Spirituality and reincarnation through Wiccan eyes

[icymist]

What is "spirituality?" It's a great marketing tool for preachers and writers, but it doesn't have much real meaning for nearly anybody today. The problem is that we don't understand the relationship between the finite part of ourselves the part that lives and dies and our eternal part.

Some religions say we only get one trip through life, and then we're off to an eternity of reward or punishment. Other religions re-imagine what "spirit" is, based on the understanding that we all have those two parts, the finite and the eternal. They believe that we, here on this planet, are incarnations of an eternal essence — a soul. Among them are Buddhism, Taoism and many neo-Pagan religions, such as my own path, Wicca.

Those who follow this philosophy understand that our time here is a temporary phase through which our soul passes on its way to ... enlightenment, perfection — whatever. As we progress, our souls are reincarnated into a sequence of lifetimes, so we can learn. We aren't expected to "get it right the first time"; we're only human, after all.

If you read the Bible, even Jesus and his disciples believed in reincarnation. In Mark 8, right after the loaves and fishes incident, they were on their way to Caesarea Philippi. Jesus asked them, "Who do people say I am?" They answered that he was Elijah reincarnated, or one of the other prophets reincarnated. One of them even suggested that he was John the Baptist reincarnated, which must have given him a chuckle, since he'd played with his cousin John (later the Baptist) as a child!

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