The Afterlife and Reincarnation: A Personal Theory

Every year as Samhain approaches my thoughts, perhaps unsurprisingly, tend to turn more often
toward the subjects of death, the afterlife, and rebirth.

Somehow, I’m not entirely sure how, I never went through any phase of believing that death was a horrible traumatic thing to be feared. The manner of one’s death, yes, can be quite horrible, traumatic and scary -- we can’t all peacefully slip away in our sleep without pain, sadly. But death, what happens to the spirit and what lies beyond, while always a point of curiosity for me, has never held any terror. Partly, I attribute this to growing up on working farms and the no-nonsense approach of my mother and grandparents to such topics. We hunted and killed animals for food. We raised animals for food. Sometimes non-food animals would get sick or injured and die, or have to be put down. Best case scenario, they’d live long happy lives and go of old age. But the reality of death was never hidden from me. On that note, I also feel compelled to point out that no-nonsense the approach to teaching me might have been, but it was in no way insensitive. They made sure that I also knew that it was okay to be sad, to grieve for the life lost ... but also to honour the life that had been lived.

This being said, I was rather young when my 'aunt' Jan died of lung cancer. Young enough that there wasn’t much difference in my mind about the love one can hold for an animal and the love one can hold for a person. I felt just as much grief over the death of my pony Rascal as I felt when Jan finally passed; I loved them both dearly and species wasn’t a factor. But as much as I grieved for the loss of them in my life, because of how I was taught, I also found happiness and peace in the memories of when they were alive. It didn’t lessen the grief, as such, but I believe it did make it easier to bear. Instead of being angry or feeling cheated out of having such experiences as feeding the snowbirds right out of our hands in winter, I felt -- and still feel -- fortunate for having gotten to have that experience with Jan at all.

I’ve been told by others that I have a rather philosophical approach toward the subject of death, and perhaps that’s true. All I really know is that it’s not a topic that holds any discomfort for me. Over the years, I’ve done a lot of reading into and research about the various beliefs about death and the afterlife in several different cultures, both modern and ancient, that have led to my current theories.

Personally, I have a very strong aversion to the concept of either Heaven or Hell (by whatever Names they may be called) being the soul’s destination for all eternity. I can understand the appeal of an eternal paradise as a ‘reward’ for living a good life... but by what values does one judge a ‘good’ life? While some core beliefs carry across religions, many differ in the extreme. Does that mean that actually, there’s more than one version of Heaven, and which one you ascend to after death depends upon which belief system you adhere to? And what about those who hold that certain acts, if done in the name of their God, will grant them entrance into Heaven, while by many other tenets of belief those same acts would condemn their souls to an eternity in Hell? And as for Hell... why the prevalent belief that one can only attain redemption during their mortal life? Surely, if the soul is eternal, there should be some manner in which it can earn redemption even after death. So many hold to the belief in a Divine Being who is all-forgiving, and yet simultaneously believe in ‘unforgivable sins.’ I could never wrap my head around that.

At this point I feel the need to emphasise: just because I do not fully comprehend or agree with a belief system, does not mean I consider it to be invalid. There are many Paths to be walked, and this diversity of belief should be respected. We choose, or discover, or are led to the Path that ‘fits’ and while that means our Journeys will take us in several different directions and to many different places, they all lead back to the Divine Source. Or so I believe. You might disagree, and that’s okay.

My personal theory -- and I prefer to call it a theory rather than a belief because until I die, I’m not going to know -- and the belief systems that have always resonated the most with me, are those that believe in a continuous cycle of life, death, and rebirth. I believe, quite strongly, that our souls choose to live mortal lives in order to learn, and sometimes to fulfill a specific purpose. What they learn, well, that depends on the type of life they choose to be born into, and the choices they make during that life. If we are judged for how well we’ve learned, or performed our appointed task, I believe that for the most part, we judge ourselves. This may seem conceited to some, because how dare we have the audacity to decide for ourselves if we’ve succeeded or failed and what sort of ‘reward’ or ‘punishment’ we should receive. Allow me to explain my theory.

