"Renaissance and Rebirth: Reincarnation in early modern Italian kabbalah" (Hutton & Reincarnation, Part Four)

0.
"The interest of English-speaking intellectuals in reincarnation, however, was supercharged in the 1880s by the Theosophical movement led by Madame Blavatsky. Drawing directly on Hindu and Buddhist thought, once more, it made the doctrine both widely known and fashionable in the West, as it has been ever since."
[From 'Dion Fortune and Wicca', a talk presented by Ronald Hutton at the 2009 Dion Fortune Seminar]

"The ideas of theosophy filtered through to large numbers of people who never joined the Society, encouraging them to seek an alternative from the apparent bonds of both traditional Christianity and of the new science in syncretic faiths and heterodox reinterpretations of Christ's teachings, often infusing concepts taken from classical paganism. Indian ideas, however, remained a much greater source of inspiration. The two biggest achievements of Blavatsky's movement were probably to make the notions of a single divine world soul, of which all life is a part, and of reincarnation, both widely known and widely held in the modern European and American worlds."
[Triumph of the Moon, Ronald Hutton, p. 20]


1.
"Indeed, metempsychosis stood as a salient element in the Renaissance conceptualization of the human being, the universe, and the former's place in regard to the latter. Under the rubric of this doctrine, which is known in variant forms with diverse subtleties of meaning by the English terms palingenesis, the transmigration of souls, rebirth, and reincarnation, and which is associated with the Hebrew locutions gilgul neshamot, ha'atakah, 'ibbur, din b'nei halof, and sod ha-shelach, stand concepts and theories as diverse as its names ....

"This present study will focus on eight significant fifteenth century thinkers who discussed the idea of metempsychosis from with Jewish and humanist contexts. The first two scholars to be treated, Rabbi Michael ha-Cohen Balbo and Rabbi Moshe ha-Cohen Ashkenazi, were Jewish communal leaders at the ends of two opposing philosophical camps in the community of Candia on the Venetian controlled island of Crete ....

"The next two thinkers to be treated in this study, Rabbi Isaac Abarbanel and Rabbi Judah Hayyat, were prominent Spanish Jewish thinkers who both made their way to Italy after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 .... The next two thinkers who will be examined, Rabbi Elia Hayyim ben Binyamin of Genazzano and Rabbi Yohanan Alemanno, were born in Italy and were active in Tuscany ....

"The final two thinkers to be analyzed in this book were prominent Christian philosophers of the Italian Renaissance who fell under the influence of kabbalistic lore. Giovanni Pico dello Mirandola and Marsilio Ficino were two of the most influential and important Italian humanist philosophers of the fifteenth century, and an analysis of their thought concerning metempsychosis will help us to moor the idea in the wider cultural and philosophical context of the Italian Renaissance. Indeed, both Pico and Ficino discussed the idea at some length within their writings, and both seem to have lent it a degree of support. Nevertheless, the idea was in opposition to the standard sentiments of the Church, and both thinkers veiled their support of the doctrine of metempsychosis is allegory. Interestingly, Pico, who is widely known for his familiarity with kabbalistic lore, completely omits kabbalistic reference to metempsychosis and relies most heavily on Plotinus in the formulation of his own theories. In contradistinction, Ficino, who is not known for his reliance on kabbalah, invokes the kabbalistic tradition in regard to metempsychosis, oftentimes at points that go beyond mere allegory and venture into questions of veridicality ...."
[Renaissance and rebirth: reincarnation in early modern Italian kabbalah by Brian Ogren, Brill, 2009, pp. 2-5]


2.
"After the Bahir normalized the concept of transmigration within Judaism and gave it credence by reading it into canonical texts, later generations of Jewish thinkers followed suit. In a standard interpretive process of arcanization, these thinkers read the enigmatic doctrine of metempsychosis back in to the classical canon of Judaism, including the bible itself. Through this process, thinkers would interpret biblical and other canonical texts as though they contained within themselves the secret doctrine of transmigration, seeking legitimacy for the doctrine from these very texts themselves .... In the original kabbalistic thought of Nahmanides [1194-1270], this idea was highly veiled, and in the words of Nahmanides himself, "The matter is a great secret from the secrets of the Torah concerning the generation of man, and it is seen by the eyes of those to whom God gave eyes to see." In other words, it is a secret tradition that explains the human generations throughout the ages, and it cannot readily be revealed, but is left up to the understanding of those who are capable of understanding on their own accord. Nahmanides also perceived the doctrine to be the key to the entire book of Job. Nevertheless, in this case too, according to Nahmanides, the matter is highly secretive, should not be expounded, and can only be understood by the select few.

