(3) Metempsychosis has always been the accepted belief of many of the most intelligent members of the ace. It is found to have been the inner doctrine of the ancient Egyptians, and was held in the highest regard by the great thinkers of the ancient Western world, such as Pythagoras, Empedocles, Plato, Virgil, and Ovid. Plato 's teachings were filled with the doctrine. The Hindu philosophies are based upon it. The Persian Magi held implicitly to it. The ancient Druids, and the Priests of Gaul taught it. Traces of the doctrine are found in the records of the ancient races of the Aztecs, the Peruvians, and other old peoples of the New World. The Eleusinian Mysteries of Greece, the Roman Mysteries of the Temple, the Inner Doctrines of the Kabbala of the Hebrews, all were based upon the doctrine of Metempsychosis. The early Christian Fathers, the Gnostics and Manicheans and other early Christian sects, believed in it. The great philosophers, ancient and modern, treated it with respect if indeed they did not fully accept it in many cases. The following quotations from modern authorities give an idea of the importance attached to the doctrine by modern thinkers: Hedge says: "Of all the theories respecting the origin of the soul, Metempsychosis seems to me the most plausible and therefore the one most likely to throw light on the question of the life to come." James Freeman Clarke says: "It would be curious if we would find science and philosophy taking up again the old theory of metempsychosis, remodeling it to suit our present modes of religious and scientific thought, and launching it again on the wide ocean of human belief. But stranger things have happened in the history of human opinions." Professor Knight says: "If we could legitimately determine any question of belief by the number of its adherents, the decision would be in favor of metempsychosis rather than to any other. I think it is quite as likely to be revived and to come to the front as any rival theory." Professor Bowen says: "It seems to me, a firm and well-grounded faith in the doctrine of Christian metempsychosis might help to regenerate the world. For it would be a faith not hedged around with many of the difficulties and objections which beset other forms of doctrines, and it offers distinct and pungent motives for trying to lead a more Christian life, and for loving and helping our brother man. The doctrine of Metempsychosis may almost claim to be a natural or innate belief in the human mind, if we may judge from its wide diffusion among the nations of the earth, and its prevalence throughout the historical ages." E. D. Walker says: "When Christianity first swept over Europe, the inner thought of its leaders was deeply tinctured with this truth. The Church tried effectually to eradicate it, but in various sects it kept sprouting forth beyond the time of Erigina and Bonaventura, its mediaeval advocates. Every great intuitional soul, as Paracelsus, Boehme, and Swedenborg, has adhered to it. The Italian luminaries, Giordano Bruno and Campanella, embraced it. The best of German philosophy is enriched by it. In Schopenhauer, Lessing, and Fichte the younger, it is earnestly advocated. The anthropological systems of Kant and Schelling furnish points of contact with it. The younger Helmont adduces in two hundred problems all the arguments which may be urged in favor of the return of souls into human bodies, according to Jewish ideas. Of English thinkers, the Cambridge Platonists defended it with much learning and acuteness, most conspicuously Henry More; and in Cudsworth and Hume it ranks as the most rational theory of immortality. Glanvil devotes a curious treatise to it. It captivated the minds of Fourier and Leroux. Andre Pezzani's book on the Plurality of the Soul's Lives works out the system on the Roman Catholic idea of expiation." But, better than all the opinions and shades of belief found among the great writers and teachers concerning this important subject, is the inner conviction of all souls which have reached a certain stage of spiritual enfoldment—the conviction that "I have lived before." Such a conviction and intuitive belief based upon the reawakening of dim memories, is worth more to an individual than tons of printed opinions on the subject.

