tistis said to have the spirit of Elijah as proof that the New Testament acknowledged reincarnation.
See also Antinomianism; Dualism; Gnosti-
cism; Irenaeus, New Testament; New Testament and reincarnation.
Cartomancy(divination by cards) see Phoenix
Cards; Tarot.
Caste system. This is the Indian system of rigid social ranking of people according to their birth.
Most Westerners have never seen the subhuman conditions in which some lower castes, and worse, the untouchables, are forced to live. Not only do the often very well off highest castes feel no responsi- bility to improve the lives of those beneath them, but look down contemptuously on the lower castes, and oppress them. They justify this by the claim that lower caste birth is a result of sinful karma, and so they deserve what they get. In other words, reincarnation not only justifies the economic and political status quo, it encourages a process of karmicaly blaming the victim.
See also Ambedkar, Bhim Rao; Karma; Karma
and faith; Karma and justice; Noble lie; Rebirth and cyclical time; Return and serve argument for reincarnation; Roy, Raja Ram Mohan; Weber, Max; Women.
Cathars or Cathari (Greek: Pure). This was the name applied to a 12th and 13th century anti– Catholic, pro-ascetic, gnostic Christian group in Northern Italy, Southern France, and parts of Ger- many that almost certainly was an offshoot of the
Bogomils.
The Cathars actually called themselves Ecclesia
Dei (Church of God), and while acknowledging
JesusChrist as a divinely sent angel, they rejected the Old Testament as being the record of an infe- rior, even evil, deity or demiurge. They also re- jected the Catholic sacraments of baptism, mar- riage, and Holy Communion. The main reason for these rejections was that the Cathars believed strongly in a body-soul dualism, which regarded marriage and sexual reproduction as a further trap- ping of souls into bodies.
Cathar society was divided into the ordinary be- liever and the celibate clergy or “Pure Ones”; hence the name given to them by outsiders. It was held that those members who sincerely took and kept their ascetic vow, the consolamentum, could gain liberation from the misery of metempsychosis. This vow was of such importance to the Cathars that it was thought better to choose deliberate sui-
cide(endure) than to break it. This act of taking one’s own life might be done by starving oneself to death or opening a vein and bleeding to death while lying in a hot bath. The Cathars did not regard such suicide as cowardly, because they believed that by choosing their own time of death they were snatching this choice away from Satan, the evil ma- terial creator.
The threat of the Cathars to the Church of Rome can be measured by the fact that the first known mention of the Cathars is in 1140, yet by 1179, during the third Lateran Council, the Church was already condemning the Cathars as heretics and in 1209 Pope Innocent III called for a crusade against them. This crusade came to be called the Al- bigensian crusade because the main Cathar center was in and around the city of Albi in Languedoc, southern France.
The anti–Cathar crusade was just the start of the attempt to exterminate these people and it was in order to finish their extermination that the Catholic Inquisition was originally established. This was initiated by Pope Lucius III in 1184 when he ordered bishops to make inquisition for heresy in their diocese and hand over to the secular au- thorities for punishment those who did not recant. This order was strengthen in1232 by Pope Greg- ory IX who appointed full-time inquisitors, at first mainly from the Dominican (the domini canes: hounds of the Lord), but then from the Franciscan orders.
Finally, in 1252, Pope Innocent IV authorized
the use of torture against the most recalcitrant of the heretics.
The last Cathar to be burnt in Languedoc was as late as 1330, some 100 years after the start of the persecution.
See also Church Council of 553; Fortune,
Dion; Guirdham, Arthur; Kabbalah; Rebirth and suicide; Rebirth, group; Resurrection, bod- ily; Soul groups.
Cats. Besides the general reputation of cats as crea- tures with easy access to the occult world, one kab- balic legend says that the soul of a person who mis- uses the Divine Name is reborn into the body of a cat.
