The Reincarnation of a Massacred Medieval Sect

The Cathars were a Christian sect who thrived in the 12th century in Southern Europe. They believed in reincarnation; and while they also believed in heaven, they did not believe in hell. For the Cathars, souls are eternal; as they said, “we are all divine sparks, even angels, imprisoned in tunics of flesh.” These divine sparks are reincarnated into different bodies again and again, until the spirit is ready for the ultimate heavenly ascension. And this privilege was not reserved only for the righteous. They believed all souls would eventually find their place in heaven, even the souls of animals. For this reason, they practiced a vegetarian diet. 

In many ways, their beliefs aligned closely with Hinduism and Buddhism, in which multiple lives spent on this Earth contribute to the eventual goal of an ascension to eternal bliss. The Cathars saw their views as an older and purer form of Christianity, much aligned with the Gnostics, yet at odds with their popular contemporaries, the Catholic church, who set forth to eliminate the Cathars by violent means. Throughout the 13th century, virtually all of the Cathars were hanged or burned at the hands of the Catholic church- starting with a brutal Inquisition in the south of France in 1244. What few remained, were forced to go into hiding. 

Yet in accordance with their beliefs, evidence suggests the Cathars did not die easy. Tales of their reincarnation have endured the centuries since their unjust demise, with one case in particular providing such a wealth of specific information, it is hard to deny the possibility of their recurring lives on this earth.

Dr. Arthur Guirdham was a well-respected psychiatrist and author, practicing in Bath, England. In 1962, a housewife in her early 30s, named only in his writings as Mrs. Smith, entered his office one afternoon. Mrs. Smith had been suffering from terrifying nightmares; one in particular which featured a shadowy figure approaching her from behind while she was lying down.  Although he did not mention it to Mrs. Smith until months later, Dr. Guirdham had been suffering from almost the exact same nightmare for 30 years. Within weeks of their meeting, neither would have the nightmare ever again. Guirdham was certainly intrigued by the dream connection, but he was more impressed by the precise descriptions Mrs. Smith was able to conjure seemingly out of thin air. He continued seeing her, and quickly surmised that she showed no signs of mental illness.

When she was a 13-year-old English schoolgirl, Mrs. Smith began writing down highly specific details, names, and events she received in lucid, lifelike visions of another life. There is nothing unusual about teenage girls imagining fanciful lives in faraway times and places- but Mrs. Smith’s accounts were extraordinary because she wrote them out in perfect medieval French- specifically in the dialect native to the region occupied by the Cathars. At one point in 1944, she wrote out the full lyrics to an obscure medieval song- which exactly matched verses uncovered in a French archive 23 years later. Mrs. Smith had never taken French lessons, let alone medieval French, and during her childhood in the 1940s, it would have been impossible for a young girl to find this kind of information on her own. 

Impressed with the specific nature of her visions, Guirdham began scouring history books and reaching out to scholars to see if he could find any evidence that her visions were true. In the 1960s, obtaining this sort of obscure historical information was a long and arduous task. But Guirdham was determined- one of his first achievements was to verify a long list of names Mrs. Smith had provided from her visions.  Guirdham was able to identify the specific names listed by Mrs. Smith only because of the Catholic Inquisition. They kept impeccable records of the Cathars as they attempted to eliminate the heretic sect. These records, written in French, were kept under lock and key in a private archive, which would have been absolutely inaccessible to Mrs. Smith. Furthermore, she was able to describe the relationships between the people she named, and other specific details which would later be verified.

Another recollection that particularly impressed Guirdham was Mrs. Smith’s insistence that the Cathars wore blue robes, a fact which she had been sure of since 1944. Every single historical account of the Cathars described them as wearing black robes. It wasn’t until 1965- three years after Mrs. Smith had told Guirdham about the blue robes- that a new book revealed the Cathars did in fact wear robes of this color. Her notes also contained accurately drawn coins and jewelry from the era, as well as maps which depicted the Cathar village in the Toulouse region, where the Inquisition would commit its most atrocious acts.  

In 1967, Guirdham traveled to the south of France to further investigate Mrs. Smith’s visions. By traversing the region she described so specifically, and by accessing Cathar documents that were only available at a local archive, he was able to corroborate impossibly obscure details from her past life writings. For Guirdham, the confirmation of these details proved beyond a doubt that her recollections were real. What’s more, Mrs. Smith would eventually reveal that Guirdham was a Cathar in his past life as well- which explained their shared dream.  

Mrs. Smith’s past incarnation was eventually burned at the stake for her beliefs… an event she was forced to relive in a terrifying vision. As she wrote to Guirdham: “I didn’t know when you were burnt to death you’d bleed. I thought the blood would all dry up in the terrible heat. But I was bleeding heavily. The blood was dripping and hissing in the flames. I wished I had enough blood to put the flames out.”

Beyond all belief, over the years, Guirdham would end up finding 9 more reincarnated Cathars in the town of Bath. Skeptics have claimed that he was leading his suggestible patients- as he became more and more obsessed with his own tale of reincarnation. And while this is certainly a valid cause of concern, some extraordinary evidence remains. Another one of his patients produced a sketchbook from when she was 7 years old- which contained drawings depicting a Cathar village and specific names of the villagers, which were again verified. As Guirdham wrote, “It’s beyond me how a 7-year-old child could know these names when I shouldn’t think there was an expert in medieval history in England at the time who knew them.”

Furthermore, Guirdham did not use drugs or hypnosis techniques to coerce these recollections- two common techniques used to implant or suggest memories- in fact, all of these visions appeared to his patients during lucid states of being. 

In his book, The Cathars and Reincarnation, Guirdham goes into incredible detail about the past lives of his patients, as well as his own- corroborating visions and recollections of the group in Bath with historical records from 13th century France.  Guirdham repeatedly mentions the fact that he had no interest in reincarnation, or any supernatural phenomena, before his encounter with Mrs. Smith- identifying himself as extremely skeptical by nature. He was a successful psychiatrist, and his obsession with the reincarnated Cathars did no favors for his career. However, the details and specific visions he witnessed from his patients were too compelling to ignore. As he said: “with 40 years experience in medicine, it is either that I know the difference between a clairvoyant’s experience and a schizophrenic one or I am a psychotic myself. None of the people in my group is mad in any way – and none of my colleagues have found me psychotic.”

 It is impossible to ever know for sure whether Guirdham and his Cathars represented a legitimate case of group reincarnation or something more mundane- skeptics maintain the doctor must have been guilty of some elaboration or fabrication of the facts. Yet the evidence is stunning when examined objectively- and it makes an interesting addition to the growing body of scientific research into reincarnation.

Dr. Ian Stevenson, former chair of psychiatry at the University of Virginia, collected and published hundreds of cases in which children remembered specific details of their past lives- often these details are verified through investigation and documentation, much like Guirdham’s Cathars. In cultures which readily believe in reincarnation, tales of past-lives are common; for the Tibetans, their leader, the Dalai Lama, regularly reincarnates into a new physical body. 

In the West, however, these claims are met with extreme skepticism; partially due to a materialist scientific worldview, and partially due to the dominance of the same strains of Christianity responsible for massacring the Cathars in the first place. Perhaps if more doctors and scientists followed Guirdham’s path- investigating the extraordinary, even when it violates our preconceived beliefs, instead of dismissing these fantastical stories without a second look- we could find answers to the greatest mysteries of our existence.