Inherited Memories
I often get letters, emails etc., asking how I can write so much about the past?
On a strictly intellectual level I suppose I can put this down to a long period of rigorous education! And I have still got the bruises to show! On the other hand I sometimes wonder about the theory of reincarnation.
I know it sounds an easy way to explain life but I have always found it fascinating. I never did very well at school until I came across Latin and then my progress was incredibly swift. No, I don’t believe that I am the reincarnation of a pharaoh or a mediaeval king but it is possible we lived before? Could that explain people’s behaviour? Or again, is it possible that we inherit memories?
Professor Dawkins talks of ‘Memes’, basically folk beliefs inherited, do we also inherit memories? Not the traces of former lives but those of our ancestors?
I must admit when I plot a novel sometimes the descriptions comes thick and fast yet it is so hard to sift what you’ve learnt from what you inherit.
Labels: Memes, memory, reincarnation
posted by Paul Doherty @ 11:29 PM
13 Comments
13 Comments:
Many people seems to remember traces of previous lives, and so I do. When I visit cities that I’ve never seen before I seem to recognize some places like squares, buildings or streets.
If many personalities in the past time have shared this theory, perhaps there is some truth in it.
The theory of inherited memories could explain because many people take up the ancestors’ works and, according to me, isn’t incompatible with the theory of reincarnation.
I love all your books but especially the ones about Egypt, I am in the middle of reading the Poisoner of Ptah. Its great and the rest of the series have been brilliant too. I love Brother Athelstan and Hugh Corbett but love the Egyptian ones best. Hope there will be another soon.
Although I was born in London, I could not understand my passion for Yorkshire.
Whilst speaking to a Teacher from India, I mentioned my strange interest in all things Indian and my feelings for Yorkshire.
He asked me whether any of my family had ever been to India. I explained that my Father had served in the British army there, long before I was born.
He smiled and said: "You are experiencing 'Ancestral memories' and will probably find that past members of your family lived and were born in Yorkshire.
He was right.
Desiree
Hi Paul from Sydney Australia
Thanks for your novels!
I think I've read most of all the series (I've purchased 45), with Corbett and Athelstan my favourite - any chance of another Athelstan, and perhaps a Canterbury Tale?
Also, the Duthkas novels can't be ordered it seems; a shame, I enjoyed the two I read.
What a shame. I have all four Nicholas Segalla novels and they are very good. The last three I bought from Amazon. Try them.
The libraries have them too.
My favourite characters are Corbett and Shallot. Wonderful
Inherited memories? It is very possible I believe, to have sort of race or tribal memory.
I enjoy all of your books very much but I would like to see another Kathryn Swinbrook title!
I have an open mind about past lives, soemt hings do awaken a memory....but had to say I just discovered your books and am loving them. The detail is fantastic and it has got me interested in a period in history that I never cared for before.
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Hullo Paul,I have only just finished "The Cup of Ghosts" and really enjoyed it and have the sequal, I hope the third does not take too long to write. Also love your Egyptian novels, so realistic you can smell them (in places). Beverly
I truly believe in past lives-maybe not discovering I was Elizabeth I or Mata Hari-but being comfortable, in fact, sometimes a little obsessive about a time or place.
I hear Renaissance Dance Music and it lifts my heart, I see English gardens and architecture from the 15th century and feel at home.
I have never been out of the US.
Whether it's inherited memory or past life???
Your books, though, feed my passion for the past. I love your descriptions of the streets, of food, how and what people ate.
I could go on.
Please continue soon with your Traveling Pilgrims. They scare the bejesus out of me. Thank you, mary-anne
I know what you mean about feeling comfortable about a time or place;with me it's the mid Georgian period. I really feel at home with the costumes, music and architecture of that age. I don't know too much about architecture but I seem to instantly know when a building is of that period.
But I also have a passion for the past and maybe it is just a particular love of that period.
it's the mark of a really good book --that you can lose yourself in it so much that you end up wondering about past lives etc ! Its a touch of magic and we need that very much in this life..
There are some Physicists, Brian Greene, (author of many books) and Julian Barbour, “The end of time: the next revolution in physics”and others who believe that time acts a wave and that we can live in many waves, i.e., many times and simultaneously. I cannot begin to intelligently describe this phenomenon however, if this theory is even proven, iit would possibly explain these feelings of having experienced a different time and place.
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