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The Waterhouse Witch

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There once was a witch named Waterhouse...

We are sisters of the most magical sort: there I am, on the right, much heavier and physically twenty years older, but Esther, on the left, is actually ninety-five years older than I am. Aren't we a pair? Face on, we don't resemble each other that much: our eyes have different slants, our noses and jaws are not the same. I am taller than she was. But under our problem noses (how we both grew up hating our noses!) that descent to the mouth, and those mouths, are pretty much the same. From profile, when we were the same age and I was thinner, you would have a hard time telling us apart - that's the important stuff. That's what helped me recognize her -

Or I should say, recognize myself.

I am the reincarnation of Esther Waterhouse.

The Map To Exploring A Past Life

  1. "Nah, a resemblance means nothing..."
  2. What Would Make You Believe?
  3. The Adored Waterhouse
  4. Who was Esther Waterhouse?
  5. Do you want to read more on this story?
  6. Jenny Kissed Me
  7. John William Waterhouse on Amazon.com
  8. How do you know you have past life recall?
  9. An important tool: keep a touchstone list
  10. You Want To Repeat That?
  11. Reincarnation
  12. The Magic Circle
  13. William Logsdail loved to paint his friends...
  14. This is William Logsdail in his past two lives...
  15. Come back to me!
  16. What's Esther Up To Now?
  17. Visit The Psychic Tutor

"Nah, a resemblance means nothing..."

You're right. A resemblance to someone who lived before is nothing by itself.

It is not proof that you had that past life. But a resemblance will certainly get your attention - especially after a dream practically yells your past life name three times in a row!

In March of 2003 I had a dream that I was floating over the countryside until I settled down at a house where friends had gathered for some sort of celebration. When I landed, I was greeted three different times in the same way - "The Waterhouse Witch is here!"

I felt a huge anticipation. When one of the crowd told me "he's in there," and pointed to a door, I knew he was talking about my long lost love. In a very realistic moment I held my breath as I walked towards the door and -

Woke up.

I knew the phrase had to be important to me if it was repeated three times. An internet friend suggested I google the phrase, and I did. A painting called "The Magic Circle" appeared at the top of the search list. It had been painted by a Victorian artist I was only vaguely aware of: John William Waterhouse. But I was not vague about that painting. I knew it, I knew the landscape of it.

I also instantly knew something else. I googled the phrase "Waterhouse Wife."

The painting of the artist's wife, to the right, appeared onscreen. I stared at it in shock. It took me a long time to own up to it, but I had to - for that's my picture on the left!

What Would Make You Believe?

For me, once the dream came, everything fell into place...

Once I had the dream recalled in this video, one thing after another fell into place, and a lot of fragments of recall were finally explained...
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The Adored Waterhouse

Let me introduce you to my husband. Excuse the formality...

John William Waterhouse (1849-1917) is known as an English Pre-Raphaelite painter, but this is a misnomer - he was a Classicist. He use of themes of female characters from mythology and literature led to this error.

He was born in Rome Italy to the artists William and Isabella Waterhouse. When John was 5 years old the family moved to Kensington. As a young artist he studied under his father before entering the Royal Academy schools as a student of sculpture in 1870. He soon returned to painting. His early works were of classical Roman, Greek, and Christian themes and were exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Society of British Artists and the Dudley Gallery.

In 1874, at the age of 25, Waterhouse submitted the classical allegory "Sleep and His Half-Brother Death" to the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition. The painting was extremely well received. its theme, a memorial to his two brothers who had died young, attracted another sort of attention from a young artist, Esther Kenworthy of Ealing, who had also lost two young brothers. This shared grief and their mutual interests in art and theater made for a strong bond. After a long period of friendship, they married in 1883.

After disappointments, there were no children, but their life together was rich and full.

In 1895 Waterhouse became a full member of the Royal Academy. He taught at and was a member of a number of Academies in the area of St. John's Wood.

Waterhouse's most famous subject is "The Lady of Shalott", a subject he painted three times; the first, in 1888, was based on his half sister Mary.

He died after a long battle with cancer in 1917. His grave, and Esther's, can be found at Kensal Green Cemetery in London. There is, at this time, a drive to restore their gravesite.

Who was Esther Waterhouse?

Here we go being formal again...