When in our mortal lives, for the most part we forget what other lives we’ve lived. In part I feel this is to prevent confusion, disconnection, and the possibility of going crazy because some memories may just be too painful, shameful, traumatic or grief-stricken. While some people may be far more sensitive to and connected with their past lives, for the most part I believe that we’re meant to focus on our current lives -- and if something bleeds through strongly enough to awaken memories of a past life, then that means we’ve some serious unfinished business to attend to. Perhaps we got distracted, or prevented, or died before we had a chance to finish -- the possibilities are many.

But once we do pass back into the Aetherial Realm and reconnect with the Spirits and the Divine, all those memories from all those lives are once more available to us because in that form, we have the capacity to keep things separate and not be overwhelmed. Yes, I do hold that there are Spirits -- our Guides and Guardians -- who can help us see our lives from different perspectives and help us fully decide if our goals in our most recent life were met and also help us decide what we want/need to do next and where/when we should go to best accomplish our new tasks. I also believe that Time is a purely mortal construct, so we don’t need to be reincarnated along a linear time-stream. This also means that our spirits can spend as long as needed contemplating their lives and this will in no way impact when they return to a mortal life -- centuries or seconds, not a factor. Nor do we also have to return to the same world/dimension/reality. We have the infinity of the Universe to learn from and explore.

In a way, this theory of mine allows for some version of Heaven and Hell, but a mutable one. The Aetherial Plane is a place of pure thought, will and imagination. Depending on the lives we’ve lived, we may choose for a time to create for ourselves a small personal paradise in which we can contemplate, well, anything and everything. But if we feel that our spirits have been tainted, then we may end up creating our own punishments; our own Hell. This may be within the Aetherial Realm, or it may be in a series of short, brutal mortal lives chosen to inflict upon ourselves the mortal pain we, for whatever reasons we might have, feel we deserve to suffer. But we are not condemned to such suffering forever. Those Spirits who live purely within the Aetherial Realm are always there, waiting for when we’re ready, to help us cleanse and renew our souls and while it’s not they who offer redemption, they offer us the chance for it in the return to the ‘normal’ (for lack of a better word) cycle of reincarnation.

Until someone figures out a way to carry scientific equipment with them when they pass on, and then bring it back again, or discovers the technology that allows us to access, measure, and study what I call the Aetherial Realm, none of us will ever know for certain which theory is correct, or even if any theory is correct, or quite possibly if all of them are correct.

For myself, there are occurrences that have contributed to and reinforced my personal theory. Certain tidbits of knowledge that I have that I know I never learned in this life. Certain mannerisms that for me are instinctual but make no sense when one takes into consideration the culture within which I was raised. Meeting certain people whom I know and feel an immediate and strong connection toward (not always a positive one, mind -- one can encounter past enemies as easily as past friends). I’m sure many of you know the feeling I mean. That “Hey, I’ve just met you and this is crazy, but I feel like I’ve known you my entire life so let’s be BFFs!” feeling, or that “Hey, I’ve just met you and this is crazy, but I kinda wanna rip your tongue out through your anus.” feeling.

Light and dark, good and bad, life and death... balance in all things. Which is why I don’t avoid mentioning the negative when I write posts like this. As much as we might wish for a world that’s all sparkly rainbows, that’s just not reality.

Guides, Guardians, and Totems, Oh My!

Artist Unknown (would like to remedy that!)

While I have not read every single book or article out there about Spirit Guides and Guardians, I have

noticed among what I have read is that some seem to use the terms interchangeably. Given my own personal study and experience, I have to disagree with this. Guides and Guardians are two very distinct and different types of Spirit. One major difference, at least in what I’ve experienced, is that Guardians tend to be permanent, while Guides only come to us when they’re needed and leave once their purpose has been fulfilled. However long that may be varies, of course, so a Guide could wind up sticking around for quite some time, but that doesn’t mean they should be mistaken for or lumped in with Guardians.

