Reincarnation vs Ghosts in Wicca

[tutu10]

So for the spirit of Samhain I wanted to bring up this discussion, Lets get to thinking!

Many wiccans celebrate Samhain as when the Veil between our world and the spirit world is thinnest, BUT many wiccans also believe in reincarnation. If you are reincarnated after you die then how are their spirits or Ghosts?

What do you believe or feel is right? One is true (to you) but not the other? That spirits are echos of the past? That Spirits are not dead people at all? That spirits are simply part of our memory of the people who have passed? Any other ideas?

[Corbin]

(Some rambling thought)

I have come to believe in incarnation through spiritual experience, not reincarnation. I will try to explain.

Imagine a cup scooping up water from a river and then later pouring it back into the river and discarding the cup.

Imagine a person as a single example of a portioned off piece of a vast universal soul or spirit who hives off to become an individual thing (to incarnate), wrapped in a physical shell. Not just people either - everything else.

This is the macrocosm becoming its own microcosms. To experience, To BE. The source being a single vast thing and a multiplicity of individual things of which it is composed at the same time (the whole being greater then the sum of its parts). All connected. This however questions if we are here to spiritually develop or simply that we may become closer connected to the source while incarnated (remember, not learn - our spiritual awareness).

Just about everything that it develops in its span develops by layer a temporal personality (or its individuality or 'its illusion' ) which when it disincarnates is a skin shed from a snake. The spirit rejoins the soul and survives (our immortality) while the physical and mental remains passes. What the spirit became aware of while incarnated, the sum of its experiences, returns to the river, its source, enriching a great flowing spirit.

I'm getting there ... ghosts...

But what could a 'ghost' be? If it is composed of the part that is shed which still has energy (for whatever reason) it seems likely it is transformed into a [Thought=Form] , the shade of a passed light, a lingering spirit, the emotional and mental imprint and memory of a passed soul.

Its them but it also at the same time isn't them.

[Siona]

If you are reincarnated after you die then how are their spirits or Ghosts?

I do not believe reincarnation is an instant thing. (Or even necessarily a mandatory thing, to be honest.) I believe in an 'afterlife,' a sort of spiritual counterpart to our physical world. Spirits often go to this world when the physical form dies. From there they may reincarnate at some point in time. Sometimes, for whatever reason, spirits linger in this world. Or, spirits may travel from the unseen world to our world and back, the way some witches and other spiritual practitioners are known to travel between the worlds. Sometimes 'ghosts' are not human spirits, but imprints of energy left behind, echoes of an event or person.

[SpiritTalker]

I feel deep truth in the concept of the all-one Being in multiple forms. I more or less accept that reincarnation isn't immediate (& can be declined) & the parts of the conscious self can separate and interact at different frequencies when the body ceases to function. Heck we do that while attached to the body anyway. What we call ghosts has various causes ex: frequency patterns skipping like a stone over a pond, the imbedding of intense emotional outpourings imprinted into an energy field, energy attachment to a location or family, multiple parallel planes, to suggest a few. All apply. Ive interacted with mobil, self-animating, non-physical, intelligent forms of individuals ive never known so it's no part of my current memory, but doesn't rule out parallel plane memory. So-called truth for me just won't function as black or white...it's a rainbow that fluxes constantly as I move. No one idea rules out any other so my thinking isn't "either this or that" but "this and that" simultaneously.