"After the generation of Nahmanides, perhaps due to a desire to unravel the mystery of the secret that enticed by means of its very secrecy, the topic of metempsychosis became more open for discussion amongst kabbalistic thinkers. Among these thinkers, the thirteenth century Isaac of Acco, who sought to synthesize several mystical strands and elements including Sufism, ecstatic kabbalah and theosophical thought, discussed the idea of metempsychosis in his influential work Sefer Me'irat Einayim. Most of the sections of Me'irat Einayim dealing with transmigration are based upon, and attempt to decode the mysteries of Nahmanides. Indeed, in the very first place in which Isaac of Acco discusses the idea, in relation to the death of Abel in the book of Genesis, he directly quotes Nahmanides: "The received secret concerning the matter of Abel is very great." He proceeds, "Alas, I am properly writing a clear clarification for you, with the help of He who is good and who makes good; know that the secret of Abel is the secret of transmigration." In a motif that is later to become prominent with kabbalistic thought, Abel's is the first soul to be transmigrated, and eventually finds its way into the figure of Moses. Isaac of Acco expands upon the idea of metempsychosis in various other ways, and with this declaration and others, and this blatantly stated transmigrational reading of Nahmanides' secret, he opens up the way for further exploration and inquiry into the matter.

"Around 1275, the same period in which Isaac of Acco was active, the Zohar made its appearance onto the scene of Jewish thought in Castile, Spain. Later to become the central text of kabbalah, the Zohar is in actuality not a single book, but an entire body of literature. Within the specific portion of this corpus known as 'the body' of the Zohar, which is fundamentally a running mystical midrashic commentary on the weekly portions of the Torah, the discussion concerning metempsychosis takes its fullest form in the commentary on the Torah portion Mishpatim, known as Sava d'Mishpatim. This section of the Zohar contains the discourse of Rav Yeiva Sava, and unassuming old man who appears to be a lowly donkey driver, but who in reality is a remarkable mystic. Rav Yeiva gives a rather elaborate homily concerning the soul, in which the theory of metempsychosis is the most developed of the Zohar ...."

"The fourteenth century Italian kabbalist Menahem Recanati based himself heavily on Zoharic literature and profusely expounded upon the idea of metempsychosis on his own accord .... [Recanati] offers a type of summary of the idea as it appears within prior kabbalistic sources, basing himself mainly upon the Bahir and upon the Zohar; in regard to the latter, he basis himself especially, though not exclusively, upon the Midrash ha-Ne'elam l'Ruth. Recanati proved to have had a profound effect upon the subsequent course of Italian kabbalah, which relied heavily upon his theories and his citations of the Zohar. Indeed, his works were a main source of Zoharic literature for those within the Italian milieu. Recanati also influenced the likes of David ibn Avi Zimra concerning transmigration, a figure who was the purported teacher of Isaac Luria. Without a doubt, Recanati's reach was wide-ranging, both as a transmitter of previous texts and ideas and as an interpreter in his own right."
[Brian Ogren, ibid, pp. 15-18]


3.
"Fifteenth century Italy witnessed notable developments in notions of metempsychosis, partly due to a turn in philosophical psychology to more homocentric notions, partly due to an influx of texts, ideas and scholars and the meeting points of various cultures, and partly due to a struggle for the assertion of national and cultural identity. Many other factors were involved as well, such as the exotericization of previously esoteric modes of thought, and indeed, no single factor stands at the crux of the process of these developments. Rather, the picture remains as complex as the doctrine of metempsychosis itself. What is certain is that in the late fifteenth century Italy, the fluid doctrine of metempsychosis advanced to a position of theoretical prominence. Aided by the greater acceptance of both prior kabbalistic concepts and Neoplatonic thought, which were both esteemed elements of prisca theologia in Italian Renaissance Jewish and Christian camps alike, the doctrine of metempsychosis began to be taken very seriously, even by those outside of the strictly mystical camps. As such, by turning to this increasingly popular doctrine of individual continuity in all of its complexities, greater light can be shed upon the dynamics, complications and consequences of Italian Renaissance thought, both Jewish and Christian analogously, concerning the creation of man in the divine image and the resulting uniqeness of his distinctive soul."
[Brian Ogren, ibid, p. 39]


About Brian Ogren, author of Renaissance and Rebirth (from Brill website):
Brian Ogren, Ph.D. (2008) in Jewish Thought, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, teaches Jewish Thought and mysticism at the Hebrew University and at other institutions in Israel. He has published several articles on philosophy and Jewish Thought.

