by: Rick Johnson 
PO Box 40451
Tucson, Az.
85717
RikJohnson@juno.com
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One of the primary concerns of any religious faith is what to do with the soul after it is finished with the body. Different religions have tried different ideas, some more successful than others.
Islam has the idea that if you are a good male muslem, you will be transported to some
garden in paradise where you will eat lamb, drink goat's milk and spend your time having
sex with a number of beautiful virgins, all of whom will regrow their maidenheads
overnight as you sleep, thus fulfilling one of the male gender's fantasies of always
knowing that you are that woman's only and first and best lover.
Odinism has determined that the One-eyed God will send his representatives to the
battlefields to collect the bravest warriors who will then go to the Valhallah to spend the
days fighting and the evenings in an eternal party. These warriors will then be used by
Odin to defend the earth when the last great battle occurs.
Early Judaism and some of the christian baptist religions hold the idea that the
soul must remain in the body until their god destroys the universe. At this time the bodies
will emerge from their graves, intact (thus explaining the christian hatred for organ
transplants that took place in the 1960's) to be judged on an individual basis by their god.
Those who meet the requirements will travel to heaven to spend eternity singing praises
to the god who has condemned the majority of the world's men, women and children to an
eternity of torment. Thus demonstrating their gods unlimited love.
Many of the other christian religions conceive of a similar situation save that the
soul immediately, upon death, travels to heaven for eternal bliss or hell for eternal
torment. The problem with this is; what about the children who died before becoming
good or evil and what about those who never heard of christianity, and so never had the
opportunity to accept jesus as their savior (a requirement that appears to be mandatory in
the christian religions)? So those christians who appear to be unwilling to make an
unpopular decision on this have conceived of a Purgatory as a short-term prison until the
soul can move to Heaven or Hell and a Limbo for those others to drift in nothingness for
eternity.
The ancient Greeks had every soul drop down to Hades where they spent eternity
wandering in the gloom save for those few who were heroic enough or, in the case of
women, sexy enough to attract the attention of the Gods who then would grant the soul a
form of lesser-godhood and take them to Olympus where they would spend eternity in the
political mish-mash of the Gods.
Most of these concepts have one major fault... they teach that the Earth is just some
temporary resting place where the soul is trapped until it could travel to the true reality.
This idea causes a number of problems, one of which is the ecological problem. As was
so graphically demonstrated by the Doonsbury cartoon about U.S. Secretary of the
Interior James Watt explaining his plan to bulldoze the Northwest wilderness by stating
that, as jesus was returning to earth soon, the world would end and so there was no reason
to protect that which god planned to destroy in the very near future.
Thus as there is no reason to protect the Earth, it is OK to pollute the air, poison
the water, destroy the rain forests AND, as only humans have souls, animals can be
hunted to extinction for our pleasure. This is a situation that is, to say the least,
ecologically unsound. Particularly as the second coming appears to be taking its time.
A second and no less important problem from a social viewpoint is the selectivity
of these ideas. If the best thing for an Odinist to do is to die killing another person, this
will lead to war and murder and we must consider the problem of what happens to those
who die in accidents, women and children? In islam, Paradise is great if you are a man,
but somewhat messy and unattractive if a woman. In both christianity and islam, only
those who are born or convert to the religion may achieve their heavens. So does that
mean that a child of no evil nature, one who has been good all her life must go to hell
because she lives in the wilds of Borneo and has never heard of the koran or bible? And
what about all those who died before the islamic and christian saviours were born?
True, christianity has stated that jesus went to hell to free the 'good' pagans, but
we are faced with the knowledge that these 'good' people suffered unendurable agonies
for hundreds of thousands of years before they were freed. A comparable idea is the idea
that the Jews in the Nazi concentration camps were in great shape because they were
eventually freed by the Allies. So their suffering while imprisoned was not important.
But if America could have had the power to prevent all this suffering and did not, what
does that say about the morality of the United States. Again, if the christian god had the
power to prevent all those 'good' people from suffering in hell for all those millennia and
did not, what does that say about his morality.
Similar arguments can be made for any and every religion that selects some while
condemns others.
A more interesting and logical idea is the concept of reincarnation. Here, the soul moves
from one body to another with each life.
Though the average person thinks of reincarnation as an idea that exists in India
and places some people above others, the idea of reincarnation is actually quite common.
The Celtic Druids had a theory similar to the Hindu concept of rebirth, and both cultures
had developed a list of every animal and class of people in existence. Then the soul first
incarnated in the lowest and simplest of the 'aminalcules' what we consider to be
microbes, and if 'good', upon that microbe's death, it was reborn into a 'higher' form of
microbe. Eventually, over an almost infinite number of incarnations, the soul made it to
the mammals and had to work itself up to man.