Causal body. In Theosophy, along with the astral
body, etheric body, and mental body surround- ing the soul sheath-like is the causal body. The main purpose of this body is to store or carry the past life karma of an individual. Also, in some Theosophical systems the causal body is what the
ego(individuality) takes on once it no longer in- habits the mental body. Still others associate this body with the spiritual soul or buddhi. This is not to say that buddhi alone is the causal body, but it be- comes that in alliance with the manas (mind). The causal body is, therefore, considered to be what is most commonly called the reincarnating soul. The causal body is also sometimes identified with the
akashic record. In Sanskrit this causal body is called the karana sharira or linga sharia.
See also Kosha; Mental plane; Soul and spirit
levels, Theosophical.
Cave. In many ancient cultures a cave represented either the entrance to the underworld, the under- world itself, or the tomb. Among some gnostic groups the cave also represented the womb into which the soul was reborn. While it is mere coin- cidence that tomb and womb rhyme in English, even without such rhyme, the ancient Greeks used the cave metaphor in a tomb to womb manner to describe reincarnation.
See also Gnosticism; Orphism.
Cayce, Edgar(1877– 1945). Born on a farm near Hopkinsville, Kentucky, as a youth Cayce was known to believe that he could speak to angels and receive visions of his deceased grandfather. At about 20 years old he is said to have experienced a gradual paralysis of his vocal center which no doctor could explain, much less cure. This led Cayce to enter a self-induced trance in which he discovered a cure. In 1901 Cayce began to give thousands of what were thought to be clairvoyant medical diagnoses while in a similar self-induced trance state and as a result he became a specialist in what is called trance ther-
apy. Then, starting in 1923, these diagnoses were
expanded to include akashic record past life read- ings, of which there were some 2,500 by his death. Through some of these readings he came to believe that he himself had lived many lives before. Among these was a celestial life prior to Adam and Eve, a life on the lost continent of Atlantis, a priest in
Egyptof the 11th millennium BCE, a Trojan soldier,
a life as a disciple of Jesus, etc. According to Cayce it was not the apostle Luke (Lucus) who wrote the
Acts of the Apostles; it was he (Cayce) as Lucius, the Bishop of Laodicea who wrote it.
Cayce, along with some new age groups, went so far as to propose that Jesus himself had several reincarnations prior to being the figure mentioned in the New Testament. The first of these was as the pre-embodied first expression of Divine Mind (the Logos) named Amilius. This being lived on the lost continent of Atlantis and was responsible for creat- ing the present human physical form as a replace- ment for the ape-like human form in which the earliest fallen intelligent souls had entangled them- selves. The second reincarnation of the historical Jesus to be was as Adam. This belief probably comes from an extremely liberal reading of those New Testament letters of Paul that connect the birth of sin through the old Adam with the death of sin through the New Adam (Christ), as in 1st
Corinthians15:22, 45.
According to Cayce, the biblical Enoch, the Old Testament patriarch who journeyed to heaven to receive mysteries, was also a previous embodiment of Jesus. The fact that, according to Genesis 5:3– 22, the lives of Adam and Enoch overlapped by half a century seems to have been overlooked by Cayce. Then there followed incarnations as Hermes (the Egyptian Thoth), who was said to be the ar- chitect of the Great Pyramid, as well as the sage who began the Hermetic philosophy tradition;
Melchizedek, the mystical high priest and king of Salem (ancient Jerusalem); Joseph, son of Jacob (Israel); Joshua, the leader of Hebrews into the Promised Land; Asaph, who was the music direc- tor and seer who served under King David and King Solomon; Jeshua, who was the high priest who helped organize the return from exile and the rebuilding of the temple, according to the biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and who Cayce be- lieved to have compiled the books of the Old Tes- tament; and the last of the pre–Jesus embodiments was Zend, the man who Cayce claimed to have compiled and translated the books of the Zoroas- trians. This last name was presumably taken from the name of the holy scripture of Zoroastrianism, which is the Zend Avesta. Cayce further believed that there will be one more reincarnation of the Logos-Jesus who will usher the world into in the kingdom of heaven on Earth.