About the book Renaissance and Rebirth (also from Brill):
Metempsychosis was a prominent element in Renaissance conceptualizations of the human being, the universe, and the place of the human person in the universe. A variety of concepts emerged in debates about metempsychosis: human to human reincarnation, human to vegetal, human to animal, and human to angelic transmigration. As a complex and changing doctrine, metempsychosis gives us a well-placed window for viewing the complex and dynamic contours of Jewish thought in late fifteenth century Italy; as such, it enables us to evaluate Jewish thought in relation to non-Jewish Italian developments. This book addresses the problematic question of the roles and achievements of Jews who lived in Italy in the development of Renaissance culture in its Jewish and its Christian dimensions.


Ronald Hutton & Reincarnation:

1. Part One: Dion Fortune, Ronald Hutton, Wicca & Reincarnation
2. Part Two: Ronald Hutton, Tertullian, John Italos, Anna Comnena & Reincarnation
3. Part Three: Ronald Hutton, Reincarnation & the Renaissance
4. Part Four: "Renaissance & Rebirth: Reincarnation in early modern Italian kabbalah"
5. Part Five: Ronald Hutton,Vergil, Ovid & GradeSaver.Com
6. Part Six: Ronald Hutton, Voltaire, and Metempsychosis
7. Part Seven: Erotic Metempsychosis

Ronald Hutton, Reincarnation, and the Renaissance

0.
"As for reincarnation ... it is not a western idea at all, though some confusion has been created among English-reading occultists by the American mystic Edgar Cayce...."
[From "Dion Fortune and Wicca", a talk presented by Ronald Hutton to the 2009 Dion Fortune Seminar]


1.
"Defenders of Plato [during the Renaissance] maintained that Plato's belief in individual immortality and in the creation of the world by a divine Demiurge made his philosophy more easily reconciled with Christianity, but critics noted the difficulties posed by Plato's belief in the transmigration of souls and by the fact that the creation described in the Timaeus was not a creation ex nihilo but rather from preexisting matter."
[Natural Philosophy by Ann Blair, which is Chp. 17 of The Cambridge History of Science, Vol. 3 (2006). The quote is taken from p. 374. In this and all quotes below, emphasis in bold has been added.]


2.
"To counter such arguments [in favor of Platonism], the Byzantine scholar and fanatical Aristotelian, George of Trebizond, in 1458 wrote A Comparison of the Philosophers Aristotle and Plato .... The rise of Platonism, in George's view, was a greater threat to western civilization than the advance of the Turks, not least because Plato's philosophy, in striking contrast to Aristotle's, was completely incompatible with Christianity. Plato's doctrine of immortality, George contended, was undermined by his belief in the pre-existence and transmigration of souls; and in the Timaeus he did not describe a creation 'out of nothing', as in Christian theology, since it is clear that the 'receptacle' was already in being."
[The legacy of ancient philosophy by Jill Kraye, which is Chp. 12 in The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Philosophy (2003). The quote is from p. 333.]


3.
"The most renowned of the early [pre-Socratic] Greek philosophers, however, was Pythagoras ... In addition to the biography [of Pythagoras] in Diogenes Laertius, there were various works on Pythagoras by Iamblichus, which some humanists certainly read -- Ficino even made a Latin translation, though it never got into print ... and a Neo-Pythagorean treatise ascribed to Timaeus of Locri, the principle speaker in Plato's Timaeus, carried sufficient weight to accompany the dialogue in the Greek editions of Plato published in Aldus in 1513 and Estienne in 1578.

