The idea for this piece came to me while I was watching “Hotel of Two Worlds” by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt at the Bulgarian Army Theatre, directed by Ivan Urumov. There are performances that end with the curtain: you pick up your coat, and half an hour later you are already discussing where to have dinner. And there are others that leave with you and keep turning over in your head. This one was exactly that kind. Somewhere between life, death, the second chance and those meetings that change our direction, I thought of something very human and very old: why do we sometimes see someone for the first time, and yet the feeling inside us is completely different — as if this meeting has already happened.
You know what I mean, don’t you? You still know almost nothing about the person. You haven’t heard their story, you don’t know how they love, how they argue, how they leave, whether they run late, whether they snore, or whether they have that wonderful habit of leaving everything wherever they last used it — and yet inside you there is already something much more than ordinary liking. This is exactly what we so easily call love at first sight, except that I have always been curious about what exactly we manage to recognise in a single glance, when our reason does not yet have enough material even for a decent opinion.
You can know one person for years and still feel there is a distance between you, while another turns up on a Tuesday, you have one coffee together, and by Friday you already feel as though you broke off your conversation two hundred years ago and are now simply carrying on from there. Their voice is close to you, the way they laugh is familiar, you sense when they will fall silent, and it is as if you already know which subject will touch a nerve. You cannot say where this feeling comes from; you have no shared memory, photograph, date or witnesses. And yet inside you there is one very clear thing: I don’t remember, but I know.
To me, this very difference between “I remember” and “I know” is one of the most interesting doors into the subject of past lives. Over the centuries people have looked for different explanations for experiences like these. Some traditions speak of reincarnation, others of karma, still others of a soul that continues its journey and keeps traces of earlier choices, relationships and experiences. The forms differ, but the question is remarkably constant: if there is something in us that has lived before, what exactly carries on?
Perhaps the memory arrives without a beginning, an end, a year or an address, simply as a feeling. The fear. The attraction. The inexplicable trust. The sense that a certain place is close to us. A talent we take to with ease. Or a person we see and, even before we have got to know them, already know that their presence will matter.
There is, of course, another kind of recognition, a good deal less romantic. You meet someone; they are kind, smiling, charming, everyone around you likes them, and your inner sense has already written three pages of objections. You have not even remembered their surname yet, but inside you there is one categorical thought: “I know this one.” That is exactly what makes me think recognition is not always love. Sometimes a person awakens trust, another distrust, a third the wish to protect them, a fourth a guilt that makes no sense at all in the real situation, and a fifth makes us start proving ourselves straight away.
And then comes the far more interesting question: am I recognising the person, or am I recognising the feeling they awaken in me?
That is exactly where, for me, the subject of karma begins. A heavenly accounts office that keeps our files from past centuries and waits for a convenient moment to send us the invoice sounds rather unconvincing to me. I see karma more as a story that changes the people, the place and the time, yet keeps something of its pattern. We may meet different partners, change city, job, even our whole way of life, and at some point catch ourselves waiting again, rescuing again, proving ourselves again, or fearing again that someone will leave.
That is exactly when I would go into Karma in the Game of the Soul and ask a question that to me is far stronger than “Were we together in a past life?”: “What am I repeating with this person, and why is this particular role so familiar to me?” Because sometimes the most important recognition is who we ourselves become beside the other person.
If the story is a love story, I would naturally go on to Compatibility as well, because whatever may have been once, two people still have to meet in this life, with their characters, their habits, their fears, the way they love, talk, fall silent and pull away. The past can give meaning to a thread, but relationships are lived in the present.
Imagine, for example, a woman who meets a man, and from the very start everything goes wonderfully. He is attentive, he seeks her out, he is interested in her, there is no visible reason to expect a bad ending, and yet inside her the fear of losing him has already begun. The break-up does not exist yet, but it is as if she is waiting for it. And then the question becomes much deeper: does this fear come from the present relationship, from an earlier love, from childhood, from a family story, or from something a person no longer remembers as an event but still carries as a feeling?
That is exactly why, for me, the phrase “karmic love” means very little on its own until we go further. A strong connection does not necessarily mean that two people must stay together. Sometimes a meeting comes to continue a love, sometimes to bring us back to a part of ourselves we had forgotten, and sometimes to set before us a choice we keep putting off. There are also meetings that come so that we can close a story that has travelled with us for far too long. If I am to be completely honest, this interests me far more than the beautiful “we are destined for each other”.
Recognition, however, is far from being only about love. There are friendships that begin almost without any getting-to-know-you period. You meet someone relatively late in life and after a few conversations you wonder why life took so long to arrange this acquaintance. You don’t have to explain yourself from the very beginning, you don’t weigh every word, and you don’t wonder whether you will be understood. There is simply a closeness that arrives much faster than it should, given how long you have known each other.
There are also people who stay in our lives very briefly, yet their influence turns out to be enormous. You meet someone on a train, at an event, in a waiting room or completely by chance, you talk for an hour and never see each other again, and one sentence of theirs stays with you for years. It is exactly meetings like these that make me ask how long a connection has to last in order to matter. Perhaps some people come to stay, and others come only for a single door we need to open.
The same feeling can exist within a family. Sometimes a mother watches over her grown-up child with a worry that seems far greater than the real circumstances, while the child feels guilty every time they choose their own life. In a story like that I would also open The Lineage, because what we feel as something very personal may have a thread in the generations before us as well. A fear can be passed on, so can a role, and some family plots are remarkably persistent in choosing new heroes.
Then I would ask: “Did this begin between us, or did someone before us already live this same feeling?” And this is exactly what I like about esotericism when we use it wisely: it can help us see several layers at once without handing us a final verdict — a personal pattern, a family story, and that hard-to-explain feeling that something is much older than the present situation.
