Wiccan/Pagan view of the afterlife?

Question

I guess this is ask-a-Pagan day, but hey I'm learning a whole lot. I really respect your views and outlook on life, and appreciate the kindness you display on this website. I've read a few times that you don't believe in Heaven and Hell, so I'm curious as to what you believe happens after we die. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

lol I like that, Ask-a-Pagan day.
Well, we have very differing views throughout paganism as to what an afterlife might contain.
Some wiccans believe in the "summerlands".. a place of rest and relaxation and a place to reflect on lessons learned in this life before proceeding to the next.
Some pagans believe in an afterlife where we go to be with our ancestors and teach those of our lineage through our spirits as they move on.
Some believe we will be with our ancestors at the sacred council fires only.
Some believe we move on to another realm.
Some believe that we simply become part of the energy of the earth.
That's not all, but it's at least a representative of the differing beliefs.

Answer 2

Wow, what n amazing plethura of answers, and it is hard to know which is correct, because you are asking about a belief. The fact of the matter is that we don't exactly know. We know that our soul moves on, that it has a chance to reflect upon the past life that we have lived and the lessons we have learned. But other than that, there is no definite. It is my belief that we continue our life cycles, our soul being reincarnated until such time as we have learned all of lifes lessons. At this point, it is my belief, that we are given the choice. To either walk with the wise ones and lead those on Earth, to act as a guardian to our loved ones, to give our soul a break and just relish in the land the Christians call Heaven, or to be born, once again, and help lead others, directly, in their quest for enlightenment, the learning of their lessons. It is through this option, and the fact that at any time, a soul can change it's mind, that "Heaven" never gets very full, because after a time a rejuvination, it gets boring. and that we do not believe in a hell, we just believe that the lessons of life need to be learned properly. Some souls have no hope of ever learning, they don't want to, they want to be evil, and to that end, we have the evil spirits that walk on earth.

As I have stated, repeatedly, this is only my belief, I speak for no other Pagans, Wiccans, or Spiritualities.
Thank you for the awesome question, it gives me the opportunity to see how others believe, and to reflect upon my own beliefs. Blesses Be

Answer 3

Most pagan's views are different from person to person. Paganism and Wicca beliefs are very individualistic and so are their beliefs on the afterlife.

Answer 4

Most experienced Wiccans aren't going to seriously answer that because there are conflicting views of that within the Wiccan liturgy, and explaining that to someone lacking the necessary vocabularly and background is pointless.
Suffice it to say, a multiplicity of things, just like in other mystery religions.

Answer 5

It really depends on the pagan.

Personally? I'm an eclectic. I'm of the opinion everyone goes to the same place and they're weighed (judged) on what they did in their past life before being sent on to an appropriate reincarnation.

Answer 6

I'm an animist. I believe in the soul going through a cycle of physical death and rebirth.

When I die, I believe my soul will be reborn in to another human body after a period of reflection on the lessons of this life. New souls are born, and old ones die or move on. The age of your soul may determine how wise you seem in life. I believe that to break the cycle and leave the wheel, you have to pay all debts owed by you to other souls, and have all outstanding debts (by others) paid to your soul.

Answer 7

I'm a Celtic Pagan so I believe I will go to the Celtic spirit world when I die.

Answer 8

After the body dies, the awareness of the individual lingers for a short period, since it is that the message of death travels slow through the body. (Hair and fingernails, for example, continue to grow.) During this time the individual takes a drink from the Well-of-Wyrd, life, fate or destiny. This is the moment of judgement when the individual stands back, so to say, and reviews objectively the whole of one's life, sees oneself from the outside, as others have seen her/him. It is a moment of, often painful, realization about the nature of oneself, ones life and true purpose. Then there follows an undetermined peroid of "sleep" as the last of the awareness of the body expires.

Awareness is an energy that, like any other, only changes form. The Edda says that the awareness is reconstitued for a time in a place or condition referred to as The-Home-of-Dreams. This is like the Bardo of some Buddhist teachings. In this strange and dreamlike world the awareness experiences possible joys and terrors, influenced by the life lived before. All souls return there and often passed relations are encountered.

After the total experience of ones life have been fully incorporated into ones spiritual make-up, the awareness of the being will eventually find a physical expression for itself here on Midgard. Personalities are expressed again and again through a family line. We belong to the families that we do owing to a common shared origin as a particular expression of a certain aspect of the creative mind that some call god (and/or goddess) by multitudenous names. The process is the outworking of Wyrd to the fullest possible expression. You may think of it as spiritual evolution.

More advanced, wise or evolved souls are called hamingja. They face life and death without fear. These are the great people of history who seem born to fulfill a specific mission. As hamingja, they are like the lucid dreamers in the Home-of-Dreams, always focused and in control. A select some, usually female, of these beings may choose to remain in that place and from there offer comfort, guidance and wisdom to those whom they choose. You may think of them as Guardian Angels.

Answer 9

Eternal existance. Much as a Christian does, but that I'm my own judge working on evolving my human experience. I used to think that perhaps I was evolving my soul. But lately, I think I'm answering my soul's craving to really have access to the earthly experience.

The latter gives me a lot of satisfaction as I feel more the purpose of being here on the planet is divine. That we are IT. Some of the things said in the bible have switched. This being one of them.

Bringing heaven to earth. That we are all that is and ever will be. Our bodies functioning limitations can get in the way, and in as much as we can. We are to move that out of the way, to allow for our capabilities of doing even greater things.

As the masters, say...

Are we endless in our infinity? Have we created God in the image of ourselves and evolving the human; evolves our god experience? Our we no-thing at all, creating endless possibilities from that?

All to be a human, expressing our spirit?

For me, hell does nothing constructive for the human heart but add fear. Any action from fear, is not love. At least, none that I practice with those whom I love. They have nothing to fear from me.

Answer 10

As has been noted, there's a wide, wide range of beliefs about the afterlife common in paganism and Wicca. The same is true of Asatru and heathenry, but the scope is a bit more limited.

Heathen beliefs about the afterlife fall into three main camps:

1. Valhalla, Helheim, or one of the other "Halls" of our godhs, as determined by both one's manner of living and one's manner of dying (Valhalla is traditionally reserved in the literature for those who die heroically in battle). Personally, I believe those are all metaphors for how one lived one's live here; Norse texts have a wonderful quality of rendering metaphorical imagery in concrete language that often throws those used to interpreting sacred texts literally a bit off course.

2. Reincarnation, but only among one's descendants . . . the idea that we will be reborn into our family Line. There's evidence in our extant Lore for this, but it's sketchy at best; generally, only someone's "hamingja," or sacral Luck, is portrayed as having been passed on to their descendants---not their consciousness itself. The persistence of the idea in heathenry is generally attributable to an influx of foreign concepts from New Age sources.

3. The literal burial mound itself, where one is gathered into the folds of one's ancestry and rejoins one's Line. Even here, this may be a simple metaphor for living on in the memories of one's descendants, of one's deeds and wordfame living on after one has died. But we are on firmer ground, overall, in that Germanic burial mounds are distinguished not only by their range and type of grave goods, but by their placement *within* the community boundaries rather than outside its walls. IOW, early heathens saw their own *utangardh,* or tribal unit/shieldclan, as being composed of both the living and the dead.

As you can probably already infer, I go with #3.