"It was this close connection between Pythagoreanism and Platonism, underscored in many Neoplatonic works, which gave Pythagoras a special significance for Renaissance Platonists from Ficino to Patrizi. Pythagoras, for them, was the philosopher who bequeathed to Plato the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, among the best advertisements for Christian Platonism -- though this did not prevent them from using him as a convenient fall guy for Plato's embarrassing belief in the transmigration of souls."
[Jill Kraye, ibid, pp. 341-342]


4.
"Plato's philosophy ... also contained elements profoundly troubling to the larger Christian culture of the early Renaissance. It is true that Plato had (arguably) held something like a Christian doctrine of creation, and he had undoubtedly believed in the immortality of the soul. But increassing familiarity with the dialogues would disclose other doctrines less easy to reconcile with orthodoxy. Though Plato had believed in immortality, he had also apparently believed in the preexistence and transmigration of souls. A determined Christianizer could, studying the account of creation in the Timaeus, identify the demiurge with Christ and the Forms with Ideas in the mind of God. But it was difficult to know what to do with the "receptacle", the chaotic matter which was explicitly stated (52D) to have existed from all eternity, in direct contradiction of the Christian ex nihilo."
[Plato in the Italian Renaissance, Vol. 1 by James Hankins, pp. 10-11]


5.
"This leads to the third group of charges against Plato: that his theological views were incompatible with Christian truth. The humanists, quoting a famous passage in Augustine's De civitate Dei, had argued that Plato's belief in individual immortality and creation made his theology closer to Christianity than Aristotle's. Plato's critics replied that, whatever his merits as a theologian, they were outweighed by his defects. They attacked his heterodox views on the pre-existence and transmigration of souls. They noted that, even if Plato had believed in creation, he had not believed in creation ex nihilo; in the Timaeus it seemed that the 'receptacle' (or 'prime matter', as it was called by Renaissance interpreters) was already in being at the moment of creation."
[Routledge encyclopedia of philosophy, entry for "Platonism, Renaissance", p. 442]


To the above I will just add three brief footnotes:

(1) One of the charges against John Italos that was not mentioned by Anna Comnena, was that Italos had rejected the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo in favor of the Pagan view that the material out of which the Cosmos is fashioned has existed for all eternity.

(2) In Witches, Druids and King Arthur, Ronald Hutton actually makes several references James Hankins' work on Platonism in the Renaissance.

(3) I apologize for the repetitive nature of these selections. The point, however, is to demonstrate that this stuff is not difficult to find, at least not so long as one actually looks for it.



Ronald Hutton & Reincarnation:

1. Part One: Dion Fortune, Ronald Hutton, Wicca & Reincarnation
2. Part Two: Ronald Hutton, Tertullian, John Italos, Anna Comnena & Reincarnation
3. Part Three: Ronald Hutton, Reincarnation & the Renaissance
4. Part Four: "Renaissance & Rebirth: Reincarnation in early modern Italian kabbalah"
5. Part Five: Ronald Hutton,Vergil, Ovid & GradeSaver.Com
6. Part Six: Ronald Hutton, Voltaire, and Metempsychosis
7. Part Seven: Erotic Metempsychosis

Abortion and mental health problems: No relationship. None. Zip. Nada.

AP science reporter Alicia Chang (SciWriAlicia on twitter) has penned an excellent write-up of a new Danish study that shows that: Abortion Doesn't Increase Mental Health Risk, But Having A Baby Does. (That's the headline of Chang's piece as it appears at the Huffington Post. The article was also carried by The Washington Post and many other media outlets.)

Results of the study have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, with Trine Munk-Olsen as the lead author. Here is a link: Induced First-Trimester Abortion and Risk of Mental Disorder. The full paper is available only to subscribers, but anyone can read the detailed summary that is provided for the general public.

Ronald Hutton, Tertullian, John Italos, Anna Comnena & the Transmigration of Souls (Hutton & Reincarnation, Part Two)

Tertullian Contra Pythagoras
Tertullian, in his De Anima, criticized the Pagan philosophical notion of "transmigration of souls" (for this is how the Greek metempsychosis is often rendered in English, while sometimes it is translated more prosaically as "reincarnation"). From Chapter XVIII of that work, "The Pythagorean Doctrine of Transmigration Sketched and Censured", through Chapter XXXV, "The Opinions of Carpocrates, Another Offset from the Pythagorean Dogmas, Stated and Confuted", Tertullian rails (Chapter XXXIII is even titled "The Judicial Retribution of These Migrations Refuted with Raillery"!) against the "inextricable embarrassment" of the "plainly false" notion "that Living Men are Formed from the Dead".

