"You are a walking billboard about your past lives--and so are those around you. We all literally wear clues to our past lives on our sleeves. We also put them in our closets and on our bookshelves, watch them at the movies, and reflect them in our careers....

"[Y]ou are a multidimensional being and...death is just a chance to refill your spiritual gas tanks for the next trip!"

Barbara Lane, Ph.D., 16 Clues to Your Past Lives, 1999, Back Cover.

Have you ever been to a Civil War Reenactment? I haven't, but I became fascinated with them when I read a book by Barbara Lane about people who participate in Civil War reenactments. Lane writes about men and women who spend much time and money to research and recreate life and even specific battles from the American Civil War, 1861-65.

Echoes from the Battlefield is the result of an experiment that Lane began in order to discover if the reenactors' passionate interests in the Civil War could be based on actual experience as a Civil War soldier in a past life. The concept sparked my interest! And I hope maybe yours! I gathered some information about reenactments and summarize Lane's book in this issue.

Lane's experiment first began as she was working on her dissertation for a Ph.D. which grew into this book, published in 1996. The next year, she published another book about reenactors, Echoes from Medieval Halls, which is as fascinating as her first. In 1999, Lane gave us 16 Clues to Your Past lives, a fun book pointing to possibilities for our own past lives based on our interests and talents in this life. If this topic peaks your interest, perhaps you'll discover one of your own previous lives!

According to Wikipedia, Civil War reenacting is thought to have begun during the American Civil War centennial commemorations in 1961-65 and grew popular throughout the 1980s and 90s. In 1998, the 135th anniversary reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg took place near the original battlefield in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, with around 20,000 reenactors participating and about 50,000 spectators.

Most participants in Civil War Reenactments seek to recreate particular battles or events from the Civil War and to live and dress as authentically as possible as the soldiers did in battle as well as in camps. "Hobbyists," as participants are called, range from those who spend relatively little time or money in preparation to those who are adamant in their attempts to recreate living conditions and exact events of the battles for the reenactments.

The latter, called "Authentics" or "Progressives," work to replicate uniforms down to exact copies of buttons, the number of stiches on a jacket, and even their undergarments. They take great effort in researching all aspects of Civil War battles and living conditions of the soldiers. Public reenactments, typically held over weekends to allow spectators and participants to travel from distances, demonstrate to the spectators events that occurred during the war and what it was like to be a soldier or a women or child of the era. Some public demonstrations of battles are scripted to show exactly what happened, and others may be impromptu contests between reenactors taking sides to exhibit basic tactics and maneuvers.

Some hard-core reenactors enjoy weekends in smaller groups without spectators recreating life during the Civil War, staying in character, and experiencing as close as possible life during that time.

Paraphrased from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War_reenactmentt

by Barbara Lane

Barbara Lane is a clinical hypnotherapist. She became interested in Civil War reenacting when she first attended a demonstration with a friend as a spectator which led her to research past lives of reenactors. Eventually, she found herself joining her friend in becoming a reenactor. As she learned to know other long-term reenactors, she was struck by their enthusiasm and even obsession with the Civil War and their drive to represent the period as authentically as possible.

Lane writes, "The fervor and sincerity of the participants led me to ask: Could this passion be a result of the remembrance of a lifetime in the Civil War period: And if so, could I, in my capacity as a past-life regression therapist, help them to recall their past lifetimes?" (p. xvi)

Although most were skeptical at first, Lane found twelve reenactors to join in her experiment. Under hypnosis, all twelve were able to recall memories of a past life during the Civil War era.

Lane continues, "[U]sing standard past-life regression hypnosis techniques, I was able to eavesdrop into their minds as they were actually reliving their experiences in the Civil War. No longer was the war something from old history books. It was alive in my living room. From their lips, piece after piece of astonishing information unfolded: details about their uniforms; camp life; being wounded, even dying." (p. xvi)

Lane began this project as part of a dissertation for a Ph.D in metaphysical sciences from Westbrook University in New Mexico and continued to compile the material into her book. Besides the amazing hypnosis sessions and informational interviews with participants, Lane spent hundreds of hours in Civil War research as well as fact-checking, which led to "cemeteries, battlefields, archivists, and historians." (p. xvii)

She found that most of the historical facts gathered through the regression sessions were accurate and led her to find eleven of twelve close matches between the participants' memories and actual persons. Echoes from the Battlefield contains confirmed information about Civil War battles, military structure at the time, along with terms and techniques used in fighting. The author includes twelve fascinating chapters describing the recalled memories of each of the twelve reenactors who participated.

