Reincarnation has its own geography. As the long path of our soul journey winds around the Earth, we build up all kinds of personal associations with particular places. Those bonds can be strong enough to continue calling to us over great distances of time and space. When we go back to those places, we often recognize them with a strong feeling of déjà vu – a deep inner knowing that we’ve been there before.
When Jeff visited Assisi for the first time, he had an extraordinary déjà vu experience. He knew exactly how the town was laid out, and found his way around easily without a map. He also remembered buildings that had once been there, but had now disappeared. He said it felt like he’d come home.
The writer Louis Bromfield was sure that his love of France came from an earlier life. ‘Nothing ever surprised or astonished me there,’ he wrote. ‘No landscape, no forest, no château, no Paris street, no provincial town ever seemed strange. I had seen it all before. It was a country and a people that I knew well.’
Ever since childhood, the hypnotherapist Arnall Bloxham had vivid dreams of earlier times. One of those dreams came true when he visited the Cotswolds for the first time.
It began with a strong déjà vu feeling about a certain steep hill. In one of his recurring dreams he was always going down that hill in a bumpy coach – and feeling travel sick. Even though he’d never been there before, he somehow knew that at the bottom of the hill there’d be big iron gates between two towers.
That was the entrance to Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire – which he instantly recognized as his home in a previous life. Once inside, he immediately knew where everything was. He was able to show his wife and friend around, identifying all the rooms and special features without a guidebook.
While the déjà vu experience gives us big clues about our former lives, there are also many other ways in which past-life places may call to us. The main reasons for this are:
Over the course of our lifetimes, we leave all kinds of loose ends lying around the world. We may come into this life intending to find closure or healing for one or more of them. This could mean completing an unfinished journey, letting go of an old pain or keeping a promise to return somewhere one day.
Sometimes we don’t have to travel far to do that. If it’s important to be in a certain place for past-life reasons, we may simply be born there.
There can be many good reasons for being reborn in the same place again. For example, when a life ends suddenly, the spirit will often reincarnate very quickly in the same area. This makes it easy to pick up where it left off.
In his previous life one of my clients was deeply involved in secret work during the Second World War. He was reborn near to Bletchley Park soon after the war. That was where they turned the course of the war by cracking the German secret codes. He’s now still actively engaged in international peace work, continuing the mission of his earlier life.
Another form of unfinished business comes from a past life when an important journey failed. Despite all our desperation and determination, we just didn’t get there. When this drive is strong, it reactivates in another life. We are then finally able to complete that journey.
In a past life, Andy was an escaping prisoner of war. He was trying to make his way back from Germany to England. Unfortunately he was caught and shot while still halfway across Europe.
In this lifetime Andy was able to complete that journey. The chance came up for him to travel across Europe back to England. Although it wasn’t as dangerous as his past-life journey, it was still tricky enough to make him nervous.
‘It had its challenges,’ he said. ‘But I was much more jumpy than this trip warranted. It was only when I got on the ferry back to England that the fear began to ebb away. And when I saw the white cliffs of Dover, I was overjoyed.
‘At the time, I didn’t know why that journey had such a big effect on me. But now that I’ve had a regression, I can understand it. I was completing my escape from during the war. That’s why it felt so good.’
Dr Roger Woolger, who specialized in regression therapy, wrote about his past life as a French Huguenot. After years of persecution, his family decided to join the wave of Huguenots migrating to the new world of America.
Sadly, by then he was an old man, and the journey was too much for him. ‘I remember dying miserably by the roadside’, he wrote.
But, as I think so often happens, his deepest wish came true in the end. In his next life, he was reborn in America. There he lived the free life of a trapper. He was able to enjoy all the liberty he’d once yearned for as an oppressed Huguenot in Europe.
We naturally associate unpleasant past-life experiences with the places where they happened. As a result, we may reincarnate with a strong distaste for those parts of the world. This is often coupled with an unconscious inner drive to go there again and heal that effect.
