Metempsychosis and Reincarnation in Isis Unveiled

A Quarterly Journal of Research

Volume XVI, Numbers 3 and 4 July – October 2012 (Double Issue)

ISSN 0951-497X

Metempsychosis and Reincarnation in Isis UnveiledJulie Chajes

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The nature of Blavatsky’s beliefs about life after death have been discussed in a number of previous works, usually

resulting in erroneous or only partially correct conclusions, the most common of which is that Blavatsky initially denied reincarnation and later affirmed it. The notable exception is John Patrick Deveney, who in his biography of Paschal Beverly Randolph (1997) pointed to Randolph’s denial of reincarnation and affirmation of metempsychosis, and to parallel arguments in Blavatsky’s early writings.2 This paper confirms and develops Deveney’s argument that Isis Unveiled (1877) offered two main rebirth possibilities: “metempsychosis” and “reincarnation.” It must begin by underscoring the fact that these terms have very specific meanings in Isis, regardless of other possible interpretations. (To add to the confusion, in Isis Unveiled the term “transmigration” was also used, although virtually always in relationship with metempsychosis.) In Isis,

“metempsychosis” is the primary doctrine. It refers to the transformations (described as “transmigrations”) of the pre-human entity through human incarnation to rebirth on higher worlds. In New Age Religion and Western Culture, Wouter Hanegraaff drew attention to versions of the doctrine of “ascendant metempsychosis” articulated since the eighteenth century, which have centred on the notion of progress or evolution.3 The doctrine of metempsychosis of Isis Unveiled is a specific version of ascendant metempsychosis in which progress on other worlds was preceded by the achievement of immortality through the conjoining of two spiritual principles, the spirit and soul. Together with the physical body, these made up a tripartite spiritual anthropology during earth life.4

Blavatsky referred to the second rebirth possibility as “reincarnation”, but in Isis Unveiled, this term had a specific meaning that referred to a theory that was different

Article

Metempsychosis and Reincarnation in Isis Unveiled

Julie ChajesGoldstein-Goren Dept. of Jewish Thought

Ben Gurion University of the Negev1


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from the one taught as the normative after-death occurrence in Blavatsky’s masterwork, the Secret Doctrine (1888). In Isis the term “reincarnation” nearly always meant rebirth on this earth with the same soul (personality) as well as spirit. This was said to occur only in exceptional circumstances, such as infant death or congenital idiocy. Blavatsky was at pains to contrast this theory with the Spiritist belief that the same soul or personality repeatedly returns to earth life. In The Secret Doctrine, the normative occurrence was a return to earth with a new soul and hence, personality. The total number of principles constitutive of the human spiritual anthropology was now given as seven, in contrast to the three of Isis Unveiled. The developments of The Secret Doctrine are beyond the scope of this paper. What is at stake here is the frequently articulated accusation that Blavatsky denied reincarnation in Isis Unveiled. The confusion over terminology and changing doctrines means that in one sense she did deny it, in another she did not. This ambiguity allowed Blavatsky to later deny that she had ever rejected reincarnation. Previous discussions of Blavatsky’s early “denial of reincarnation” have commonly become caught up in her subsequent clarifications and missed the important doctrine of metempsychosis altogether, as well as the importance of the early Theosophical teachings on the achievement of immortality and of the doctrine of karma within that. This may be precisely what Blavatsky wanted, since

she was keen to deflect suspicion that she, or her masters, had changed their minds.

Focusing solely on the question of Blavatsky’s early position on metempsychosis and reincarnation, I validate and expand Deveney’s conclusions, conclusions that to some extent contradict Blavatsky’s own later explanations. I demonstrate through numerous quotations from Isis Unveiled and Blavatsky’s early letters that Deveney was correct that Blavatsky taught a primary doctrine of metempsychosis and a supplementary doctrine of occasional reincarnation with the same soul. I develop this point by examining her early statements closely to reveal further details of her teachings, such as the fact that in addition to post-mortem progress on higher worlds, “metempsychosis” encompasses pre-human as well as gestational phases of development, that karma was considered operative during ascent through the spheres and that a new astral body was acquired on each sphere. This replaced the previous astral body (or the physical body if the last “incarnation” had been on earth) and each sphere had a specific astral body associated with it. This repeated “incarnation” into a mortal body (either physical or astral) maintained a constant tripartite spiritual anthropology until absorption into the divine source was achieved. This took place in the seventh and highest sphere that was equated with nirvana. Because of the repeated “incarnations” leading up to this, Blavatsky sometimes presented


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metempsychosis as a type of “reincarnation” even though only one of the incarnations would be on the earth. I also highlight a number of exceptional occurrences that are related to the notion of reincarnation, such as the case of terrestrial larvae, the transfer of a spiritual entity to a student by an adept and the doctrine of permutation or revolution. These teachings have not, to my knowledge, been clarified to this extent in any of the secondary literature on Theosophy so far. I therefore hope to give a fuller and more detailed picture of Blavatsky’s early teachings on after-death states than has hitherto been provided.

Metempsychosis

Blavatsky’s supposed early denial of reincarnation was discussed in Helmut Zander’s 1999 tome on European reincarnation beliefs, Geschichte der Seelenwanderung in Europa: Alternative Religiöse Traditionen von der Antike bis heute. Zander claimed that Blavatsky excluded the concept of reincarnation from Isis Unveiled or only used it metaphorically. He quoted the following extract from the first volume of Isis Unveiled.

The purifying process of transmigrations—the metempsychosis—however grossly anthropomorphized at a later period, must only be regarded as a supplementary doctrine, [my emphasis] disfigured by theological sophistry with the object

of getting a firmer hold upon believers through a popular superstition. Neither Gautama Buddha nor Pythagoras intended to teach this purely metaphysical allegory literally.5

It is quite understandable why in light of this, Zander argued that Blavatsky proposed a non-literal interpretation of metempsychosis.6 He correctly acknowledged that there are some passages in which Blavatsky speaks approvingly of “reincarnation,” but argued that it would be impossible to build a theory of reincarnation in Isis Unveiled without suppressing the places where she denied it, or which were inconclusive and ambiguous.7 In fact, the quoted passage is the only one that is not in accord with Blavatsky’s other statements in that work. Although in general I would be reluctant to take Blavatsky’s later claims about the editorial mistakes in Isis at face value, weighed against the large number of extracts that affirm and describe the doctrine of metempsychosis, this passage does seem to be an error because it is reincarnation, and not metempsychosis, that is the supplementary doctrine.

