Note 61 — Chapter VI · MATHEMATICAL MAGIC OF PYTHAGORAS

It happens that the hypothesis of reincarnation was personally unwelcome to Éliphas Lévi, and he did not know enough of Zoharic Kabalism to realise that it is of some importance therein. The traditions concerning the teaching of Pythagoras must be taken at their proper value, but there is no question that, according to these, he was an important champion of what used to be called the doctrine of metempsychosis, understood as the soul’s transmigration into successive bodies. He himself had been (a) Æthalides, a son of Mercury; (b) Euphorbus, son of Panthus, who perished at the hands of Menelaus in the Trojan war; (c) Hermotimus, a prophet of Clazomenæ, a city of Ionia; (d) a humble fisherman, and finally (e) the philosopher of Samos.