This explained why man was a recent evolution on Earth. The first souls simply
had not 'evolved' enough to make it to a human body so there was no need for same.
Eventually, this 'good' soul made it to a human and, then soul had to start in the
lowest class and work itself upwards until it reached the highest class of human. This
required the soul to do what was expected of it when it inhabited that particular human.
For example, when it made it to the Warrior class, it was required to kill. If it refused to
kill, it was considered to be 'bad' and had to drop into a lower form of life. Remember,
there are NO absolutes as to good or bad. Both ideas are derived from the religious and
philosophical ideas that you have been taught over the years. Thus it is 'good' for an
Odinist or a Sikh or a christian crusader or a moslem terrorist to kill according to their
own religious beliefs. To expect each of these to be a pacifist is to, by religious
requirement, demand that they be bad. And if you are 'good', you evolve into a higher
person and if you are 'bad', you devolve into a lower person.
The concept of Reincarnation even existed in christianity in it's early centuries. The idea
was that the soul had to be absolutely pure to enter heaven and if it wasn't, it would be
reborn on earth over and over again until it had purified itself completely and could enter
the realm of god.
This idea was outlawed in 366 A.D. when the Council of Ancyra decided that a
christian priest could 'purify' anyone by having them do nothing more streneous than to
accept jesus as their saviour. I think that by this logic, if Hitler (who was a catholic and
has NEVER been excommunicated) had repented at the last moment (and maybe he did),
he would be in heaven now,
Reincarnation has two major advantages over the 'heaven/hell' concept. First, it is
environmentally sound. If you are going to be reborn back on the earth, it is logical to
make the Earth a better place than when you left. After all, why trash up your house just
before a vacation since you will have to live there when you return. Thus, reincarnation
provides a vital empetis to ecological responsibility.
The second advantage is that if we can be an animal in one life and a person in
another and then an animal once again, it again becomes our responsibility to take care of
other life forms. Whaleing and the annual killing of the fur seals becomes obscene.
Hunting for pleasure is transformed into murder and, as many have done, vegetarianism
becomes desirable.
But we still have the same or similar problems here that we had with the 'heaven'
orientated religions. I.E. the idea that people are 'better' than animals and that some
people are 'better' than others. If a Brahman is 'better' and more evolved in a physical and
spiritual way than a merchant, than the Brahman can easily justly oppressing the merchant
and the so called 'untouchables'. The Eta in Japan become relegated to life in the slums
and the Celtic Warrior Class can easily kill the innocent of a neighboring tribe provided
that they are of an 'inferior' class.
Various ideas have been proposed to arrest this thinking process, some with more
success than others. One being that the idea of more evolved people and less evolved
people be tossed. Unfortunately, though in Western societies, this has been scrapped by
those who profess to believe in Reincarnation, the attitude here is STILL that the believer
is somehow more evolved than the non-believer and even two believers will 'discuss'
among themselves which of them is more highly spiritually evolved than the other. Class
distinctions are still here, they are just used on an individual basis.
In Wicca, the standard belief is in Reincarnation, though the exact form is dependant on
each person's interpretation of their perception of reality. The Cycle of Rebirth is a
common theme in Craft Myths and even in the Rituals of The Old Religion. The Sabbat
of Yule is the Rebirth of the Horned God in His Aspect of the Sun. He is sacrificed at
Lammas or Mabon for the good of the people following His fight with darkness and as he
weakens and eventually dies, He is reborn through the Great Mother at the Winter
Solstice.
The Goddess Herself, though never dying or being reborn, is rejuvenated in the
Spring to be a Maiden again, then to age through the Mother stage into the Crone in the
Winter, only to be returned to the Maiden so that She can be the Mother of Her Consort.
The Divine Play at Yule shows this rebirth of the Sun God, often in graphic detail
and symbolism. In some Traditions, the death and rebirth of the God is shown by the
Coven or High Priestess placing a veil over the High Priest to show His death., then
pulling it off as He joyfully arises to indicate His rebirth. Other methods are often used to
show the same idea of Death and Rebirth not only for the Horned God but for the indi-
vidual as well.
The Gardnerian and similar Traditions hold the idea that all life has a soul. This
means that every person, tree, cat, mouse, rat, bird, lizard, fish, insect, dog, amoeba and
so on possesses that divine spark that comes from the union of the Horned God and the
Mother Goddess. And so, every soul has the opportunity to be reborn. The 'official', and
I use the term in its' loosest understanding, attitude among Gardnerian and many of the
other Traditional Covens is that you have a choice of who your parents will be in your
next life. One Gardnerian question asked of Novices is, "Why did you choose your
parents?" This idea, if taken to it's logical conclusion, gives the vague idea that the
individual may, if desired, choose another set of parents or even a couple of cats for their
parents, thus experiencing a life in another manner.