Zander correctly observed that Blavatsky distinguished between reincarnation and metempsychosis. Amongst other passages, he quoted the following.

We will now present a few fragments of this mysterious doctrine of reincarnation—as distinct from metempsychosis—which


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we have from an authority. Reincarnation, i.e., the appearance of the same individual, or rather of his astral monad, twice on the same planet, is not a rule in nature; it is an exception, like the teratological phenomenon of a two-headed infant. It is preceded by a violation of the laws of harmony of nature, and happens only when the latter, seeking to restore its disturbed equilibrium, violently throws back into earth-life the astral monad which had been tossed out of the circle of necessity by crime or accident. Thus, in cases of abortion, of infants dying before a certain age, and of congenital and incurable idiocy, nature’s original design to produce a perfect human being, has been interrupted. [...] The immortal spirit and astral monad of the individual—the latter having been set apart to animate a frame and the former to shed its divine light on the corporeal organization—must try a second time to carry out the purpose of the creative intelligence. […] If reason has been so far developed as to become active and discriminative, there is no reincarnation on this earth, for the three parts of the triune man have been united together, and he is capable of running the race.8

Metempsychosis was not understood metaphorically here, as Zander suggested, but literally. Metempsychosis (rebirth on higher worlds) was the normative post-mortem occurrence, distinct from “reincarnation” (understood here as rebirth on earth with the

same soul). This occurred only in the case of “unfinished business.” Unfinished business meant that the soul had been unfairly cast out of earth life before it had had a chance to conjoin with the spirit and become immortal. In order to “restore equilibrium” the same soul (referred to in this extract as the “astral monad”) would be reborn in a new body on earth through “reincarnation.” Normally however, the soul and spirit would have a chance of uniting and “running the race”, that is, progressing through the spheres in metempsychosis, and in such cases reincarnation on earth does not occur. Interestingly, this extract also gives an indication of what happens on an experiential level when soul and spirit combine: reason becomes active and discriminative.

“Metempsychosis” in the Ancient WorldVarious passages associate metem-

psychosis with Pythagoras and Blavatsky cited the English Classicist John Lemprière, suggesting that Pythagoras learned of metempsychosis in India.9 She claimed that all ancient philosophers had taught metempsychosis, and that Pythagoras learned it from the Brahmans and Buddhists.

There was not a philosopher of any notoriety who did not hold to this doctrine of metempsychosis, as taught by the Brahmans, Buddhists, and later by the Pythagoreans, in its esoteric sense, whether he expressed it more or


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less intelligibly. Origen and Clemens Alexandrinus, Synesius and Chalcidius, all believed in it; and the Gnostics, who are unhesitatingly proclaimed by history as a body of the most refined, learned, and enlightened men, were all believers in metempsychosis.10

She mentioned Giordano Bruno’s belief in Pythagorean metempsychosis,11 and giving further (and witty) endorsement, she linked Pythagorean metempsychosis and evolution.

If the Pythagorean metempsychosis should be thoroughly explained and compared to the modern theory of evolution, it would be found to supply every “missing link” in the chain of the latter.12

In the following extract, Blavatsky equated the teachings of Plato, Pythagoras, the Chaldeans and the late thirteenth-century Kabbalistic text the Zohar, arguing that all had taught a progress of the spirit on higher worlds after death (metempsychosis.) The Zohar was specifically invoked to disprove the commonly-held notion of reincarnation as the repeated return of the same personality.

Plato, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, the Eleatic schools of Greece, as well as the old Chaldean sacerdotal colleges, all taught the doctrine of the dual evolution;

the doctrine of transmigration of souls referring only to the progress of man from world to world, after death […] a soul which thirsts after a reunion with its spirit, which alone confers upon it immortality, must purify itself through cyclic transmigrations, onward toward the only Land of Bliss and Eternal Rest, called in the Sohar, “The Palace of Love” [...] The proof that transmigration of the soul does not relate to man’s condition on this earth after death, is found in the Sohar…[my emphasis].13

In a letter to C. C. Massey written in February 1876, Blavatsky equated her understanding of the “Eastern Kabbalah” with Pythagoreanism. She said that Pythagoras (and the Neoplatonists) did not teach reincarnation, like the Spiritists, but an esoteric doctrine, undoubtedly metempsychosis.

The eastern Kabbalah embraces the Pythagorean philosophy; the western, or Rosicrucian, did not. But the metempsychosis of Pythagoras was an exoteric expression to cover the esoteric meaning, and his commentators, who had not the key, have misunderstood him as grossly as they have misunderstood everything else written by those of the Neoplatonics, who, like Porphyry, Iamblichus and Plotinus, have been adopting and elaborating his precepts. The spirits upon whose communications


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the reincarnationist school base their theory, have simply given back the opinions which they found in the heads or brains of their mediums.14

The Nature of MetempsychosisThe details of the doctrine of

metempsychosis can be gleaned from Blavatsky’s other statements. For example;

These philosophers held, with the Hindus, that God had infused into matter a portion of his own Divine Spirit, which animates and moves every particle. They taught that men have two souls, of separate and quite different natures: the one perishable—the Astral Soul, or the inner, fluidic body—the other incorruptible and immortal—the Augoeides, or portion of the Divine Spirit; that the mortal or Astral Soul perishes at each gradual change at the threshold of every new sphere, becoming with every transmigration more purified.15

The astral soul or fluidic body referred to here indicates an astral body that was acquired by the conjoined and immortal soul-spirit (referred to here as the Divine Spirit). As this immortal soul-spirit entity progressed through the spheres, metempsychosis acquired a new astral body at each “threshold,” at the same time discarding the previous astral body. After earth life, the body that was discarded was the physical

body, and at each new level of spiritual progress, a more refined astral body was acquired and then cast off.

Blavatsky claimed that “European scholars” had distorted this esoteric doctrine of metempsychosis.16 She stressed the need to understand metempsychosis properly.

