Reincarnation The Cycle of Necessity: Manly P. Hall

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Book at a Glance

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Why Hall Wrote This Book

By 1939, Manly P. Hall had already published The Lost Keys of Freemasonry and The Secret Teachings of All Ages, establishing himself as the foremost popular writer on Western esotericism. But throughout those works, one subject kept surfacing that Hall felt deserved its own dedicated treatment: the doctrine of rebirth.

Reincarnation is not a peripheral idea in the Western esoteric tradition. It is central to it. The Pythagoreans taught it. The Platonists assumed it. The Hermeticists built their cosmology around it. The Kabbalists encoded it in the concept of gilgul. And yet, for most Western readers in the 1930s, reincarnation was still understood primarily as an "Eastern" concept, foreign to the Judeo-Christian tradition and incompatible with Western thought.

Hall wrote Reincarnation: The Cycle of Necessity to correct that assumption. His goal was to show that the doctrine of rebirth is not the property of any single civilization but a near-universal teaching found in virtually every philosophical tradition on earth, including the Western traditions that had officially rejected it.

Hall's Framework: Karma and Reincarnation

Hall opens the book by establishing a framework that holds the entire work together. He defines two principles and argues they cannot be separated.

"Karma is the law, and reincarnation is the means by which that law is administered." - Manly P. Hall

Karma, in Hall's usage, is not a system of cosmic punishment and reward. It is the law of cause and effect operating across lifetimes. Every action, thought, and intention generates consequences. Those consequences do not vanish when the physical body dies. They persist as conditions that the soul must meet in subsequent incarnations.

Reincarnation, then, is the process through which the soul returns to physical existence to continue its development. Hall describes it as a cycle, not a line. The soul does not progress in a straight trajectory from ignorance to wisdom. It spirals, returning to familiar themes at higher levels of understanding, working through the same fundamental challenges with increasing skill and awareness.

Inside the Book: Tradition by Tradition

The Eastern Traditions: Hinduism and Buddhism

Hall begins where most Western readers expect: with the Eastern traditions that have preserved the doctrine of rebirth most explicitly. He surveys the Hindu concept of samsara (the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth), the role of karma in determining the conditions of each incarnation, and the ultimate goal of moksha (liberation from the cycle). He then examines the Buddhist modifications of this framework, particularly the teaching of anatta (non-self), which complicates the question of what exactly is reborn if there is no permanent soul.

Hall handles this distinction carefully. He does not flatten the differences between Hindu and Buddhist thought. He acknowledges that the two traditions disagree on fundamental points while noting that both affirm the continuity of consciousness through multiple existences.

The Greek Tradition: Pythagoras, Plato, and the Mystery Schools

This section is where Hall is most in his element. He traces the doctrine of metempsychosis (transmigration of souls) through Pythagoras, who reportedly remembered his own past lives, to Plato, who built the doctrine into the very structure of his philosophical system. The Myth of Er in Plato's Republic, where souls choose their next incarnation before drinking from the River of Forgetfulness, receives extended treatment.

Hall connects the Greek philosophical teaching to the mystery school initiations at Eleusis, where candidates were said to experience the death and rebirth of the soul directly. This connection matters because it links the philosophical doctrine of reincarnation to an experiential practice, something that Hall believed was essential for genuine understanding.

The American Indian Traditions

Hall includes a section on indigenous North American teachings about rebirth, noting that many tribal traditions hold some form of the doctrine without having had contact with Eastern philosophy. He treats these traditions with the same respect he gives to Greek philosophy and Hindu metaphysics, a characteristic that distinguishes his work from many of his contemporaries who treated indigenous thought as primitive.

Reincarnation in the Old and New Testaments

This is perhaps the most provocative section for Western readers. Hall examines passages in both Testaments that suggest, or at least do not contradict, the doctrine of rebirth. He gives particular attention to the question posed about Jesus: "Is this Elijah?" (Matthew 11:14, 17:10-13), and to Jesus's apparent affirmation that John the Baptist was Elijah returned. He also examines Ecclesiastes, the Wisdom of Solomon, and several Pauline epistles for language consistent with the pre-existence and continuity of the soul.