(2) The doctrine of Metempsychosis is one of the oldest of the human race. Traces of the teaching are found in the records of practically every one of the ancient races in all parts of the globe. In one form or another it has existed in the esoteric circles to be found at the heart of each of the world's great religions, including Christianity. It has always been a cardinal doctrine in the religions of the Orient, and during the past twenty-five years has attained a wonderful revival of popularity among the thinkers of the Occident. The Rosicrucians’ teachings hold that the Evolution of Man has been accomplished not alone by the general evolutionary trend of the race by which it moves forward from generation to generation, but also by the advance and ascent caused by the improvement in the reincarnating individual soul, each step of rebirth tending upward and onward. As a writer has said: "The teachings hold that Evolution is caused by the soul striving, struggling, and pressing forward toward fuller and still fuller expression, using Matter as a material, and yet always struggling to free itself from the confining and retarding influence of the latter. The struggle results in an unfoldment, causing sheath after sheath of the confining material bonds to be thrown off and discarded, as the spirit moulds matter to serve its higher purposes. Evolution is but the process of birth of the imprisoned spirit, unfolding and extricating itself from the web of matter in which it has been involved and infolded. And the pains and struggles are but incidents of the spiritual parturition." The Rosicrucians have no special, distinctive theories concerning Metempsychosis, but, on the contrary, accept the general teaching of the ancient occultists concerning reembodiment of the soul. They regard re-birth as just as natural as birth, and consider that the race has at its disposal a vast volume of actual experiences of individuals which conclusively proves the truth of the doctrine. In fact, the Rosicrucian teachers make no attempt to argue the question with the student; but, rather, present the teaching as it comes to them, backed up by the wealth of authority on the part of the ancient schools, and fortified by the innumerable personal recollections on the part of individuals—in most cases the student himself has an intuition of the truth of the doctrine, in the first place, and often has a greater or less degree of recollection of his former lives on earth.

(1) From these things, therefore, it is easy to answer your next question. For the peculiar dæmon does not rule over one of the parts in us, but, in short, over all the parts at once, and extends to every principle within us, in the same manner as he was distributed to us from the total orders in the universe. For that which it appears to you proper to add as an indication “ that dæmons preside over the parts of our body, so that one is the guardian of health, another of the form of the body, and another of the corporeal habits, and that there is one dæmon who presides in common over all these ;” this you should consider as an argument that there is one dæmon who is the guardian and governor of every thing that is in us. You must not, therefore, distribute one dæmon to the body, but another to the soul, and another to intellect: for it is absurd that the animal should be one, but the dæmon that presides over it multiform. For every where the natures that govern are more simple than the natures that are governed. And it will be still more absurd if the many dæmons that rule over the parts are not connascent, but separated from each other. But you also make contrariety among them. For you speak as if “ some of them were good, but others bad .” Evil dæmons, however, have no where a ruling allotment, nor are they oppositely divided to such as are good with equal authority and power.

(4) That all beings are, in truth, but expressions of the One Being—centres of consciousness, form, and activity within itself,—is a fundamental tenet of all occult and esoteric teaching. That all Being is One; all Life, One; all Form, One; all Consciousness, One, is known to all true disciples of the occult and esoteric teachings of the past and present, occidental and oriental, philosophical and theological. Hidden behind and under the orthodox, exoteric teachings, there is always to be found this insistence upon Essential Oneness on the part of the Inner Teachings of all schools.

(1) That which follows in the next place, descends from a divine alienation of mind to an ecstasy of the reasoning power which leads it to a worse condition, and absurdly says, “ that the cause of divination is the mania which happens in diseases .” For, as we may conjecture, it assimilates enthusiasm to the redundancy of the black bile, to the aberrations of intoxication, and to the fury which happens from mad dogs. It is necessary, therefore, from the beginning, to divide ecstasy into two species, one of which leads to a worse condition of being, and fills us with stupidity and folly; but the other imparts goods which are more honourable than human temperance. One species also deviates to a disorderly, confused, and material motion; but the other gives itself to the cause which rules over the orderly distribution of things in the world. And the one, indeed, as being deprived of knowledge, wanders from wisdom; but the other conjoins with natures that transcend all our wisdom. The one, likewise, is unstable, but the other is immutable. The one is preternatural, but the other is above nature. The one draws down the soul, but the other elevates it. And the one entirely separates us from a divine allotment, but the other connects us with it.

