Returning Families
"I would show you now how their past incarnations shaped their political roles in your world today.
I do so neither to glorify nor vilify them, but to illustrate what lessons life teaches us through karma."
— Kublai Khan, clairaudient message, 7 April 1996
Claudians and Clintons
The transmigration of soul groups can be illustrated worldwide by any number of families, friendships and fraternities. Roman Americans are not unique, nor unsual, but their reputations are universal and so serve us as useful examples. We take the Claudian-Clinton clan as our prime example.
Claudius and Women
Claudius was passionate about women, especially younger women who tended to be nubile rather than dependable. After two failed betrothals (not necessarily of his own making) he went on to marry four times. However, women were to be the thorn in his flesh all life long. His third wife, Massalina, dominated him and behaved scandalously, blatantly mocking him by having an affair until he finally had her killed. Claudius then married his young niece, Julia Agrippina, the mother of Nero by a previous marriage, who managed to persuade him to disinherit Britannicus, then still a child, in favour of her own adolescent son. As a karmic twist, Julia herself would be murdered by Nero. If we take all these karmic connections seriously, then we are indeed witnessing the same actors perform similar roles again — almost like a play within a play. However, there are some keys differences: Hillary Clinton unites behind her former campaign rival and, with her husband's endorsement, helps Obama win the 2008 election. It is said the Clinton's overcome their unjust treatment of “a true heir who never came of age.” This does not, however, redeem them of other crimes committed, either back then or in this life now.
History tells us that when Nero (Trump) was a boy, Agrippina (Hillary Clinton) asked a soothsayer to predict her son’s future. According to Tacitus, a court diviner had proclaimed her son to be the future emperor but that he would later kill her. Without regret Agrippina replied: “Let him kill me, provided he becomes emperor." (Tacitus, Annals XIV.9) So much for unbridled ambition. Once married to Claudius (Bill Clinton), Agrippina succeeded in having Nero — her son by a previous marriage — put first in line for emperor before his own son Britannicus. Having set the stage for succession, Agrippina then had Claudius poisoned by Locusta and, with Nero as her accomplice, also had Locusta poison Britannicus (Barack Obama). And so Nero co-ruled with his mother until, confident of his control over the empire, he had her murdered too. His ambition then knew no bounds. As it knows none today. Now back to the half-brothers Nero and Britannicus. Nero had Britannicus killed on the eve of his fourteenth birthday, before he could reach traditional manhood, thereby preventing him from becoming emperor. By all accounts, these two brothers seem able to set aside their differences in public today.
Young Claudius was first betrothed to Aemilia Lepida, a relative, but the engagement was broken by her great-grandfather, Caesar Augustus, when her parents fell out of favour at court. Claudius' second betrothal was also a strategic alliance, this time with the old patrician Camilli family, but tragedy prevented their marriage from taking place. We are told Kamala Harris made a brief appearance in Rome as Livia Medullina Camilla, the ill-fated fiancée of Claudius. (El Ochre, 17 January 2021) According to the historian Tacitus, Camilla fell suddenly ill and died on the day of their wedding in c.9CE, then aged 14 or 15. Robert Graves, a reincarnation of Tacitus, suggests in his 'I, Claudius' (1934) that Medullina's murder was part of a vendetta against her family. Had Medullina lived and married Claudius, she would have become empress of Rome. Like Britannicus who was denied his rightful succession and claimed it in his current life as Obama, one wonders if karma would similarly compensate her. Perhaps becoming VP was just that. It seems Camilla-Kamala was groomed for prominent positions at least thrice: first as the fiancée of Emperor Claudius, then as the wife of India's former Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and most recently as Vice President. Alas, Americans chose a very different destiny to that which they were offered but, ultimately, good will be wrought out of the bad.
