Transmigration
TRANSMIGRATION denotes the process by which, after death, either a spiritual or an ethereal, subtle, and thinly material part of the personality, leaves the body that it previously inhabited; it then "migrates" to enter (i.e., is reborn in) another body, either human or animal, or another form of being, such as a plant or even an inanimate object. Other terms often used in this context are rebirth, especially in connection with Indian religions, palingenesis (from Greek palin, "again," and genesis, "birth,"), metempsychosis (from Greek meta, "again," and psychê, "soul") and, increasingly in modern popular parlance, reincarnation (from Latin re "back" and caro, "flesh"). Manichaean texts in Syriac use the expression tašpikha or tašpikha denafshata, corresponding to Greek metangismos (from Greek metangizesthai, "pour from one vessel into another one, decant"; similarly, Latin transfundi) and conveying the underlying notion of a transfusion or change of vessel whereby the soul is "poured" from one body into another. The Latin church father Augustine of Hippo (354–430) in his anti-Manichaean writings also uses the noun revolutiones and the verb revolvi, which happen to be identical with the later qabbalistic technical term gilgul: the soul "revolves" (i.e. rotates) through successive bodies. Earlier qabbalistic terms were sod-ha-ʿibbur ("the mystery of transition") and haʿtaqah ("displacing, changing place"), the latter equivalent to the Arabic tanasukh.
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