Other species, extinction, and extraterrestrials

One of the things that has been leveled against the religious of any and all faiths is the human-centric viewpoint many of them have. And furthermore, the geocentric viewpoint. That's part of the reason I wrestle with the topic of interplanetary paganism, but it raises some other interesting thought experiments.

Life lesson?  It happens.  Work with it.

One of the big ones I always wonder about is reincarnation. Not all pagans, and not even all Wiccans believe in reincarnation. I happen to be one who does. There are a lot of questions, theological and otherwise, with reincarnation. Whole books can be and have been written on the topic. But one of the common conceptual debates for those who believe is that of inter-species reincarnation. On a conceptual level I can see no reason why we couldn't be reincarnated as an animal. Our paths in life are often guided by the lessons we are to learn at a given time (I wrestle with the question of 'toward what end?' and whether that's important) and I think life as an animal could be a valuable one. And who among us pagans, or even among animal lovers, has felt the intelligence and empathy in the eyes of a pet or even a wild animal?

But what about extraterrestrial life? Could we reincarnate entirely outside of our planet? Just something to think about. I, personally, say yes to that question. Before you go thinking I'm just a sci-fi geek (and I am), I do so because I believe that with the evidence we have from the numerous planet finding missions like Kepler, there's sound reason to believe life exists elsewhere. Every other natural phenomena we find is found in more than one example in the universe, I think it's almost silly to presume that everything happens regularly in the universe but life just so happens to be the only thing that happened once.

And what of the Fairy folk, of demi-gods, etc? Who's to say they aren't viable incarnations? I'm not the first one to raise that possibility. Not by several millenia.

That face is as wise as any owl I've seen.

Stepping away from reincarnation, let's take it from the approach of totem animals, animal guardians, etc. Often we hear of pagans finding totem animals, spirit guardians and the like typically from the stock of woodland, land-dwelling creatures. I'm not saying we pick those spirits, it's a collaborative process, to be sure and often we are the ones being chosen. But what of the other species who never appear on that list? Couldn't a wombat or a capybara serve the same role? Or, sticking closer to home, are oppossums and garter snakes simply uninterested in the role? Or are they and are we simply not paying close enough attention? Perhaps we should open our ears, eyes and spirits to guidance from the creatures last-picked on the guardian animal team, so to speak.

Pay some respects to grandmother Paraphysornis

For that matter, what of our ancestors? I attended a festival at which we thanked a grandmother tree whose roots remained, but whose trunk and branches had been removed years ago. And you could feel her presence in that space. Could we not speak to and thank the spirits of animals for which there is no living representative? Granted we don't want to open our ears too far. Life has been around for arguably billions of years. That's a lot of noise. But one of my prized finds which has featured on my altar from time to time is a fossil worm I found in Arkansas. As a Geology geek, this worm was an incredible find. Rarely do soft-bodied critters show up so nicely. But as a pagan, fossils have always spoken to me loud and clear "we are as important to this planet and its history as the wolf or the raven!"  And so it takes a place of honor on account of its age and the fact that it has survived to tell its tale to me where millions like it went without a trace.  There's a host of incredible animals that have walked this planet, some of them are actually our ancestors. Do they have anything to say to us? Would we know their voices if they did?

Hey, it's cousin Plesiadapis.  You never call, you never write.  I'm your cousin for Pete's sake!

So I've been thinking about what I'm writing in these blog posts. Are they sometimes silly? Yeah, that's how I write. And I'm all over the place, asking questions I could go a whole pagan lifetime without asking and I'd be just fime. But for all that, I take these questions seriously. It's important to me that my faith make sense both spiritually and logically. And exploring my faith is as much to me a thought experiment as it is an experience dancing around a Beltaine fire or calling my corners. For whatever the gods have meant for me to learn in this life, they've made a pretty strong point that what I'm good at is taking the bigger view, cracking jokes, and obsessing over details.