Although Cayce continued to regard himself as a full Christian, it was not only his acceptance of reincarnation, but especially concepts such as Jesus having had former lives that allowed Cayce’s ideas to be thoroughly criticized by orthodox Christian groups. Lynn Elwell Sparrow, however, in her Edgar
Cayce and the Born Again Christian attempts to de-
fend Cayce’s Christian orthodoxy. Certainly, some degree of Christian orthodoxy ought to acknowl- edged Cayce, if for no other reason than he ac- cepted uncritically the Old Testament mythology of the Garden of Eden, Babel, and the Flood suf- ficiently to claim that the children of Adam and Noah have even reincarnated as more recent per- sons.
Critics of Cayce’s teachings were certainly not confined to Christian groups. Non-Christian skep- tics readily criticized the fact that Cayce’s past life readings included far too many lives of high status to be statistically valid. This, of course, is in con- trast to more recent past life readings which in- volved a far greater number of low status indi- viduals in every society in every historical period. There has also been some questioning why Cayce’s past life readings are so overwhelmingly Western. Very few of these readings include past lives in Sub- Sahara Africa, China, Russia, or Latin America.
In response to this criticism it has been pointed out that few of his clients had ancestral roots in these areas; and with the exceptions of Atlantis and ancient Egypt, the past life ethnicity of his clients tended to closely match that of their present life.
Cayce was further criticized as sometimes assign- ing the same past life to more than one living in- dividual. It has also been noticed that Cayce’s Es- sene material seems to have diverted little from the views of the 1911 Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ by Levi H. Dowling and the work by H. Spencer Lewis, The Mystical Life of Jesus (1926).
Cayce’s conviction that human souls were re- born on the non-physical planes of all the other planets in between earthly rebirths was thought to considerably stretch his credibility, and some of his many future predictions, such as the 1998 destruc- tion of California and New York, which clearly proved to be wrong, did not help matters.
Despite these questionable issues, Cayce’s writ- ings probably have done more to promote past life readings and later past life therapy among the gen- eral population than any other author’s writings and he continues to have many faithful followers. Cayce’s work is promoted by the Association for Research and Enlightenment which was found in 1931 and is located in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Recently there has been the claim that Cayce has been reborn as a certain David Wilcock.
See also Akashic Record; Astrology and re-
birth; Egypt; Essenes; Fellowship of the Inner Light; Hermes; Mayans; Melchizedek; Rosicru- cians; Social status in past lives; Swarm of bees theory.
Celestial gates. These are two mythical heavenly gates, one of which is in the constellation of Can- cer, and the other in Capricorn. The earliest refer- ence to these two gates comes from Homer’s Odyssey (book 13) in which Cancer is considered the gate through which men are born, and Capricorn the gate through which the gods are born. By the time of the philosopher Porphyry (234–305 CE), in a re-
vised view of the gates, it was through Cancer that the souls passed to rest in a peaceful state and through Capricorn that the souls returned to earth to be reborn. The first, and most obvious, signi- ficance to these signs is that their arrival in the eve- ning sky mark the summer and winter solstices. Secondly, the concept of these as gates of death and birth came from the belief that the planet Saturn, the most distant of the visible planets in pre-tele- scopic astronomy, was the ruler over Capricorn; while the moon, the closest to the earth, ruled over Cancer. Thirdly, the Cancer-Capricorn axis was used to determine the antiscion of a planet in astrology. In other words, as far as the ancients were concerned, these two planets and their signs marked the boundaries of time; and this was the main reason for their religious importance, espe- cially for the followers of Mithraism, and, later, Christianity. December 22nd (the winter solstice) was regarded as the birthday of the Sun God Mithra and, until the Gregorian calendar reform moved this to the 25th of December, it was also the orig- inal date chosen for the birth of Christ.
A more modern, modified version of the celestial gate concept is mentioned in Jocelyn’s Citizens of the
Cosmos (1981), where it is stated that it is only dur-
ing the three months ruled by the Archangel of the moon, Gabriel, that is from the end of December to the beginning of Spring, that the souls can re-enter the sphere of the earth to eventually be reborn.
