration as the ages passed, and Taoism in common with other faiths is no exception to this universal but melancholy rule. (return to text)
270. Bk. VI, vv. 724 et seq. (return to text)
271. Vol. XIII, p. 382 (eleventh edition). (return to text)
272. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, edited by the late Sir William Smith, LL. D.; Vol. II, p. 433. (return to text)
273. The word which Herodotus here uses in his original Greek is zoon, which word, precisely like its equivalent Latin term, animal, can signify 'living being' or 'beast,' and the latter because the beast is a living being. So is a man a living being; but because of the human being's possessing his spiritual and intellectual faculties and attributes, and as these take such eminent precedence over the mere vitality or animality of his body, the term, zoon, in Greek, or animal in Latin, was rarely if ever used for human beings. It was, however, constantly used in a mystical sense to signify animate beings of any kind, high or low, when the emphasis was placed upon the body-side of being. Thus in the Circle of the Zodiac the various Signs or Houses or Mansions thereof were called zoa, i. e., living beings, quite in accordance with the mystical Greek idea that the celestial bodies were 'animals,' 'living beings,' but in their case, ensouled or inspirited by divinities.
One cannot avoid calling attention to this matter, however briefly, because of the persistent translating of this term, zoon, in the Greek, or equivalently animal of the Latin, as 'beast' or 'animal' in the modern European sense; and this translation because it often misses the actual mystical intent of the original Greek or Latin writer can amount to an actual mistranslation of the original sense. (return to text)
274. Bk. XI, 'Euterpe,' 123. (return to text)
275. See infra, chapter xxxii, 'Pneumatology and Psychology.' (return to text)
276. Isaiah, xviii, 1. (return to text)
277. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. XVIII, p. 259 (eleventh edition). (return to text)
278. In view of the fact of the immense influence that the general Doctrine of Reimbodiment exercised not only upon the Jews, by reason of its universal acceptance by the Pharisees, but also because of the powerful molding of the earliest Christian thought by the doctrine, as shown in the writings of Origen and Clement of Alexandria, and by the Synods and Councils in which the doctrine in its Origenistic form was condemned: it has been thought of no small interest and value to make a number of rather lengthy citations from both the Jewish and early Christian Patristic literatures, illustrating the statement here made. These citations will be found in later pages of the present chapter and the succeeding one. (return to text)
279. Josephus is known to historians as Flavius Josephus, adopting the name Flavius from the emperor Vespasian whose favor he had won. Josephus was born at Jerusalem in the year 37 of the Christian Era. He was of princely Jewish origin on his mother's side, and from his father, Matthias, he had inherited the priestly office and function at Jerusalem. He became involved in the struggles of the Jews against the Roman power, and was one of the generals of the Jews and saw service against the invading Roman arms. His life was spared by Vespasian and he won the favor of the great Roman Emperor. Josephus died in 98. He wrote a number of books of which the two most important are The Jewish War, and The Antiquities of the Jews, which furnish two of the most important sources from which modern historians draw information of the time in which Josephus lived. That his books contain interpolations is true. (return to text)
280. The Antiquities of the Jews; Whiston's translation; revised by A. R. Shilleto; Bk. XVIII, ch. i, pars. 3 and 4. (return to text)
281. The Jewish War, Bk. II, ch. viii, par. 14. (return to text)
282. The Jewish War, Bk, III, ch. viii, par. 5. (return to text)
283. Genesis, xxviii, 12. (return to text)
284. The Works of Philo Judaeus, Vol. II, 'On the Doctrine that Dreams are sent from God,' Bk. I, sec. XXII. The quotations from Philo contained in the present chapter are from the translation by C. D. Yonge, made from the original Greek. (return to text)
285. Op. cit., 'On the Giants,' Vol. I, sec. II. (return to text)
286. Op. cit., Vol. I, sec. III. (return to text)