Along the way, Tertullian names, as advocates of "transmigration", in addition to Pythagoras: Plato, Albinus, Pherecydes, Empedocles, Hermes Trismegistus, Simon Magus, and Carpocrates. We could also add many more, such as Ovid, Vergil, Macrobius, Cicero, Plutarch, Salustius, Plotinus, Apuleius (or whoever was the author/translator of the Latin Aesclepius), and so forth.

But perhaps I've gotten ahead of myself. Since there are so many people who actually take Ronald Hutton seriously as an authority on Pagan history, I cannot necessarily assume that such people even know who Tertullian is. I suppose it is likely that they have heard the name "Tertullian" (just as Hutton has certainly heard the names Pythagoras, Plato, Ovid, etc), but it is unlikely (almost inconceivable) that they could have any idea of the man's place in history.

Tertullian has been referred to as "the father of Latin Christianity" (as he is called by Andrew J. Ekonomou in his Byzantine Rome and the Greek Popes on p. 22), and also as "the founder of Western theology" (as he is called by Justo L. González in his The Story of Christianity Volume I: The early church to the dawn of the Reformation on p. 77). His writings provide the first known use of the Latin theological term trinitas, and in addition he provides the oldest known attempt to "explain" trinitarianism. He also wrote of "original sin", although he died well over a century before Augustine was born. And it was Tertullian who first posed the rhetorical questions: "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? Or the Academy with the Church?"

For more on Tertullian see the two works just cited by Ekonomou and Gonzales; the online collection of his writings at The Tertullian Project; the 2005 biography, Tertullian by Geoffrey D. Dunn; the 2003 biography, Tertullian: The First Theologian of the West by Eric Osborn; and Tertullian and the Church by David Ivan Rankin.

Anna Comnena Contra John Italos
The above, on Tertullian, is all given, at risk of beating a dead horse, to re-emphasize what was already shown in the first post in this series (Dion Fortune, Ronald Hutton, Wicca, & Reincarnation): namely, that reincarnation has been well established as a "western" idea for as long as there has been such a thing as western civilization.

Before turning to the Renaissance (which is where Part Three of this series will take up), I will now pause briefly in the 11th century to examine the fascinating case of John Italos, who was Michael Psellos' handpicked successor as Scholarch of the Platonic school of philosophy in Constantinople. (This was a "school" in the old, Pagan, sense of haeresis, and it was newly founded by Psellos, who asserted that the study of philosophy had fallen into utter neglect, and that it was up to him, singlehandedly, to revive it).

Italos was a foreigner in Byzantium, for his name simply means "John the Italian". Anna Comnena ( Άννα Κομνηνή, 1083–1153) states, in her celebrated Alexiad, that "His accent was what one would expect from a Latin youth who had come to our country and studied Greek thoroughly but without mastering our idiom; sometimes he mutilated syllables. Neither his defective pronunciation nor the clipping of sounds escaped the notice of most people and the better educated accused him of vulgarity." [The Alexiad, 2003 Penguin edition, translation by E.R.A. Sewter, p. 177]

The princess also informs us that Italos "occupied the Chair of General Philosophy [the Chair created by his mentor, Psellos] and it was to his lectures that the young men flocked. He elucidated the works of Proclus and Plato, the teachings of the philosophers Porphyry and Iamblichus, and above all the technical treatises of Aristotle."

But Anna Comnena approved of the philosophy taught by Italos even less than his attempts at speaking the Hellenic language, and she says of his students, "they acquired no accurate systematic knowledge of any kind: they played the role of dialectician with chaotic changes and frenzied metaphors, but they had no sound understanding. They propounded their theories, even at that time putting forward their ideas on metempsychosis in rather veiled terms and on certain other matters of a similar nature and almost as monstrous." [p. 178]

How could it come to pass that such "monstrous" ideas were being circulated in the city of Constantine, the seat of power of the ruling Christian Emperor, Anna Comnena's own father, Alexios I Komnenos (Ἀλέξιος Α' Κομνηνός, 1056-118)? The princess informs us, since we ask, "These events, you see, all took place before my father was raised to supreme power." And Comnena wastes no time in reassuring us that His Daddiness promptly set about putting things in order, just as soon as he had the "Supreme Power" to do so: "Noting that Italos was everywhere causing trouble and leading many astray, he referred the man for preliminary examination to the Sebastocrator Isaac, who was himself a great savant with high ideals. Isaac, satisfied that Italos was indeed a trouble-maker, publicly refuted him at this inquiry and later, on instructions from his brother (the emperor), committed him to appear before an ecclesiastical tribunal." [p. 179]

While awaiting trial, Italos was held as prisoner under the personal supervision of Eustratios Garidas, then Patriarch of Constantinople, during which time Italos, according to Comnena, "almost made Garidas his own dedicated disciple"! Fortunately for Garidas' soul, a mob was raised to storm the church where Italos was being held prisoner (for what good is a Christian church that does not have a dungeon in the basement?). And fortunately for Italos' bodily safety, he was able to find his way to the church roof and hide himself "in some hole" before the mob got it's hands on him.