For myself, Guides and Guardians have always appeared in animal form, which makes sense given my strong feelings toward and connection with Nature, as well as the environment in which I was raised. I have said before, and undoubtedly will say again, that I strongly believe that our individual interpretations of the Astral and the Divine are shaped in many ways by our mortal experiences, learnings and beliefs, as that is where the base of our understanding comes from. What builds on top of that, well... that depends upon the individual and the Spirit.

In the interest of trying not to ramble off on befuddling and disorganised tangents (though that might happen anyway), I’m going to begin with Guides.

Over the course of my life, I’ve had several different Guides, each offering a different lesson or needed reminder. They have included Mouse, Turtle, Bear, Hawk, Dolphin, Shark, and Snake. Some stayed with me for months, a couple for years, or in some cases a mere matter of weeks. Now, again, what these animals represent often depends upon the interpretations of a given culture, so when researched, one can find slightly differing, or even completely contradictory meanings, reasons for appearing, and spiritual powers ascribed to them.

Some of these Guides have come at points in my life that are not things I’m willing (yet) to share in a public forum. There are two in particular, however, that I will touch on.

Mouse first started appearing during my early teens, and stayed with me for roughly three-ish years. At the time, I wasn’t consciously involved in or actively studying any form of Paganism; I reacted to Mouse on a purely instinctual and subconscious level. It wasn’t until years later, as I began my conscious journey into exploring the many different facets of Pagan and Native beliefs, that I realised why Mouse had come to me at that particular time. The main thing that seems to be agreed upon about Mouse is a reminder to pay attention to trivial, but necessary and important things in life, and to not get lost in larger events or in trying to see the bigger picture. My own personal addition to that is that along with general life details, it can also be a reminder to not take for granted the things that, when compared to the big picture, seem rather small but are in fact quite important. Like everyday gestures of kindness from friends whose presence you’ve begun to take for granted and yet actually, the fact that they’re still staunchly by your side while you’re in the middle of an epic break-down and feel like you’re going completely batshit insane is really, really huge.

Hawk, appropriately enough, came into my life at around the same time that I made the conscious decision to study Paganism. To put it simply, an opening of awareness, enlightenment, and being guided toward a Path you’re meant to follow or purpose you’re meant to fulfill are commonly agreed upon interpretations of Hawk’s appearance. I was guided to meeting J, my Ha’shin and spirit brother, and thus ended my confused bumbling around as he and certain friends he introduced me to gently helped me begin a more structured approach and also helped me to understand things that until I had people to actually discuss them with, had only confused me. Through J, I also gained an awareness and understanding of aspects of the world and people that I’d never even been aware of before. While Hawk is no longer with me, I try to live by the lesson brought to me; to be aware of the world beyond my own little bubble, and always open to new learning.

When it comes to Guardians, at this point in my life I have three. They have names¹, which I will share, but please don’t ask me how I know them. I just do.

Dmitri has been with me the longest. I think quite possibly since I was hatched². For the longest time, all I really knew was that he was a big cat, possibly a leopard or a tiger. I was never really sure because he’s never appeared in any kind of solid (figuratively speaking) form. He’s always an ethereal, shifting silvery-white cat-shape. It’s taken many years for me to properly identify him as a snow leopard.

I think I had on some level always felt his presence, but the first time he fully revealed himself to me was when I was four. I was being stupid with some friends, as young children are wont to be. Somehow one of them had discovered that the angled wooden doors that led down to the cellar were bouncy, almost like a trampoline. So naturally, we made a game out of taking turns to run up, jump on the doors and see how far we could launch ourselves with the springy recoil. If you’re thinking something bad happened, you’re right.

It was my turn, and I made my run up to the doors, jumped... and the world disappeared. I can’t even remember the sound of the doors breaking, though I’m sure there was a crack or crash of some sort, nor the sensation of falling or even landing. Just that one moment there was resistance beneath my feet as I completed my jump, and then blackness. What happened is that the doors had given way, falling open inward and dropping me several feet down onto the cement stairs. I was definitely being looked out for on that day, because I really should have ended up with a busted open skull. Instead, my head bounced off an empty plastic bucket and my body was snapped forward in such a way that I somehow broke my four front teeth off. We assume I hit the edge of a stair. Barring some scrapes and bruises and fat lips, that was the worst injury I suffered from the experience. Anyway.

