Even though billions of people around the world believe in reincarnation, and the belief in reincarnation has existed for thousands of years, it remains a highly controversial subject. Personally, I believe that's a good thing. We should examine our beliefs to determine whether they are based in reality rather than fantasy. Most occultists, but definitely not all of them, accept reincarnation as a "given." Aleister Crowley, for example, thought he was the reincarnation of famed French occultist Eliphas Levi. He also thought that in a life previous to that he had been Edward Kelly, the assistant to Dr. John Dee, discoverer of the system of Enochian magick. Why don't more people accept

Popularized by astronomer Carl Sagan, the actual source of the quote I used to title this post may be from Marcello Truzzi, a co-founder of the debunking group called CISCOP. The concept, however, goes back to people such as the French astronomer Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace —usually just called "Laplace"— (""The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness") or even Scottish philosopher David Hume ("A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence"). It seems so reasonable. The question, however, is should we accept it as valid? The people at SCEPCOP point out that no matter how reasonable it seems, the debunkers or