"I will pulse in your blood, I will ring from your core,
When the Lady, my Love, gives you flesh once more!
You will meet and remember the loves of your lives;
For your heart and your soul are my eyes."
(--Gwen Zak, "I Am Lord")

Upset by his satirical broadsides against the Christian establishment, a woman once asked Samuel Clemens whether he believed in Holy Baptism. "Believe in it?" thundered the irascible journalist; "Why, Madam, I've seen it done!"

This is the way the members of my expanded Family--theRavenhearts--feel about reincarnation. It's not a matter of belief for us; it's a matter of personal experience. It's a matter of recognition (literally, "knowing again").

As Pagans, we consider the myths and legends that have been passed down to us through the generations to contain the essential stories and lessons conveyed from our ancestral selves to our present incarnations. And we Ravenhearts have a story we share amongst ourselves; a Family Myth, if you will. We call it The Village...

Thousands of years ago (or Once Upon a Time, if you prefer), somewhere in central Europe, we all lived together in our Village. We had lived there from the earliest time, from when the great walls of Ice retreated from the valley. Other villages, of course, also came into being across the Earth, all with similar stories and destinies...

We farmed the fields, hunted in the forests, picked herbs and berries on the hillsides, planted apple trees, and erected standing stones to mark the risings and settings of the Sun, Moon and stars. We learned to grind and polish stone; to fire pottery; to forge bronze; to smelt iron. Our houses had ancient walls of stone and ever-renewed roofs of thatch. We honored the Earth our Mother, and celebrated the turnings of Her seasons through Summer's life, Winter's death, and Spring's rebirth. And when we died in our time, our bodies would be buried in the orchard, with sapling trees planted on our graves. And we would be remembered, and invited to return as children conceived by those who had loved us.

And generation after generation, in this way we kept returning to The Village, and the ones we loved. For we were reborn among the souls we had grown to know and love, familiar beacons calling us to become brothers, sisters, sons, or daughters to those we had just left. And we grew strong in our love for each other, our bonds of Family, Clan and Tribe, and the wisdom accumulated through countless returning lives.

Sometimes wanderers would find their way to The Village, to become part of it ever after. And sometimes some of us traveled far afield, and returned with mates from distant lands, whose lives and destinies became interwoven with The Village forevermore. These stories are also recalled and told among us.

Over the centuries, our Village suffered hard times as well as good. Periodically, raiders would cross the river to pillage and plunder, stealing what they could make off with, whether it be food, tools, goods or women. But always we defended our homes, drove off the invaders, recouped our losses, and rebuilt our lives. And when women who had been carried off in those raids eventually came to the ends of their lives, they often returned to The Village in their next incarnations, sometimes calling to join us the souls of  children they had borne far away.

And then one terrible day, the Romans came. These were not simple raiders, intent only on plunder. These were disciplined armies of conquest in the name of Empire. When we would not capitulate, they burned The Village to the ground. Most of us were killed defending our homes and families. The few survivors were taken prisoner, back to Rome, far from our destroyed home, which was lost to us forever.

For now, when we died, there was no Village to return to. No one to receive our spirits back into the welcoming wombs and arms of those who had known and loved us. We were homeless souls, cast adrift; orphans of the storm.

And so we became scattered across the world. We took incarnation wherever we could find it, in other lands both near and far. We all have our stories of these past two thousand years, always seeking each other, through life after life, driven by love and longing. Sometimes two of us would meet, would love, would live a life together for a time. And then, death would separate us once again.

In these many lives we have lived, in many lands, since The Village, we have each met and loved other lost souls, and forged new bonds. Some of us have returned in each new life to the essential roles we had held in the Village: potter, smith, warrior, farmer, healer, hunter, herder, builder, priest(ess), storyteller, poet, wizard, Witch... And some of us have lived successive lives very different one from the next.

Never quite fitting in with the societies in which we kept finding ourselves, for we carried a secret alienation deep in our souls, many of us were particularly targeted by the Witch Hunters and Inquisitors, and we were brutally tortured and murdered in life after life during the Burning Times. Only to keep returning, again and again.

For always we have sought each other; sought to recover the Village. Because, in our deepest heart of hearts, we have never forgotten.

And now, in this time, two millennia later, some of us have found each other again. We have remembered who we truly are, and what we have always meant to each other. And we have forged a new Family--a core seed of The Village that once was, and shall be again. It is an open Family, seeking reconnection with those others of The Village who may show up. All that our Family members have done in working to create (and re-create) new (and old) religious and social movements and structures (the Church of All Worlds, Neo-Paganism, Green Egg, polyamory, Mythic Images, TheaGenesis, Millennial Connections...) has been towards setting up a beacon to draw Home again those of our kindred so long lost from each other.

How often have we heard the words of a newly-discovered Pagan, spoken through tears at their first Festival: "I feel like I've finally come Home! I feel like I've finally found my People!" How many of us have spoken those words? How many of us have said to another, "Welcome Home, brother (or sister); welcome Home!"

And now we have a great work to do together, beyond merely finding each other and recreating The Village. We must make certain that our Home is never destroyed again, and that, once reunited, we who love each other will never be torn asunder again.

For the whole world is our Village. If our world is destroyed, there will be no Home to return to; no more wombs to receive back our sundered souls. Our task in the coming Millennium is to insure that there will always be a Village to welcome us Home.

"Weaver, Weaver, weave our thread,
Whole and strong, into Your web.
Healer, Healer, heal our pain;
In love may we return again."
(--Starhawk, "Weaver, Weaver")

May your thirst be quenched,

Oberon Zell-Ravenheart