collapse

* Recent Posts

"Christ Is King" by Altair
[Today at 01:09:34 am]


Re: Cill Shift Schedule by SunflowerP
[Yesterday at 11:04:57 pm]


Re: Stellar Bling: The Good, the Bad, the OMG! by SunflowerP
[March 21, 2024, 11:21:37 pm]


Re: Spring Has Sprung! 2024 Edition by SunflowerP
[March 21, 2024, 10:24:10 pm]


Stellar Bling: The Good, the Bad, the OMG! by Altair
[March 21, 2024, 02:52:34 pm]

Author Topic: Rapid Reincarnation and Ancestor Worship?  (Read 4566 times)

RandallS

  • Site Admin
  • *
  • Join Date: Jun 2011
  • Location: NE Ohio
  • Posts: 10311
  • Country: us
  • Total likes: 296
    • View Profile
  • Religion: Hellenic Pagan
Rapid Reincarnation and Ancestor Worship?
« on: October 14, 2012, 08:08:58 am »
I encountered an unusual (to me) set of beliefs: the belief that people reincarnate quickly, most within 50 years after their last death, combined with a belief that all of one's ancestor deserve worship. This combination makes little sense to me because odds are that the majority of one's ancestors are currently incarnate as someone else and therefore their spirits would seem to not really be available for worship. Does this seem as odd to you as it does to me?
Randall
RetroRoleplaying [Blog]: Microlite74/75/78/81, BX Advanced, and Other Old School Tabletop RPGs
Microlite20: Lots of Rules Lite Tabletop RPGs -- Many Free

Aisling

  • Senior Staff
  • *
  • Join Date: Jun 2011
  • Posts: 4222
  • Country: us
  • Total likes: 463
    • View Profile
  • Religion: Eclectic Pagan Witch
Re: Rapid Reincarnation and Ancestor Worship?
« Reply #1 on: October 14, 2012, 08:57:41 am »
Quote from: RandallS;76572
I encountered an unusual (to me) set of beliefs: the belief that people reincarnate quickly, most within 50 years after their last death, combined with a belief that all of one's ancestor deserve worship. This combination makes little sense to me because odds are that the majority of one's ancestors are currently incarnate as someone else and therefore their spirits would seem to not really be available for worship. Does this seem as odd to you as it does to me?

 
:confused:

The only way I begin to wrap my head around this is if the person is honoring a particular incarnation of their ancestors, rather than the spirits themselves.  

Otherwise, it seems that they'd have to pay homage to the living incarnations of those ancestors.  That wouldn't be awkward at all.

"The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you." -
Neil deGrasse Tyson

Faemon

  • Grand Master Member
  • *******
  • Join Date: May 2012
  • Posts: 1229
  • Total likes: 9
    • View Profile
Re: Rapid Reincarnation and Ancestor Worship?
« Reply #2 on: October 14, 2012, 03:08:15 pm »
Quote from: RandallS;76572
the majority of one's ancestors are currently incarnate as someone else and therefore their spirits would seem to not really be available for worship

I've read of some past life regressions that were done in third person. As in, instead of extending their lifeline backwards, instead of even taking a spirit journey a seeing one's past life from the outside because you're traveling through time as well as space-- what happens is, that who somebody was in a past life can be conversed with as if that past life is a life of the past (as in, a ghost. Of somebody else. But it's really your own ghost.)

As seen on Avatar: Legend of Aang, and read of in... I forgot, but it might have been either The Pleiadian Mission by Randolph Winters or Notes From The Cosmos by Gordon Scallion.

All three of which are incredible occult resources (that is, I'm sure other posters might find varying levels of credibility) but the way I see it, it could be a matter of personal style when it comes to accessing psychic information (some see dead people, others hear them, others just feel cold spots-- maybe first person versus third person past life regressions are like that,) or it could be a matter of a spirit being more complicated than one spirit per body to be doing everything spiritual (reincarnating, storing past life experience memories, keeping the body both alive and aware, generating psychic energy.) Think of the New Agey idea going around about a "higher self" that isn't aligned or associated to ego and yet is still your "self". It might be that one is worshiping who one's ancestors were, or... since spirit-time is often described as fluid... who they presently are in the past. Basically it could be worshiping the ancestors' higher selves. Well, the ancestors' ancestral selves-- which is more redundant than contradictory.

