I'm agnostic, but I've been into the Pagan religions for a long time now and even listen to NorseFolk. I was just curious, what are Pagan views on the afterlife?
I'm agnostic, but I've been into the Pagan religions for a long time now and even listen to NorseFolk. I was just curious, what are Pagan views on the afterlife?
Pagan views on the afterlife are many and varied! It's one of those things where if you ask tend different pagans, you're likely to get ten different answers, because there simply is no one single belief or 'right answer' when it comes to the afterlife (possibly because we can't demonstrate what actually happens with any degree of reliable and repeatable data).
Personally, I believe there are options for the afterlife, so to speak. Because I'm inherently lazy, and my belief in the afterlife can be complicated, I went and found an old post where I already laid out my thoughts...
Originally Posted by Rae'ya
I think it is most likely that when we die, we die. The end. There is nothing else except that our bodies go back to the Earth...unless of course we embalm them, in which case they stick around for quite a bit longer.
You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him/her that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let him/her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her/his eyes, that those photons created within her/him constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.
And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly.
Aaron Freeman
And in the end what remains of us is what we do with our lives-- what we make, what we build, what we grow. And most of all, who and how we love...because they define how we are remembered.You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one
(Snip)
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.
From Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet
But if there is an afterlife other than that, if our consciousness does outlast out physical form, the only.one that makes sense is a reincarnation of sorts...but not one where our consciousness remains intact or even recognisable as *us*
...something like this:
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.
Last edited by thalassa; 25 Sep 2015 at 20:22.
“You have never answered but you did not need to. If I stand at the ocean I can hear you with your thousand voices. Sometimes you shout, hilarious laughter that taunts all questions. Other nights you are silent as death, a mirror in which the stars show themselves. Then I think you want to tell me something, but you never do. Of course I know I have written letters to no-one. But what if I find a trident tomorrow?" ~~Letters to Poseidon, Cees Nooteboom
“We still carry this primal relationship to the Earth within our consciousness, even if we have long forgotten it. It is a primal recognition of the wonder, beauty, and divine nature of the Earth. It is a felt reverence for all that exists. Once we bring this foundational quality into our consciousness, we will be able to respond to our present man-made crisis from a place of balance, in which our actions will be grounded in an attitude of respect for all of life. This is the nature of real sustainability.”
~~Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
"We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universes--one indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us maximal freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way."
~~Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
"Humans are not rational creatures. Now, logic and rationality are very helpful tools, but there’s also a place for embracing our subjectivity and thinking symbolically. Sometimes what our so-called higher thinking can’t or won’t see, our older, more primitive intuition will." John Beckett
Pagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
No afterlife, fortunately.
Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.
Thal, that first and last item you quoted were beautiful.
“The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.” – John Muir
Mostly art.
I believe that we are spiritual beings living a physical life to learn what cannot be taught on the spiritual level. When we die we return to our place in the spirit realm. We are free to reincarnate to experience more or to help another spirit learn or teach. We are also free to remain as spirit in that place where we exist more naturally.
This is how I see it...we follow different trads, we work with different deities or none at all. We have vastly different life experiences. I think it's the same with the afterlife, some will have one, some won't, and different trads are likely to have different afterlives.
I don't think I will have one. Had a near death experience once, for what it's worth, and it supported the no afterlife idea.
I know that sounds weird, but there it is.
I can't prove my position, it is therefore a myth in which I choose to believe based upon evidence from my experience and knowledge.
Since energy cannot be destroyed or created only changed between matter and energy I feel the energy of a life goes on after death.
What that existence is I believe because of my own near death experience and having invoked deity and seen a part of life beyond the physical that there is a "place" or dimension where the spirits live in that form. I believe that we can choose to remain there or to reincarnate to a new life on a physical plain.
Thalassa, that first quote made me cry! Damn you!
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And the last one. On a side note, there was an animation made of the book 'the Prophet' recently. Corbin, you may also be interested to know there is a teaching pack to go with it. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/...gibran/6724326 I'm not sure where to find it I'm sorry, but I know it exists. And here is the interview with the exec. producer.
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http://journeysinfilm.org/films/the-prophet/ found it ^.^
Or from one form to another.
Which generally means entropy - dissipation in heat.
Every moment of a life is a horrible tragedy, a slapstick comedy, dark nihilism, golden illumination, or nothing at all; depending on how we write the story we tell ourselves.
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