Transmigration

even before the final dissolution of the human body of the moment of death there is incessant transmigration of the bodily atoms… That which is common to the human and to the sub-human worlds alike, namely, matter in its varied aspects as solids, liquids, and gases, eternally transmigrates.

Evans-Wentz argues that transmigration operates at both the material-atomic level and the consciousness level, using the esoteric Bardo doctrine to reframe the concept as a universal, continuous process rather than a discrete post-mortem event.

Evans-Wentz, W. Y., The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927thesis

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Souls: Transmigration of Souls — Greek names for, x,-84; Thracian belief in, 263 f.; Egyptian belief in, 346; Orphic, 337; 342 f.; 346 f.; Pythagorean, 375; xi, 50, 55; in Pindar, 415 f.; Empedokles, xi, 75… Plato, 467.

Rohde's index entry systematically maps transmigration across the full spectrum of Greek religious and philosophical traditions — Thracian, Egyptian, Orphic, Pythagorean, Pindaric, Empedoclean, and Platonic — establishing it as the central connective doctrine of Greek soul-belief.

Rohde, Erwin, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1894thesis

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The most famous of so-called 'Orphic' doctrines, the transmigration of souls, is not, as it happens, directly attested by anyone in the Classical Age… Pythagoras himself, as we have seen, had experienced transmigration.

Dodds challenges the easy attribution of transmigration solely to Orphism, arguing that Pythagorean and Orphic teachings were insufficiently distinguished, and that personal experiential authority — not scripture — grounded the doctrine's credibility.

E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, 1951thesis

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it continued its journey, perpetually alternating between an unfettered separate existence, and an ever-renewed incarnation — traversing the great 'Circle of Necessity' in which it becomes the life-companion of many bodies both of men and beasts.

Rohde presents the Orphic soul as condemned by the 'Circle of Necessity' to endless transmigration through human and animal bodies, framing the doctrine as a mythological eschatology with explicit moral and ritual implications.

Rohde, Erwin, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1894thesis

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one view he seems to have held is that the soul is immortal. It dwells for a time in living creatures, endowing them with life. It experiences transmigration. Pythagoras probably adopted the second idea from traditions in the East, where he is said to have travelled.

Sullivan identifies the Pythagorean psyche as the primary vehicle for transmigration in Greek thought, noting that Pythagoras likely imported the concept from Eastern sources, and that this migrating soul was designated by a specific technical term.

Sullivan, Shirley Darcus, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995thesis

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it is possible that at the beginning he would not be sufficiently developed to carry on his life or his mind into larger life-worlds or mind-worlds and would be compelled to accept an immediate transmigration from one earthly body to another as his only present possibility of persistence.

Aurobindo situates transmigration within a developmental ontology: it is not a permanent metaphysical fate but a provisional stage imposed on souls insufficiently evolved for passage into higher planes, positioning it as a rung in spiritual progression.

Aurobindo, Sri, The Life Divine, 1939thesis

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Dr. Evans-Wentz raises again the debated question of the transmigration of human 'souls' into sub-human bodies… It seems to be an irrational, though it may be a popular, belief that a human 'soul' can permanently inhabit a sub-human body as its own. For the body cannot exist in such disagreement with its occupant.

The passage critically examines the orthodox doctrine of human souls transmigrating into animal bodies, arguing that the esoteric Buddhist position rejects literal downward transmigration as philosophically untenable.

Evans-Wentz, W. Y., The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927thesis

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it is this 'vital spirit', or animal soul, which alone is capable of transmigrating into sub-human forms, and not 'the reasonable soul', or super-animal principle.

Drawing on Manu's hierarchical soul-doctrine, Evans-Wentz distinguishes the transmigrating 'vital spirit' from the higher 'reasonable soul,' reinforcing the esoteric position that not all aspects of the human psyche are subject to downward reincarnation.

