metempsychosis love

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Reincarnation.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Transmigration of the soul; the passing of the soul of a person after death into another body, either that of a human being or that of an animal: a doctrine held by various ancient peoples and by Pythagoras and his followers, and still maintained by Brahmans and some others: also loosely used of such a transfer of the soul of a living person.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The passage of the soul, as an immortal essence, at the death of the animal body it had inhabited, into another living body, whether of a brute or a human being; transmigration of souls.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun after death the soul begins a new cycle of existence in another human body

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Late Latin metempsȳchōsis, from Greek metempsūkhōsis, from metempsūkhousthai, to transmigrate : meta-, meta- + empsūkhos, animate (en, in; see en– + psūkhē, soul; see bhes- in Indo-European roots).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Late Latin metempsychosis, from Hellenistic Ancient Greek μετεμψύχωσις, from Ancient Greek μετα- + εν ("in") + ψυχή ("soul").

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Examples

  • The second doctrine is commonly known as metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls or reincarnation, the last name being the most correct.

    Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 1 Charles Eliot 1896

  • It must have grown up among a people to whom the idea of metempsychosis was well known, but who at the same time held a skeptical view of that doctrine.

    Filipino Popular Tales Dean Spruill Fansler

  • This passage contains the explanation of what might be called the metempsychosis of certain human souls at the present time; we once heard a great Teacher fully reveal this mystery to a chosen group of

    Reincarnation A Study in Human Evolution Th. Pascal

  • Plato himself had entertained the idea of metempsychosis and much that seems oriental in Plotinus may be not a new importation but the elaboration of Plato's views in a form congenial to the age [1143].

    Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 Charles Eliot 1896

  • Thus the idea of metempsychosis as one of many passing fancies may be indigenous to China but its prevalence in popular thought and language is undoubtedly due to Buddhism, for Taoism and Confucianism have nothing definite to say as to the state of the dead.

    Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 Charles Eliot 1896

  • India and imported by Buddhism into all the countries which it influenced — is that called metempsychosis, the transmigration of the soul or reincarnation.

    Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 1 Charles Eliot 1896

  • On the other hand, his psychogony, based on the idea of metempsychosis borrowed from the Orient, gives itself up to numerical vagaries.

    Essai sur l'imagination créatrice. English Albert Heyem Nachmen Baron 1877

  • The doctrine of metempsychosis, which is found in some shape or other all over the world, implies a fundamental identity between the two; the Hindu is taught to respect the flocks browsing in the meadow, and will on no account lift his hand against a cow, for who knows but it may he his own grandmother?

    Myths and Myth-makers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology 1872

  • South-eastern Asia, has passed in its protracted existence, it is difficult to determine with any degree of certainty, precisely what its disciples hold; but the belief in metempsychosis, which is one of its fundamental doctrines, must permit us to range it on the side of those who hold to the idea of a middle state.

    Purgatory Mrs. James Sadlier 1861

  • Origen: That He says of John, "Elias is already come," is not to be understood of the soul of Elias, that we fall not into the doctrine of metempsychosis, which is foreign to the truth of Church doctrine, but, as the Angel had foretold, he came "in the spirit and spirit of Elias."

    Catena Aurea - Gospel of Matthew 1225?-1274 1842

Comments

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  • the doctrine of transmigration of souls into another body

    August 7, 2007

  • Did you see his hand? Instead of a life line, he has a series of broken lines. Like a stream that comes to a stone, parts, and flows together again a meter farther on. The line of a man who must have died many times . . . . World champion of the metempsychosis relay.

    --Umberto Eco, 1988, Foucault's Pendulum, p. 188

    October 2, 2008