Having just barely escaped the Christian lynch mob, Italos (after being coaxed down from the roof) was told that all would be forgiven if he would only shave his head, crawl on his knees begging forgiveness, and recite, before the congregation of the great church, the anathema pronounced upon him. Which he agreed to do.

After performing this public penance, however, Italos seems to have continued, at least in private, to philosophize in the same old Pagan manner as before. Once this was discovered he was formally excommunicated and sentenced to life imprisonment. His life was spared (and his excommunication lifted) only because he once again recanted, and this time, apparently, with feeling. Anna Comnena herself, good Christian that she was, softens her heart at the end of this narrative, and approvingly tells us that on his second try at a second chance, Italos "did indeed change his ideas about dogma and repented of his former errors." There were eleven specific "errors" charged to Italos, but Comnena only mentions three, and the first of these is (1) "transmigration of souls", with the other two being (2) "ridicule of sacred images of the saints", and (3) views on Plato's "theory of ideas" that were not sufficiently orthodox.

John Italos' trial for heresy took place in 1082. Nothing is heard from of of him again. But the Platonic school founded by his mentor, Michael Psellos, continued on for almost another five centuries. The last head of the school was George Gemistos Plethon.

Conclusions
In closing, two things must be forcefully emphasized:

(1) The reliability, or, more precisely, the objectivity, of the accounts given by Tertullian and Anna Comnena regarding metempsychosis and those who advocated it is of no concern here. Rather it is the subjective aspect of what they have to say that matters. They are both witnesses to the fact that reincarnation was well known to them, and also to the fact that the connection of metempsychosis to classical Greek philosophy, and to Plato and Pythagoras in particular, was accepted as being as obvious as the observation that Greeks speak Greek.

(2) Neither Tertullian nor Comnena rejected metempsychosis due to any consideration of its "foreignness" or its "easternness". Indeed, neither showed any indication that they thought of metempsychosis as, in any sense, foreign or eastern or Asiatic or insufficiently European or anything of the sort. Rather, they both condemned the "monstrous" theory of reincarnation for only one reason: it is a Pagan idea.

[That rather fetching portrait of Anna Comnena is from the cover art of the book Anna of Byzantium, a novel by Tracy Barrett.]



Ronald Hutton & Reincarnation:

1. Part One: Dion Fortune, Ronald Hutton, Wicca & Reincarnation
2. Part Two: Ronald Hutton, Tertullian, John Italos, Anna Comnena & Reincarnation
3. Part Three: Ronald Hutton, Reincarnation & the Renaissance
4. Part Four: "Renaissance & Rebirth: Reincarnation in early modern Italian kabbalah"
5. Part Five: Ronald Hutton,Vergil, Ovid & GradeSaver.Com
6. Part Six: Ronald Hutton, Voltaire, and Metempsychosis
7. Part Seven: Erotic Metempsychosis

Dion Fortune, Ronald Hutton, Wicca, & Reincarnation

As part of the 2009 Dion Fortune Seminar Ronald Hutton gave a talk on the subject of "Dion Fortune and Wicca", during which he had this to say on the subject of reincarnation:

As for reincarnation, that also was a belief system old and familiar among the British by the time of Fortune and Gardner. It is not a Western idea at all, though confusion has been created among English-reading occultists by the American mystic Edgar Cayce, who declared that it was Christian doctrine until declared heresy by a sixth-century Council of Constantinople.

This is post-Christian special pleading: the doctrine condemned at Constantinople was that God created each individual soul in advance, at the beginning of time, which is not the same thing as reincarnation.

The concept of reincarnation comes from the East, being especially associated with Hindu and Buddhist thought. It reached Europe, like so much else, in the 18th century, and was especially influential in Britain because the British conquest of India, followed by Ceylon and Burma, opened a highway for it.

