Abstract

The tradition of prisca theologia and the Corpus Hermeticum are Pico della Mirandola instrumental in revival of preexistence. Real flowering is under the Cambridge Platonists, especially Henry More, along with Anne Conway and Kabbalists, who often combined the idea with theosis or deification. Thomas Traherne was the most prolific poet of the idea. Poets reworked Milton's great epic, to restore what they saw as occluded references to human preexistence