I think it’s fair to say I haven’t considered myself a Pagan for a while now. I took some time to really reflect on that and I feel that while my experiences don’t integrate well with a rational positivist outlook, they don’t really integrate well with a Pagan one either.
I just don’t see any real meaning in my experiences beyond what they are. In fact, if I was to be perfectly honest, I’m actually really put out that there wasn’t some higher purpose revealed when I discovered the details of my past life.
How can I compare that disappointment to anything, or explain how an experience usually considered mystical actually made me feel detached from mysticism?
I wish it had been a life as Aliester Crowley or Gerald Gardner I’d discovered; maybe then I could have kept on believing that there was a purpose there. Instead, I remembered a life as an archetypal John Everyman who died a senseless death in one of history’s greatest tragedies, and no signs or auguries that I’ve returned for some higher purpose. I am as different from the man I once was as any two people could possibly be, and if you could have told me a century ago what I’d be in my next life, I’d have never believed you.
The only questions this experience answers are questions about myself, and it tells me a lot about why I came into this world so unhappy, I suppose. But it doesn’t tell me why I came into this world to begin with.
I feel like I’ve finally let go of the last hope for a meaning-guaranteeing myth, but I say so with despair.
I gazed into the abyss, and the abyss gazed back into me.
