Review of Julie Chajes, Recycled Lives: A History of Reincarnation in Blavatsky’s Theosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2019, xii + 215 p., Hardcover, ISBN 978-0-19-090913-0, £64

Abstract

This is a review of Julie Chajes, Recycled Lives: A History of Reincarnation in Blavatsky’s Theosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2019. The book, which falls under the broader umbrella of the academic study of Western esotericism, is concerned with the Russian occultist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891), her doctrine of reincarnation, its development through the different phases of her literary work, and her sources, whether these be Indian philosophy, Ancient Greek philosophy, or nineteenth-century science. Blavatsky’s project, which lies at the crossroads of spiritualism and comparative philology, was to uncover what she believed was a primeval wisdom, parts of which, she thought, had been preserved in diffuse forms in the mythologies, religions, philosophies, and science of ancient civilizations (Hindus, Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks, Jews, etc.). According to Blavatsky, one of the fundamental elements of this primitive wisdom-religion is the belief in reincarnation. But—and this is the main focus of the book—it so happens, or so the author claims, that Blavatsky defended two different theories of reincarnation at different stages of her literary career; in Isis Unveiled (1877) she defended the theory of metempsychosis, whereas in The Secret Doctrine (1888) she defended a theory of reincarnation simpliciter. In this review, I briefly present each of these two theories from the author’s perspective before addressing the author’s take on the Ancient Greek and nineteenth-century sources of Blavatsky.