Most witches believe in reincarnation, which is also called metempsychosis or the transmigration of the soul. Wicca has this in common with many Eastern religions. Globally, there are more people who believe in reincarnation than do not. The doctrine of the Transmigration of Souls is generally believed to have originated in Egypt. Greeks shared this belief but it reached fullest flower in the East. Tibetan Buddhists, for example, have it down to such a science that they know exactly when and where to look for a newborn Dalai Lama after the previous one dies.
Reincarnation is a sort of cosmic recycling, like water into ice into fog into water. We die, our energy returns to the Matrix and we are re-formed, born anew. There is a new personality with each incarnation, but our individuality is immortal.
An Old Soul is a person who has lived more than once before. Human population growth means the presence among us of people who are actually of ancient origin. This may be in part responsible for the rebirth of Goddess-worship and Bronze Age sensibilities. A mahatma, or Great Soul, is one who has achieved enlightenment but chooses to return, to continue to serve the Universe. Mohandas K. Gandhi was better known by this title, as Mahatma Gandhi. Witches see teachers like Jesus, Zoroaster and the Buddha as Great Souls.
Are we always reborn as humans? Do we have to reincarnate on this world? There are creatures called Doppelgangers, they are humans who live on a planet like Earth, but they are in every way opposite. Instead of pain they endorse happiness. Love, peace, and pleasure are the most important things there. There is world peace, no one hates anyone else, and they live in harmony with the earth and with each other. They are not greedy or spiteful. I would love to live there for a lifetime or three. Can we return as animals? (Cat or dragon would be great.) How much time passes before we come back? I have no idea. I don't know anything about the mechanics of reincarnation. I just know, in the way a witch Knows things, that I have been before and will be again. Some people feel like they don't belong on this earth. My husband has a very strong feeling that he does not belong here. He says it isn't just the people who don't accept him, it is the whole world, Nature, the dirt itself, and the humans too. Lately that feeling has dissipated, but he still feels he is from a different planet or dimension. I am exactly the opposite. I love this world. I feel like I created it almost, or watched it being made. I have known Earth for a long time, and I want all the humans to go away and leave her alone. I want all the factories to disappear and to be able to travel her face, exploring and enjoying her many lands. I have little fear of big cats, tigers and such, bears bother me a bit, cows scare the heck out of me, but in all, most "dangerous" animals I feel like I know them and they know me, and will not hurt me in any way. Perhaps I was a bit of dust floating around during creation. I love the idea of making things grow like they do in movies, suddenly everything pops out of the ground and flowers follow me wherever I walk. If only...
The Goddess brings reunion with those who have gone before. This could happen in a future life or it could be in the Summerlands, the place where we rest between incarnations. Witches don't believe in a heaven or a hell, in eternal reward or eternal punishment. We believe in personal growth and transformation. We recognize karma, that which we bring to each lifetime from previous ones. We understand that what goes around comes around, that we reap what we sow.
Karma can be good (positive) or bad (negative), depending on what sort of lives you have lead. The actions of each lifetime add to the karma of the next one. Karma is not the only force at work in our lives, so it influences but does not determine our fate. We work to improve ourselves with each incarnation, work toward achieving our fullest potential. The population explosion also means there are many new souls on earth, people who have not lived before. I have often wondered if the presence of so many new souls is not responsible for the worst excesses of this century, wondered if the madness and the violence cannot be seen as the result of technology in the hands of raw souls.
The Summerlands is not a heaven or a hell. It is more like the Otherworld of Celtic mythology, a not-here place from which souls go and come. We think it is a place of peace and beauty, a place where we are reunited with our loved ones and in full possession of all the wisdom we have accumulated in our lifetimes. Celts believed that bards could access this realm at will. I have an intuitive belief in such a Summerlands, in the place where we are our full selves.
I was once terrified of death, when I was very young. I had never heard anything about any afterlife what so ever. I remember being in kindergarten and riding on the bus and trying to imagine not being any more, not existing. I couldn't and I think that is why I embraced Christianity so quickly when I was young. I hated the idea that there was nothing after death.
I do believe in ghosts and always have, even before I was a witch. A friend of mine also saw her grandfather standing over her while she was sleeping on the night of his death. There are many of my friends who either live in a haunted house or know of one. There used to be a poltergeist in my house, but its activities have quieted down greatly. Once, I was sitting on my bed reading and looked up. For about two seconds there was a blond girl a little older than me sitting on the end of my bed, smiling at me. She wore a gingham dress and had straight hair. She was very beautiful and she didn't seem to be angry that I was there. But another friend once visited a graveyard at night with a friend of hers. They saw a woman floating about a headstone, holding a shotgun. She pointed the gun at them, and they left very quickly. Not all ghosts are evil, but not all of them are good. Maybe they stay around forever, or maybe until their questions have been answered, or until next Tuesday, or until someone recognizes they are there and remembers them, or tells them they are free.

I have not done many specific workings with past lives, yet their influences come through. I have always had a fear of being crushed. I have had dreams since childhood of having to hold up something that was hundreds of times too heavy for me. Later, I found out that I was killed by being tied to a rock and thrown off of a cliff, probably into the sea. I expect I was probably held underneath the rock, and was unable to lift it.
Also I once bought a new age cd with various songs on it. The very last song was named "Prophecy" (of all things.) While I head that song, I had a vision of being a newborn baby and being cradled by a woman with very long blond hair. My mother had long blond hair, so I asked her if she knew the song, but she did not recognize it. I found out later that the woman had been my mother in another life, and that the song she was singing to me was a very common song of that time.

ANCIENT DREAMS
Ancient dreams are not like ordinary dreams. They may have dream motifs and nonsense mixed in, but these dreams have something that feels real at their core. Physical sensations may mark them, the ability to feel or smell things. If you normally dream in black and white an ancient dream may come in color, and vice versa. You wake hard from an ancient dream, shaken, with the feeling that you have actually been somewhere. In such dreams lie the clues to past lives. Another thing about ancient dreams is that you never forget them
It seems that we encounter and reencounter people as we are reincarnated. It seems that strong personal bonds survive death. Some people recognize the child inside them when they are pregnant. The child is not a stranger to them. They have known her or him before.
We can discover past life connections, who we knew as well as who we were, from dreams. A man (who does not believe in reincarnation) dreamt this:
"I was in a temple with a big altar and my wife was the priestess, younger, with a lot of long, curly red hair, wearing a diaphanous gown. I was in trouble, sick in mind or soul or body, and I had come to the priestess for help. She burned incense, made magick and recited incantations. Then she approached me with a large, pointy bud or seed, which she pressed into my chest, and the full force of the healing magick jolted me. It was a dream but more than a dream. She wore a collar of amber stones and her robe was of the colors of her hair. I think it was a vision of something that happened or will happen."

Reincarnation does not require that we believe in it.

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