Past Lives of Famous People
—Journeys of the Soul

Welcome to the Sample Gallery of Past Lives

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  Approaching the Gallery

When approaching the Akashic Record and a study of the soul history of famous people there is much to learn and much to understand. For beginners this is best done in small steps and with a patient heart. More experienced intuitives may also find advantage (perhaps a surprising advantage) in giving themselves permission to reconnect and review any past assumptions they may have about particular past lives, in patience.

Take small steps, reach out and feel for intuitive expansion. Strive to see what is being presented.

The studies presented in the Sample Gallery have been selected only after the following disciplined process is complete: First, a clear soul connection between lives must be received and confirmed in deep meditation, and then additional historical research must be done. This two stage process allows further intuitive confirmation from inner guidance. The lives which you will find in the Sample Gallery are placed here with confidence concerning their connection to other lives. To make best advantage of this offering, first trust the connection and then seek to understand its depth. Additional biographical research is valuable for understanding the breadth and complexity of a past life connection, and will aid intuitive attunement to the lives.

A willingness to take these studies at face value and to work with them intuitively will yield a most productive harvest.

In the Sample Gallery you will also find Hollywood actor Leonardo Di Caprio and his most recent past life. Di Caprio is a reincarnation of Rudolf Valentino, the famous 1920's silent film idol. This is an exceptional example of a new life continuing where the last life left off.

This progression is an example of how past life charisma and the recognition of a soul formerly loved by the public can work. Valentino's life ended at a young age, in the midst of the excitement of the fame and success of his Hollywood career. Less than fifty years later, Leonardo Di Caprio was born to a family that would likely support a possible film career. He was helped to become a child actor and he retained a full time movie agent by his early teens. The public loved him at first sight. This past life connection is one of a few examples that are so easy to see that they are a gift to the public at this time in history, helping a greater number of people come to a realization of reincarnation all around us.

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In this Gallery there are other good examples of individuals responding to life, and a choice of careers, by calling on a natural charisma which flows from past life public soul recognition magnetism. There are other examples in our Sample Gallery, and in the book, of present day actors' careers being aided by the magnetism of past life fame, which affects those around them in subtle ways. Many souls drawn to become actors in this life were not formerly actors but had lived lives of fame and celebrity on a public stage. A good example of this is the well known television and movie actress Jane Seymour. You will find her past life connection discussed in greater detail in Past Lives of Famous People: Journeys of the Soul. When still young this struggling English actor (born Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg) decided to take Jane Seymour as her stage name. It was then that her career took off.

The secret of the success of this choice of names is that she really is the twentieth century reincarnation of the former Queen of England, Jane Seymour--third, and much loved, wife of King Henry VIII of England. Queen Jane Seymour is well respected in English history. She is buried in honor in Westminster Abbey in the Royal burial chamber.

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  Gender and Reincarnation

The complex variety of past life patterns also includes the possibility of gender change between lives. In studying past lives I have seen "gender switching" occasionally, but alternating male and female lives does not happen with regularity, in every other life, as some may think. My impression is that individual souls have definite polarity at the highest soul level: each soul is either feminine or masculine. The biune self (a level of existence one step higher than the individual soul) began as a united androgynous spirit before incarnating into the physical dimensions of earth. The story of Adam and Eve may be understood as an allegorical rendering of the original division of the biune being into male and female.

At the divine soul level of spirit every being is either masculine in polarity or feminine in polarity. Therefore, when “gender switching” does take place in an earth incarnation, it is often noticeable—like a right foot in a left shoe. This is usually a temporary condition of a single lifetime for the soul. Gender switching may be a karmic condition for correcting a soul imbalance, for learning a soul lesson, or for some other soul purpose that may not be easy to see.

