e ignorance of the masses may have
caused it to be believed that the contrary was the case, none the less
the Initiates, from the very beginning, denied that human
transmigration into the bodies of animals ever took place.

On this question many of them have frequently said that it is the soul
which, in such cases, changes its nature, and assumes the passions of
animals into which, as is said exoterically, it transmigrates, though
it does not enter into their bodies.

"He who believes that he transmigrates, after death, into the body of
a beast or a plant," says Hierocles,[189] "is grossly mistaken; he is
ignorant of the fact that the essential form of the soul cannot
change, that it is and it remains human, and only, metaphorically
speaking, does virtue make of it a god, and vice an animal."

"A human soul," adds Hermes, "cannot go back into the body of an
animal; it is preserved from such pollution, for all time, by the will
of the gods."[190]

Mrs. Besant says as follows in a letter dealing with Theosophy and
Reincarnation (_The Theosophist_, April, 1906):

"Even with the wealth of detail given in the Hindu Shastras, thousands
of facts of the invisible world are omitted, because their statement
would hopelessly bewilder the public mind.

"If all the details are given, ere the main principles are grasped,
hopeless confusion is caused to the beginner.

"When an Ego, a human soul, by vicious appetite or otherwise, forms a
very strong link of attachment to any type of animal, the astral body
(Kamarupa) of such a person shows the corresponding animal
characteristics, and in the astral world, where thoughts and passions
are visible as forms, may take the animal shapes; thus, after death,
in _Pretaloka_, the soul would be embodied in an animal vesture,
resembling or approximating to the animal whose qualities had been
encouraged during earth-life. Either at this stage, or when the soul
is returning towards reincarnation, and is again in the astral world,
it may, in extreme cases, be linked by magnetic affinity to the astral
body of the animal it has approached in character, and will then,
through the animal's astral body, be chained as a prisoner to that
animal's physical body. Thus chained, it cannot go onwards to
_Svarga_, if the tie be set up while it is a _Preta_; nor go onwards
to human birth, if it be descending towards physical life. It is truly
undergoing penal servitude, chained to an animal; it is consciou