Esther Maria Kensworthy Waterhouse ( 1857-1944) was an Englishwoman, the daughter of an art teacher, who loved to paint but was not as serious about it as the man she married in 1883, the classical painter John William Waterhouse. She stopped trying to be a professional artist a few years into their marriage, and turned to another passion: theatre. As a theatre critic in the days when all theatre reviews were done under the cover of pseudonyms or initials, we cannot find any of her reviews. However: one painting was rediscovered, and can be seen here.

It was a painting sold on ebay, signed E.M.Waterhouse. The location was unidentified, but I recognized it as the Norfolk fens, close to Clippesby Hall, the last home of Esther's sister Emily and brother-in-law. Peregrine Feeney.

Esther and Nino, as he was known to family and friends, worked and lived in the Primrose Hill neighborhood above Regent's Park in London, then settled in nearby St. John's Wood for the rest of Nino's life. In the meantime, both traveled widely, primarily in Italy and Great Britain, mostly in the company of the Feeneys - both couples were childless.

Nino became chronically ill around the age of 52, but continued his work, even through the worst bouts with the liver cancer that took his life in 1917.After her husband's death, she remained in their family home in St. John's Wood, until financial problems forced her to auction off many of his works in 1927. She died in a nursing home in Faversham in December 1944, close to her 87th birthday.

It feels very strange writing all that in third person...and to write so little. But a wealth of information on both of us is available in the following links.

Do you want to read more on this story?

Or know more about reincarnation?

Visit the websites linked here!
The Story of the Waterhouse Witch
Here is more of my story at a website that is full of the images and evidence of my past life as Esther Waterhouse
The Reincarnation Compendium
A website that goes into more about the concepts of reincarnation and past life recall.
John William Waterhouse
I can never say enough about this website, or how much I appreciate the work of Julia Kerr, the webmaster. This website and its wonderful community helped me find out so much, and to recover my head when I wanted to rush and connect all the dots, falling flat on my ass sometimes! A slap of reality by top notch researchers is sometimes the best help of all...

Jenny Kissed Me

The sweetest clue...

Since I was very, very little, I have been fond of a tiny poem by Leigh Hunt, one I would repeat every chance I got. Sometimes I would sing it.

One day the man I recognized as my past life husband started singing a little tune. I stopped still. He didn't know where he got the tune, he had always sung it for this poem.

It was the same poem. And, I think, the same tune. But after awhile you start thinking, "this is so much, this is too much, how can it be real?"

It can.

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John William Waterhouse on Amazon.com

Needless to say, I'm very proud of my past husband...

And these are the best books about him. There are a couple of others, but Peter Trippi has come the closest to understanding who Nino was.

The 2010 Calendar is the latest in many products that feature Nino's work.
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How do you know you have past life recall?

Contrary to what most people believe, most past life recall is not actual memory.

Think about your current life. How much of it do you actually remember, while you're living inside this life? How much do you remember of yesterday, or last week? As for the extraordinary moments of your life that you do remember well, how short a list is that?

Most of what we remember of our present lives is the accumulation of moments, that will pop up when we least expect them - or nothing at all. For most people, that NOTHING can be over 90%!

This is why we are astounded by people with really great memories.

Yet when someone says they believe they lived before, they are often held up to a higher standard of memory, when they can't be - these things happened a long time ago, during a past life, something most people never remember at all.

Or think they don't!

Actual past life recall is made up of fragments. If you have highly detailed stories about what you did and who you did it with, especially if what you believe happens to run contrary to records or sense - think about what you are doing. It is more likely that you have fallen prey to your own imagination than recalled actual events.

Go forward patiently and sensibly, and you will find out the most amazing things:This is a list of the basic type of fragments you can expect to stumble over, on the way to remembering who you might have been:
  • As a child, you kept talking about other people in another time and place.
  • You have a strong attraction to another time, place, historical person, or event.
  • You don't feel quite right in your own body and it nags at you.
  • You instantly know things you really shouldn't know at all, (in some cases, a language) or have skills and talents that you didn't have to learn.
  • You immediately know someone you just met, don't know why, and you can't shake the feeling. WARNING: This rarely means you've met your "soul mate!" You have just met someone you knew before!
  • You have an inexplicable phobia about something - fire, knives, water, a particular type of catastrophic event. Past life is not always the source of a phobia, but if you can't find a present life cause, it possibly could be.
  • Vivid unforgettable dreams or flashes of memory about events that seem to connect will give you clues and circumstances that you can't shake; You end up thinking, "I am part of this, this happened." or, as in my case, something will be driven into your mind until you have to go find out - was this past life?"

