Pomponius Mela attributes to the Druidical priestesses of Sena the knowledge of transforming themselves into animals at will.
Proteus, according to Homer's account, becomes a dragon, a lion, or a boar. Eustathius, the commentator, adds, "not really changing but only appearing to do so." Proteus was an adroit worker of miracles, and was well acquainted with the secrets of Egyptian philosophy. He assumed animal shape in order to escape the necessity of foretelling the future when asked to do so but, whenever he saw his endeavours were of no avail, he resumed his natural appearance.
Towards the end of the sixteenth century Joseph Acosta, who resided in Peru, asserts that sorcerers existed there at that time who were capable of assuming any form they pleased. He tells of a ruler of a city in Mexico who was sent for by the predecessor of Montezuma and who transformed himself successively before the eyes of men who tried to seize his person, into a tiger, an eagle, and a serpent. At length he gave in, and being taken before the emperor was condemned to death.
The same kind of power was ascribed, in 1702, by the Bishop of Chiapa (a province of Guatemala) to the Naguals, the national priests who endeavoured to win back the children brought up as Christians by the Government, to the religion of their ancestors. After various ceremonies, the child he was teaching was told to advance and embrace the Nagual. At that moment he assumed a hideous animal form, and as a lion, tiger, or other wild beast, threw the young convert to Christianity into a state of abject terror by appearing chained to him.[94] There, no doubt, hypnotism became a weapon of religious fanaticism.
At the appearance of the monster Ravanas, the gods, becoming alarmed, transform themselves into animals: Indras changes into a peacock, Yamas into a crow, Kuveras into a chameleon, and Varunas into a swan in order to escape the ire of the enemy.
These transformations, says de Gubernatis,[95] instead of being capricious, were necessary and natural to the several gods, for the animal is the shadow that follows the hero and is so closely identified with him that it may often be said to be the hero himself.
Nash, in "Christ's Tears over Jerusalem," 1613, has the following remarkable passage. "They talk of an ox that tolled the bell at Woolwich, and how from an ox he transformed himself into an old man, and from an old man to an infant and into a young man again."
The Egyptians were the first to broach the opinion that the soul of man is immortal and that, when the body dies, it enters into the form of an animal which is born at the moment, thence passing on from one animal to another, until it has circled through the forms of all the creatures which tenant the earth, the water, and the air, after which it enters again into a human frame and is born anew. The whole period of transmigration is (they say) three thousand years.[96]
According to Egyptian beliefs only the souls of wicked men suffered the disgrace of entering the body of an animal when, "weighed in the balance" before the tribunal of Osiris, they were pronounced unworthy to enter the abode of the blessed. The soul was then sent back to the body of a pig.
The doctrine of metempsychosis was borrowed from Egypt by Pythagoras and classical allusions are so numerous that it is impossible to mention more than a few instances.