Oddcast episode

June 4, 2025

Coming Back for More: The Secret History of Reincarnation in the West, Part I: Pythagoras and the Orphics

In the way we approach the esoteric here on the SHWEP, there isn’t really such a thing as an ‘esoteric belief’, strictly speaking. Take belief in, say, multiple gods or divine entities: although such belief may take an esoteric form in certain cultural contexts, in other contexts – say, modern India or Japan – this is an uncontroversial and exoteric belief. Belief in reincarnation is no different, but here we can add a proviso: while reincarnation is a standard, exoteric tenet of many Sanskritic religions, it is also a belief with deep roots in the west, but in the west this belief has more often than not been an esoteric doctrine; that is, it has been held by recondite groups as a secret teaching, and, when it is discussed in texts, it is, more often than not, hedged about with either actual secrecy or with the rhetorics of secret wisdom.

So interesting is reincarnation as, de facto, an esoteric belief of the west, that we have decided to devote this series to it. In this first installment we look at the earliest evidence from classical Greece.

Works Cited in this Episode:

Primary:

Herodotos 2.81 on the Egyptians, Orphics, and Bakkhics: The shorter version says ὀμολογέουσι δὲ ταῦτα τοῖσι Ὀρφικοῖσι καλεομένοισι καὶ Πυθαγορείοισι (Flor.) while the longer has ὀμολογέει δὲ ταῦτα τοῖσι Ὀρφικοῖσι καλεομένοισι καὶ Βαχκικοῖσι, ἐοῦσι δὲ Αἰγυπτίοισι καὶ Πυθαγορείοισι (Rom.). On Egyptian metempsychōsis: 2.123.

Pindar on metempsychōsis: Olympian Ode 2.56 ff.

Pythagoras:

• Pythagoras taught reincarnation: see Burkert 1972, 120-66 [cited below] for a thorough summary of the evidence.
• Xenophanes’ testimony: 21 B7 DK = D.L. 8.36.

Diogenes Laertius: Pythagoras the first to affirm cyclical animal reincarnation: 8.14.

Upanishads: The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (4.4) and Chāndogya Upaniṣad (5.10) feature the earliest clear references to reincarnation. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad introduces the idea that one’s actions (karma) determine future rebirths; the Chāndogya Upaniṣad teaches that the soul (ātman) transmigrates based on knowledge and deeds.

Secondary:

Alberto Bernabé and Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristóbal. Instructions for the Netherworld: The Orphic Gold Tablets. Brill, Leiden/Boston, MA, 2008. Michael Chase, trans; we quote p. 120 (on the scholarly consensus that the Orphics got their reincarnation from Pythagoras).

Walter Burkert. Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1972 (we mention the original 1962 German publication at one point). Translated by Edward L. Minar; we quote p. 39 and p. 128 (on the scholarly consensus that Pythagoras got his reincarnation from the Orphics).

Basil L. Gildersleeve, editor. Pindar: The Olympian and Pythian Odes with an Introductory Essay, Notes, and Indexes. Macmillan, London, 1890; we quote pp. 149–50, notes to Olympian II, line 63 ff.

Herodotus, with an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920.

Pamela Mensch, translator, James Miller, editor. Diogenes Laertius. Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018.

Erwin Rohde. Psyche: The Cult of Soul and Belief in Immortality Among the Greeks. Kegan Paul, London, 1925.

Richard Seaford. The Origins of Philosophy in Ancient Greece and Ancient India. A Historical Comparison. The University Press, Cambridge, 2019.

Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. Der Glaube der Hellenen. Berlin, 1931-1932. 2 vols.

Recommended Reading:

SHWEP Oddcast Transmigration Recommended Reading

Themes

Egypt, Empedocles, Initiation, Metempsychosis, Money, Mystery-Cult, Orpheus, Orphism, Plato, Pythagoras, Pythagoreanism, Rupert and Steve, Soul, Virgil, voces magicæ