Term Paper

Immortality is a reoccurring theme throughout many modern fantasy novels. The character who possesses this specific trait struggles throughout the story with the many conflicts that arise from being immortal. These include watching all the people they love die, dealing with humanity far longer than anyone should have to, and deciding whether they will live as a superhero or a regular Joe. Clearly, there are lots of decisions to be made and lots of obstacles to overcome, when someone is going to live forever. However, things get significantly easier when it is only your soul that is everlasting. The soul remembers the many experiences it’s had, but the mind doesn’t. One such theory was created by Pythagoras and recorded by Ovid in his Metamorphosis. Pythagoras gave this theory its name, metempsychosis.
Many eastern religions are associated with the idea of an immortal soul. These religions come in many shapes and sized, but one of the most commonly known is Buddhism. It is common knowledge that two of the simplest elements of Buddhism are karma and reincarnation. In their most basic principles these two elements are intertwined. Karma is the actions, thoughts, and words of any one man. How the man uses these elements, whether for good or bad, influences his reincarnation in his next life. Quite simply, if he has good thoughts, words and actions he will move up, and if they are bad he will move down. The act of reincarnation takes place after the person dies, but it is not simply a physical rebirth of the person as something else. The Buddhists believe that each person possesses an immortal soul and this is what is being reborn in a different form each time the person is reincarnated (Tsuji).
The theory of metempsychosis is closely related to the eastern belief of reincarnation, but it does differ slightly. In chapter 15 of Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Pythagoras states the theory of metempsychosis as: “Everything changes, nothing dies: the spirit wanders, arriving here or there and occupying whatever body it pleases, passing from a wild beast into human being…but is never destroyed” (“Metamorphosis”). Pythagoras believed that the soul stayed the same, but simply took other forms (“Metamorphosis”). This is where the idea of metempsychosis differs from that of reincarnation. In Buddhism and other eastern religions, the karma of a human or animal determined what its soul was destined to be in its next life. However, in metempsychosis there is no such thing as karma. The soul is not bound by any of its previous actions in its next life. In metempsychosis the soul doesn’t really have a goal in mind; it just simply wanders from one body to the next as it pleases. In reincarnation, though, the soul is trying to reach an ultimate goal of enlightenment; it must perpetrate good actions and thoughts to climb up the next rung of the ladder. The Buddhist soul is forever bound by the actions in all its lives.
In Ovid’s Metamorphosis Pythagoras takes his theory one step further and uses it to express and support his belief in vegetarianism. Pythagoras sees each soul as an equal. There is no such thing as a human’s soul and a cat’s soul, but only an immortal soul. Following this train of thought, if someone was to kill and eat a cow, or any other animal, they would essentially be eating a kindred spirit. A being that is so like them, that they would essentially be practicing cannibalism. Pythagoras instead advises that we stick to the abundance of fruit and plants that surround us. In this way we can avoid the self-destructive act of killing our own kind. He even takes it one step further and demands that sacrifices come to an end. He says that humans have involved the divine ones in their crimes against humanity, and that we are crazy to think that any god delights in the suffering of any living thing. In the last paragraph of his section on vegetarianism Pythagoras sums up his anguish by saying “When you place the flesh of slaughtered cattle in your mouths, know and feel that you are devouring your fellow-creature.”
Every theory has merit, but they don’t ever seem to ring true until they point at which they are somehow demonstrated. Ovid understood this and so within the same book that he included Pythagoras’s ideas on metempsychosis and vegetari anism, he also included examples; in the form of stories, of just how powerful these theories can be. One of these stories is the story of Callisto and it goes something like this: Callisto is the very beautiful, favorite, virgin nymph of the goddess Diana. Callisto is so beautiful that she catches the eye of Jupiter himself, but Jupiter knows that she will never consent to lay with him. One day after a long day of hunting Callisto decides to nap under a tree and Jupiter sees this as his chance to have her. He appears to Callisto as Diana so that she will trust him and allow him near her. Callisto is fooled by Jupiter’s disguise and only becomes frightened when he grabs her so she cannot move. Although she fights with everything she has Callisto is no match for Jupiter himself and he proceeds to rape her. The rape deeply scars Callisto and after nine months when Diana and the other nymphs discover the pregnancy that resulted from the rape, they banish her from the only home she has ever known. By this time Juno has caught wind of Callisto’s pregnancy and she is in such a rage that she decides that as soon as Callisto’s child is born she is going to punish Callisto for what she has done. Callisto soon gives birth to a boy called Arcas, after which Juno keeps her promise and turns Callisto into a bear. Callisto spends the next 15 years wandering the forest unhappily in her new form. Until one day her now grown son is hunting in the forest and sees her. He=2 0knows nothing about his mother, so naturally he tries to kill her. Only by the intervention of Jupiter, who caused all the problems in the first place, is this killing stopped. Jupiter takes mother and son and sends them up into the stars as the great bear and the small bear (Hughes, 42-48).
It is true that Callisto only changed form with the help of a god, but Pythagoras’s theories still apply. In the form of a bear Callisto still had human thoughts and emotions; her soul was still the same as before. Also, Arcas had believed in the preservation of all souls and that killing any other life form was a great crime, he most likely would not have tried to kill his mother. If Jupiter had not decided to intervene on the part of Callisto, and save her from her son’s spear, than a great tradegy would have occurred; a son would have killed his mother. This is exactly the kind of tragedy that Pythagoras wants us to avoid.
Another great example of this theory is the story of Pentheus; although he is not quite as lucky as Callisto. Pentheus was the king of Thebes and when the great seer Tiresias came to tell of a new god, Bacchus, Pentheus was the only man who refused to believe in this new god. Despite Pentheus’s dislike for Bacchus, the whole town of Thebes celebrates in his honor and Pentheus is so angry that he demands his royal guard to find and arrest Bacchus. The guards return, not with Bacchus, but with his high priest. T he priest tells a great story about Bacchus, but Pentheus still does not believe and sends the priest to his dungeon. Finally Pentheus decides to go see about this new god for himself and begins to climb the mountain consecrated to Bacchus. Halfway up the mountain he comes to a clearing, which he enters and he finds a group of women performing the naked mysteries. The women spot him, but they do not see a man because Bacchus has transformed Pentheus into a boar. The women run at him and the first to throw a spear into him is his own mother. The women continue to tear him limb from limb, while he screams, but they hear only the squeals of a boar (Hughes 171-187).
This story is a true tragedy. A mother kills her son while he screams for mercy, but she cannot hear him because he no longer has the form of her beloved child. If she had believed in the immortal soul, perhaps her son would have been spared and perhaps she would have been spared being the orchestrator in his brutal killing.
Metempsychosis carries many implications both in the moral and spiritual senses. While it may not influence significant change in the life of the reader, it certainly can be considered food for thought. If nothing else, the concept can be considered morally motivational. Like all spiritual concepts, it is based upon influencing people into better decisions, and promoting peace. Regardless of the moral and social implications of this concept, it undoubtedly makes for some very interesting and thought provoking stories.