In speaking of previous lives there is a deplorable and only too widespread tendency to refer back to important historical personages. I have come across all kinds of people who believe that they were incarnated as some historical personage or figure in the Gospels. Quite recently a lady informed me that she had been Mary Magdalene, and I could only reply that she was the twenty-fourth Mary Magdalene I had met in my life. In these matters the greatest care must be taken to prevent fantastic notions arising.
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 130 – Esoteric Christianity and the Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz / intimate workings of karma – Vienna, 9th February 1912
Translated by Pauline Wehrle
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