I've sat thinking about how energy gets absorbed and redistributed about the universe, in a method that some people call reincarnation. I've felt the need to look at my views on reincarnation, because I've started to notice different things that conflict with my previous views. When a flower dies in winter, and re-emerges in the spring; is it the same flower in that spot, or a different one? I think it's a different one that grew from the previous one. Just as we humans, and other animals, do. I've read, before, that the Celts believed that we could come back as anything, transient or intransient. Whether or not this is true, is up for speculation, but I agree with it. I think our energy is absorbed and redistributed into what is needed.

When we look into our past lives, are they really lives we've lived? Or are they snippets of someone else's life, who's energy contributed to our current make-up? I'm willing to go out on a limb with my pseudo-scientific background and say that our bodies are what holds our spirit together, and when it dies and releases our spirit, it scatters. Like light particles and that energy becomes fused with other things. What we call past lives, are the little bits of memory that the absorbed energy carries, which would explain why people don't remember their whole lives, just bits and pieces, to know who they were. That would also explain why we can have so many past lives that get remembered. It's just a matter of tapping into those bits and pieces of memory. For me, this is what makes up the otherworld, we become someone/thing else. That would explain why I can remember the tree part of me, as well as the pixie part of me. They are what makes up the current me.

We are our ancestors and our descendants. I really like this phrase, mainly because it shows our interconnectedness with each other. However, I take it one step further and include "our surroundings". Our energies contribute to our environment and our surroundings; our vibrations contribute to how our pets react to us and how we react to them. It also affects the plants around us that we take care of. Like the gods before us, who went underground, and became spirits within nature, we can transform into it. That is how we are capable of shape-shifting, through various methods, and working with the energy of various places and animals. We are able to call on those because they are part of us. It's just all a manner of tapping into that energy and learning how to use it.

Duality
"I am everything, yet nothing at all"

The world in both the physical and spiritual is based on duality. Best seen concept is day and night. Both are different, yet are the same thing. Day brings with it the light and warmth of the sun, night brings the coolness of the dark and the shadows. They are complete opposites of the same spectrum, light/dark, warmth/cold, yet within that, they are the same thing. Follow the sun through its course, and you will never know the dark of night. Follow the moon through its course, and you will never know the light of day. Positive/negative. What are they? They are different ends of a spectrum, yet wrap around into the same thing. Positive comes from negative and negative comes from positive.

The gods. They are everything, yet nothing. They intertwine with each other, yet maintain their individual characteristics and exist independent of each other yet completely dependant upon the other. A symbiosis of sorts where everyone wins. They are the picture within a picture. Each god contributes to a pantheon, which contributes to the entire spirit that creates the whole of being. Nothing exists without itself. Like the man who has no hearing, sight, touch, smell, or speech. Does he exist or does he not? He is a paradox of existance, a duality. He exists because his mind tells him he exists, but he has no input other than his mind to tell him that. He exists to other people because they can see him and use all their senses to tell that he exists. The only input he has is what his mind tells him. Paradox/duality.

Between each one of us flows the animating chemistry that makes us exist. It is everyone, yet no one. It is the life force that causes each one of us to create existance, it flows inside of us and all around us, yet it is not us, but it is. The organism, we are each an organism that contributes to the whole organism. The Earth is a living thing. We are organs of the Earth along with each other thing that lives upon it. The Earth is part of the solar system, which is part of a universe, which is part of an even greater universe.

The gods, they are also a part of the universe, they too are around us and within us. Existing with us, yet are not. We walk with the gods, we are part of the gods, we are the gods. The gods walk with us, they are part of us, they are us. Two sides of the coin. Two ends of the spectrum. We are gods, yet we are not, because we donít realize that. We are not sensitive to what they are unless we allow ourselves to open up the mindís portal into their existance. Once that is done, we become them. We contribute to them, and as a result, contribute to ourselves as well. The greater whole that we each try to deny. We are a small drop of water in a pond, when we move, we cause a ripple effect that is felt by every other drop in that pond. Because of that, nothing we can ever do is independent of others nor is it never felt by others. We can enlighten everyone around us. Like telling someone to smile when they donít feel happy and eventually they will feel happy, and that happiness will begin to start rubbing off on other people, and they too, will feel happy. Ripple effect. Moving in cycles, because there will be a wall or edge of the pond at some point, and it will all start to ripple back to us. That is something some call karma, or is it just a more concrete example of Newtonís Laws of gravity and motion? Throw something up into the air, and it will eventually come down. Throw something away from you, and take away friction, it will eventually nail you in the back of the head. But, on its way, it is going to hit other people and bounce off of them, effecting them in some way. By their being affected, they become part of us, yet they are not because they are independent of us, yet through this idea or object they become tied to us because of what we did to them. They become linked and in turn, we are linked to everyone they are linked with and so on and so forth, till we are all linked. Therefore, we are everyone, yet no one. In that great consciousness, we become lost and cease to exist, but we exist within that consciousness, therefore, we exist, yet we do not.

