I guess this is a viable question. As Gaelic Polytheists, and it's kind of complicated, so bear with me, some or most believe in reincarnation. Given this, and we go into our next lives, and let's say become Jewish, hypothetically would our soul/spirit then belong to YWHW and end reincarnation or would it in our belief case be universal. I guess mainly, based solely on a persons religion, does that affect where you go in the end? Probably goes beyond just GP, but it does seem interesting.
An equally viable question: does it matter? Iâm not saying it doesnât, Iâm just asking you, because the afterlife tends to be a pretty personal thing even in religions where such ideas are clearly laid outâwhich they certainly are not for Gaelpols.
A lot of people in the GP realm of thinking donât see reincarnation in the usual senseâthat is, the sense that Hinduism and Buddhism, namely, have imparted upon the western New Age sphere. Not to say that it would be wrong to do so. Personally, I think of it as two (or moreâwho knows?) realms, for the lack of a better word. You live your life here and then you die and you return to some genuine, essential form of yourself, you get to look at your life in comparison with all of the previous ones, and you get to examine them all objectively. Then you âdieâ or something, and you move on to the next life. But I know Wolf, on the other hand, has an altogether different take that Iâm not going to do her the injustice of trying to describe.
The point is, like just about everything else within Gaelpol, there are conflicting ideas. Even in antiquity. There is literally no right way even to be Recon. So back to my original questionâI would argue that the answer to this doesnât matter. There are certain spiritual, theological questions that people ask regardless of faith. And the answers to those questions arenât interesting, so much as the reasons for asking them. This, the question of the afterlife, is one of those times.
âKorrigan
I'd agree with Korrigan as well, the afterlife is such a very personal idea that it's difficult to tack down within GP and honestly it very much depends. One can get into metaphysical multiverse theoretical discussions for days and still not be able to really articulate how they understand something, so it's honestly a matter of figuring out where you stand on that.
Realistically, I think that if a faith has a pretty laid out methodology behind the afterlife, then you should be able to understand and follow that paradigm, though I personally could suggest that even in Christianity, which has a much more decided track on what happens after one dies could still be a part of a reincarnate cycle that isn't quite addressed in the Book.
-Wolf