Metempsychosis

The earliest Greek thinker with whom metempsychosis is connected is Pherecydes of Syros ; [8] but Pythagoras , who is said to have been his pupil, is its first famous philosophic exponent. Pythagoras is not believed to have invented the doctrine or to have imported it from Egypt. Instead he made his reputation by bringing the Orphic doctrine from North-Eastern Hellas to Magna Graecia, and creating societies for its diffusion. The real weight and importance of metempsychosis in Western tradition is due to its adoption by Plato. After death, he said, he went with others to the place of Judgment and saw the souls returning from heaven, and proceeded with them to a place where they chose new lives, human and animal.

He saw the soul of Orpheus changing into a swan, Thamyras becoming a nightingale, musical birds choosing to be men, the soul of Atalanta choosing the honours of an athlete. Men were seen passing into animals and wild and tame animals changing into each other. After their choice the souls drank of Lethe and then shot away like stars to their birth.

There are myths and theories to the same effect in other dialogues, the Phaedrus , Meno , Phaedo , Timaeus and Laws. Marsilio Ficino Platonic Theology In later Greek literature the doctrine appears from time to time; it is mentioned in a fragment of Menander the Inspired Woman and satirized by Lucian Gallus 18 seq. In Roman literature it is found as early as Ennius , [10] who in his Calabrian home must have been familiar with the Greek teachings which had descended to his times from the cities of Magna Graecia.

In a lost passage of his Annals, a Roman history in verse, Ennius told how he had seen Homer in a dream, who had assured him that the same soul which had animated both the poets had once belonged to a peacock. Persius in one of his satires vi. Virgil works the idea into his account of the Underworld in the sixth book of the Aeneid vv. It persists in antiquity down to the latest classic thinkers, Plotinus and the other Neoplatonists.

Metempsychosis was a part of the Neo- Manichaen dogma of the Albigenses around France in the 12th century. Please tell us where you read or heard it including the quote, if possible. Test Your Knowledge - and learn some interesting things along the way. Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

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Metempsychosis

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Identify the word pairs with a common ancestor. India The doctrine of transmigration is not found in the oldest of the sacred books of India , viz. At the same time, transmigrations are determined by moral worth. Every act has its award in some future life. By irreversible law, evil deeds beget unhappiness, sooner or later; these, indeed, are nothing else but the slowly-ripened fruit of conduct, which every man must eat.

Thus they explain the anomalies of experience presented in the misfortunes of the good and the prosperity of the wicked: Such a belief may tend to patience and resignation in present suffering, but it has a distinctly unpleasant effect upon the Brahmanical out-look on the future. A pious Brahman cannot assure himself of happiness in his next incarnation; there may be the penalty of great unknown sin still to be faced. Beatitude is union with Brahma and emancipation from the series of births, but no degree of actual holiness can guarantee this, since one is always exposed to the danger of being thrown back either by sin past or sin to come, the fruit of which will have to be eaten, and so on, we might be tempted to imagine, ad infinitum.

Hence a great fear of re-incarnation prevails. Buddhism , on the contrary, cuts through caste-divisions and asserts the paramount importance of "works", of individual effort, though always with a background of fatalism which the denial of a personal Providence entails. According to the Buddhist doctrine , the ambition to rise to the summit of existence must infallibly be fulfilled; and the mission of Gautama was to teach the way to its attainment, i. It is only through a long series of existences that this consummation can be reached. Gautama himself had as many as five hundred and fifty transmigrations in various forms of life.

The characteristic feature in Buddhistic metempsychosis is the doctrine of Karma , which is a subtle substitute for the conception of personal continuity. According to this view it is not the concrete individuality of the soul that survives, and migrates into a new life, but only the karma , or action, i. As the karma is greater or less, so will the next transmigration be a promotion or a degradation.

At times the degradation may be so extreme that karma is embodied in an inanimate form, as in the case of Gautama's disciple who, for negligence in his master's service, was reduced after death to the form of a broomstick. Later Jewish teaching The notion of soul-wandering is familiar to the Jewish Rabbins.

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They distinguish two kinds of transmigrations, Gilgul Neshameth , in which the soul was tied down to a life-tenancy of a single body: Ibbur , in which souls may inhabit bodies by temporary possession without passing through birth and death. Josephus tells us that transmigration was a doctrine of the Pharisees , who taught that the righteous should be allowed to return to life, while the wicked were to be doomed to eternal imprisonment. It was their gloomy conception of Sheol , like the gloomy Greek conception of Hades, that forced them to this shift for a compensation to virtue.

On the other hand, some of the Talmudists invoke endless transmigration as a penalty for crime. The descriptions of the soul's journeys over land and sea are elaborated with a wealth of imagination , frequently verging on the grotesque.

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The retributive purpose was rigorously maintained. The following is a sample of what awaits the "guiltiest of the guilty". Thus, the tormented fly in terror, and the tormentors follow in vengeance until the time decreed is done. Then the doomed sink into dust and ashes. Another beginning of existence, the commencement of a second trial, awaits them. They become clay, they take the nature of the stone and the mineral; they are water, fire, air; they roll in the thunder; they float in the cloud; they rush in the whirlwind.

They change again; they enter into the shapes of the vegetable tribes; they live in the shrub, the flower, the tree. Ages on ages pass. They enter into the shape of the beast, the bird, the fish, the insect. Then at last they are suffered to enter into the rank of human beings once more.

If in this state it should fall again, it is lost eternally.

How far these and such like descriptions were really believed, how far they were conscious fable, is difficult to determine. That there was a fairly widespread belief in the doctrine of pre-existence in some form, seems likely enough.

metempsychosis | Definition of metempsychosis in English by Oxford Dictionaries

Jerome tells us that metempsychosis was a secret doctrine of certain sectaries in his day, but it was too evidently opposed to the Catholic doctrine of Redemption ever to obtain a settled footing. It was held, however, in a Platonic form by the Gnostics , and was so taught by Origen in his great work, Peri archon. Bodily existence, according to Origen , is a penal and unnatural condition, a punishment for sin committed in a previous state of bliss, the grossness of the sin being the measure of the fall. Another effect of that sin is inequality; all were created equal.