The doctrine of Metempsychosis has been abundantly ridiculed by men of science and rejected by theologians, yet if it had been properly understood in its application to the indestructibility of matter and the immortality of spirit, it would have been perceived that it is a sublime conception.17

One can hardly imagine a stronger endorsement than the statement that metempsychosis is a “sublime conception.” Blavatsky affirmed the existence of a true interpretation of metempsychosis, as opposed to “popular beliefs” about it.

It is again from this sense of highest benevolence and charity toward the weaker, however abject the creature may be, that they honor one of the natural modifications of their own dual nature, and that later the popular belief in metempsychosis arose. No trace of the latter is to be found in the Vedas; and the true interpretation of the doctrine, discussed at length in Manu and the


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Buddhistic sacred books, having been confined from the first to the learned and sacerdotal castes, the false and foolish popular ideas concerning it need occasion no surprise [my emphases].18

This clearly contrasts popular misunderstandings about metempsychosis (which are not to be found in the Vedas) with the true interpretation of it (which, according to Blavatsky, is found in the Hindu work The Laws of Manu, as well as Buddhist texts).

All of the passages above affirm that metempsychosis is a real esoteric doctrine, and none of them give any indication that it entails rebirth on this earth. On the contrary, scattered extracts in Isis Unveiled indicate that metempsychosis refers specifically to the progress of the soul on other worlds. In Isis, Blavatsky defined metempsychosis as “the progress of the soul from one stage of existence to another.”19 Metempsychosis was also said to involve a “succession of disciplines through refuge-heavens.”20 Blavatsky described the journey of the spirit (referred to as the “monad”) through “ceaseless peregrinations from one form to another” on earth (mineral, vegetable, animal) and stated that birth as a human was its “last earthly transformation.”21 This is because since it had reached the human stage, its next transformation would be elsewhere, it would not “reincarnate” as a human on earth again. Blavatsky further explained that

“reincarnationists” (i.e. of the Spiritist Allan Kardec school) quote Apuleius in corroboration of their theory that man passes through a succession of physical human births upon this planet, “but Apuleius distinctly says that we come upon this earth from another one.”22

The Wider Scope of “Metempsychosis”The following extracts elaborate

on the notion touched upon above, that “metempsychosis” referred to humanity’s spiritual and physical transformations, first in pre-human forms (mineral, vegetable, animal), then in the womb, and finally on other worlds following the achievement of immortality.

[…] the monad was shot down into the first form of matter and became encased in stone; then, in course of time, […] the monad crept out of its prison to sunlight as a lichen. From change to change it went higher and higher; […] until its physical form became once more the Adam of dust, shaped in the image of the Adam Kadmon. Before undergoing its last earthly transformation, the external covering of the monad, from the moment of its conception as an embryo, passes in turn, once more, through the phases of the several kingdoms. In its fluidic prison it assumes a vague resemblance at various periods of the gestation to plant, reptile, bird, and animal, until it becomes a human embryo.23


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Later in the same volume, Blavatsky elaborated on the notion of metempsychosis during gestation, complaining that “no physiologist or anatomist seems to have had the idea of applying to the development of the human being, […] the Pythagorean esoteric doctrine of metempsychosis, so erroneously interpreted by critics.” Thus she explained the “Kabbalistic axiom,” elaborating that “a stone becomes a plant; a plant a beast; a beast a man.” During gestation, after three or four weeks the ovum has assumed a plant-like appearance and “the stone has now become changed, by metempsychosis, into a plant.” The embryo then develops into an animal and its monad has not yet become either human or immortal. Finally, “the divine essence settles in the infant frame, which it will inhabit until the moment of physical death, when man becomes a spirit.”24 The transformation of the man into a spirit had already been elaborated in the following extract.

At the birth of the future man, the monad, radiating with all the glory of its immortal parent which watches it from the seventh sphere, becomes senseless. It loses all recollection of the past, and returns to consciousness but gradually, when the instinct of childhood gives way to reason and intelligence. After the separation between the life‐principle (astral spirit) and the body takes place, the liberated soul—Monad, exultingly rejoins the mother and father spirit, the

radiant Augoeides, [Divine Spirit] and the two, merged into one, forever form, with a glory proportioned to the spiritual purity of the past earth‐life, the Adam who has completed the circle of necessity, and is freed from the last vestige of his physical encasement. Henceforth, growing more and more radiant at each step of his upward progress, he mounts the shining path that ends at the point from which he started around the GRAND CYCLE.25

Following birth as a human, previous incarnations (as minerals, plants and animals) are forgotten. The “life principle” or “astral spirit” mentioned here is the soul-spirit entity, which abandons the physical body, becoming a “liberated soul—Monad.” It will never again experience physical encasement, because all future astral bodies will be of a more refined substance than physical matter. This extract states that there are seven spheres in total, for the seventh and highest sphere is the abode of the divine source, which “watches” and awaits the return of the soul-spirit with which it will eventually be reunified. This early septenary element is worth noting. It reflects Spiritualist accounts of heaven, which usually included seven spheres through which the dead advanced in increasing perfection. The number seven was a theme that was to become much more developed in The Secret Doctrine.


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“Transmigration”Blavatsky often used the term transmigration

either synonymously with metempsychosis or to refer to the transformation the soul-spirit underwent at the threshold of each new stage of existence. Making it synonymous with metempsychosis, she spoke of the doctrine of transmigration as referring to the progress of man from world to world after death, and as something that does not relate to man’s condition on this earth after death.26 She commented on Edward Upham’s History and Doctrine of Buddhism, that in Buddhism, all beings are subject to the laws of transmigration (presumably also referring to metempsychosis, since she endorsed Buddhist teachings).27 She said that ideas on the transmigrations and the trinity of man were held by many of the early Christian Fathers but that they had been misunderstood,28 and that “a soul which thirsts after a reunion with its spirit […] must purify itself through cyclic transmigrations.”29 This indicates that an immortal soul-spirit entity that seeks union with the divine source (the end-point of metempsychosis) must become purified by transmigrating through each sphere, through the process of metempsychosis. Thus, “transmigration” was used as a verb and “metempsychosis” as a noun, especially since Blavatsky wanted to avoid use of the word “reincarnation.” During metempsychosis, the immortal entity transmigrates from state to state, first through mineral and animal forms, then in the womb, and finally on higher spheres, until union with the divine is achieved in the seventh.

