REINCARNATION

Ellis (The Occult): Reincarnation is the theory that when a body dies, the soul transmigrates – it is reborn into another body. Because of this, everybody will have experienced previous lives, and death will herald the entrance into yet another life by means of reincarnation. This never ending process of death and rebirth is called the Wheel of Samsara. New Agers have taken this ancient belief and packaged it for the modern consumer. Today, it has become that sense of deja vu which says: ‘I’ve been to this place at some time before; maybe in my previous life I was a famous king, politician or public figure.’ Many leading New Agers have claimed just that. It is seen very much as a kind of ‘upward evolution’ whereby mankind is gradually being upgraded, both on an individual level and as a race of people.

Hunt and McMahon (America,….): Evolution has always been recognized as the vehicle that makes reincarnation seem credible. There is no point in being reincarnated back to earth countless times unless one is evolving higher. Of course one could as a result of “bad karma” (so the theory goes), drop lower on the scale as well. As evolution gained official status as the only religious view sponsored by the government in public schools it was only natural that its religious twin, reincarnation, would enjoy a renaissance in the West, and so it has. Since reincarnation is a belief basic to witchcraft, it is not surprising that it is amoral. Instead of solving the problems of evil, it perpetuates it. If a husband beats his wife, the cause-and-effect law of karma decrees that he must be reincarnated as a wife who is beaten by her husband. That husband (who will have been prepared by his karma to be a wife beater) will in turn have to come back as a wife beaten by her husband, and so forth endlessly. The perpetrator of each crime must become the victim of the same crime, which necessitates another perpetrator, who in turn must become a subsequent victim at the hands of another, ad infinitum, ad absurdum.