Wives, Mistresses and Sisters
We now look at a few women from the Claudian family: Oprah Winfrey appears to be an incarnation of Claudia Octavia, daughter of Emperor Claudius (Bill Clinton) and sister to Britannicus (Barack Obama). After her brother’s untimely death, Octavia's stepmother Agrippina (Hillary Clinton) bullied her into marriage with her half-brother Lucius, later Nero, whom she detested. These lives were confimed by El Aurenx (23 August 2024) to clarify details recorded by the historian Tacitus; namely how Octavia suffered in wedlock but “learned to hide her griefs, her affections, her every emotion". (Annals 13.16.1) If this karmic trajectory is correct, then Oprah has since learnt to express her emotions and create an “intimate, confessional form of media communication... an emotion-centred approach”. (Wikipedia, profile article) According to El Ochre (4 September 2024), Octavia was a conjoint incarnation involving two souls, both incarnate again, and known as Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama today. Michelle is identified with the biblical Michal, a daughter of Saul who became the first wife of David, while Oprah is identified with the biblical Orpah from the Book of Ruth. Oprah Winfrey was originally named Orpah, uncannily after her previous biblical incarnation, but renamed later for easier pronunciation. In rabbinic literature Orpah is considered the mother of Goliath and his giant Philistine brothers. At that time, the biblical Michal and Orpah would have been on opposite sides of the Israelite-Philistine conflict, yet connected through David who slew Goliath. They make a formidable pair, even now. What we see here is rare but not extraordinary. Conjoint incarnations occur throughout history, as Steiner well knew, with examples ranging from Jesus Christ to individuals living with schizophrenia. Such incarnations may incorporate more than one soul, or even two oversouls, so we cannot simply say that a particular person is either one or the other. This can create discrepancies or divergences in recorded soul-lineages between, say, Steiner and Cayce, but these can be easily resolved since we now have more nuanced and subtle ways of understanding the complex operations of karma and reincarnation.
Claudia Acte (Melania) was brought back from Asia Minor as a war trophy and appears to have entered the palace of Emperor Claudius (Clinton) and his daughter Octavia (Oprah) as an enslaved young girl or woman. Once freed, possibly at the request of Octavia, Acte went on to have a clandestine affair with the impetuous Nero (Trump), then only 17 years old and the adopted son of Claudius. Nero was headstrong and ambitious and their turbulent relationship lasted three years, c.55 – 58 CE, until he was dissuaded from continuing the romance with her. It was reportedly an emotional and passionate affair which, had Nero forced his hand, would have ended in marriage.. Statilia Messalina (Ivanka) was Nero's third and last wife. Trump's first wife Ivana was her mother in that life too, and also known as Statilia Messalina. They shared the same name in both these lives (Ivanka was named Ivana at birth). As is well known, and by his own admission, Trump has always been sexually attracted to Ivanka, and now we may understand why. As Nero he forced her husband, the consul Marcus Julius Vestinus Atticus, to commit suicide so that he might marry her himself. She survived Nero's own suicide. (El Ochre, 8 September 2024) We share this not to vilify or blame anyone but to show that relationships between married men and their wives or mistresses are a linked affair — despite societal efforts to keep the women separate — and that what appears historically is not always what we find karmically.
Recurrent relationships often reveal complex dynamics within returning families. Or, as we often say today, it's complicated: Claudia ("Livilla") Livia was the niece and daughter-in-law of Emperor Tiberius. She was reborn as Lucrezia, an illegitimate daughter of Rodrigo Borgia (Pope Alexander VI). Returning as Latife Hanim she became the wife of Kemal Atatürk, first president of Turkey. In short, she had three different kinds of relationships in each incarnation with the same soul partner.
Claudia Sheinbaum, the newly elected President of Mexico, is another intriguing example from the same family. Her name 'Claudia' expectably places her in Rome around the time of Emperor Claudius. She was the adopted daughter of Claudius (El Ochre, 20 December 2024) whose actual father was the famed British Chieftain Caractacus then living in exile at the Palatium Britannicum in Rome. Originally named Gladys, she became Claudia upon her honorary adoption by the Emperor. St Paul was a regular visitor to this Christian household, to whom he also addressed his Letters to the Romans. While Claudius ejected the Jews from Rome (one of his more ignoble acts) he tolerated these Christians, unlike his successor Nero. Claudia Sheinbaum's strong stance against Trump likely stems from Nero's persecution of the Christians, which led to the martyrdom among others of her husband, Roman Senator Rufus Pudens. They are mentioned in Paul's letter to Timothy (2 Timothy 4:21). As Claudia's paternal surname suggests, her grandfather was an Ashkenazi Jew from Lithuania who came to Mexico as a refugee a century ago. Her grandmother was a Sephardic Jew from Bulgaria. Their flight from Nazi-dominated countries is itself a tale of mystery and intrigue. However, true to Claudia's life back in ancient Rome where she assimilated a Celtic identity with the new Christian faith, so too she appears able to blend an Abrahamic/Catholic identity with indigenous Afro-Mexican beliefs. In her inauguration speech before the Congress she defined herself as “a mother, grandmother, scientist, and woman of faith, and from today, by the will of the people of Mexico, the constitutional president of the United Mexican States.” (1 October 1924)
For definitions and examples of ‘conjoint souls’, ‘oversouling’ and ‘imprinting’ see Keywords used. Whether or not Steiner and Cayce knew about these or simply chose not to specify them is something we can only speculate over here. However, their ideas of ‘incorporation’ or 'overshadowing' come close to our concept of the 'oversoul'; whereas ours is not the same as Ralph Waldo Emerson's 'over-soul'.