Of course, that's just how I'd reason it out. I have no idea what the person you talked to believes because this belief is new and unusual to me, too. But not odd as in inconceivably impossible.
« Last Edit: October 14, 2012, 03:10:39 pm by Faemon »
The Codex of Poesy: wishcraft, faelatry, alchemy, and other slight misspellings.
the Otherfaith: Chromatic Genderbending Faery Monarchs of Technology. DeviantArt

Wind

  • Apprentice
  • ***
  • Join Date: Jun 2012
  • Posts: 36
  • Total likes: 0
    • View Profile
Re: Rapid Reincarnation and Ancestor Worship?
« Reply #3 on: October 14, 2012, 06:39:11 pm »
Quote from: RandallS;76572
I encountered an unusual (to me) set of beliefs: the belief that people reincarnate quickly, most within 50 years after their last death, combined with a belief that all of one's ancestor deserve worship. This combination makes little sense to me because odds are that the majority of one's ancestors are currently incarnate as someone else and therefore their spirits would seem to not really be available for worship. Does this seem as odd to you as it does to me?

 
In Buddhism we believe the soul is re-incarnated in 3 to 40 days. Once in a great while it can take up to two years, but usually it's about 3 days after death. We believe all people should be honored because they have been at once time your mother/father/sister/brother, etc.

I don't know where you're getting an idea that a soul would take over 50 years to re-incarnate. I've never heard of that before.

As far as instant re-incarnation, I don't have too much of a problem with that.  Did this person mention what their religion is? They may have further explanation. As far as worshiping past relatives, are you sure they don't mean honoring?  I've never heard of "worshiping" ancestors before your post.

Valentine

  • Sr. Master Member
  • *******
  • Join Date: Jul 2011
  • Posts: 936
  • Country: us
  • Total likes: 81
    • View Profile
  • Religion: get free; get others free; make new life in the aftermath
  • Preferred Pronouns: she/her
Re: Rapid Reincarnation and Ancestor Worship?
« Reply #4 on: October 14, 2012, 07:21:25 pm »
Quote from: RandallS;76572
I encountered an unusual (to me) set of beliefs: the belief that people reincarnate quickly, most within 50 years after their last death, combined with a belief that all of one's ancestor deserve worship. This combination makes little sense to me because odds are that the majority of one's ancestors are currently incarnate as someone else and therefore their spirits would seem to not really be available for worship. Does this seem as odd to you as it does to me?

 
I suppose one way to suss it out is that a footprint doesn't look like a boot?  If a soul is sort of like a three-dimensional object intersecting with the two-dimensional plane of this world--to vastly oversimplify--than any given incarnation, any given self, might be a slice or facet of that greater soul.  Like, think of the soul as a sphere touching on a plane--and each incarnation as the given circle of that sphere that is intersected with the plane at a given moment, even as the sphere is moving and rotating.
So the soul can move on to touch on other facets, or intersect in different ways/at different angles/at different depths, but each of those intersections or facets are distinct and still sort of contained in the whole.  And from here, even being a single intersection of that whole right now, those other ones are still sort of...out there, still distinct echoes.  
Like photographed moments, to switch metaphors, in the history of a soul.  That is, the soul that incarnated as Jeff, over here, has un-intersected and re-intersected as a new person, but the tiny slice of it that is Jeff is not necessarily still in this world, or only portions are, at an angle, distinctly itself and still part of the gestalt in a way that's difficult to comprehend from here.

I don't know, it's the best way I could come up with to reconcile it.
"Let be be finale of seem." - Wallace Stevens, "The Emperor of Ice-Cream"
"There isn't a way things should be.  There's just what happens, and what we do."
- Terry Pratchett, "A Hat Full of Sky"

RandallS

  • Site Admin
  • *
  • Join Date: Jun 2011
  • Location: NE Ohio
  • Posts: 10311
  • Country: us
  • Total likes: 296
    • View Profile
  • Religion: Hellenic Pagan
Re: Rapid Reincarnation and Ancestor Worship?
« Reply #5 on: October 14, 2012, 09:08:58 pm »
Quote from: Wind;76638
I don't know where you're getting an idea that a soul would take over 50 years to re-incarnate. I've never heard of that before.

I'm heard everything from right away to hundreds or thousands of years. There does not seem to be any standard that all who belief in reincarnation agree to.

Quote
As far as worshiping past relatives, are you sure they don't mean honoring?  I've never heard of "worshiping" ancestors before your post.