Blavatsky’s Attempted ClarificationsThe confusing terminology of Isis Unveiled

meant that Helmut Zander was not the first to miss the doctrine of metempsychosis and conclude that Blavatsky denied reincarnation in Isis Unveiled. Such accusations led Blavatsky to publish an article in The Path in November 1886 entitled “Theories about Reincarnation and Spirits,” which later became an appendix to Isis Unveiled. She complained that

Over and over again the abstruse and mooted question of rebirth or reincarnation has crept out during the first ten years of the Theosophical Society’s existence. It has been alleged on prima facie evidence, that a notable discrepancy was found between statements made in Isis Unveiled, Vol. 1, pp. 351-2, and later teachings from the same pen and under the inspiration of the same master.30

Blavatsky attempted to correct various “editorial mistakes.”31 However, the essence of her defense was that in Isis Unveiled, rebirth doctrines were “hardly sketched” and that since there are “later and more minute renderings of the esoteric doctrines” (i.e., The Secret Doctrine), what is written in Isis is “immaterial.”32

Although Blavatsky was being somewhat disingenuous, in a sense she was telling the truth when she said that she had taught a type of “reincarnation” all along; she just hadn’t taught


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that a return of the same soul was normative (and she never did) and she didn’t clarify that neither of the main rebirth doctrines of Isis Unveiled were the same as what was taught as the normative occurrence in the Secret Doctrine. Blavatsky’s later explanations did not clarify what was really going on. It seems that she was hoping that her earlier writings would not be scrutinised too closely, since she did not want to be seen to be contradicting herself. Blavatsky took advantage of the fact that her statements in Isis were somewhat vague and terminologically confused but in fact, she provided quite enough information to make her early doctrines (and the differences between them and her later doctrines) absolutely clear.

Blavatsky’s LettersMuch of the necessary clarification can be

found in Blavatsky’s letters, which expressed her opinions more lucidly than her books. In February 1876, she stated that the belief in a (normative) return to life on earth of the same soul (like that of the Spiritists) was anti-evolutionary. Death would be followed by an ascent through the spheres. Blavatsky’s use of the term reincarnation synonymously with metempsychosis is especially confusing, although what she was really seems to be saying is that in a sense, metempsychosis is a type of reincarnation.

This philosophy of the evolution of species by flux and reflux from matter

to spirit and back again is the only true one; ...the whole trouble of Kardec, and other reincarnationists lies in their misunderstanding the hermetic philosophy upon this point. While it is true that there is a reincarnation in one sense, in the other it is untrue. Nay, more, it is absurd and unphilosophical, doing violence to the law of evolution, which is constantly carrying matter and spirit upward toward perfection. When the elementary dies out of one state of existence he is born into a higher one, and when man dies out of the world of gross matter, he is born into one more ethereal; so on from sphere to sphere, man never losing his trinity, for at each birth a new and more perfect astral body is evolved out of elementaries of a correspondingly higher order, while his previous astral body takes the place of the antecedent, external earthly body. [my emphasis] Man’s soul (or Divine Spirit, for you must not confound the divine with the astral spirit) constantly entering into new astral bodies, there is an actual reincarnation; but that when it has passed through any sphere into a higher one, it should re-enter the lower sphere and pass through other bodies similar to the one it has just quitted, is as unphilosophical as to fancy that the human foetus could go back into the elementary condition, or the child after birth re-enters its mother’s womb.33


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This extract refers to the three parts of the human spiritual anthropology, the body, the soul (confusingly referred to here as the “astral spirit”) and the Divine spirit (even more confusing also referred to as the soul!). It presents the idea that when spirit and soul combine to form an immortal entity, this progresses to the next sphere through metempsychosis. Following death on earth, the physical body is discarded and the soul and spirit ascend as one. Each time the soul-spirit progresses to the next sphere, an astral body is added to the soul-spirit entity, giving a new trinity of principles. The fact that the duality “incarnates” into a new and higher astral body each time it ascends is the reason that metempsychosis may be considered a type of “reincarnation.” Blavatsky was very firm in her statement that a return to the same lowly material body of earth life would be anti-evolutionary.

Elaborating these ideas, in the spring of 1877, Blavatsky wrote the following to her aunt Nadyezhda de Fadeyev (1829-1919), stating that immortality cannot be taken for granted, since it is conditional and occurs as a result of the shedding of attachments to the earthly elements that are necessary to incarnation on earth.

Per se the soul is not immortal. The soul outlives the man’s body only for as long as it is necessary for it to get rid of everything earthly and fleshly; then, as it is gradually purified, its essence comes into progressively closer union with the Spirit, which alone is immortal. The tie

between them becomes more and more indissoluble. When the last atom of the earthly is evaporated, then this duality becomes a unity, and the Ego of the former man becomes forever immortal. [...] And so not all of us human beings are immortal. As Jesus expresses it, we must take the kingdom of Heaven by violence. [...] When the soul is imprisoned in a sinning body, it is as if in jail, and in order to get rid of its chains, it has progressively to aspire upward towards its spirit. The soul is a chameleon. It becomes either a copy of the spirit or of the body. In the first case, it acquires the faculty of separating itself from the body with ease, and of setting forth, travelling all over the wide world, having left in the body a provision of vital forces, or animal, instinctive mental movements. [...] In the measure of its union with the spirit it becomes more or less clairvoyant.34

The same year, she again wrote to her aunt, explaining that immortality was achieved through the elision of the soul (périsprit) and spirit. The alternative was annihilation.

All the most ancient philosophies prove that this “essence” meant the immortal spirit—the spark of the infinite and beginningless ocean, called God, a spark with which every human being is endowed from birth by the Divine, that it may overshadow him during all his


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earthly life; and after the death of the body either to blend with the soul (périsprit) to make him immortal, or,—if the man was a beast during his life—break the spiritual thread uniting the animal soul, the individual intellectuality, to the immortal spirit, leaving the animal entity at the mercy of the elements constituting its subjective being; after that, following the law of perpetuum mobile, the soul or ego of the former man has unavoidably to dissolve in time, to be annihilated. It is this immortal spirit of ours that is and always was called Chrestos or Christos. [...] If we behaved as Christ and the Buddha behaved when embodied as two mortal men, we and any one of us would become like Christ and Buddha, namely united and blended with the Christ-Buddha principle in us, with our immortal spirit; but of course only after the death of our sinful flesh, because how could we, with our beastly snout, climb into paradise in this life?35

Finally, in a letter written to W. H. Burr, the same year, Blavatsky elaborated that only a very few people achieved immortality. This indicates that although metempsychosis was the primary doctrine of Isis Unveiled, it was not considered normative in the way that reincarnation came to be understood in The Secret Doctrine. (In The Secret Doctrine, nearly everybody reincarnates on earth, whereas in Isis Unveiled, only a select few achieve immortality and progress higher.

