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Though I asked around, no one could remember who you were or (as we say of children) who you belonged to.

I have a message for you anyway: a message, and a blessing.

In the photo, you're five, maybe six years old. You're curled up on the couch next to young Damien, arm slung around his neck, cheek pressed to his.

You are radiantly happy.

Ah, young Damien: beautiful son of perfectly ordinary-looking parents. Leading-man looks, and indeed, his acting career took off from there. I gather that he's still doing stand-up these days.

Damien. He does look a tad embarrassed by your unabashed adulation. Seventeen, eighteen, maybe, at the peak of his shine; does he understand what's really going on here? Regardless, he receives it magnanimously, bless him for it.

And you. I look at your picture, and I think: 60 years ago, that would have been me.

In any given place, you seek that beauty, and when you find it, you gravitate: as water flows downhill, as a wandering planet draws nigh its fated star. Why, you don't know; it never occurs even to ask. But when you see it, you fly to it, as by nature. Given a place there, you rest content. From here, as Plato would have it, all the rest of the good unfolds.

I've gotten a few messages about reincarnation and how--and if--it relates to Hellenism. Time to talk about it. The idea of reincarnation probably dates back to the Iron Age (so around 1200 BC.). It enters the Hellenic stream of thought and philosophy around the 6th century BC, although there is mention of the theoretical subject in pre-Socratic philosophy.

The ancient Hellenes most likely did not use the word 'reincarnation'; 'Metempsychosis' (μετεμψύχωσις) is a better word for the phenomenon they believed in. It is a philosophical term in the Hellenic language which refers to the transmigration of the soul, especially its reincarnation after death. The notion that the human soul enters another body upon death, though unfamiliar in Hellenic religion, was widespread in Hellenic philosophy. The doctrine of transmigration is first associated with the Pythagoreans and Orphics and was later taught by Plato and Pindar. For the former groups, the soul retained its identity throughout its reincarnations; Plato indicated that souls do not remember their previous experiences. Although Herodotus claims that the Hellenes learned this idea from Egypt, most scholars do not believe it came either from Egypt or from India, but developed independently.

This is part two in a series of blogs that will focus on meditation and contemplative practices in Paganism.  If you have not read part one, I encourage you to do so. Let's start with some more ideas and definitions about meditation.