Susy Smith delivers another dependable primer on the supernatural, again for the millions! This isn't an exhaustive cultural dive like Hans Stefan Santesson's Reincarnation volume, but a swift survey across the reincarnation scene as it stands in 1967 with appropriate historical context. Susy Smith specialized in merging solid info with a breezy, accessible style. It's hard to make it look as easy as she does.
Spiritism founder Allan Kardec, polymath Emanuel Swedenborg, and author Aldous Huxley are only a few of the historical persons Smith quotes on reincarnation. Evangelical superstar Billy Graham gives the proper Christian perspective, that our souls are indeed immortal but that we pass after one life and one death straight to the eternal Kingdom of God. Of course other faiths have other ideas, and folk traditions of every culture are heedless to doctrine as we already learned from Santesson. Edgar Cayce for one merged his Christian faith with his deep breadth of occult reading for a very humanistic interpretation of reincarnation and our duty to our souls and ourselves. Cayce biographer Gina Cerminara struggles with the idea of karmic justice and the social inequity of India's caste system, concluding that no matter the ultimate spiritual truth, we owe it to each other to be kind.
There's a lot more inside, from Oahspe and Blavatsky to past life regression. Having talked up Smith thus far, perhaps it's best we let her have the last word:
Reincarnation For the Millions is available to read and download at archive dot org.
Dell Publishing, 1967