If this is accepted, then it becomes important to understand that many Wiccans
and Witches accept that ALL life is on an equal footing when considering the evolution
of the soul. The Hindu and Druidic ideas that some people and animals are more
advanced than others cannot coexist with this idea of universal equality and so must be
dropped as racist. Thus, Traditional Wiccans and Witches believe in equality, not only
racial and sexual, but among all living things. Animal rights become important. The LD-
50 test where cosmetic companies will put make-up into the eyes of a hundred rabbits
(chosen because rabbits cannot cry and so the make-up remains in the eyes) until 50 of
them die from the dosage or pain becomes not a necessary cruelty, but an abomination to
the Gods. Whaling and the 'accidental' killings of dolphins become murder. This is taken
by many Wiccans to cause them to become vegetarians and in many Traditional Rituals,
the communal feast of Cakes and Wine forbids any meat products.
Another aspect of this is that Gardnerians and their relations consider the idea that
it is a reality for all to be born among their loved ones to know, and love them again. To
be 'bad' in the Gardnerian view will to cause the Witch to be reborn in their next life
among strangers, always to spend that life with the feeling that one is lost, constantly
searching for a community with which one can be at home. For many, finding the
Goddess and Her Consort and joining a Coven fills that need and is the fulfillment of the
promise of the Goddess and an end to ones self-imposed exile. The Gardnerian, upon
finding the Craft, now is back home ... back with his/her family once again.
(My ex-wife is roman catholic and so subscribes to the concept of heaven/hell. However, one night when we were watching TV, our year-old son looked up at our photo display, saw a photo of his mother's father and suddenly developed a look of incredible sorrow. At that time she (who had some psychic sensitivity) realized that her son was her father come back. When she asked me why? I replied that he had not been a very good father to her and had almost ruined her life with his drinking. This was his way of coming back to repeat his relations with her and to do a better job at this time. She became angry and stated..."He's my son, not some reincarnated thing" But soon the evidence and mannerism's of the boy convinced her that her father had, though a Catholic, secummed to the Wiccan beliefs in the afterlife. A couple of years later it became apparent that our daughter was her grandmother Who also had had a bad relationship with her and so had also been reborn among her 'loved ones' in an effort to repair the damage she had caused and to somehow,make things right. )
(From personal experience, I have found that it is impossible to magickally or psychically heal someone who doesn't want to be well. In one case the person wishes to be sick for the attention, in another there is a need for that person to punish themselves, and in another, the soul is going about its business and resents my interference. )
One question that occurs among the Novice and even Cowens is "Where do the extra
souls come from? After all there are more people alive now than a hundred years ago so
doesn't this disprove reincarnation?"
There are a number of arguments for this attitude, which never seems to be
applied to the major religions. First, one famous Witch postulated that souls are being
reborn on Earth from another planet which is even now suffering a declining population.
This may explain why some people always seem to be 'lost' or unable to understand the
simplest devices or actions. The argument against this is that when we regress people to
prior lives, we never get convincing data about life of other planets.
Another argument is that time is irrelevant to the soul, which has the ability to
incarnate from the past to the present to the future and back to the past. If this is true, a
good past life regressionist should be able to gather data about future medical advances
from someone whose previous life had occurred in the future.
The final major theory is that the soul, instead of being a constant non-renewable
resource, is in fact creatable. The Lord and Lady are constantly 'budding' off parts of
themselves to form new souls which are being scattered about the cosmos. Thus we have
the situation of brand new souls and old souls interacting in the same society. An
interesting concept, though it leave those on an ego-trip with the attitude that, "My soul is
far older and wiser that yours." But then, age doesn't necessarily denote wisdom, as many
of our elder politicians show. Personally, I believe that a combination of the above three
ideas is true, though I lean heavily on the creation of new souls. I also am aware that
some souls may suffer from senility and remain because of some cosmic glitch that
prevents them from returning to the Gods for renewal.
This, then is the primary belief among the Wicca as to the concept of
Reincarnation. Most Witches believe in the idea. Many Traditionals believe that we can
choose our own parents and do so to learn a lesson and to be among our loved ones that
we may know and love them again.
To contact me or to request topics to be covered, send to RikJohnson@juno.com
by: Rick Johnson
PO Box 40451
Tucson, Az.
85717
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Return to the Writings page.