There are two problems with these traditional astrologically related associations with reincarna- tion. First, because of the advance of the signs east- ward the winter and summer solstices no longer as- tronomically occur under Capricorn or Cancer, but under Sagittarius and Gemini. Second, it must be understood that both the Capricorn and Cancer constellations are only visible in the northern hemi- sphere, so it would be unknown as to what the souls in the southern hemisphere did at death and rebirth. Perhaps it is just assumed that they simply reversed the process, exiting December–February (southern summer) and returning in June–August (southern winter).
See also Arcturus; Astrology and rebirth;
Gnosticism; Interim period; Planetary descent and ascent of the soul; Planets, other; Pluto, the Plane; Zodiac.
Celestine Prophecy(1992). This best-selling book was said to have been channeled through James Redfield. Although it avoids words like karma and reincarnation, it apparently accepts both beliefs. The book mentions soul groups which are beings who, in the afterlife, offer support to others in ob- taining a rebirth vision or what those souls wish to accomplish in their next life.
Celibacy and Reincarnation see Chinese reli- gion and reincarnation; Esoteric Fraternity; Fiat
Lux; Jainism; Manichaeism; Ojas; Orphism;
Priscillian.
Celts see Druids.
Chakras (wheels). In kundalini (Hindu) yoga there are believed to be seven main psychic centers in the human body, the constructive and systematic cultivation of which are believed to lead to a bet- ter reincarnation or even enlightenment. This is achieved by having a psychic or spiritually invigor- ating energy called kundalini (serpent energy) flow upwards through these chakras. While none of these centers or chakras corresponds literally to any phys- ical organ, attempts have been made to symbolically associate the chakras with such organs. The most commonly accepted locations for these are as fol- lows. The first, or the lowest, chakra is believed to be located near the coccyx or anus; the second is located at either the level of the genitals or, in some case, perhaps because of prudery, it is located at the spleen; the third is at the navel (stomach or solar plexus) level; the fourth is at the heart level; the fifth is at the throat (larynx) level; and the sixth is just above the brow, an area which is sometimes called the psychic or third eye and is associated with the pineal gland. It may be coincidental, but it was the pineal gland that the Western philosopher
Rene Descartes(1596– 1650) thought was the lo- cation of the soul.
The seventh, or highest, of these psychic centers is located at or just above the crown of the skull, and is technically not considered a chakra. This is be- cause it is less a staging center on the journey to spiritual liberation or enlightenment than it is the point of liberation or enlightenment itself. None- theless, if a chakra is only thought of as a level of spiritual attainment then the seventh level could be considered a chakra. Despite the separation be- tween the crown chakra and the pituitary gland, which is just in the back center of the brain, the two are sometimes thought to be associated with one another.
Esoteric (Tantric) Buddhism also acknowledges a set of four or five chakras. These are the same as the above, only with the two lowest generally ig- nored or deleted.
The relationship between the chakras and rebirth can be complex, but in general it is thought that upon death if the adept can release the soul or re- birth factor through the crown chakra then this will lead to the end of rebirth. In this sense there is a similarity to the nine doors in Vajrayana Bud-
dhism.
See also Angels and reincarnation; Astrology
and rebirth; Kabbalah; Planetary descent and ascent of the soul; Nirvikalpa Samadhi; Ojas.
Chalice of Oblivion(Latin: Oblivionis Poculum)
see Drink or fruit of forgetfulness; Lethe.
Chan-ch’a sha-o yeh-pao ching, WG (Book of Di-
vining the Requital of Good and Evil Actions). This
is a Chinese Buddhist apocrypha that explains how, through spinning a set of wooden tops, based on the religious euphemism “turning the wheel of the Dharma,” one can learn about one’s previous life, and even whether the immediate future life is going to be fortunate or unfortunate.
See also Mahayana Buddhist rebirth texts.