(48) The understanding of the Principle of Polarity enables the occultist to transmute one mental state into another, along the lines of Polarization. Things belonging to different classes cannot be transmuted into each other, but the opposing poles of the same thing may be so changed—that is, may have a change in their polarity effected and thus be transmuted one into the other. Thus, love can never become east or west, or red or violet; but love may be changed into hate, or hate into love, by a shifting of polarity. Courage may be transmuted into fear, or fear into courage; hard may be changed into soft, dull into sharp, hot into cold, and so on, the transmutation always being between things of the same kind. The fearful man may shift his polarity and by thus changing his emotional vibrations may become filled with courage. Likewise, the slothful man may shift his polarity into activity and energetic action. The key lies in the fact that in this process of transmutation there is not an actual change of one thing into another distinct thing, but rather a shifting of the centre of polar force from one extreme of the scale to the other, just as one would shift the carriage of his typewriter from 1 to 70, or change the focus of an opera glass.

(1) The wise, therefore, speak as follows: The soul having a twofold life, one being in conjunction with body, but the other being separate from all body; when we are awake we employ, for the most part, the life which is common with the body, except when we separate ourselves entirely from it by pure intellectual and dianoetic energies. But when we are asleep, we are perfectly liberated, as it were, from certain surrounding bonds, and use a life separated from generation. Hence, this form of life, whether it be intellectual or divine, and whether these two are the same thing, or whether each is peculiarly of itself one thing, is then excited in us, and energizes in a way conformable to its nature. Since, therefore, intellect surveys real beings, but the soul contains in itself the reasons of all generated natures, it very properly follows that, according to a cause which comprehends future events, it should have a foreknowledge of them, as arranged in their precedaneous reasons. And it possesses a divination still more perfect than this, when it conjoins the portions of life and intellectual energy to the wholes from which it was separated. For then it is filled from wholes with all scientific knowledge, so as for the most part to attain by its conceptions to the apprehension of every thing which is effected in the world. Indeed, when it is united to the Gods, by a liberated energy of this kind, it then receives the most true plenitudes of intellections, from which it emits the true divination of divine dreams, and derives the most genuine principles of knowledge.

(1) I heard a voice saying to me, "Shem, since you are from an unmixed power and you are the first being upon the earth, hear and understand what I shall say to you first concerning the great powers who were in existence in the beginning before I appeared. There was light and darkness, and there was spirit between them. Since your root fell into forgetfulness—that which was the unconceived spirit—I reveal to you the truth about the powers. The light was thought, full of attentiveness and reason; they were united into one form. And the darkness was wind in waters. He possessed the mind wrapped in chaotic fire. And the spirit between them was a gentle, humble light. These are the three roots. They reigned each in themselves, alone. And they covered each other, each one with its power.

(1) If, however, it be requisite to unfold to you the truth concerning the peculiar dæmon, we must say that he is not distributed to us from one part of the heavens, or from some one of the visible elements; but that from the whole world, the all-various life contained in it, and the all-various body through which the soul descends into generation, a certain peculiar portion is distributed to each of the parts in us, according to a peculiar prefecture. This dæmon, therefore, is established in the paradigm before the soul descends into generation; and when the soul has received him as its leader, the dæmon immediately presides over the soul, gives completion to its lives, and binds it to body when it descends. He likewise governs the common animal of the soul, directs its peculiar life, and imparts to us the principles of all our thoughts and reasonings. We also perform such things as he suggests to our intellect, and he continues to govern us till, through sacerdotal theurgy, we obtain a God for the inspective guardian and leader of the soul. For then the dæmon either yields or delivers his government to a more excellent nature, or is subjected to him, as contributing to his guardianship, or in some other way is ministrant to him as to his lord.

