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Metempsychosis (Greek: μετεμψύχωσις) is a philosophical term in the Greek language referring to transmigration of the soul, especially its reincarnation after death. It is a doctrine popular among a number of Eastern religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Druzism¹ wherein an individual incarnates from one body to another, either human, animal, or plant.² Generally the term is only used within the context of Greek Philosophy, but has also been used by modern philosophers such as Schopenhauer³ and Kurt Gödel⁴; otherwise, the term "transmigration" is more appropriate. The word also plays a prominent role in James Joyce's Ulysses, and is associated also with Nietzsche.⁵. The term of metempsychosis has also been used by a spiritual teacher named Tathagata in answer to a member's question⁶ about Enlightenment. Another term sometimes used synonymously is Palingenesia.

Europe before the pre-Socratic philosophers

It is unclear how the doctrine of metempsychosis arose in Greece. It is easiest to assume that earlier ideas which had never been extinguished were utilized for religious and philosophic purposes. The Orphic religion, which held it, first appeared in Thrace upon the semi-barbarous north-eastern frontier. Orpheus, its legendary founder, is said to have taught that soul and body are united by a compact unequally binding on either; the soul is divine, immortal and aspires to freedom, while the body holds it in fetters as a prisoner. Death dissolves this compact, but only to re-imprison the liberated soul after a short time: for the wheel of birth revolves inexorably. Thus the soul continues its journey, alternating between a separate unrestrained existence and fresh reincarnation, round the wide circle of necessity, as the companion of many bodies of men and animals." To these unfortunate prisoners Orpheus proclaims the message of liberation, that they stand in need of the grace of redeeming gods and of Dionysus in particular, and calls them to turn to God by ascetic piety of life and self-purification: the purer their lives the higher will be their next reincarnation, until the soul has completed the spiral ascent of destiny to live for ever as God from whom it comes. Such was the teaching of Orphism which appeared in Greece about the 6th century BC, organized itself into private and public mysteries at Eleusis and elsewhere, and produced a copious literature^{citation needed}.

The druids of Gaul, Britain and Ireland are recorded by Caesar to have had metempsychosis as one of their core doctrines (but little is known about the druids, who have become something of a blank slate upon which many enthusiastic pictures are drawn).

In Greek philosophy

The earliest Greek thinker with whom metempsychosis is connected is Pherecydes of Syros⁷; but Pythagoras, who is said to have been his pupil, is its first famous philosophic exponent. Pythagoras probably neither invented the doctrine nor imported it from Egypt, but made his reputation by bringing Orphic doctrine from North-Eastern Hellas to Magna Graecia and by instituting societies for its diffusion.

The real weight and importance of metempsychosis in Western tradition is due to its adoption by Plato^{citation needed}. Had he not embodied it in some of his greatest works it would be merely a matter of curious investigation for the Western anthropologist and student of folk-lore. In the eschatological myth which closes the Republic he tells the story how Er, the son of Armenius, miraculously returned to life on the twelfth day after death and recounted the secrets of the other world. 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.^{citation needed} In Plato's view the number of souls was fixed; birth therefore is never the creation of a soul, but only a transmigration from one body to another.⁸ Plato's acceptance of the doctrine is characteristic of his sympathy with popular beliefs and desire to incorporate them in a purified form into his system.^{citation needed} Aristotle, a far less emotional and sympathetic mind, has a doctrine of immortality totally inconsistent with it.^{citation needed}

The extent of Plato's belief in metempsychosis has been debated by some scholars in modern times. Marsilio Ficino (Platonic Theology 17.3-4), for one, argued that Plato's references to metempsychosis were intended allegorically.

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, 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.^{citation needed} 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. 9) laughs at Ennius for this: it is referred to also by Lucretius (i. 124) and by Horace (Epist. II. i. 52). Virgil works the idea into his account of the Underworld in the sixth book of the Aeneid (vv. 724 sqq.). It persists in antiquity down to the latest classic thinkers, Plotinus and the other Neoplatonists.

In literature after the Classical Era

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Metempsychosis is mentioned in Christopher Marlowe's The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1592). Anguished that his soul will be damned in hell forever, he prays for metempsychosis to be true so that his soul will be free.

"Metempsychosis" is the title of a longer work by the metaphysical poet John Donne, written in 1601. The poem, also known as the Infinitati Sacrum, consists of two parts, the "Epistle" and "The Progress of the Soule". In the first line of the latter part, Donne writes that he "sing[s] of the progresse of a deathlesse soule".

The English lawyer, writer and amateur alchemist Whitelocke Bulstrode gave the title Metempsychosis to the 1725 Latin translation of his An Essay on Transmigration.

In the Marquis de Sade's Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795), a character explains the idea as fact and as a rationale for the decriminalization of murder.

Metempsychosis is mentioned in Washington Irving's 1819 short story, The Art of Book-Making in the anthology, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. Irving uses the term to describe the way in which modern writers pilfer the works of older, deceased authors. "Many of their works, also, undergo a kind of metempsychosis, and spring up under new forms."

Metempsychosis is mentioned and is a key plot device in Edgar Allan Poe's 1832 short story, "Metzengerstein." Poe returns to metempsychosis again in "Morella" (1835) and "The Oval Portrait" (1842).

Metempsychosis is mentioned in chapter 98 of Moby Dick (1851) by Herman Melville. "Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild...".

Metempsychosis is referred to in Sabine Baring-Gould's The Book of Werewolves, (1865), discussing the transmigration of the soul from man into beast.

Also referred to in Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1877) when Darya Alexandrovna's beliefs are contrasted with the catholic views of her family and friends. "She had her own strange religion of metampsychosis, in which she firmly believed, caring little for the dogmas of the Church."⁹

The term is mentioned in the opening pages of Proust's Swann's Way (1913).

Metempsychosis is referred to and recurs as a theme in James Joyce's modernist novel, Ulysses (1920). ¹⁰ In Joycean fashion, the word famously appears, mispronounced by Molly Bloom, as "met him pike hoses." ¹¹

In the 1996 David Foster Wallace novel Infinite Jest, the mysterious Joelle Van Dyne broadcasts from the MIT college radio station under the on-air name "Madame Psychosis," a play on the term appropriate to the character, who is described as being two different people before and after a freak disfiguring accident (and recovery from cocaine addiction).

There is a poem in Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves (2000) entitled "Pelican's Juvenile Metempsychosis."

See also

• Zalmoxis
• Ya’furiyya Shia
• Gilgul

References

External links

• The Columbia Encyclopedia: Transmigration of souls or Metempsychosis
• The Catholic Encyclopedia: Metempsychosis
• Jewish view of reincarnation
• Did Plato Believe in Reincarnation?