In the Sample Gallery (and in the book) you will find a few examples of gender change between lives of souls who have other famous incarnations in history. One example is that of Sappho, a famed female Grecian poet who lived circa 600 B.C., whose soul reincarnated in the eighteenth/nineteenth century to became the famous English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

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Another interesting example of gender switching which can be found in our Sample Gallery is the past life connection between the English social activist and Theosophist Annie Besant and the renowned Jewish/Dutch philosopher Benedict Baruch de Spinoza. These lives are two incarnations of the same soul.

The Spinoza-Besant study may be viewed as a good example of a divine soul purpose overshadowing the choice of gender for a particular life for the purpose of teaching or presenting the fruit of inner genius. This is another study that is presented in greater depth, including additional historical lives, in Past Lives of Famous People: Journeys of the Soul.

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  Exploring Musical Lives—Talent, Karma, and Destiny

The following section presents a few examples of recent reincarnations of some well known classical composers who seem to be following progressive incarnations of a highly developed musical soul talent. There is much to learn in a study of these progressive lives.

Does a soul always, in every life, pursue a refined talent that is its special gift? The answer is, maybe. Once in incarnation a soul talent is subject to all of the conditions of that life. There is natural inheritance, such as being a part of a family that specializes in something particular as can be seen in many musical families. In almost every case the greatest classical composers of Europe came from families or societies that provided training and direction in classical music. They often began their training in earliest childhood under the direction of ambitious parents.

Each soul is on a spiritual journey of learning and unfoldment of inner gifts. What of the needs of the soul that we know nothing about? What if a soul planned to express a life focused on some other purpose or direction than classical music? Perhaps in a new life a talented soul will be drawn to focus on artistic innovation and new forms of personal expression, such, for example, as architecture, including building or garden design, rather than music. Perhaps the soul is following an inward direction to not repeat the stress of classical music training as a child--or perhaps he is following a will to embrace new sounds and expressions in a different cultural setting. Such a soul could just as easily take a "life off", a life of rest. A soul may choose to express a life more focused on the development or exercise of personal skills, or character traits, that were not well developed in the former life. Many things could explain why a great musical talent returns to the same music, or musical instrument, of his most recent famous classical life, or why not.

In the Sample Gallery you will find Sir Edward Elgar, an English born musical talent who lived and composed in the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries. Emerging from a blue collar, Roman Catholic upbringing, this self taught musician became (after some struggle to overcome his social roots and the restrictive class consciousness of Victorian England) one of the most respected composers of his day. He wrote many grand orchestral pieces and oratorios including famous tunes like the Pomp and Circumstance Marches. German composer Richard Strauss called him the “first progressive English musician.”

This soul had an even earlier life in Germany as a seminal Romantic composer and an important operatic forerunner of Wagner. As Elgar this soul was drawn back to Germany often. He traveled and vacationed there throughout his life. In researching his biography it is interesting to discover that Elgar’s first major success came with the performance of his work in Germany. In addition, some of Elgar’s later works have been compared with Wagner’s. The fully extended past life case study is very interesting.

After the life as Sir Edward Elgar, this soul returned to yet another life in music in England, a life so parallel to that of Elgar that it seems that he took up right where he had left off (reminiscent of the Valentino-Di Caprio progression). He has now become the world famous composer of musicals, Andrew Lloyd Webber. He is the composer of such well known musicals as: Cats, Phantom of the Opera, Jesus Christ Super Star, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat, Evita, and many more.

Andrew Lloyd Webber was born in England into a home filled with music: his father was a professor of musical theory and composition at the Royal College of Music and his mother was a singer and violinist at the same school. He started to play the violin at the age of three, returning to an instrument which Edward Elgar had both played and taught. When Webber was six he composed his own songs and, by the age of nine, he had a piece of music published in a magazine Music Teacher.

Both Elgar and Webber wrote music that they called Starlight Express. The Starlight Express (1915), by Edward Elgar was music for a children's play. Webber completed a large original work called Starlight Express in l984. In 1991 he reworked Starlight Express, dropping some songs and adding three new ones, all dedicated to his young son.