In her regression Alicia discovered a past life in Scotland. She was a Stuart supporter – on the side of Bonnie Prince Charlie and his doomed claim to the throne. The memory began with her standing on a quay, watching a battle. She felt utterly helpless.
When she went home she found that her house had burned down and her children were dead. And more attacks were on the way. She was bundled into a boat with the other survivors, to get away as fast as possible. They all went and hid on an offshore island.
She said it felt so wrong to leave her dead children behind like that. The grief and guilt she felt at the time were at their worst during the boat journey to the island.
In the second part of the regression, her spirit guide explained how the real purpose of her recent trip to Scotland had been to heal that memory. While there, she’d taken a boat trip from the mainland to an island. The little excursion brought up strong feelings in her, both joyful and anxious.
Her guide said the reason she’d been drawn to do that boat journey again was to heal the old pain. He said that she hadn’t needed to feel guilty at the time and she could let it go completely now.
Sometimes we may need to heal the effects of banishment, exile or a sad migration. When we have to leave a homeland we loved, we often whisper a promise to ourselves that one day we will return. When we do so, even if it’s lifetimes later, it brings us deep emotional healing.
This process can sometimes take strange twists and turns.
A Dutch woman, Anneke, came for a regression to get to the bottom of her problems with her Anglophobia. She said at school she’d hated her English lessons and all her English teachers.
Then, in one of life’s little ironies, she ended up marrying an English teacher. On top of that, he was an Anglophile – in love with all things English. Her son felt the same way. But she stubbornly refused even to speak English with them.
After years of this stalemate, she decided it was time to sort it out. While on holiday in England with her family, she came for a regression to get to the bottom of this issue.
She found that she’d been a Roman Catholic priest when Henry VIII made his break with the Vatican. He disbanded all the Catholic monasteries and grabbed their assets. Almost overnight it became dangerous to be a Catholic in England.
In that life Anneke tried to protest against this – and was killed for it. The fury she felt about this had gnawed away at her ever since. After that life she refused to incarnate in England again and chose to live in Europe instead.
After the regression, she realized that she’d been keeping her anger burning about something that was now irrelevant to her. She decided that it was time to end her self-imposed exile, and become friends with England again.
Carrie experienced a subtler form of exile. She’d gone to visit Stonehenge – and felt nothing but anger and hostility towards the place. So she came for a regression to see if there was a past-life reason for this.
She went back to a time when she was a female shamanic practitioner in that part of the world. It was a meaningful way of life, full of ancient wisdom and the mysteries of nature.
At that time, Stonehenge symbolized the beginning of a new way. It represented more mental control over religion, with greater male dominance. The people were impressed with the great new ceremonies. The old shamans and wise women were increasingly ignored and pushed aside. This was why she still hated Stonehenge.
Talking it over afterwards, Carrie said she couldn’t see her way to resolving this issue. She wasn’t ready to let go of her anger.
But a few months later, I heard from her again. She’d been back to Stonehenge to try and make her peace with it. While there, she’d gone into meditation. She was granted a sweeping vision of the many different good ways in which Stonehenge has served and helped people. One of those ways included help she herself had received from Stonehenge in a previous life.
‘I’d gone there with some horrible illness,’ she said. ‘And the place somehow cured me. I was so happy and grateful. So I’ve decided that my earlier self needs to stop hating Stonehenge. I’m fine with it now.’
Places where we had happy, fulfilling lives may continue to call to us like an affectionate mother, wanting to nurture and look after us. Going to those places can feel welcoming as a home. These are the havens that we visit whenever we need to recharge our batteries.
‘My childhood roots were in Yorkshire – but I’ve never really felt at home there,’ a friend of mine once remarked. ‘Strangely, I feel much more rooted in Crete. The first time I went there, I felt that I had come home. It feels like I belong there.
