5 myths
Gilgul neshamot, the transmigration of souls in Kabbalistic thought, and the journey of the soul across multiple lifetimes toward repair.
5 myths on JewishMythology.com retell how Jewish tradition imagines gilgul (reincarnation), drawn from the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, Talmud, Kabbalah, and later Jewish literature. Each story below synthesizes primary sources into a single narrative; follow any myth to read it, and from there into the source passages behind it.
When a righteous soul leaves the body, three angel companies appear already waiting. What follows is not rest but an active arrival at the gates of Eden.
Rabbi Joseph Karo wrote the Shulchan Aruch by day and received a heavenly visitor by night. One night the maggid explained his wife's past life to him.
A sinner reborn as a killer filly, the soul of Ishmael in a speaking donkey, a dead man in a widow. Gilgul made flesh, and the rabbis who set it free.
Sha'ar HaGilgulim reads a verse from Samuel as a map of Lurianic patience, no nefesh is discarded before its repair and ascent are complete.
You think you have one soul. The Kabbalists of Safed counted five, and said most people die owning only the first. The rest you have to earn.
