Editing Reincarnation (section)

====Mystery cults====
The [[Orphism (religion)|Orphic religion]], which taught reincarnation, about the sixth century BCE, produced a copious literature.<ref>Linforth, Ivan M. (1941) ''The Arts of Orpheus'' Arno Press, New York, {{OCLC|514515}}</ref><ref>Long, Herbert S. (1948) ''A Study of the doctrine of metempsychosis in Greece, from Pythagoras to Plato'' (Long's 1942 Ph.D. dissertation) Princeton, New Jersey, {{OCLC|1472399}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Long |first1=Herbert S. |title=Plato's Doctrine of Metempsychosis and Its Source |journal=The Classical Weekly |date=1948 |volume=41 |issue=10 |pages=149–155 |id={{ProQuest|1296280468}} |doi=10.2307/4342414 |jstor=4342414 }}</ref> [[Orpheus]], its legendary founder, is said to have taught that the immortal soul aspires to freedom while the body holds it prisoner. The wheel of birth revolves, the soul alternates between freedom and captivity round the wide circle of necessity. Orpheus proclaimed the need of the grace of the gods, [[Dionysus]] in particular, and of self-purification until the soul has completed the spiral ascent of destiny to live forever.

An association between [[Pythagoreanism|Pythagorean philosophy]] and reincarnation was routinely accepted throughout antiquity, as Pythagoras also taught about reincarnation. However, unlike the Orphics, who considered metempsychosis a cycle of grief that could be escaped by attaining liberation from it, Pythagoras seems to postulate an eternal, neutral reincarnation where subsequent lives would not be conditioned by any action done in the previous.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Pythagoras and the Early Pythagoreans|author=Leonid Zhmud|publisher=OUP Oxford|year=2012|isbn=978-0-19-928931-8|pages=232–233}}</ref>