I have had a regression myself, and perhaps that is exactly why the subject of past lives has never been for me merely the curious question “Who was I?”. Of course, when you go through something like that, you want details — where you are, what you look like, who is around you, whom you love, what is happening. Curiosity is curiosity, and if someone saw themselves in another era and reacted with “Fine, that doesn’t particularly interest me”, I personally would have certain doubts about their human nature.
For me, though, the most valuable part comes afterwards, when you return to your present life and start asking: “What of what I saw do I recognise now?” Is there a fear I have always carried without being able to point to where it began? Is there a person towards whom my reaction suddenly makes more sense? Is there a choice I keep making again? Is there a promise I seem to be keeping without ever having consciously made it? Is there a skill that has felt familiar to me from the very start?
Whether regression brings back a literal memory, a symbolic story from the subconscious or a mixture of images, feelings and associations, I cannot prove, and to be honest, that is not what matters most to me. If a story helps me understand why I keep rescuing someone, why I wait, why I choose a certain kind of relationship or why a certain fear keeps returning to my life, it has already given me something. If the only thing I learn is that in the seventeenth century I lived in a beautiful house, that is pleasant too, especially if the present one needs renovating, but personally I would go a little deeper.
Because recognition can also come through a place. You go to a city for the first time and, instead of the usual “How beautiful”, a much deeper “At last” rises inside you. You don’t know the streets, you have never lived there, you have no specific memory, and yet the place feels close to you. For someone else it may be a language, music, a culture or a historical era. One person, even as a child, is drawn to a country with which their family has no connection at all; another hears a language they don’t understand and still feels a special closeness; and a third starts painting, playing music or working with their hands and has the feeling of remembering rather than starting from scratch.
That is exactly where that “I don’t remember, but I know” returns. And if I were looking for a past life connected to my present one, I would follow exactly this thread: the life that still has a continuation in my life today — in the person I meet, in the love I repeat, in the fear I don’t understand, in the place that draws me, in the talent I feel to be my own, or in the decision I am facing once again. The most spectacular versions, in which I was without fail a queen, a healer, a warrior or at least someone with a decent wardrobe, can happily wait.
And then comes one more question, which interests me far more than mere curiosity about who I once was: if a story really does come back, why does it come back right now? To repeat the same thing? To finish something? To make a different choice? To understand what we did not manage to understand before? This very idea runs through many esoteric views of karma — as a second meeting with a theme that still has something to give us.
If the person has already stayed in the past but the story goes on in your head, then I would open Letting Go and ask a question that, in my view, is far stronger than “How do I forget them?”: “What am I still waiting to receive from this story?” Perhaps I am waiting for the person to come back, to choose me, to apologise, to realise what they have lost, for us to have the conversation that never happened, or simply to get the ending I had imagined.
That is exactly why I like the Game of the Soul the way it is: you start with one question, and it gradually leads you to the next. You come in through love and arrive at Karma, then you see a family thread in The Lineage, you check what you are to each other now in Compatibility, or you discover in Letting Go that the relationship has ended on the outside but still goes on inside you. And then you understand that the question “Why did I meet this person?” is sometimes only the beginning.
After this article I want to ask you something more interesting than whether you believe in past lives, because that question is answered with a single “yes” or “no” and the conversation ends there. My question is a different one: is there a person, a place, a fear, a talent or a feeling that you have never been able to fully explain, yet inwardly feel to be familiar?
From there the test “What Did Your Soul Recognise?” will begin, and if your choice leads you to a particular person, we will continue after it with the tarot spread “We Have Met Before”. There we will look for the symbolic story between two people — what we were to each other, how we met, what bound us, which event changed our relationship, how we parted, what was left unfinished, and why this connection is appearing in our lives again now.
And in the end, one question remains for me, far more important than finding out who was who a few centuries ago. If we really have met before, if an old story has found its way back to us, then understanding what it was is only the first step. The more interesting part is to understand why it has come back and what we will do with it this time.
There is no certain sign of it, so the best thread to follow is your own feeling: a familiarity that comes before you have really got to know each other, and the feeling the person awakens in you — trust, fear, guilt, tenderness or the need to prove yourself. The most useful question is what you recognise in yourself beside this person and what keeps repeating in your life with them.
That is what we call a strong connection in which two people meet with a theme older than the relationship itself. Sometimes the meeting comes to continue a love, sometimes to finish a story, to set a different choice before us, or to close something that has travelled with us for a long time. The strength of the connection shows that the theme matters; whether the two stay together is for them to decide, in this life.
Images, feelings and stories that may be a literal memory, a symbolic story from the subconscious or a mixture of the two. The most valuable part comes after the session, when what you saw connects with your present life: a fear, a repeated choice, a person or a skill that suddenly makes sense.
Some people feel a quiet “at last” towards a city, a language, music or an era, without any memory that could explain it. In esoteric traditions this is linked to traces of earlier lives, and for the person themselves it often shows where their soul is drawn today.
Test: What Did Your Soul Recognise in This Person?Does someone feel strangely familiar from the first meeting? Choose an image and see what trace it carries: old love, a promise, a debt or a mirror.
What Karma Is Active in Your Life?Three words from a letter grid and three numbers from 1 to 78 for the Tarot. See which story keeps repeating in your life: love, family, money or silence.
Tarot Spread “The Old Echo”: What From the Past Is Still at WorkFour variants, seven positions each: love, worth, security and the unsaid. Where the old echo comes from and what can change from here.
Test: Which Old Echo Is Calling in Your Life?An unread message, a closed door, an empty chair, a mirror, a document or a table after an argument. Pick the image and see which old echo is calling.