this notion arose among primitive peoples even anthropologists, ethnologists, and philosophers can only speculate. In plant life there is every indication of resurrection, or rebirth. Certain species seem to wither and die, only to revive or be born again at a later period.

The vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere is a time when plant life is renewed after the barren, moribund appearance of nature in winter. Perhaps man, too, is reborn to live again among mortals in some other form. At least, nature would seem to suggest it.

Psychologically, thç desire to live again among one’s friends and family, continuing the familiar ways of life one had enjoyed, would certainly have as strong an appeal as a promise of life in another world which had never been experienced personally. A cursory examination of the history of this subject reveals that the belief in a re-embodiment on earth has been accepted by millions for centuries.

Today, the words reincarnation, transmigration, and metamorphosis are commonly and erroneously interchanged. There is, in fact, quite a technical difference between their meanings. The doctrine of transmigration supposes the possibility after death of the soul of man entering a plant, bird, reptile, or a bull; in fact, anything that is animate.

Wherever it has been a religious doctrine, however, transmigration has been governed by certain assumed supernatural laws: the form in which the soul incarnated being dependent upon its personal development, and the experience to be gained dependent upon the form in which the soul is placed or the punishments imposed upon it. Usually, the transmigration of the soul into an animal has been accepted as an act of regression.

Primitive peoples are keen observers of animal life and behavior because of its being contiguous with their own living. They presume a certain similarity between the characteristics of animals and the behavior of humans. To the primitive mind, then, there was an actual bond or relationship to the human personality by the law of similarity. Consequently, it was not difficult for such minds to assume that a particular species of living things possessed souls of humans that passed into them at death.

The Egyptians had three ideas regarding the human personality after death. One was the mystical union with God; the second, transmigration into an animal; and third, metamorphosis, or the voluntary entering of the soul into another form. In the conception of the mystical union, the soul was returned to merge with God. It became one with the Divine Essence.

In this idea, we find an ancient expression, which prevails in many esoteric teachings today, of the highest form of mystical pantheism. In the famous Book of the Dead, a collection of religious liturgies and descriptions of life after death, we find such statements as “I am Ra [a god]” or, “I am Thoth.” It was believed that when the soul united with God, it was a complete apotheosis, the absorption conferring on the soul a divine power equal to that of God.

Other Egyptian Beliefs

Some Egyptologists are in doubt as to what extent the Egyptians believed in transmigration, or the passing of the soul into animals. Some tomb inscriptions seem to imply transmigration. Various scenes show Egyptians driving swine before a god for judgment to be passed on them as if they possessed a rational soul.

On the other hand, there are examples of metamorphosis—the belief that humans attempt to transform into other living forms. There are also indications that the Egyptians believed that inanimate objects could be transformed into living ones, as the metamorphosis of a wax model into a crocodile.

The Book of the Dead contains several chapters of magical formulas, giving the deceased the power to be transformed into whatever he pleases—a hawk, a god, a flower, or a reptile: “I am the swallow; I am the swallow. I am the Scorpion Bird [or white bird], the daughter of Ra.”

Since the civilization of Egypt covered a period of thousands of years, its culture advanced and declined at different times. Prevailing religious conceptions over such a long period of civilization were both primitive and representative of advanced abstraction. As in many lands today, crude polytheistic beliefs and animism

[23]