Lesser known beliefs in reincarnation

 

Lesser known beliefs in reincarnation

Reincarnation without Karma: Pythagoras and the Native Americans

In the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy article about Pythagoras, written by Carl Huffman, we read that the ancient Greek philosopher might have believed in a version of reincarnation in which there was no correlation between the conduct of one’s life and the conditions of future lifetimes:

“There are significant points of contact between the Greek religious movement known as Orphism and Pythagoreanism, but the evidence for Orphism is at least as problematic as that for Pythagoras and often complicates rather than clarifies our understanding of Pythagoras (Betegh 2014; Burkert 1972a, 125 ff.; Kahn 2002, 19–22; Riedweg 2002). There is some evidence that the Orphics also believed in metempsychosis and considerable debate has arisen as to whether they borrowed the doctrine from Pythagoras (Burkert 1972a, 133; Bremmer 2002, 24) or he borrowed it from them (Zhmud 2012a, 221-238). Dicaearchus says that Pythagoras was the first to introduce metempsychosis into Greece (Porphyry VP 19). Moreover, while Orphism presents a heavily moralized version of metempsychosis in accordance with which we are born again for punishment in this life so that our body is the prison of the soul while it undergoes punishment, it is not clear that the same was true in Pythagoreanism. It may be that rebirths in a series of animals and people were seen as a natural cycle of the soul (Zhmud 2012a, 232-233). One would expect that the Pythagorean way of life was connected to metempsychosis, which would in turn suggest that a certain reincarnation is a reward or punishment for following or not following the principles set out in that way of life. However, there is no unambiguous evidence connecting the Pythagorean way of life with metempsychosis.” (https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2016/entries/pythagoras/#FatSou )

Curiously enough this peculiar form of reincarnation is also attributed to some Native Americans (see e.g. this link: https://escholarship.org/content/qt5sv475pk/qt5sv475pk_noSplash_14e05d7eb286a95a521c2826f8e038fa.pdf?t=rzjjns and https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/native-american-children-past-life-memories/ ).


Reincarnation among the Celts: the attestation of Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar, the famous Roman emperor, attested in the first century BC that the Celts in Gaul (or at least some of them) believed in reincarnation:

“The Druids do not go to war, nor pay tribute together with the rest; they have an exemption from military service and a dispensation in all matters. Induced by such great advantages, many embrace this profession of their own accord, and [many] are sent to it by their parents and relations. They are said there to learn by heart a great number of verses; accordingly some remain in the course of training twenty years. Nor do they regard it lawful to commit these to writing, though in almost all other matters, in their public and private transactions, they use Greek characters. That practice they seem to me to have adopted for two reasons; because they neither desire their doctrines to be divulged among the mass of the people, nor those who learn, to devote themselves the less to the efforts of memory, relying on writing; since it generally occurs to most men, that, in their dependence on writing, they relax their diligence in learning thoroughly, and their employment of the memory. They wish to inculcate this as one of their leading tenets, that souls do not become extinct, but pass after death from one body to another, and they think that men by this tenet are in a great degree excited to valor, the fear of death being disregarded. They likewise discuss and impart to the youth many things respecting the stars and their motion, respecting the extent of the world and of our earth, respecting the nature of things, respecting the power and the majesty of the immortal gods.” (De Bello Gallico 6,14; translated by McDevitte and Bohn; source: https://freeread.de/@RGLibrary/Caesar/GallicWar6.html )

According to the Wikipedia page on reincarnation there are other sources about the Celtic belief in reincarnation but I didn’t find the text online.

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