Also, when one names something, one gains control of it. Markale used the example of the Hebrew Lilith myth. In this myth, Lilith became angry for being paired up with Adam, spoke the name of God and then disappeared. Since that point, not only has the name of God been forbidden from being spoken, but some people have not even bothered to seek it out. His theory in application to Druids, is that the Druids know the name of god, they are the keepers of it. But, in that manner, wouldn't that mean that the name of god is knowledge? Or another incarnation of it? Druids were the keepers of knowledge, the wisdom of the Earth. They were also seekers of the deeper meanings that could be derived of it. Going on that, in the Bible, the first sentence of the book of John is, "In the beginning was the word, and with that word was life." In my studies, the Word was equated with Jesus, and was used to explain how Jesus was there in the beginning. Why? Because, Jesus was the word of God. As the Word, he spoke the knowledge, he was a keeper of the wisdom of God, putting him at Druid status in that definition. Later in his example, Markale points to his belief that the Druids knew the name, as do priests of all religions, but never spoke on the thought that by speaking aloud the name of god, existence would give man power over god. He also talks of the concept that God does not exist, he becomes (p. 210). Now, on a long stretch, I'm going to agree with this, for reasons that I cannot say whether or not God(s), as defined, exist without humans. Yes, I will say that there is a force that creates everything outside of human existence, because this earth and the things that are on it have been here long before humans were. Now, onto the concept that god becomes. God is like, or is, the Mabon that is continually being reborn, growing, and changing. Like the concept of order and disorder, god changes and evolves. And because of this constant change and evolution, god will never fully exist as a complete creation, he is a work in progress. He exists on the spiral continuum (p. 217) with everything else.

To wonder and study what god is, the only true text that one needs is to look out a window and begin to look at his various aspects. Like Emerson espouses, one must transcend the physical to enter into the spiritual. The front of the tapestry, being a creation of art, gives way to the back of the tapestry, which is knotwork and course fibers running in complete disarray. Again, we find the aspects of order and disorder. They are making sense of each other and within each, one can find the patterns that give way to the other.

"When Lugh was born from both order (the Tuatha de Danaan) and disorder (the Fomor), the world was already established." (Jean Markale, The Druids; p. 208)

Lugh is the light hero that was born of Tuatha (sky) and Fomorian(water). He is a hero that can perform all the tasks within the 3 realms without problem. In the beginning, there was conflict between order and disorder. The Tuatha came in and defeated the Fomor, sending them out beyond the sea. In time, the Tuathan king could no longer rule, due to a disfigurement, and disorder took the helm in the form of Balorís other son. After he broke down the Tuatha to the point of chaos, Lugh came onto the scene and was given the throne by Nuada for him to rule. During this rule, Lugh, being the balance between order and disorder, defeated his grandfather by killing him, and restoring balance to the two tribes. In a sense, he is the karmic force that balances our life between the ends of order and disorder. He is the plateau that we reach between each step, where we rest a bit before continuing on. Without disorder, man cannot move forward. Once an order is set, man must reach disorder before he settles into a ritual, which leads to stagnation. In history, there are times of peace and there are times of war. One must have both, in order to grow as a society just as one must have peace and war within oneís self, in order to grow as a person. In the above quote, Lugh is what brings about the world. His birth was created by the coming together of order and disorder, thus, creating the world. As with the story of Ireland, chaos must precede order. Once order organizes chaos, there is a pattern, which begins to fluctuate between the order and the disorder. From that point, one can begin to move, change, adapt, and grow.

In a later section, Markale discusses the naming of God. There is an all present force, that is made up by the gods. Each god has a name within that force yet, does not contribute to the naming of that force. By naming something, man has defined that something. By having a name, that thing is defined and delineated by the lines of that definition. As with people, when one isnít named, they create their own definition of themselves. With many names, a person shows many sides of them that can each have a definition that alludes to the whole, but is only part of that whole, which has no name. Iíve always thought of what it would be like to go through life without a name. I could be anything or anyone I wanted to be. Or, could I go through life as I do now, separating myself off into the multitude of facets that create all of me. Each individual part having a defining aspect and having a name for that aspect, but leading up to the whole that is me. I go through life with a name to what my body is. It is called Lara. My personality is called min Fearthuinn, it is what I am. I am created by all the gods, with little bits and pieces of them all bundled up into my body. I call my personality min Fearthuinn because it means ìthe soft rainî. As rain, I can go anywhere, I am fluid, I can change shapes when it becomes necessary for me to do so. I can mutate aspects of myself when their current form no longer meets the requirements set aside by my surroundings. The only reason we name things is so that we have a means of reference. In one of my language courses in college, we discussed exactly what language was. The written language, as one sees it in a dictionary, is just a bunch of symbols we use to refer to more symbols. Language is symbolic in every way. It is an abstract of the concrete, and the concrete of the abstract. When a person looks at a tree, and points to one, it defines one aspect of the tree. The tree is symbolic of the word and the word is symbolic of something abstract. When you look at the tree, what is it really? Or, when you see the word tree, what do you think of? Is it the concrete image you might see in a grove? What kind of tree is it? Oak, apple, etc? The concrete then becomes the abstract and symbolic of something deeper.