Barbara Lane, Echoes from the Battlefield, 1996

Alan, at 25 years old, was one of the youngest of the reenactors that participated in Lane's research. In his regression he felt that he was a guard in a prisoner-of-war camp. At one point, he described having been stabbed with a stick. It seemed that he was a Union soldier in a Confederate prison camp where he may have volunteered to help the guards. He recalled in his regression being part of the 42nd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, of which he had no previous knowledge in his real life. Lane writes that he may have angered fellow prisoners which may be the reason for his stabbing. She found that his account of the prison camp sounded like Salisbury, North Carolina, or Andersonville Stockade, Georgia. She discovered in her research that it was common for prisoners to be detailed to help the Confederates, and that many prisoners were wounded or contracted disease in POW camps. Alan had given the name of Stephen White or Wright of Company H or D of the 13th Pennsylvania Reserves. Lane found records of two prisoners, either of whom may have been a match. (pp. 59-68)

"It would be easy to pick Robert "Rob" Lee Hodge out from the others in his first-grade class picture--he was the one wearing a Confederate kepi," a French-style military cap of blue or gray wool. (p. 85) Rob had been infatuated with the Civil War since the age of four. Lane writes that "eight other reenactors who participated in her study were fascinated by the Civil War as children." They played "Rebs and Yanks as kids." (p. 102) During Rob's six hours of regression in two sittings, he described disgust at being in filthy trenches with rats, being either bored doing nothing or marching for hours, seeing many men with bleeding feet, being wounded by a gunshot in the shoulder, and often experiencing hunger and fear. Knowing facts about the war in his current life as a reenactor, he was surprised when in trance to find circumstances that did not match his expectations but which Lane was able to verify. Remembering his name as John or Jim Jackson, he told that he fought in the war for three years, was part of the surrender at Appomattox, and then went home to Alabama to his burned out cabin and land to farm. His family, which included his mother, a wife, and two children, were gone, to where, he didn't know. He hoped that they would return. (pp. 85-105)

Paraphrased from Echoes from the Battlefield

I have three primary topics about which I collect authors' thoughts and which I love to share with others who are interested. I feel that the world would be more loving and inclusive if these topics were better understood, and individuals would have more clarity about who they are and why they are here. My favorite topics are The Afterlife, Reincarnation, and The Law of Attraction which are expressed in my statement of belief:

In past issues of Just Who Do We Think We Are?, I attempted to include an author's quote on each of the subjects. However, I plan now to highlight just one topic in each newsletter in the interest of brevity. In this issue I'm highlighting The Law of Attraction.

The Power of Our Thoughts 

"In the same way that it is a good idea to drink when you feel the indication of thirst—and therefore maintain your Well-Being long before dehydration is experienced—it is equally important to change the thought and release resistance at the first indication of negative emotion. For while it is certainly possible to withstand negative emotion for long periods of time, it is not the optimal experience for the cells of your physical body.

When you learn to release resistance in the early, subtle stages, your physical body must thrive. Thriving is what is natural to you."

Excerpted from Getting into the Vortex Guided Meditation CD and

User Guide on 11/1/10

About Future Crunch: "We are a team of science communicators based in Melbourne, Australia. We curate stories of good news, mind-blowing science, human progress, and we support small charities using science and technology to make the world a better place. More than 40,000 people subscribe to our free, fortnightly email newsletter." (https://futurecrun.ch/). There is also an in-depth subscription newsletter.

Childcare in the US state of New Mexico is now free for those on low-incomes, with the government covering costs to help people get back to work after COVID. The initiative is funded by taxes on oil and gas and is the first in the country to cover a broad range of incomes, with families earning up to 400% of the federal poverty level eligible. WaPo

In the last five years, a restoration project in Brazil has recovered 5,000 ha of forest cover in a watershed serving São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, with plans to reforest another 1.5 million ha by 2030. The program was inspired by a smaller conservation project in Extrema, which has planted more than 2 million native trees since 2005. Mongabay

"Over one million children in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi have now received one or more doses of the world’s first malaria vaccine. The rollout began as a pilot program in Malawi in 2019 and once widely deployed, could save the lives of up to an additional 80,000 children each year." WHO

"California just got a glimpse of the future, after its grid ran on 97% of renewables energy earlier this month. It's a temporary high - there's still a lot of work to do to solve intermittency, but that's happening faster than anyone predicted. The state now has over 2.1 GW in battery capacity, an eight-fold increase over 2019, and a stack of clean energy bills are working their way through the legislature."

Quebec has become the first jurisdiction in the world to explicitly ban oil and gas development in its territory, following decades of environmental and grassroots campaigning. It's a pretty radical move - Canada is among the top five oil producers worldwide; the new law ends all petroleum exploration and production as well as the public financing of those activities in Quebec. National Observer

The 2022 Our Ocean Conference has just finished, and secured 410 new commitments worth over $16 billion for improving the health, productivity and protection of the world’s oceans. This includes $700 million to protect the Great Barrier Reef. To date, the event has protected at least 13 million km² of ocean. Mongabay

"Just Who Do We Think We Are?"

Shari's website under the "My Two Cents" tab.