Even fewer return to earth with the same soul due to unfinished business.) Blavatsky one again pointed to annihilation as the only alternative for one who fails in this spiritual mission.

I deny that immortality is achieved by every man, woman or child. Immortality must be won [...] But a very small percentage of the human race becomes immortal, i.e. very few individuals become gods. [...] The rest are sooner or later annihilated, and their bodies and souls are disintegrated, and while the atoms of one return to the elements of physical nature, the more sublimated atoms of the other, when no longer cemented by the presence of their individual “spirits”—which are alone immortal, as everything real becomes subjective—are violently torn loose from each other and return to the more sublimated elements of spiritual nature.36

In light of the doctrine of the achievement of immortality, we now see where the doctrine of same soul reincarnation comes in. For those who did not achieve immortality during earth life but had a good reason (they died too young or weren’t of fully sound mind) then their spirit would be reborn on this earth, together with the same soul and a new body. It would negate the justice of the universe for annihilation to take place in cases such as these. This is why in an article of 1878, Blavatsky stated that a dead child


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“is a failure of nature” and must therefore be born again. Together with the rebirth on earth of the congenital idiot, these are the “only cases of human [same soul] reincarnation.”37 Other humans have a fair chance at the achievement of immortality. If they fail to achieve this, then perhaps the implication is that they deserve annihilation.

KarmaAlthough during her later phase Blavatsky’s

understanding of karma developed, she was aware of the notion during her earlier period. Karma was discussed in Blavatsky’s earlier work as being operative in metempsychosis. She stated that a belief in “merit and demerit” was one of the principal articles of faith of the wisdom religion (i.e. Theosophy).38 She spoke of the disembodied ego unconsciously “furnishing the conditions of his successive self—procreations in various forms” through his mental state and karma, understood as “the good or bad deeds of his preceding existence and commonly referred to as “‘merit and demerit.’”39 In another extract, she wrote that karma was the cause of rebirth and the power that controls the universe.

Like the revolutions of a wheel, there is a regular succession of death and birth, the moral cause of which is the cleaving to existing objects, while the instrumental cause is karma (the power which controls

the universe, prompting it to activity), merit and demerit. […]They, in whom evil desire is entirely destroyed, are called Arhats. Freedom from evil desire insures the possession of a miraculous power. At his death, the Arhat is never reincarnated; he invariably attains Nirvana—a word, by the bye, falsely interpreted by the Christian scholars and skeptical commentators. […] Nirvana is the highest attainable sphere.40

Arhats, or Buddhist adepts, have overcome their karma. They are not even “reincarnated” into an astral body on one of the spheres, because such an occurrence is the result of lingering karma. They therefore ascend to the seventh sphere, which is the same as nirvana. Blavatsky continued,

The pitris (the pre-Adamic spirits) are considered as reincarnated, by the Buddhistic philosopher, though in a degree far superior to that of the man of earth. Do they not die in their turn? Do not their astral bodies suffer and rejoice, and feel the same curse of illusionary feelings as when embodied?41

The pitris, seem to be portrayed here as the beings of higher spheres. Although they are on a very high level, they are not as high as the arhats, and they are still subject to “death” and “reincarnation” into astral bodies and to


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transmigration through the higher spheres until they achieve nirvana. Their astral bodies suffer and rejoice because they are still subject to the effects of karma: all beings are, until they have achieved nirvana.

[...] Jesus, when healing the sick, invariably used the following expression: “Thy sins are forgiven thee.” This is a pure Buddhistical doctrine. ‘The Jews said to the blind man: Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us? The doctrine of the disciples (of Christ) is analogous to the ‘Merit and Demerit’ of the Buddhists; for the sick recovered, if their sins were forgiven.’ But, this former life believed in by the Buddhists, is not a life on this planet [my emphasis], for, more than any other people, the Buddhistical philosopher appreciated the great doctrine of cycles.42

Blavatsky was eager to point out that Buddhists do not believe in reincarnation in the simplistic sense of a return to earth life of the same personality. The doctrine of cycles is the doctrine of metempsychosis, and the implication is that Jesus and the early Christians believed in karma, which is the doctrine that explains why “sins” cause suffering.

In other extracts from Isis Unveiled, Blavatsky elaborated on her understanding of karma. The merit and demerit of the life lived on Earth was said to affect the astral body that the individual took to the higher worlds. As

we saw in a previous extract, a new astral body accompanied the immortal soul-spirit entity at each new phase.

Our astral bodies, pure ether, are but illusions of matter, so long as they retain their terrestrial outline. The latter changes, says the Buddhist, according to the merits or demerits of the person during his lifetime, and this is metempsychosis.43

Thus, each astral body that is acquired is affected by karma. The following passage is more detailed.

The soul only passed through various stages (Hindu Rupa-locas) to arrive at the divine excellence; meanwhile the thumos returned to the earth, and even the phren was eliminated. Thus the metempsychosis was only a succession of disciplines through refuge-heavens (called by the Buddhists Zion), to work off the exterior mind, to rid the nous of the phren, or soul, the Buddhist “Winyanaskandaya,” that principle that lives from Karma and the Skandhas (groups). It is the latter, the metaphysical personations of the “deeds” of man, whether good or bad, which, after the death of his body, incarnate themselves, so to say, and form their many invisible but never-dying compounds into a new body, or rather into an ethereal being,


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the double of what man was morally. It is the astral body of the kabalist and the “incarnated deeds” which form the new sentient self as his Ahancara (the ego, self-consciousness), given to him by the sovereign Master (the breath of God) can never perish, for it is immortal per se as a spirit; hence the sufferings of the newly-born self till he rids himself of every earthly thought, desire, and passion.44

I suggest that what Blavatsky is saying is that the thumos (in Plato, one of the constituents of the human psyche) and the phren (an ancient Greek term for “mind”) are types of astral body that correspond to different spheres. These are responsible for “carrying” or embodying the person’s karma during their life in that sphere. After they have done their job, they are discarded. The rupa-lokas are the seven worlds or spheres that the immortal soul-spirit passes through. With each transmigration, it releases itself from the bonds of karma, from “every earthly thought, desire, and passion.” The reward is arrival at the “divine excellence” meaning absorption into the divine source. This is the same as nirvana, and is achieved by arhats.

