Philip Jamieson and Marianne Schmidt

The following jointly authored paper was published in Nexus: The Alternative News Magazine 28(5) (August-September 2021) 63-68, 87 (available, as published, at https://nexusmagazine.com/product/reincarnation-fact-or-fiction/?v=6cc98ba2045f)

Featured image from Pixabay, by Gerd Altmann at https://pixabay.com/illustrations/clock-hands-space-time-transience-5842395/

The Tale of an Argonaut and an Ancient Greek Philosopher

It is now almost 60 years since the rollicking adventures of Jason and the Argonauts, searching in that ancient Greek tale for the Golden Fleece, were immortalised in a now cult classic family film. The myth, one of the oldest chronicling a hero’s quest,[1] has been described as setting the example for the plot of almost all modern stories.[2]

Another, less well known, aspect of the myth is also worth recounting. Amongst the crew of Argonauts joining Jason on his famous quest was Aethalides who in ancient Greek mythology lived and died in the years before the Trojan Wars some 3300 years ago.  Or did he? – his death at least requires something of a footnote, for one of our most famous philosophers, who also excelled in mathematics, astronomy and music, claimed to have been Aethalides reincarnated. That philosopher, described as perhaps the most persuasive intellectual of all time, was Pythagoras. Living some 8 centuries after Aethalides, a contemporary of Gautama Buddha, Confucius and some suggest Zoroaster, his teachings in the 6^th Century BCE were part of a flowering of philosophical and religious thought across Eurasia. He remains, in Western culture, the “father of philosophy”, long before Socrates, Plato or Aristotle.[3]

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