Philosophy & ThoughtGreek → English
Metempsychosis
/ˌmɛtəmsaɪˈkoʊsɪs/noun
The passage of a soul after death into a new body, human or animal.
The Greek roots
μετά
metá
across, change
ἐν
en
in
ψυχή
psūkhḗ
soul
Literally: “ensouling into another body”
The story of the word
Pythagoras taught it, and reportedly stopped a man beating a puppy because he recognised the yelp of a dead friend. Plato gives the fullest account in the myth of Er at the end of the Republic, where souls choose their next lives. Joyce puts the word into Molly Bloom's mouth in Ulysses, where she mishears it as "met him pike hoses".
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
psychepsychologymetamorphosismetaphor
In a sentence
Empedocles claimed to remember having been a bush and a fish.
The lecture traced metempsychosis from Orphic cult to Renaissance Platonism.