Many Neo-Pagans believe in reincarnation; others do not. Whatever their views on the survival of the soul, Neo-Pagans share a positive view of death.
In the Neo-Pagan mythos, life and death are joined in a sacred marriage. The Goddess is both creator and destroyer. The Earth is both womb and tomb. This paradoxical life-death function promises renewal through recurrence and transformation through surrender and annihilation. This is manifested in the seasonal cycle, where the sacrifice of the old year makes the new year possible. In this view, every death promises new life. Nothing dies in vain. No virtue or energy is lost. There is only transfiguration and transformation. The cyclical movement of nature transforms apparent defeat into transcendence. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee explains:
“If life does not change, it dies; yet, paradoxically, we are so frightened of death that we try to hold back the flow of life. Without knowing it, we are caught in a masculine, idealized image, a longing for perfection that denies the feminine, with its understanding of darkness, decay, and destruction. Without darkness, there can be no birth; nothing creative can take place. Without destruction, there can be no cycle of life—only a sterile environment in which nothing grows. If we do not accept the darkness, life will lose whatever meaning it has left. If we do not allow ourselves to live in the darkness, the doors of revelation will remain closed.”
Neo-Paganism sanctifies our ultimate annihilation and teaches that death is no less sacred than life. Indeed, death possesses a holiness that transcends the individual ego’s will toward life. Neo-Pagans cultivate a transformation of consciousness toward an acceptance of our place in the eternal cycle of birth, life, and death. Neo-Pagan rituals encourage us to fearlessly accept the disintegration that awaits all of us. This requires abandoning an egocentric perspective of human fate and coming to terms with the inescapable cosmic round. Time and death are only evil from the limited perspective of the ego. This perspective deprives death of its individual reference and views death, like life, as a moment in the experience of the cosmos.