An important tool: keep a touchstone list

Bringing yourself back to reality.

If you look into a possible past life, do yourself a favor before you begin. Make a list of what you think may be true, and never touch it - don't change it as you learn about possibilities through your research.

Make it the most detailed ideas you have. Not all of them may come true, but the point is to have a list that remains of what you believed before you started looking into things. Once any of us start our research, our past life recall is considered tainted, because we might mistake what we learn for actual memory. As an example: the following is a selection of my own touchstone list:
  1. I believed I live in London England, and not in Georgia, until the second grade.
  2. I felt very attracted to the Bloomsbury Group, a circle of artists and literary friends, the most famous of which was Virginia Woolf. I identified with her sister Vanessa, and used to wish my name was Ness.

    (I still believe that Ness was a very private nickname for Esther. Our circle of friends were much like the Bloomsbury group.)
  3. I felt extremely familiar with Charles Dickens and William Butler Yeats and read much of their work when I was growing up. I especially felt very attracted to Yeats' involvement with a magical movement called The Golden Dawn, and would imitate their rituals in my back yard, under the moon. I felt very comfortable and familiar with all this magic.

    (Dicken's youngest son was one of Nino and Esther's friends. William Butler Yeats was a neighbor, and his brother Jack was another close friend. The Feeneys and Waterhouses practiced rites akin to Golden Dawn magic.)
  4. One day about more than a decade ago someone called a man I felt very attached to "Tiny." I became very irritated and blurted that his nickname was "Bear." This man constantly made me flash back on another life, and I knew I had adored him then as I did in the current life.

    (It turned out he strongly resembled Esther's brother-in-law, Peregrine Feeney.
    Feeney's nickname turned out to be Bear.)
  5. I knew I had been with the man who is the reincarnation of Nino the moment I met him. That feeling only got stronger as time went on, and got in the way of us being friends. Yet one time, during an argument, he yelled without knowing it: "Damn it! Why can't you be a better wife?" I had changed too much for him.

    (When I had realized who I was, I went looking for John William Waterhouse.
    Yes. They resemble one another in many ways, including a severely injured leg.
    Nino, in this lifetime, has often said something out of the blue that ended up coming straight from Waterhouse. But he does not consciously remember, and I have not tried to make him recall. If he ever will, he will.) One of those things is recalled below.)

You Want To Repeat That?

It's obvious I believe we live again and again. But there are a lot of arguments about what is proof and at what point can the proof be taken at face value. Can something as subjective as recall ever be called objective proof?

What would you consider proof?

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Or would you never consider it, and why?

vallain says:

This is fascinating. I can't think of any way to produce proof, but certainly too much to be coincidental.

Posted December 29, 2009

 

Reincarnation

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The Magic Circle

The painting that brought Esther back to me has inspired a play

I have written a play called "The Magic Circle," named after this painting, to celebrate the life I once had. To make sure no one feels I am claiming it is true, I have set it as a fantasy: Nino and Ness, caught up in a midsummer's dream, as they redefine their relationships in life and in love...

The play was presented as a first draft reading in 2007, with a workshop series of readings again in 2008. If all goes well, a concert reading of the latest draft will be given within the next few months. Look for an update on its progress, and perhaps a future lens of its own.

William Logsdail loved to paint his friends...

He was one of our best friends, among all the artists - and still close...

This detail from The Royal Exchange, 1888, shows how much William loved to do this. From left to right: Nino, myself, Logsdail, painted by Nino, above me, our brother-in-law Peregrine Feeney holding the reins, Frank Bramley, Logsdail's oldest friend, above him, Nino's half sister Mary in the pink trimmed white dress, my sister Emily, not yet married to Peregrine, in the blue. Our friends Joseph Wolf left, and Lance Calkin, right, above Emily.

We often posed for Logsdail's paintings. I can point us out in some paintings that experts have not yet recognized. Logsdail tended to flatter me. The odd thing is, when he touched up Esther, he made her look like me as I was when I was young, this time around...

This is William Logsdail in his past two lives...