In both of these lives Elgar/Webber was/is showered with honors and given great recognition. Another element that helps tie these two lives together is seen in the fact that in his later years (on recovering from some years of depression brought on by his wife's death) Elgar began several major musical works, including an opera, soon before his death. The life of Andrew Lloyd Webber can be seen as an ongoing progression of the dreams, thoughts, intentions and energy of a composer who was not yet finished with his creative life work. Even Webber's public honors and titles seem to be a continuation of Elgar's life accomplishments. This study presents a harmonious continuation from one life to the next. It is a past life connection that should be easy to see, and easy to understand. (Not all progressions of recognized and honored talent are as easy to see and understand, however.)

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Another past life connection found in the Sample Gallery which links a classical musician with a modern popular artist is that of a present day reincarnation of Franz Joseph Haydn, one of the greatest and most prolific German classical musicians and composers of the eighteenth century. This connection requires a little intuitive stretching. Someone who really knows music (and not just classical music) may be able to shine more light on this study in a later Forum discussion (other than just commenting that, "the study is wrong", or, "the gods must be crazy"). I am confident in this past life connection. America's great pop composer and musical artist Neil Diamond is the same soul who was Franz Joseph Haydn.

This past life study is also presented and discussed in greater depth in Past Lives of Famous People: Journeys of the Soul.

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In the Gallery (and the book) you will find another example of the soul of a great European composer of classical music incarnating into twentieth century America to play a leading role in the development of contemporary popular music. This is a very curious study indeed. I refer to George Frederick Handel. If you can allow yourself to accept the following progression as real, you will discover that it can reveal secrets to you about the soul, and about the bridging of soul talent across centuries. This case reveals some important principles about soul direction and karma. If you can see it this study reveals much about the importance of character development in the soul journey (which is even more important than art).

Another element to consider when studying the following life connection is the existence and presence of higher angelic power that may aid a talented soul in pursuit of his/her art in a particular life. Many poets and artists have called this higher power their muse. In the case of classical music genius, some seers have recognized a higher ability as the inspiration of Music Angels. An inspirational mantling of this type may help a talented soul to reach heights of profound musical channeling in a way that is unique to a particular time and place, serving the needs of a culture or an entire soul collective; it may even help a composer to hear the Music of the Spheres. In another life the same talented soul may, in his new personality, be close or distant to this level of inspiration. The presence or absence of this type of inspiration can help explain some obvious differences between some of these connected lives.

The soul of George Frederick Handel reincarnated to become the multi-talented Stevie Wonder, who is an icon of modern American (and international) popular music. Born in Saginaw, Michigan, Stevie Wonder is not only loved by millions of fans for his music and positive energy, but has gone on to earn the respect and admiration of the world's musical elite, receiving many major music awards.

George Frederick Handel was a German born classical musician who moved to England early in his career. A highly talented composer, organist, and a prolific improviser of popular music, Handel performed his innovative music before large crowds of adoring fans. Buried at Westminster Cathedral, he is an icon of English culture.

Handel's most famous work is The Messiah, a two and a half hour long Christmas Oratorio. He wrote The Messiah in an astonishing twenty-five intensely focused days about which he later said, "I think God has visited me." Many consider The Messiah to be music of the angels. There is a famous story about the first performance of The Messiah. The King of England was sitting in the front of the crowd. He was so moved by the singing of the Hallelujah Chorus that he stood up, and the whole audience stood with him. From then on standing has become traditional whenever Handel's Hallelujah Chorus is sung.

In the year 2001 Stevie Wonder was honored with an international music award in London before an assembled crowd of the world's elite musical talent. When he came to receive the award the crowd gave him a standing ovation that was reported as the longest in the history of those ceremonies. Knowing a bit of the past life history of Stevie Wonder allows us to share (more consciously) in the high drama of soul life that surrounds us every day.

You are invited to search the Sample Gallery, and if this type of study interests you please order a copy of Past Lives of Famous People; Journeys of the Soul.