(1) Concerning another kind of divination, also, you say as follows: “ Others who are conscious what they are doing in other respects, are divinely inspired according to the phantastic part, some indeed receiving darkness for a cooperator, others certain potions, but others in cantations and compositions. And some energize according to the imagination through water, others in a wall, others in the open air, and others in the light of the sun, or some other celestial body. ” The whole, however, of this kind of divination of which you now speak, since it is multiform, may be comprehended in one power, which may be called the eduction of light. But this illuminates with divine light the etherial and luciform vehicle with which the soul is surrounded, from which divine visions occupy our phantastic power, these visions being excited by the will of the Gods. For the whole life of the soul and all the powers that are in it, being in subjection to the Gods, are moved in such a way as the Gods, the leaders of the soul, please.

(1) Mankind came to be in three essential types, the spiritual, the psychic, and the material, conforming to the triple disposition of the Logos, from which were brought forth the material ones and the psychic ones and the spiritual ones. Each of the three essential types is known by its fruit. And they were not known at first but only at the coming of the Savior, who shone upon the saints and revealed what each was.

(29) The Mind of the Eternal Father said into Three, governing all things by Mind.

(1) In the next place we shall explain how divination is effected through sacred animals, such, for instance, as hawks. We must never say, therefore, that the Gods accede through bodies that are thus procured, being employed. For they do not preside over animals, either partibly, or proximately, or materially, or with a certain habitude towards them. But to dæmons and these such as are very much divided, to different orders of whom different animals are allotted, and who proximately exercise a government of this kind, and do not obtain their proper dominion in a way perfectly independent and immaterial, such a contact with the organs of divination must be ascribed. Or, if some one is willing so to admit, a seat must be attributed to them, through which we may be able to associate with and employ them. It is necessary, therefore, to think that this seat should be pure from bodies. For there can be no communion whatever between the pure and its contrary; but it is reasonable to admit that this seat is conjoined with men, through the soul of animals. For this soul has a certain alliance to men, through homogeneity of life; but it is allied to dæmons, because, being liberated from body, it has in a certain respect a separate subsistence. Hence, being a medium between both, it is subservient to its presiding dæmon, but announces to those who are yet detained in body that which its prefect commands. And it imparts to both these a common bond with each other.

(1) Afterwards, abandoning these particulars, you pass on to the opinion of philosophy. But you subvert the whole hypothesis concerning the peculiar dæmon. For if [as you say] “ this dæmon is a part of the soul ,” such, for instance, as the intellectual part, “ and he is happy who is in possession of a wise intellect ,” there will no longer be any other more excellent or dæmoniacal order, presiding over, as transcending the human soul. But certain parts of the soul, or a certain divided power, will have dominion over many of the forms of life that are in us; and will rule over these, not connascently, but as naturally exempt, and as transcending the whole of our composition.

(70) Mounpus* saith: Know, all ye investigators of this Art, that the head is all things, which if it hath not, all that it imposes profits nothing. Accordingly, the Masters have said that what is perfected is one, and a diversity of natures does not improve that thing, but one and a suitable nature, which it behoves you to rule carefully, for by ignorance of ruling some have erred. Do not heed, therefore, the plurality of these compositions, nor those things which the philosophers have enumerated in their books. For the nature of truth is one, and the followers of Nature have termed it thdt one thing in the belly whereof is concealed the natural arcanum. This arcanum is neither seen nor known except by the Wise. He, therefore, who knows how to extract its complexion and rules equably, for him shall a nature rise forth therefrom which shall conquer all natures, and then shall that word be fulfilled which was written by the Masters, namely, that Nature rejoices in Nature, Nature overcomes Nature, and Nature contains Nature; at the same time there are not many or diverse Natures, but one having in itself its own natures and properties, by which it prevails over other things. Do you not see that the Master has begun with one and finished one? Hence has he called those unities Sulphureous Water, conquering all Nature.

