Mircea Eliade "From Primitives to Zen": EMPEDOCLES
ON THE TRANSMIGRATION OF THE SOUL
('Fragments' 115, 117, 118)
There is an oracle of Necessity, ancient decree of the gods, eternal and sealed with broad oaths:
whenever one of those demi-gods, whose lot is long-lasting life, has sinfully defiled his dear limbs
' with bloodshed, or following strife has sworn a false oath, thrice ten thousand seasons does he
wander far from the blessed, being born throughout that time in the forms of all manner of mortal
things and changing one baleful path of life for another. The might of the air pursues him into the
sea, the sea spews him forth on to the dry land, the earth casts him into the rays of the burning sun,
and the sun into the eddies of air. one takes him from the other, but all alike abhor him. Of these
I too am now one, a fugitive from the gods and a wanderer, who put my trust in raving strife. (Frag.
II 5)
I wept and wailed when I saw the unfamiliar place. (Frag. 118)
For already have I once been a boy and a girl, a fish and a bird and a dumb sea fish. (Frag. 117)
Empedodes texts in G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, translators, The Presocratic Philosophers
Cambridge, Eng., 1957)
Books by Mircea Eliade:
- Mircea Eliade, Jr., Fred H. Johnson “Journal II, 1957-1969 (Journal)”
- Mircea Eliade, Willard R. Trask “Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth”
- Mircea Eliade “The Forge and the Crucible: The Origins and Structure of Alchemy”
- Mircea Eliade, Catherine Spencer “Bengal Nights: A Novel”
- Mircea Eliade, Willard R. Trask “History of Religious Ideas, Volume 2: From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity (History of Religious Ideas)”
- Mircea Eliade, Diane Apostolos-Cappadona “Symbolism, the Sacred, and the Arts”
- Mircea Eliade “Autobiography, Volume 2: 1937-1960, Exile's Odyssey (Autobiography / Mircea Eliade)”
- Mircea Eliade, Philip Mairet “Images and Symbols”
- Mircea Eliade, Willard R. Trask “Yoga : Immortality and Freedom”
- Mircea Eliade, Willard R. Trask “The Myth of the Eternal Return: Or, Cosmos and History”
- Mircea Eliade, Alf Hiltebeitel, Diane Apostolos-Cappadona “A History of Religious Ideas: From Muhammad to the Age of Reforms (History of Religious Ideas) Vol.3”
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