The first person to make it widely known among English and French intellectuals was Sir William Jones, who has already been mentioned as one of the earliest proponents of divine polarity as the basis of the cosmos.

Anyone with the slightest familiarity with classical philosophy knows that the concept of reincarnation (or, more precisely, metempsychosis) was attributed by the ancients to both Pythagoras and Socrates, and also that this idea figures quite prominently in the writings of Plato.

And anyone with even the most superficial acquaintance with classical literature knows that reincarnation is a crucial theme in Ovid's Metamorphoses. And since Chaucer references Ovid, by name, more often than any other author, even an education limited just to English literature would require one to be familiar with the most well known work of Publius Ovidius Naso and its general subject matter.

Therefore there is no justification for speaking of reincarnation as an idea "from the East, being especially associated with Hindu and Buddhist thought," and which only "reached Europe" in the 18th century due to the "conquest of India", without which conquest, we are left to believe, Europeans would have continued to be unaware of this concept supposedly so strange and utterly foreign to the western mind.

The writings of François Bernier (1625-1688) and Thomas Tryon (1634-1703) demonstrate that both men were familiar with the Pythagorean concept of reincarnation. We know this because they both explicitly rejected the idea of reincarnation, and in doing so they both mention both Pythagoreanism and India as sources of this idea.

Why did Bernier and Tryon feel the need to make it clear that they were not advocates of the idea of reincarnation? Because both were advocates of what came to be known as "the Pythagorean diet", that is, vegetarianism. Clearly, the association of Pythagoreanism with reincarnation was strong enough at the time that any flirtation with Pythagoreanism, even along purely "dietary" lines, was enough to arouse suspicion that one was advocating the Pagan idea of reincarnation. See Tristam Stuart's excellent The Bloodless Revolution for a discussion of Bernier and Tryon.

Apparently unaware of Bernier and Tryon, Hutton claims that Sir William Jones (1746-1794) was "[t]he first person to make [reincarnation] widely known among English and French intellectuals." First of all, as demonstrated by the cases of Bernier and Tryon, reincarnation was already known to European intellectuals a century before Jones, as was, moreover, the connection between reincarnation and classical Greek Paganism.

Second of all, Sir William Jones was himself also familiar with the parallels between the ideas of the ancient Pythagoreans and the ideas encountered among Hindus of his day, for, in his The Gentiles of Hindoustan (a letter he wrote in October of 1667 to Monsier Chapelain, and which is included in the 1996 Asian Educational Services edition of Jones' Travels in the Mogul Empire, AD 1656-1668), he states that "The Gentiles believe in a doctrine similar to that of the Pythagoreans with regard to the transmigration of souls, and hold it illegal to kill or eat any animal." See also Lynn Sharpe's, Secular Spirituality, her study of "reincarnation and spiritism in 19th century France", where she states that Sir William Jones had "linked Indic metempsychosis, Pythagorean metempsychosis, and Platonic myth." [p. 9]

Therefore, if Hutton were actually familiar with Sir William Jones' thoughts on reincarnation, he would know that Jones' writings disprove the contention that reincarnation is an "Eastern idea" that had to be imported to Europe from Asia. Indeed, Sir William Jones' writings prove beyond any doubt that 18th century Europeans who encountered the Hindu version of reincarnation immediately recognized it's similarity to Pythagoreanism.



Ronald Hutton & Reincarnation:

1. Part One: Dion Fortune, Ronald Hutton, Wicca & Reincarnation
2. Part Two: Ronald Hutton, Tertullian, John Italos, Anna Comnena & Reincarnation
3. Part Three: Ronald Hutton, Reincarnation & the Renaissance
4. Part Four: "Renaissance & Rebirth: Reincarnation in early modern Italian kabbalah"
5. Part Five: Ronald Hutton,Vergil, Ovid & GradeSaver.Com
6. Part Six: Ronald Hutton, Voltaire, and Metempsychosis
7. Part Seven: Erotic Metempsychosis

"Marriage and the growing use of X-Ray machines."

This is one of a collection of "cute antique Japanese post-cards" that you can see at pinktentacle.com (hat-tip to dangerousminds.net). I am still trying to figure out what the caption is supposed to mean:

"Marriage and the growing use of X-ray machines - (c. 1910s)"

"Travesty In Haiti": The truth about Christian missions, food aid, etc

When being interviewed by Southern Baptist pastor Marty Duren (links below), Timothy T. Schwartz, author of Travesty in Haiti: A true account of Christian missions, orphanages, food aid, fraud and drug trafficking, was asked:

"What percentage of the orphanages in Haiti are being run legitimately?"