Other Exceptional Occurrences1. Terrestrial Larvae

In addition to reincarnation with the same soul, another case of “unfinished business” or abnormal circumstances was given in the

case of “terrestrial larvae.” In 1877, Blavatsky explained that “the evil spirit is not the devil of popular fancy; it is the malicious, wicked soul of any sinner who has died without repentance, and who will go on existing until it dissipates into the dust of the elements.”45 In other words, those who did not achieve immortality linger on earth for some time before finally disappearing. These “larvae” may receive a second chance and repent, thereby achieving rebirth in human flesh. This can also be understood as a type of “reincarnation”, although it is rare. The existence of this possibility was presented as a reason for the apparent belief in reincarnation of ancient kabbalists.

It is for these carnal terrestrial larvæ, degraded human spirits, that the ancient kabalists entertained a hope of reïncarnation. But when, or how? At a fitting moment, and if helped by a sincere desire for his amendment and repentance by some strong, sympathizing person, or the will of an adept, or even a desire emanating from the erring spirit himself, provided it is powerful enough to make him throw off the burden of sinful matter. Losing all consciousness, the once bright monad is caught once more into the vortex of our terrestrial evolution, and it trespasses the subordinate kingdoms, and again breathes as a living child. To compute the time necessary for the completion of this


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process would be impossible. Since there is no perception of time in eternity, the attempt would be a mere waste of labor.46

It is noteworthy that none of this denies the primary doctrine of metempsychosis. It merely adds “reincarnation of larvae” as another exceptional occurrence.

2. The Transfer of a Spiritual EntityBlavatsky referred to Emma Hardinge

Britten’s Ghost Land (1876) to explain another exceptional type of “reincarnation”, one in which an advanced adept transfers their “spiritual entity” to their student upon their death. Presumably this referred to a type of spirit possession, in which the adept “took over” their student’s body. One would expect that an adept would have achieved immortality and earned the right to transmigrate to the next sphere, so why this would be considered desirable was not clear and was never explained. It is conceivable that an adept would choose to do this if they had some sort of business on earth that death would otherwise prevent them from completing. However, the idea was not discussed at length and seems to have been considered very rare indeed.

There were even those among the highest epoptæ of the greater Mysteries who knew nothing of their last and dreaded rite—the voluntary transfer of life from hierophant to candidate. In Ghost-Land this mystical operation of the adept’s

transfer of his spiritual entity, after the death of his body, into the youth he loves with all the ardent love of a spiritual parent, is superbly described. As in the case of the reincarnation of the lamas of Thibet, an adept of the highest order may live indefinitely. His mortal casket wears out notwithstanding certain alchemical secrets for prolonging the youthful vigor far beyond the usual limits, yet the body can rarely be kept alive beyond ten or twelve score of years. The old garment is then worn out, and the spiritual Ego forced to leave it, selects for its habitation a new body, fresh and full of healthy vital principle.47

3. Revolution or PermutationIn the lengthy passage presented below in

sections, Blavatsky referred to the doctrine of “revolution” or “permutation.”

In the very first remark made by Jesus about John the Baptist, we find him stating that he is “Elias, which was for to come.” This assertion, if it is not a later interpolation for the sake of having a prophecy fulfilled, means again that Jesus was a kabalist; unless indeed we have to adopt the doctrine of the French spiritists and suspect him of believing in reincarnation.

The fact that Jesus thought John the Baptist was the prophet Elijah proves that Jesus


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was a Kabbalist because he knew of an esoteric doctrine that allowed for this possibility. That doctrine was not, however, the doctrine of reincarnation, as taught by the Spiritists of the Kardec school. It was another, esoteric, Kabbalistic doctrine.

Except the kabalistic sects of the Essenes, the Nazarenes, the disciples of Simeon Ben Iochai, and Hillel, neither the orthodox Jews, nor the Galileans, believed or knew anything about the doctrine of permutation. And the Sadducees rejected even that of the resurrection. “But the author of this restitutionis was Mosah, our master, upon whom be peace! Who was the revolutio (transmigration) of Seth and Hebel, that he might cover the nudity of his Father Adam—Primus,” says the Kabala. Thus, Jesus hinting that John was the revolutio, or transmigration of Elias, seems to prove beyond any doubt the school to which he belonged.

The esoteric doctrine was now revealed as the doctrine of “revolution” or “permutation.” This was not the same as “reincarnation” despite some confusion on the part of uninitiated Kabbalists and Freemasons. It was also not the doctrine of metempsychosis, since there is nothing in that doctrine as we have encountered it that allows for the possibility of Moses in any way having been either Abel or Seth. As though to confirm this, Blavatsky explained;

Until the present day uninitiated Kabalists and Masons believe permutation to be synonymous with transmigration and metempsychosis. But they are as much mistaken in regard to the doctrine of the true Kabalists as to that of the Buddhists.

Blavatsky then quoted the Zohar, which she could have taken from Christian Ginsburg’s The Kabbalah (1863) or Kenneth Mackenzie’s Royal Masonic Cyclopædia (1877), both of whom reproduced the very same passage.48

True, the Sohar says in one place, “All souls are subject to transmigration . . . men do not know the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He; they do not know that they are brought before the tribunal, both before they enter this world and after they quit it”, and the Pharisees also held this doctrine, as Josephus shows (Antiquities, xviii. 13). […] But this doctrine of permutation, or revolutio, must not be understood as a belief in reincarnation. That Moses was considered the transmigration of Abel and Seth, does not imply that the kabalists—those who were initiated at least—believed that the identical spirit of either of Adam’s sons reappeared under the corporeal form of Moses. It only shows what was the mode of expression they used when hinting at one of the profoundest mysteries of the Oriental Gnosis, one of the most majestic articles of faith of the Secret Wisdom. It


