In the very first remark made by Jesus about John the Baptist, we find him stating that he is “Elias, which was for to come.” This assertion, if it is not a later interpolation for the sake of having a prophecy fulfilled, means again that Jesus was a kabalist; unless indeed we have to adopt the doctrine of the French spiritists and suspect him of believing in reïncarnation. Except the kabalistic sects of the Essenes, the Nazarenes, the disciples of Simeon Ben Iochaï, and Hillel, neither the orthodox Jews, nor the Galileans, believed or knew anything about the doctrine of _permutation_. And the Sadducees rejected even that of the resurrection. “But the author of this _restitutionis_ was Mosah, our master, upon whom be peace! Who was the _revolutio_ (transmigration) of Seth and Hebel, that he might cover the nudity of his Father Adam--_Primus_,” says the _Kabala_.[256] Thus, Jesus hinting that John was the _revolutio_, or transmigration of Elias, seems to prove beyond any doubt the school to which he belonged. Until the present day uninitiated Kabalists and Masons believe permutation to be synonymous with transmigration and metempsychosis. But they are as much mistaken in regard to the doctrine of the true Kabalists as to that of the Buddhists. True, the _Sohar_ says in one place, “All souls are subject to transmigration ... men do not know the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He; they do not know that they are brought before the tribunal, both before they enter this world and after they quit it,” and the Pharisees also held this doctrine, as Josephus shows (_Antiquities_, xviii. 13). Also the doctrine of Gilgul, held to the strange theory of the “Whirling of the Soul,” which taught that the bodies of Jews buried far away from the Holy Land, still preserve a particle of soul which can neither rest nor quit them, until it reaches the soil of the “Promised Land.” And this “whirling” process was thought to be accomplished by the soul being conveyed back through an actual evolution of species; transmigrating from the minutest insect up to the largest animal. But this was an _exoteric_ doctrine. We refer the reader to the _Kabbala Denudata_ of Henry Khunrath; his language, however obscure, may yet throw some light upon the subject.