The following article is taken from my Doppelgangers, which can be purchased in the TUC Store.
PLATO’S DOPPELGANGER
[UPDATE 7/30/26: WE are moving beyond Biblical literature but that was in the deck of cards all along. It has been three years since I began this investigation, so will you be surprised to learn that I have been sitting on the following text all that time? Perhaps not. Information falls by the wayside far too often. There are investigative papers that I haven’t gotten to and may never happen. Interest was lacking when I began showing off the first iteration, which I suppose then encouraged me to look into other cosmological matters and get distracted. Such a shame since I find the DOPPELGANGER subject to be a fascinating one.
Theoretically, Plato had a Doppelganger but we never directly encounter him. Regardless, he does have something to say on them in Timaeus, and when he does, they happen to resemble the Biblical.
Now, when all the stars which were necessary to the creation of time had attained a motion suitable to them, and had become living creatures having bodies fastened by vital chains, and learnt their appointed task, moving in the motion of the diverse, which is diagonal, and passes through and is governed by the motion of the same, they revolved, some in a larger and some in a lesser orbit-those which had the lesser orbit revolving faster, and those which had the larger more slowly. Now by reason of the motion of the same, those which revolved fastest appeared to be overtaken by those which moved slower although they really overtook them; for the motion of the same made them all turn in a spiral, and, because some went one way and some another, that which receded most slowly from the sphere of the same, which was the swiftest, appeared to follow it most nearly.
Plato, Timaeus
Hopefully my reading comprehension is up to par because I’m somewhat certain that Plato said the stars are living creatures, not giant balls of indigestion burning billions of miles away. Fastened by chains as well. I don’t take that to be a nod to the RAQIA so much as a direct reference to Ptolemy’s geometrically perfect, rotating sphere. A different variation on Hebrew Cosmology for sure but pretty much the same thing so far as I’m concerned. We may very well live in a sphere rather than a snow globe. Water still finds its level as a principle though. So it’s flat then. Oh, did I tell you about the time that Socrates was drinking poison in bed and decided to announce to his disciples that the earth was a globe? He then passed the poison chalice around, inciting millions of people to drink from it, metaphorically, of course.
And for this reason the fixed stars were created, to be divine and eternal animals, ever-abiding and revolving after the same manner and on the same spot; and the other stars which reverse their motion and are subject to deviations of this kind, were created in the manner already described. The earth, which is our nurse, clinging around the pole which is extended through the universe, he framed to be the guardian and artificer of night and day, first and eldest of gods that are in the interior of heaven.
Plato, Timaeus
Another passage from Tim reiterates what we have already read and what most if not all of my readers are well aware of. The stars in the RAQIA are living entities. No big surprise, really. It’s just nice to see other ancients believing the same thing outside of the Bible. If only modern Bible believers would ingest some of that star dust. What a wild ride it’s been over the last decade. Good times. Plato calls the stars eternal to define their immortal status as well as the heavenly realm they inhabit. So much going on here. Other fascinating tidbits include the earth as our nurse, FACT. And the part where a pole extends through the universe really needs to be included in Mystery of the Maypole and the Millennial Kingdom because that is a fact which basically all ancient cultures could agree upon until fifteen minutes ago.
Nobody can find a quote from Plato pertaining to the Milky Way as the highway or the cradle for the Transmigration of Souls, at least not from his surviving work, though Platonists have long attributed it to him. In the Kolbrin Bible the preexistent soul inhabits the Sea of Souls. I believe it to be the Milky Way. Certainly the same location as the many unborn souls that Abraham saw in The Apocalypse of Abraham. So what really needs to happen is a total home makeover to my PREEXISTENCE paper. No, I am not sharing a link. You can take my decision as commentary to the sad state it is in. Check back with my Article Updates because every paper deserves a home remodel. Life goals. Well anyways, stars are divine beings and the Milky Way is an ocean of Life.
Thus, he spoke, and once more into the cup in which he had previously mingled the soul of the universe he poured the remains of the elements and mingled them in much the same manner; they were not, however, pure as before, but diluted to the second and third degree. And having made it he divided the whole mixture into souls equal in number to the stars, and assigned each soul to a star; and having there placed them as in a chariot, he showed them the nature of the universe, and declared to them the laws of destiny, according to which their first birth would be one and the same for all, no one should suffer a disadvantage at his hands; they were to be sown in the instruments of time severally adapted to them, and to come forth the most religious of animals; and as human nature was of two kinds, the superior race would hereafter be called man. Now, when they should be implanted in bodies by necessity, and be always gaining or losing some part of their bodily substance, then in the first place it would be necessary that they should all have in them one and the same faculty of sensation, arising out of irresistible impressions; in the second place, they must have love, in which pleasure and pain mingle; also fear and anger, and the feelings which are akin or opposite to them; if they conquered these they would live righteously, and if they were conquered by them, unrighteously. He who lived well during his appointed time was to return and dwell in his native star, and there he would have a blessed and congenial existence. But if he failed in attaining this, at the second birth he would pass into a woman, and if, when in that state of being, he did not desist from evil, he would continually be changed into some brute who resembled him in the evil nature which he had acquired, and would not cease from his toils and transformations until he followed the revolution of the same and the like within him, and overcame by the help of reason the turbulent and irrational mob of later accretions, made up of fire and air and water and earth, and returned to the form of his first and better state
Plato, Timaeus
Get your knickers in a twist over the reincarnation element of Plato’s dialogue if you must. I prefer my underwear snug fitting and ironed. I am not a reincarnationist necessarily though I have given explicit examples of souls returning to the earth under different guises. The Seven Thousand Year Timeline and Saint George is a great starting point. Therefore, I am theoretically not against the principle because it can be demonstrated in recorded instances. And I’m not here to argue it either. I have simply begun to listen to the ideas from those who insist ALAHAYAM, or rather God if you prefer, desires to save everyone by bringing all souls back to Himself. That I can get behind. Picture Satan finally realizing that he has lost every soul whom he attempted to drag down with him as he himself is taken down. Yes, imagine that. To achieve these results, sinners spin through cycles of various day ages until they achieve righteousness.
Plato is essentially making the very claim. He even divides the sheep and the goats into righteous and unrighteous camps. At the creation of the Universe, God made an equal number of souls and stars, assigning one with the other. The only way we can return to the star assigned to us, thereby creating a type of Singularity event, is by learning to live in accordance with the tethered character of the star itself.
Do you know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking we need to take Plato’s proclamation and certify it as Biblical. At least in part.
11 Woe to them, in that they have walked the road of Kayin, they have given themselves over for money to the error of Bil‘am, they have been destroyed in the rebellion of Korach. 12 These men are filthy spots at your festive gatherings meant to foster love; they share your meals without a qualm, while caring only for themselves. They are waterless clouds carried along by the winds; trees without fruit even in autumn, and doubly dead because they have been uprooted; 13 savage sea-waves heaving forth their shameful deeds like foam; wandering stars for whom the blackest darkness has been reserved forever.
Yahudah (Jude) 1:11-13
Korah rebelled against the Torah and Balaam enticed Israel to do the same. Don’t do that. And we’re all aware of Cain being a murderer like his father before him, right? When you know you know. So in Jude’s worldview, a wandering star is someone who drifts away from the Commands and therefore fails to conform to the image of our heavenly Father. The word Jude uses for wandering star is planetai [πλανῆται], which is where we get planet. Living on a planet or behaving as a planet is a bad thing. I’m looking at you, Copernican Revolution.
Be a star. Tethered to the RAQIA. It’s okay, you can say it.
Be like your DOPPELGANGER.]