His answer? "I suspect none."

Haitian human rights lawyer and activist Marguerite Laurent (link below) called Travesty in Haiti "the best book that's been written by a foreigner on Haiti since forever."

• Review by Ezili Dantò "Ezili Dantò (colonially named 'Marguerite Laurent') is a Haitian woman as inspired, guided, and directed by the strength, legacy and visions of the Haitian warrior goddess, Ezili Dantò." [from her website bio]

• Review by Marty Duren Marty Duren is Southern Baptist pastor who describes himself as "a bedrock theological conservative".

• Three part interview with Timothy T. Schwartz, author of Travesy in Haiti, by Marty Duren: Part One, Part Two, Part Three.

• Excerpt from Ezili Dantò's review:

"Schwartz has rendered a service here not because there’s authentic value in being a foreigner’s FIELDWORK. For the sum of the parts do not equal the whole and being someone’s fieldwork is in itself a condescension. But Schwartz’s book reports on his own tribe’s corruption in Haiti and that, indeed, is of value to Haitians.

"The book is a must read for anyone interested in hearing the truth about Haiti. Schwartz's contribution is a guidepost to those working for charities, working in the development and foreign aid industries who accept corruption and mediocrity because it's part of the status quo, "it's a job." It's laughably idealistic to wish for accountability, honesty, grace and dignity from the folks at USAID, World Bank, the Christian missions and those "doing good" in Haiti for more than a-half century now, but if just a few people, if one person working in the human rights field who read this book began to re-evaluate and nixed the profit-over-people trend of these failed-State-making-organizations, the world, humanity would breathe that much easier .... the best book that's been written by a foreigner on Haiti since forever."

• Excerpt from Marty Duren's interview with Timothy T. Schwartz:

"It is not about developing Haiti. It is about developing US business interests; which is fine. Haitians don’t vote for US politicians. But the problem–and this is the point that I hope I make most forcefully in the book–concerns the organizations that claim they are working for the poorest of poor; it’s simply not true. They are working for the US, French, German, and Canadian special interests. And they all know this.

"These organizations are staffed by an almost uniformly good bunch of people. People who set out to help, who wanted to change the world, alleviate poverty, but they got caught up in the industry of aid and those dreams get swept away and replaced by hope for a salary raise, a pension plan, a promotion, better working conditions. This is where the biggest frustration comes in for me.

"Back in the US there is a whole different set of good people who are sending in donations and voting for these organizations, cheering them on. They are doing this because they think the money is going to help the poor and hungry and illiterate overseas. They aren’t donating money so that it can pay some other American or German a middle to upper class salary and pension plan or so the director of CARE can send his children to a $25,000 per year private school. They are giving that money to help the poor in other countries…and it just ain’t happening.

"These other good people, the NGO employees who are the recipients of most the aid, seem powerless to change things and then, as time and their careers progress, less and less disposed to try to change it.

"Yeah, that’s frustrating. But US policy, ideally, should focus on helping other countries develop. I can understand why it doesn’t since politics is politics and corporate interests tend to be first.

"My beef is with the civil/NGO sector. They are the ones we finance to defend and help the poor. They need to be held accountable. They need to do what they say they are going to do."

Sanna Kurki-Suonio (when the Gods gave us voices, this is what They had in mind)

Hat tip to Kauko (and his brand new blog on Finnish Paganism) for turning me on to Finnish folk music!

And here is a link to an interview with Sanna Kurki-Suonio, where she confirms that she learned to sing before she learned to talk!

Interview with a Vodou Priestess (Mambo Rachel Beauvoir-Dominique)

Rachel Beauvoir-Dominique earned a Ph.D in social anthropology at Oxford University. She is vice-Provost to research and chair of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at l'Université d'Etat d'Haïti. She is a respected Mambo (Priestess) in the Haitian Vodou religion, and she is the daughter of Houngan (Vodou Priest) Max Beauvoir.

This interview was conducted in September of 2009 during an exhibition on Vodou at the Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Also check out this other interview with Sara Rénélik, Labelle Deesse Jr., and Labelle Deesse Sr.