yytz/wallflower – I know, but doesn’t it strike you as odd that a symbol known to have been used by a different religion before its first documented use in ours bears a strikingly phonetically similar name. They may mean completely different things but the fact that the names sound so similar is a little suspicious.
OhTeeDee – Good question. Many, many rishonim didn’t believe that gilgulim is part of our mesorah. It mostly became a more mainstream belief around the time of the Ari Z’al, and mostly due to his talmidim spreading the idea and then further popularised by the rise of chassidus. Does this mean that it was one man’s idea? Not necessarily, there are references to Jewish beliefs in metempsychosis since the early geonim and, if you learn certain sugyos in certain ways, possibly in the gemoro too so it may have some claim to mesorah via torah sheba’al peh… It’s not a cut-and-dried issue…