To Light a Thousand Lamps - The Theosophical Society

Reincarnation / 33
Justinian and held in Constantinople in 553 AD. Careful
scrutiny of the record, however, shows that neither Origen
nor his beliefs were aired at any session of the Council. It
was at an extra-conciliary meeting held prior to the Council
that fifteen Anathemas were pronounced against Origen
and his teachings, the first of which reads:
If anyone assert the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and
shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it:
let him be anathema.*
It seems incomprehensible to us today that a teaching as
broadly accepted and as logical and spiritually satisfying as
reincarnation should have been withdrawn from public
knowledge and held under ecclesiastical wraps for nearly
1,500 years. One cannot help wondering what the history of
the Occident might have been had the concept of reincarnation
remained a vivifying element in the Christian message.
Providentially, although it was taboo to preach from the
pulpit the doctrine of the soul’s rebirth, the immortal song
of bards and poets could not be silenced, and when the
Renaissance came, philosophers joined poets in speaking
and writing openly of intimations of an earlier life or lives.
Later, Transcendentalists on both sides of the Atlantic powerfully
aªrmed their support of this transforming idea, this
doctrine of hope and consolation.
Against the background of cosmic cycles, the birth and
death of stars, and the annual renewal of earth and all
its kingdoms, reincarnation is seen as the human mode of
*Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery, comp. and ed. by Joseph
Head and Sylvia Cranston, p. 159 ¤.