Hall is honest about the limits of this evidence. He does not claim that the Bible teaches reincarnation as doctrine. He argues that the early Christian community included voices sympathetic to the idea, and that the formal rejection of the doctrine was a later political decision, not an original theological one.

The Early Christian Fathers and the Condemnation

Hall documents the views of Origen of Alexandria (185-254 CE), the most influential early Christian theologian to hold views compatible with the pre-existence and transmigration of souls. Origen's teachings on the subject were debated for centuries within the church before being formally condemned at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 CE, nearly three hundred years after his death.

Hall presents this history straightforwardly, noting that the condemnation was driven as much by institutional politics as by theological reasoning. The emperor Justinian, not the bishops, was the primary force behind the council's decisions. This historical detail matters because it suggests that the rejection of reincarnation in Western Christianity was not a unanimous or inevitable theological conclusion but a contested decision made under specific political pressures.

The Practical Questions

What distinguishes Hall's treatment from purely philosophical surveys is his willingness to address the questions that real people actually ask about reincarnation.

Do animals reincarnate? Hall examines the doctrine of transmigration across kingdoms (mineral, plant, animal, human) as taught in several traditions. He presents the range of views honestly: some traditions hold that the soul progresses upward through kingdoms; others hold that human incarnation is a distinct stream. Hall leans toward the position that consciousness evolves through all forms of life, but he does not present this as settled doctrine.

What about soul-mates? Hall addresses the popular idea of soul-mates with more nuance than most writers. He acknowledges that certain souls appear to maintain connections across incarnations, but he cautions against the romantic oversimplification that there is one perfect partner destined for each person. Karmic relationships, in Hall's view, are opportunities for mutual growth, not guarantees of personal happiness.

Can we remember past lives? Hall examines the evidence for past-life memory, including spontaneous recall, hypnotic regression, and the vivid sense of familiarity that some people experience in certain places or with certain subjects. He is cautiously open to the reality of such memories while warning against the temptation to construct elaborate past-life narratives without verification.

What happens to the suicide? Hall addresses this sensitive question with characteristic directness. He argues, within the karmic framework, that taking one's own life does not end the cycle but interrupts it, creating karmic conditions that must be faced in a subsequent incarnation. He does not use this as a basis for moral condemnation but as a reason for understanding, noting that the suffering that drives a person to such an act is itself a karmic condition that deserves compassion.

Key Teachings and Why They Matter

Reincarnation is not escapism. Hall is firm on this point. The doctrine of rebirth does not excuse passivity or indifference to present conditions. If anything, it intensifies the urgency of the present life, because what you do now creates the conditions you will meet later. There is no escape from the consequences of your actions, only a longer timeline in which to meet them.

"Man is an immortal, eternal being manifesting through an infinite sequence of bodies, each a little nobler than the one before." - Manly P. Hall

The soul is evolving, not static. Hall's vision of reincarnation is fundamentally optimistic. The cycle is not a treadmill. It is a spiral. Each incarnation offers the opportunity for growth, and the overall trajectory, however slow and interrupted, is upward. This is the "cycle of necessity" of the title: the soul must pass through physical existence because there is no other way to develop the qualities that only embodied experience can teach.

All traditions are pointing at the same reality. This book is, at its core, another expression of the perennial philosophy that Hall articulated throughout his life. The fact that reincarnation appears in Hindu, Buddhist, Greek, Egyptian, indigenous, and early Christian thought is not, for Hall, a coincidence. It is evidence that the doctrine reflects something real about the nature of consciousness, something that the human race has discovered independently, over and over, in every time and place.

Where to Get Your Copy

Reincarnation: The Cycle of Necessity is published by the Philosophical Research Society (ISBN 978-0-89314-519-4, 224 pages). The current edition includes Hall's original text with revisions from the 1946 enlarged edition, plus an extensive bibliography for further research.

For Hall's broader philosophical framework, see our guide to The Secret Teachings of All Ages. For his treatment of the Christian dimensions of this question, see The Mystical Christ and How to Understand Your Bible.

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