I had blacked out, though I’m not certain for how long. It can’t have been very long, because my friends above were still caught in that shocked ‘What just happened?!’ silence. It was dark and cool, as you’d expect a cellar to be. Certainly a frightening place for a four year old. But I felt no fear, nor even pain. I attribute some of this to shock, but not all, and I’m sure the skeptics will pass off what I’m about to relate as an hallucination from my brains just having been scrambled by the fall and bouncing off of things.

Dmitri was there. This softly glowing, absolutely gigantic cat crouched down with his tail curled up along one haunch, filling almost the whole cellar. Our gazes met and locked and I have never felt as safe, as protected, and as certain that everything was going to be alright as I was in that moment. It felt like it lasted forever, though it can’t have been much more than a single second. He seemed to nod at me, just once, and then faded from my vision. And that’s when the pain and fear set in and I started screaming my head off, getting the attention of the adults and being whisked off to hospital.

Shadovar was the second Guardian to come to me, but those circumstances are far too personal and painful to share, and not only for myself. He is a Western dragon, pitch black with ivory horns and red-yellow eyes. He is cloaked in shadow, and when he unfurls his wings it seems almost as if thunderstorms exist beneath their folds, clouds roiling and lightning snapping, his roar the thunder. He’s usually asleep, which is a very good thing, because he is an embodiment of rage. It took me far too long to realise that he’s not only a Guardian against outside forces, but also there to protect me -- and others -- from myself; from my rage. For several years I was out of control, my temper lashing out unpredictably and often violently. Eventually, after many struggles and trails, I learned that I could use Shadovar as a kind of siphon. I can channel that rage and violence into him, and he is strong enough to keep it contained and eventually neutralise it so it doesn’t get sent out into the world. I’m not saying that there aren’t times when my temper still gets the better of me and I go off like a super-volcano. But thanks to Shadovar’s presence in my life, I’m not nearly as volatile nor producing nearly as much negative energies as I used to.

Third and most recent is Khanyar, my golden gryphon. While Dmitri and Shadovar both revealed themselves to me, I had to be made aware of Khanyar through outside influence. Given the state I was in mentally and emotionally at the time, I’m not at all surprised that I needed help in realising he was there. He came to me after I got out of a particularly nasty abusive relationship. The mental and emotional abuse this guy had heaped on me had come very close to breaking me. I felt fragile, like cracked porcelain that might shatter at any moment, with just the tiniest of touches. I had come to doubt nearly everything I believed and everyone I loved. I was also silently suffering with having been raped. I was young and naive and honestly believed the bullshit idea that a person can’t be raped by their significant other, so I felt that if I ever tried to tell anyone what had happened -- be it the authorities or just someone I trusted -- I’d be the one held to blame because I’d had consensual sex in the past with the guy.

Khanyar is a constant reminder of my strength, my fortitude, my self-worth -- all things that I had forgotten I had and that the gentle support and love of friends helped me find again. He’s also a terribly vain creature, but this helps balance out my own frequent lack of confidence.

Finally that brings us to Fox. I’m not entirely sure that Totem or Spirit Animal are appropriate terms for him, but I can’t find any other that applies. Fox, for me, is much more than just a symbol or an embodiment of traits that I share. (If you really want to get technical, I share more traits with Kitsune than Fox, but I definitely don’t feel anything like a Kitsune. I’m without a doubt a Red Fox.) I’ve never really been able to find words to properly describe the relationship, and it seems I still can’t. But I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is neither Guide nor Guardian. It’s very simple, and yet extraordinarily complex -- we are two separate Entities who are one and the same. I am Fox, but I am also me. Fox is me, but also very much himself.


1. Lowercase intentional, and most certainly not to be confused with Names of Power.
2. Short version: I was born via C-section, and also when I was very young my mother would tell me she found me hatched out of a dragon’s egg. The term stuck, because we’re weird and like it that way. :-)