‘Right from the start I knew my way around “my” patch of Crete. Every lane and corner was familiar. For practical reasons, I can’t live there at the moment. But I go there often. Whenever I do, I always feel better afterwards.’
We both felt this was because she’d had at least one happy past life there. Her Cretan holidays gave her the emotional strength that kept her going through some tough challenges she had to face. She feels sure that one day she’ll go back to live in Crete – if not in this life, then in the next.
Laurie yearned to live in Wales, but life kept blocking her from making that move. She wondered if this was due to a past-life problem, and came for a regression to find out.
She went back to the life of a Victorian Welshman, working on the railway. There was an industrial dispute. He spoke out in a hotheaded way – and lost his job. Because he’d been blacklisted, he couldn’t find work again. He had to endure the guilt and sorrow of seeing his family beg for charity as he couldn’t support them.
In the second half of the session, Laurie’s spirit guide said this experience had cut her off not only from Wales, but also from her own voice. In that life, because of the terrible consequences it had had, she’d decided never to speak out again. This guilt also made her feel exiled from her beloved Wales. She felt that she didn’t deserve to go back there.
We did some work on forgiving herself and getting her voice back. Less than six months later, both a job and a place to stay came up for her in Wales. It was suddenly easy for her to move there.
‘The first day I was back there, I went for a long walk in the hills – and sang my heart out!’ she said.
Many of us had key past lives in important spiritual centres. Revisiting those places reconnects us with the inner strength, clarity and wisdom we had while living there. While visiting ancient sites all kinds of clues and synchronicities about past lives there may pop up. People have also reported feeling back in touch with the knowledge they had in those times.
This can apply not only to ancient temples but to whole countries. Jo told me how happy she was to have ‘got India back’. All her life she’d had dreams that were obviously set in India. But she had a love—hate feeling about it, and no wish ever to go there.
‘Then one night I woke up after one of those dreams about India. I went back into the dream in a semi-lucid way. It showed me the places I’d been dreaming about. There were Mogul palaces, city slums and little villages in the country.
Someone was with me, explaining it all to me. He said in India I’d once lived a life of luxury, but I’d felt guilty about it at the time. In another life I’d lived in the slums and found that very hard. My happiest times there were when I was far away from palaces or cities.
‘He said I needed to accept now that I’d had all those experiences for a reason. I won’t have to go back to them again. I can be at peace with all of those lives now.’
Later Jo went on holiday to India for the first time. She loved everything about it – its swarming cities, grand palaces and tiny villages. She felt that her enjoyment was a sign that she’d finally made peace with all her past lives there.
Cultures throughout the world have used mazes and labyrinths as a symbol of the spiritual journey. The remains of an ancient spiral pathway are still visible today winding its way around Glastonbury Tor.
People who’ve trod that path say the old magic is still there. Peter felt that it reconnected him to a former Druid lifetime.
‘Whenever life is getting too much for me, I walk that path around the Tor. It takes me back to a much earlier time. It was when I was more in touch with the magic of nature.
‘It always feels as if I have a hooded cloak on. The material is quite rough. And I have the urge to chant. I don’t want to call attention to myself, so I just hum quietly. But I can sense what it originally sounded like, and I listen to that in my mind.
‘Walking the spiral path like that always restores my energy and refreshes my spirit.’
This is a light-hearted quiz to nudge your memories and spark off clues about the places you once lived in.
Sometimes an answer will come up straight away, as if from nowhere. Other times your mind may take you on a relaxed wander around the subject. Both ways will give you information about your past lives in special places.
Choose a time when you can be quiet and relaxed. Pick one of the following questions, and put it to your inner self. Then wait for words, images or feelings to come up.
Strong feelings about any place in the world – whether positive or negative – are a good sign that you had a past life there. Other clues are:
You may feel drawn to visit a special place to:
With this knowledge, you can pick past-life places to visit for the healing and inner sustenance they may have in store for you. Holidays may never be the same again!