In the last life his name was Tom (left). He was my longtime companion. He died in 1988, 100 years after his former self painted that picture. He has been reborn. I won't say where. He still has the same eyes...

Come back to me!

Do you have your own reincarnation story? Let me know!

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  • Reply
    Pam Aug 5, 2010 @ 3:40 am | delete
    I'm not sure if I had a past life but certain things over the years make me feel as if I did. All my life I've had a fear of bodies of water that i can't see the bottom of. Even before the Jaws movies I could never bear to even see a photo of a shark much less anything that lives in the water. But I've always been fascinated with pirates. When I was in my 20s I had a dream about being a pirate. I was a large man with long black curly hair and I was horrible. In this dream we had just taken over a ship at sea and captured a young, wealthy girl who I proceeded to rape. The next vision in this dream I was being forced overboard and I assume killed by sharks. This dream was over 30 yrs, ago and I still remember it like it just happened.
    In my present life I have always been a rough and tumble sort of a tomboy and to this day hate being made to look very feminine. I've always played rough sports like tackle football and gone camping in the deep woods with nothing by my dog and a tent and a hunting knife. And I've always felt as if I had a very strong male personality to me. I have more male friends than females. It's always been hard for me to relate to women on most levels. I also love being in the water, but it has to be a swimming pool only. And once I'm in I never want to leave it. It's a strange feeling I have all the time about myself and makes me wonder if I'm just a crazy female or if part of the pirate mindset is still a part of me. I have never had another dream like that one but I've never forgotten it either. I also spoke French in the dream and so did everyone else. I don't know any French but in the dream I understood every word and was fluent in it. I don't think there is a way to ever prove what I feel but I feel very strongly that it happened. I'm 53 now and lead a pretty quiet life with my dogs and usually very shy. but when someone really does me wrong the old pirate in me comes out with a vengeance and I can spew the worst words out of my mouth without batting an eye! Hmm, maybe I just have a dual personality?
  • Reply
    mtbstarr Jul 31, 2010 @ 2:22 pm | delete
    I do have a reincarnation story, tho not in its entirety. I believe I am the reincarnation of some female knight from the early history of Europe during the reign of King Henry the 8th and then again as a native american. I have these dreams and fantasies of such situations all the time. I also feel like that living as I do now is not how I should be. I am much more comfortable in a tent, making my own food and fire, and going to sleep with the moon and rising with the sun. I do not enjoy the modernized world as I believe I should, and spend alot of time wanting and wishing to live a simpler life on the land, in the woods, and by the use of my own two hands.
  • Reply
    Fran Sep 4, 2009 @ 7:33 pm | delete
    Sandra,
    Great to hear about your play...maybe your memories are the catalyst for your written work in this lifetime? Pleased to see so much more on your journey. Take care..
  • Reply
    sandralynnsparks Aug 24, 2009 @ 10:22 am | delete
    Thanks!

    I understand about wondering whether you want to know. There were things about Esther's life I wasn't sure I wanted to face; another life I've been able to trace is full of things I wouldn't wish on anyone! I can tell you that from discussing this with other who remember, it's seems that we are usually given no more recall than we can handle - and then we always have a choice whether we pursue the recall or not.

    I'm the only one in the Waterhouse group who knows or seems to want to know. It gets lonely, because I'm surrounded by old friends in new roles that aren't close, like the old times. But I still know there are reasons I have recalled this, and I am strong enough to handle it. Make whatever choice is most comfortable for you... :)
  • Reply
    prosperity66 Aug 24, 2009 @ 3:31 am | delete
    I could add a checkmark in front of many points your wrote regarding a possible previous life - even two: one in France in the 17-18th centuries and another one in the 40-50's that I always dream about, having been a friend of my own grandmother before being her grand child! I'm comfortable with those two periods, really and only like things of the 40-50's actually often saying I'm not "made for this century". I'm scared by any kind of weapon or torture; which were normal in the previous centuries... Does that makes me a reincarnation of someone from the past? I don't know - and sometimes, I wonder if I want to know.
    Great lens here!
    5 stars and fav'd it!
    Dom.
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What's Esther Up To Now?

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sandralynnsparks

People sometimes call me a madwoman, not knowing I'm okay with that: it's a madness that creates!

And now they call me Squid Angel, too - of Theate... more »

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