Evans-Wentz, W. Y., The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927supporting

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Pherekydes was regarded as 'the first' who taught the immortality of the soul… or more correctly metempsychosis… the old theologos into the teacher of Pythagoras, the chief spokesman of the doctrine of the soul's transmigrations.

Rohde traces the historical genealogy of transmigration doctrine to Pherekydes as its putative originator, noting the consequent tradition that linked him to Pythagoras as the doctrine's primary philosophical advocate.

Rohde, Erwin, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1894supporting

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a soul that has been sullied by bloodshed or treachery 'wanders from the blessed ones for three times countless years, being born throughout the time as all kinds of mortal forms.'

Vernant documents Empedocles' transmigration doctrine as a cosmic cycle of moral expiation, in which the polluted soul traverses all mortal forms before final reincarnation as a daemonic figure and ultimate escape from mortal destiny.

Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting

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The exoteric interpretation, namely that the human stream of consciousness… not only can, but very often does take re-embodiment in sub-human creatures immediately after having been in human form, is accepted universally by Buddhists, both of the Northern and Southern Schools.

Evans-Wentz distinguishes the exoteric orthodox Buddhist acceptance of sub-human transmigration from the esoteric yogic interpretation, identifying the former as based on scriptural authority rather than direct contemplative verification.

Evans-Wentz, W. Y., The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz Edition), 1927supporting

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abstinence from flesh-food or at least from the flesh of such animals as are not sacrificed to the Olympians (the ἀνθρώπου ψυχὴ does not enter into the θυσίμα ζῴα in transmigration).

Rohde links Pythagorean dietary prohibitions directly to the transmigration doctrine, demonstrating that abstinence from animal flesh was ritually grounded in the belief that human souls could migrate into sacrificial animals.

Rohde, Erwin, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1894supporting

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transmigration of souls, 243.

Kerényi's index cross-references transmigration of souls at the page treating the Titans' dismemberment of Dionysos, connecting the myth of divine dissolution and reconstitution to the broader Orphic-Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis.

Kerényi, Carl, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, 1976supporting

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transmigration of souls, 68.

Jung's index places transmigration of souls within an analytic-psychological framework alongside 'transcendent function' and 'transformation,' indicating that analytical psychology received the concept as a culturally significant symbol of psychic continuity.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1953supporting

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In Pindar, Ol. ii, and Phaedrus, 249A, the soul which has kept pure for three lives finally escapes from the wheel of reincarnation.

The Timaeus commentary situates Platonic transmigration within the Pindaric-Pythagorean tradition of cyclical purification, where the soul's moral progress across multiple incarnations determines its eventual liberation from the cycle of rebirth.

Plato, Plato's cosmology the Timaeus of Plato, 1997supporting

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the mythology of death and birth is of reincarnation. Reincarnation is the counterpart in the Orient of purgatory in the West. That is to say, it is a chance to live again, to live out the experiences that should have illuminated you.

Campbell frames transmigration/reincarnation as the Oriental structural equivalent of Christian purgatory, treating both as mythological expressions of a psychological necessity — the soul's continued opportunity for experiential development beyond a single life.

Campbell, Joseph, Transformations of Myth Through Time, 1990supporting

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Pythagoras… his previous births, 598 f.; descent to Hades, 600 f.

Rohde records the tradition of Pythagoras' personal memory of previous incarnations as biographical testimony to the living reality of the transmigration doctrine within its originating tradition.

Rohde, Erwin, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1894supporting

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Choice of their new state of life by the souls in the other world, Rp. 617 E ft.; Phdy. 249 B. The purpose of this arrangement is made clear by Rp. 617 E: αἰτία ἑλομένου· θεὸς ἀναίτιος.

Rohde documents Plato's mythological mechanism for transmigration — the soul's autonomous choice of its next life — as a theodicy that assigns full moral responsibility to the soul, removing divine causation from the cycle of rebirth.

Rohde, Erwin, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1894aside

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