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was purposely veiled so as to half conceal and half reveal the truth. It implied that Moses, like certain other god-like men, was believed to have reached the highest of all states on earth: -the rarest of all psychological phenomena, the perfect union of the immortal spirit with the terrestrial duad had occurred. The trinity was complete. A god was incarnate. But how rare such incarnations!49

In a previous extract we saw that Blavatsky had referred to those who achieve immortality as “gods,” but she seemed especially excited about the god-like quality of Moses and others like him. A possible interpretation is that like Abel and Seth, Moses had achieved immortality through the conjoining of his soul and spirit relatively early during earth life, resulting in a more intimate connection between the most spiritual and the most physical elements of his being than most people enjoy. Although we are all gods in a sense because we are all infused with divine life, some are more fully-realised in their divinity than others. The majority of people are merely overshadowed by the divine, and immortality is achieved later in life or at death. An adept like Moses however, has already achieved the elision of spirit and soul. Blavatsky explained:

That expression, “Ye are gods,” which, to our biblical students, is a mere abstraction, has for the kabalists a vital

significance. Each immortal spirit that sheds its radiance upon a human being is a god—the Microcosmos of the Macrocosmos, part and parcel of the Unknown God, the First Cause of which it is a direct emanation. It is possessed of all the attributes of its parent source. Among these attributes are omniscience and omnipotence. Endowed with these, but yet unable to fully manifest them while in the body, during which time they are obscured, veiled, limited by the capabilities of physical nature, the thus divinely‐inhabited man may tower far above his kind, evince a god‐like wisdom, and display deific powers; for while the rest of mortals around him are but overshadowed by their divine SELF, with every chance given to them to become immortal hereafter, but no other security than their personal efforts to win the kingdom of heaven, the so chosen man has already become an immortal while yet on earth. His prize is secured. Henceforth he will live forever in eternal life. Not only he may have “dominion” over all the works of creation by employing the “excellence” of the NAME (the ineffable one) but be higher in this life, not, as Paul is made to say, “a little lower than the angels.” The ancients never entertained the sacrilegious thought that such perfected entities were incarnations of the One Supreme and for ever invisible God. No such profanation of the awful


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Majesty entered into their conceptions. Moses and his antitypes and types were to them but complete men, gods on earth, for their gods (divine spirits) had entered unto their hallowed tabernacles, the purified physical bodies.50

Thus, Blavatsky found an explanation for the doctrine of avatars that was congruent with her doctrine of metempsychosis.

ConclusionsDespite her changeable and often confusing

terminology, Blavatsky’s early position on post-mortem progress was consistent, if not always clear. On the basis of extracts from Isis Unveiled and Blavatsky’s early letters, I have shown that she initially taught a primary doctrine of metempsychosis that encompassed a journey through mineral, plant and animal forms and analogous stages during human gestation, followed by human birth, the achievement of immortality and progress to higher spheres. If immortality was not achieved then annihilation would occur, although there was still hope for terrestrial larvae to repent and “reincarnate.” The achievement of immortality was considered relatively rare, and the achievement of immortality early in life, as in the cases of “god-men” like Moses, rarer still.

During earth life, the soul and spirit, together with the physical body, formed a tripartite spiritual anthropology. Immortality

was achieved through the permanent conjoining of the soul and spirit. This meant that reason became active and discriminative and that the same personality would progress to the next level. For those few who achieved immortality, there would be transmigrations through higher spheres, each time acquiring a new astral body and thus maintaining the “trinity” of principles. On one sphere the astral body would be the phren, on another, the thumos etc. This astral body was responsible for carrying the karma into the next life and the next world. Ultimately, the immortal soul-spirit would arrive at the seventh and highest sphere, where it would have worked through all of its karma and achieved nirvana: absorption in the divine.

Reincarnation on this earth with the same soul was said to occur in exceptional circumstances in order to vindicate the justice of the universe, for what justice could there be in the annihilation of a dead infant or congenital idiot? It is noteworthy that Blavatsky accepted the idea that nature could “fail” or make mistakes. During Blavatsky’s later period she developed a septenary-based system that included a normative return of the spirit to earth life with a new soul (and hence personality) and physical body. Blavatsky tried to cover up the fact that she had changed her mind but left sufficient evidence in Isis Unveiled and her letters for us to reconstruct her early doctrines.


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Bibliography

Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna. “Death and Immortality,” in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings: 1882-1883. Compiled by Boris de Zirkoff. Volume IV. Wheaton, Ill: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1969. Pages 250–256. [Originally published in The Theosophist, Vol. IV, No. 2 (November, 1882): 28–29.]

______. “Fragments from Madame Blavatsky,” in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings: 1874-1878. Compiled by Boris de Zirkoff. Volume I. Wheaton, Ill: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1966 [2nd ed. 1977]. Pages 365–368. [Originally published in La Revue Spirite (Paris), April, 1873.]

______. Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Technology. Vol. I-Science. PDF file. Theosophy Trust, 2006. Accessed through Theosophy Trust Memorial Library: Theosophy Trust Books: http://www.theosophytrust.org/online_books.php. [The PDF version is located at http://www.theosophytrust.org/Online_Books/Isis_Unviled_Vol_1_V1.3.pdf.]

______. Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Technology. Vol. II-Theology. PDF file. Theosophy Trust, 2006. Accessed through Theosophy Trust Memorial Library: Theosophy Trust Books: http://www.theosophytrust.org/online_books.php. [The PDF version is located at http://www.theosophytrust.org/Online_Books/Isis_Unviled_Vol_2_V2.0.pdf.]

______. [Correspondence]. The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky. Vol. I. Ed. John Algeo. Wheaton, Ill. and

Chennai (Madras): Quest Books, The Theosophical Publishing House, 2003.

______. “Theories about Reincarnation and Spirits.” in H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings: 1886-1887. Compiled by Boris de Zirkoff. Volume VII. Adyar, Madras: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1958. Pages 176-199. [Originally published in The Path, Vol. I, No. 8 (Nov 1886): 232-45.]

Deveney, John Patrick. Paschal Beverly Randolph: A Nineteenth-Century Black American Spiritualist, Rosicrucian, and Sex Magician, ed. David Applebaum. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. [SUNY Series in Western Esoteric Traditions.]

Ginsburg, Christian. The Essenes: Their History and Doctrines and The Kabbalah: Its Doctrines, Development and Literature. New York: Cosimo, 2005.

