I am a solitary practitioner of Wicca, also known as Witchcraft. Don't worry... as Glenda was in The Wizard of Oz, I am a good witch (but I do not wear taffeta).

The basic tenet of my faith is "An it harm none, do as thou wilt". Wicca is a very personal and personalized faith. My particular version has no personified deities. I see the Masculine and Feminine aspects in nature and natural forces. All things are interrelated in the universe, and the forces of nature can be affected by will and skill.

Another aspect is my analysis of the afterlife concept. I realize no one has any empirical evidence that there is even an afterlife but I consider two concepts... the conservation of matter and energy means the electrical impulses that make us who we are have to go somewhere and the concept that this is all there is is really too depressing a thought to just accept.

For my own anecdotal reasons I believe in a form of reincarnation. I feel our souls go through many lives, each one serves a purpose in experience and education. Some are short as they have taught us all we need from them... some are longer for some lessons take a long time to 'get'. I do not find a linear chronology for reincarnation to be logical however. Each generation has more people than the last. Where are all the new souls coming from? So I believe that souls are not limited to linear time. Time, to a soul, is merely another dimension that it can travel through at will. As such my concept of reincarnation is non linear in chronology. In other words, your next life could be in the future, past or present relative to your current incarnation. This answers how there can be more people now than in the past. Souls do not much worry about timeframe. I also do not consider that souls care particularly about sex, race, etc... as such any incarnation will have you in the form best suited to the learning you are to accomplish in the particular incarnation.

(More Later)