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Reincarnation vs Metempsychosis - What's the difference?

reincarnation | metempsychosis |

As nouns the difference between reincarnation and metempsychosis

is that reincarnation is a rebirth of a mental capacity, such as a soul, in a physical life form, such as a body while metempsychosis is transmigration of the soul, especially its reincarnation after death.

reincarnation

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • A rebirth of a mental capacity, such as a soul, in a physical life form, such as a body
  • The idea of such a rebirth, a specific belief or doctrine on how such a rebirth occurs
  • A fresh embodiment
  • A new, considerably improved, version
  • Synonyms

    * rebirth (1, and to some extent 2)

    See also

    * rebirth * transmigration

    metempsychosis

    Noun

    (metempsychoses)
  • Transmigration of the soul, especially its reincarnation after death.
  • *, II.11:
  • Pythagoras'' borrowed ''Metempsychosis'' of the Ægyptians, but since, it hath been received of divers Nations, and especially of our ''Druides .
  • * 1891 , (Rudyard Kipling), "The Finest Story in the World":
  • The Fates that are so careful to shut the doors of each successive life behind us had, in this case, been neglectful, and Charlie was looking, though that he did not know, where never man had been permitted to look with full knowledge since Time began. Above all he was absolutely ignorant of the knowledge sold to me for five pounds; and he would retain that ignorance, for bank-clerks do not understand metempsychosis , and a sound commercial education does not include Greek.
  • * 1922 , (James Joyce), :
  • Metempsychosis , he said, is what the ancient Greeks called it. They used to believe you could be changed into an animal or a tree, for instance. What they called nymphs, for example.
  • * 1963 , (Thomas Pynchon), :
  • To go along assuming that Victoria the girl tourist and Veronica the sewer rat were one and the same V. was not at all to bring up any metempsychosis : only to affirm that his quarry fitted in with The Big One, the century’s master cabal.
  • * 1994 , (Will Self), (My Idea of Fun) :
  • Hers was a metempsychosis of novelty, her mind a vapid thing until animated by the next absolute conviction.