(8) In all forms, phases, and schools of philosophy we find this insistence upon the presence and existence of a One Something of which all else are but manifestations. In fact, as the wisest philosophers have informed us, the whole purpose of philosophy is to discover the One Unconditioned Ground of all that exists Conditionally. All philosophy worthy of the name is Monistic in essence. A leading authority on the history of philosophy informs us the: "Monism is, in strictness, a name applicable to any system of thought which sees in the universe the manifestation or working of a single principle. Such a unity may be at once the tacit presupposition and the goal of all philosophic effect, and in so far as a philosophy fails to harmonize the apparently independent and even conflicting facts of experience, as aspects or elements within a larger whole, it must be held to fall short of the necessary ideal of thought. Dualism, in an ultimate metaphysical reference, is a confession of the failure of philosophy to achieve its proper task; and this is a justification of those who consistently use the word as a term of reproach." And, now, let us take a brief passing glance at the Rosicrucian teachings concerning the manner in which the One proceeded to become the Many—the Unity to become Diversity—the Identical to become Variety—and yet remain the One, Unity, Identity of the World Soul, unaffected and unchanged by its plunge into Manifestation. Evolution we see on all sides around us, but all Evolution must be preceded by Involution, as all occultists and scientists know full well.

(1) The Rosicrucians hold as a very important part of the teaching the occult doctrine of Metempsychosis, Reincarnation, or Transmigration of Souls, the essence of which doctrine is the survival of the individual soul after it passes from the physical body in death, and its reembodiment in a physical body by rebirth after a sojourn in the resting place of the souls.

But the first Psyche loved Eros, who was with her, and poured her blood upon him and upon the earth. Then from that blood the first rose sprouted upon the earth out of the thorn bush, for a joy in the light that was to appear in the bramble. After this the beautiful, fragrant flowers sprouted up from the earth according to their kind from the blood of each of the virgins of the daughters of forethought. When they had become enamored of Eros, they poured out their blood upon him and upon the earth. After these things every herb sprouted up in the earth according to its kind, having the seed of the authorities and their angels. After these things the authorities created from the waters all species of beasts and reptiles and birds according to their kind, having the seed of the authorities and their angels. But before all these things, when Adam of light appeared on the first day, he remained upon the earth about two days. He left the lower forethought in heaven and began to ascend to his light. And immediately darkness came upon the whole world. Now, when Sophia, who is in the lower heaven, wanted to receive authority from Pistis, she created great luminaries and all the stars, and put them in the heaven to shine upon the earth and to perfect chronological signs and seasons and years and months and days and nights and seconds, and so on. And thus everything up in the sky was ordered. Now, when Adam of light wanted to enter his light, that is, the eighth heaven, he was unable because of the poverty that had mixed with his light. Then he created a great eternal realm for himself; in that eternal realm he created six realms and their worlds, six in number, which are seven times better than the heavens of chaos and their worlds. But all these realms and their worlds exist within the infinite region that is between the eighth and chaos beneath it, and they are reckoned with the world that belongs to the poverty. If you wish to know the arrangement of these, you will find it written in the Seventh Cosmos of Hieralias the Prophet.

(2) In ancient Egypt dwelt the great Adepts and Masters who have never been surpassed, and who seldom have been equaled, during the centuries that have taken their processional flight since the days of the Great Hermes. In Egypt was located the Great Lodge of Lodges of the Mystics. At the doors of her Temples entered the Neophytes who afterward, as Hierophants, Adepts, and Masters, traveled to the four corners of the earth, carrying with them the precious knowledge which they were ready, anxious, and willing to pass on to those who were ready to receive the same. All students of the Occult recognize the debt that they owe to these venerable Masters of that ancient land.

(3) So great, therefore, being the difference between the energies of dæmons, heroes, and souls throughout, it is no longer proper to doubt, what it is which separates them from each other; but they are to be distinguished by the peculiar nature of each. And so far as they are able to form one conjunction, so far the communion of them must be surveyed. For thus it will be possible truly to comprehend and define separately the conception which ought to be formed of them.