Hanegraaff, Wouter. New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Leiden, New York, Köln: Brill, 1996.

Reigle, David. “Isis Unveiled: A Perspective” at http://www.easterntradition.org/isis%20unveiled-a%20perspective.pdf. [Accessed on 29 May 2012.]

Mackenzie, Kenneth R. H. The Royal Masonic Cyclopædia of History, Rites, Symbolism and Biography. London: John Hogg and Co, 1877.

Zander, Helmut. Geschichte der Seelenwanderung in Europa: Alternative religiöse Traditionen von der Antike bis Heute. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1999.


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Notes

1The publication of this paper was made possible through an Israel Science Foundation grant number 774/10.2John Patrick Deveney, Paschal Beverly Ran-dolph: A Nineteenth-Century Black American Spiritualist, Rosicrucian, and Sex Magician, ed. David Applebaum (SUNY Series in Western Esoteric Traditions; Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 278-282. For a descriptive account of Blavatsky’s statements on reincarnation in Isis Unveiled, see David Reigle, “Isis Unveiled: A Perspective” at http://www.easterntradition.org/isis unveiled-a perspective.PDF [accessed on 29 May 2012].3Wouter Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (Leiden, New York, Köln: Brill, 1996), 473-482.4Blavatsky sometimes used varying terms to refer to these principles. In what follows, I will refer to them consistently as the “spirit” and the “soul” and indicate where Blavatsky used alternative terminology.5H.P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Technology. Vol. I-Science. PDF file (Theosophy Trust, 2006). Pp. 258-259. Accessed at http://www.theosophytrust.org/Online_Books/Isis_Unviled_Vol_1_V1.3.pdf. 6Zander, Seelenwanderung, 478.

7Zander, Seelenwanderung, 478. Zander gave the following as an example of one of Blavatsky’s various clear denials of reincarnation in Isis Unveiled. “The proof that the transmigration of the soul does not relate to man’s condition on this earth after death, is found in the Sohar, notwithstanding the many incorrect renderings of its translators.” Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled,Vol. II, 259. I refer to this passage later. See endnote 13.8Zander, Seelenwanderung, 478. Zander quoted Blavatsky, Isis I, 314. (My edition)

9Blavatsky, Isis I, 311.10Blavatsky, Isis I, 10-11.11Blavatsky, Isis I, 84-85.12Blavatsky, Isis I, 8.13H.P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Technology. Vol. II-Theology. PDF file (Theosophy Trust, 2006). Pp. 259. Accessed at http://www.theosophytrust.org/Online_Books/Isis_Unviled_Vol_2_V2.0.pdf. 14Letter to C. C. Massey, [February 1876], in The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky. Vol. I. Ed. John Algeo (Wheaton, Ill. and Chennai [Madras]: Quest Books, The Theosophical Publishing House, 2003), 248-249.15Blavatsky, Isis I, 11.16Blavatsky, Isis II, 488.17Blavatsky, Isis I, 7.18Blavatsky, Isis II, 258.


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19Blavatsky, Isis I, xliii.20Blavatsky, Isis II, 265.21Blavatsky, Isis I, 271.22Blavatsky, Isis I, 309.23Blavatsky, Isis I, 271.24Blavatsky, Isis I, 348.25Blavatsky, Isis I, 271.26Blavatsky, Isis II, 259. 27Blavatsky, Isis I, 402.28Blavatsky, Isis II, 260.29Blavatsky, Isis II, 259.30H.P. Blavatsky, “Theories about Reincarnation and Spirits,” in H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings: 1886-1887. Vol. VII. Compiled by Boris de Zirkoff (Adyar, Madras: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1958), 176.31For example, see Blavatsky, “Reincarnation and Spirits”, 183.32Blavatsky, “Reincarnation and Spirits”, 177.33Letter to C. C. Massey [February 1876], in The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky, Vol. I, 248.34Letter to N. de Fadeyev, c. May or June 1877, in Blavatsky, Letters, 306.35Letter to N. de Fadeyev, 28-29 October 1877, in Blavatsky, Letters, 347-349.36Letter to W. H. Burr, 19 Novemberber 1877, in Blavatsky, Letters, 371.

37H.P. Blavatsky, “Fragments from Madame Blavatsky”, in H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings: 1874-1878. Vol. I. Compiled by Boris de Zirkoff (Wheaton, Ill: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1966), 368.38Blavatsky, Isis II, 105.39Blavatsky, Isis II, 296.40Blavatsky, Isis I, 310.41Blavatsky, Isis I, 310.42Blavatsky, Isis I, 310.43Blavatsky, Isis I, 259.44Blavatsky, Isis II, 265.45Letter to N. de Fadeyev, 11 December 1877, in Blavatsky, Letters, 387.46Blavatsky, Isis I, 319.47Blavatsky, Isis II, 518.48See Christian Ginsburg, The Essenes: Their History and Doctrines and The Kabbalah: Its Doctrines, Development and Literature (New York: Cosimo, 2005), 124-125. These two works were originally published together by Routledge and Kegan, 1863-4. The reference to the Zohar in question was in the work Kabbalah. See also Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie, The Royal Masonic Cyclopædia of History, Rites, Symbolism and Biography (London: John Hogg and Co, 1877), 414-415. 49Blavatsky, Isis II, 137-138. The following was embedded in the middle of this extract. It refers to a Hebrew, Kabbalistic term for reincarnation,


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gilgul, and yet another interpretation of the notion of transmigration, although it dismisses it, at the same time mistakenly attributing the Kabbalah Denudata to Heinrich Khunrath, rather than Christian Knorr von Rosenroth.

Also the doctrine of Gilgul, held to the strange theory of the ‘Whirling of the Soul,’ which taught that the bodies of Jews buried far away from the Holy Land, still preserve a particle of soul which can neither rest nor quit them, until it reaches the soil of the ‘Promised Land.’ And this ‘whirling’ process was thought to be accomplished by the soul being conveyed back through an actual evolution of species; transmigrating from the minutest insect up to the largest animal. But this was an exoteric doctrine. We refer the reader to the Kabbala Denudata of Henry Khunrath; his language, however obscure, may yet throw some light upon the subject.

Blavatsky, Isis II, 136-137.50Blavatsky, Isis II, 138.

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Metempsychosis and Reincarnation in Isis Unveiled

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