The word used was "worship" -- I can't speak for what was meant, unfortunately, and this was a discussion in a store with someone I don't know so I can't get any more info, unfortunately.
Randall
RetroRoleplaying [Blog]: Microlite74/75/78/81, BX Advanced, and Other Old School Tabletop RPGs
Microlite20: Lots of Rules Lite Tabletop RPGs -- Many Free

Maps

  • Sr. Master Member
  • *******
  • Join Date: Nov 2011
  • Posts: 703
  • Total likes: 1
    • View Profile
Re: Rapid Reincarnation and Ancestor Worship?
« Reply #6 on: October 15, 2012, 12:07:48 am »
Quote from: RandallS;76572
I encountered an unusual (to me) set of beliefs: the belief that people reincarnate quickly, most within 50 years after their last death, combined with a belief that all of one's ancestor deserve worship. This combination makes little sense to me because odds are that the majority of one's ancestors are currently incarnate as someone else and therefore their spirits would seem to not really be available for worship. Does this seem as odd to you as it does to me?

 
I mostly subscribe to an intellectualization of the reincarnation idea--aka I don't actually have any real-life application for the belief--where a soul can choose, to an extent, the specifics of their reincarnation, including how long in between lives.

But at the same time, my religion posits that each human person is comprised of several souls, so its' entirely possible to honor some immutable aspect of someone-as-ancestor while simultaneously believing they can also come back as soon as they want.

Both ideas also have it that the ego dissolves after death, so the real trouble is, for me, in honoring a literal ancestor that retains all their worldly quirks and memories. I don't think it really works that way. If I'm honoring a personality, then it's being done for the sake of the living more than anything.

Lykaios

  • Apprentice
  • ***
  • Join Date: Jul 2011
  • Posts: 33
  • Total likes: 0
    • View Profile
    • http://www.aspacetoexist.blogspot.com/
Re: Rapid Reincarnation and Ancestor Worship?
« Reply #7 on: October 15, 2012, 08:22:51 am »
Quote from: RandallS;76572
I encountered an unusual (to me) set of beliefs: the belief that people reincarnate quickly, most within 50 years after their last death, combined with a belief that all of one's ancestor deserve worship. This combination makes little sense to me because odds are that the majority of one's ancestors are currently incarnate as someone else and therefore their spirits would seem to not really be available for worship. Does this seem as odd to you as it does to me?

 
I suppose it depends largely on your concept of how the soul works and what you mean by reincarnation.

Fex, in Kemeticism, the soul comes in an assortment of parts. Without getting too deep into the theology and metaphysics of that (unless someone wants me to): the memories a person has of their life are essentially in one part, while the person’s core essence is in another. It’s the latter part that reincarnates while the former (and a host of other pieces) remains in the afterlife with the other blessed ancestors that reside there.

Hence, “reincarnation” could theoretically occur immediately (though it would take a minimum of 70 days for it to happen…the period of time needed to reach the halls of judgment and go through that process) without impacting ancestor veneration.
Known elsewhere as Aeshna and/or Iakhu-Itui (Iakhu)
Religious Blog: Chaos Gilded Gold

Tags:
 

Related Topics

  Subject / Started by Replies Last post
24 Replies
5215 Views
Last post May 16, 2013, 10:23:44 pm
by Nightwind
1 Replies
1867 Views
Last post April 07, 2013, 05:24:29 pm
by Heliocoptero
0 Replies
1382 Views
Last post January 04, 2014, 01:56:20 am
by quarks
7 Replies
1967 Views
Last post August 20, 2014, 01:50:54 am
by MattyG
1 Replies
1001 Views
Last post September 25, 2016, 04:31:01 pm
by GrayEyes

* Who's Online

  • Dot Guests: 187
  • Dot Hidden: 0
  • Dot Users: 0

There aren't any users online.

* Please Donate!

The Cauldron's server is expensive and requires monthly payments. Please become a Bronze, Silver or Gold Donor if you can. Donations are needed every month. Without member support, we can't afford the server.

* Shop & Support TC

The links below are affiliate links. When you click on one of these links you will go to the listed shopping site with The Cauldron's affiliate code. Any purchases you make during your visit will earn TC a tiny percentage of your purchase price at no extra cost to you.

* In Memoriam

Chavi (2006)
Elspeth (2010)
Marilyn (2013)

* Cauldron Staff

Host:
Sunflower

Message Board Staff
Board Coordinator:
Darkhawk

Assistant Board Coordinator:
Aster Breo

Senior Staff:
Aisling, Allaya, Jenett, Sefiru

Staff:
Ashmire, EclecticWheel, HarpingHawke, Kylara, PerditaPickle, rocquelaire

Discord Chat Staff
Chat Coordinator:
Morag

'Up All Night' Coordinator:
Altair

Cauldron Council:
Bob, Catja, Chatelaine, Emma-Eldritch, Fausta, Jubes, Kelly, LyricFox, Phouka, Sperran, Star, Steve, Tana

Site Administrator:
Randall

SimplePortal 2.3.6 © 2008-2014, SimplePortal