Tag Archives: ancestors

Paganism, Religion

Polytheology: Remaining in community with the ancestors

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NOTE: This series is an exploration of my personal theology, which I tend to hold lightly. It is subject to change as I gain new insights. Also, no one should interpret anything I say as the “one true doctrine.”

Happy Monday, dear readers. For today’s polytheology post and in honor of Samhain/Winter Nights,1 I thought it would be good to talk about the importance of the ancestors in my theology. After all, not only are we in community with our fellow humans and our deities, we are still in community with those humans who went before us, who laid the foundations for the world we currently live in and continue to shape.

I originally became aware of the practice of some Pagans to honor the ancestors when I spent time in Ár nDraíocht Féin. In their rites, they welcome three groups of beings to join them: The gods, the ancestors, and the nature spirits, making offerings to each of them in turn. In time, I learned that more Pagan groups had similar traditions or practices.

As time went by, I came to understand why this was so important. I began to see that much of my Pagan spirituality was about being in community with others, including non-humans (and non-living humans). I came to understand that all of us — humans, ancestors, deities, and nature spirits — were meant to work in cooperation to shape the world we live in. I’ve written about this kind of mutual cooperation with our deities for such a goal:

I think this mutual need shapes a different kind of relationship between deities and humans than one suggested by religions that posit an all-powerful, authoritarian deity. Our deities must cooperate and even negotiate with us rather than handing down commandments from on high. This puts us on more equal footing and allows us to meaningfully consent to any relationship with them. It also suggests that we are all a part of that One Eternal Reality, trying to work communally to shape it into something beneficial for all.

So why is it important to have such a cooperative relationship with our ancestors? In my mind, the short answer to that question is “continuity.” After all, our ancestors began shaping wyrd long before we came along. They had a vision and I think that understanding and appreciating that vision is an important part of continuing the work that they began.

It’s important to note that our own vision for the world may not look the same as the one our ancestors had. That’s to be expected, as things have changed since them. And in some cases, I’m sure our ancestors’ vision was imperfect and not something to be continued.2 After all, if we do not think our deities are perfect sources of wisdom, why would we think better of our human forebears?

And yet, I also think their vision is not totally without merit. Sometimes, there is a fragment of something truly beautiful worth pulling out, embracing and expanding upon. Perhaps it’s an ideal that they expressed, but failed to live up to.3

I also think it’s necessary to understand their vision to understand how they created the world that they left for us. In understanding that, we can better figure out what to do with it, and even how to fix the flaws they left behind and/or created through their ignorance and prejudices. And sometimes, it’s necessary to understand why some things need to be dismantled and built over by starting with a better foundation.

In the end, I think that even when we dismantle certain things from the past, we honor our ancestors. In such acts, we acknowledge their humanity, complete with all its imperfections. And hopefully, it causes us to examine our own humanity and our own imperfections. May it be so and may it lead us to considering what foundations we leave our own descendants (both biological and otherwise) to work with in the future.

Post History: I wrote the first draft of this post on November 3, 2024. I proofread, revised, and finalized it on November 4, 204.

Footnotes

  1. One of the things that I love about Winter Nights is that it lasts for more than a single day. In fact, the way groups like The Troth calculate it, it lasts from one full moon to the following new moon. That’s a fortnight of ancestrally goodness! ↩︎
  2. For example, there’s no escaping the truth that a good number of my ancestors were colonizers. That is a vision I do not wish to continue and try to find ways to break away from. ↩︎
  3. Like those founding fathers who boldly stated “all men are created equal” while practicing slavery. What they said was true and valuable. We just need to practice it more fully than they did. ↩︎
Paganism, Religion, Witchcraft

#ChangingPathsChallenge2024: Roots and Wings

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Years ago, a coven member asked me a question. She knew that my own witchcraft practice tended to be shamanistic in nature and she was starting to explore those practices herself. She inquired as to why it seems that most shamanic and shamanistic practices start the newcomer of with exploring the underworld. I considered this for a moment before giving her my opinion:

The underworld is often associated with the ancestors and the ancestors typically reside there. We owe our lives and our very beings to our ancestors, as they are the ones who both made us who we are and shaped the world into what we see now. To move forward, we need to grapple with this understanding and learn the wisdom of those who came before us.

Years later, I think that answer still fits, though I think it’s also incomplete. Our ancestors were imperfect. They made mistakes. We need to learn not only the wisdom of their successes, but the wisdom they learned from their mistakes. And perhaps we might learn lessons from their mistakes that they themselves still missed.

Once we are rooted in the past and understand the lessons we can learn, we are ready to soar beyond that past. We now understand the territory beneath and behind us, giving us a framework as we take flight and explore the world anew. In this way, we add to the wisdom of our ancestors, once more reshaping the world and trying to do a slightly better job than those who came before us.

And someday, we too shall pass into the underworld. We will become the ancestors who provide wisdom and roots for future generations preparing to spread their wings and take flight themselves.

(This post is part of #ChangingPathsChallenge2024. For more information about the challenge and a list of topics, check out this post by Yvonne Aburrow.)

Family, Memories

Remembrance

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Given that this is the season to honor and remember loved ones who have passed from this world, I thought I would make today’s blog post a more personal one and talk about a beloved relative, my paternal grandmother.

I forget my exact age, by Grandma Harris passed away when I was very young, before I began school, if memory serves.  The past several years of her life, she battled cancer.  I vaguely remember many nights where my sister and I would sit in the hospital waiting room with one of my parents while the other one would go upstairs to visit Grandma during her latest hospitalization.  I cannot think of Grandma without thinking of memories of her failing health because I never knew her before her battle began.

I am told that Grandma was a caring and strong woman all of her life.  I’m inclined to believe that because of the strength, grace, and dignity with which she faced her fading health in her final years.  Anyone can be strong and loving in the best of times.  However, it takes a special person — like Grandma Harris — to be strong in sir darkest hours.

One of my most cherished memories is of a day I spent alone with my grandparents.  Grandma Harris gave me a peanut butter cookie1 and I laid on one of the couches in my grandparents’ single-wide trailer munching on it.  Now, like any preschooler, I was a messy eater.  And peanut butter cookies are prone to leaving lots of crumbs.  By the time I was done, both I and the couch were covered in crumbs.  My grandparents saw it.

Grandpa Harris — who had a much harder edge than his wife — started to get upset and critical.  But Grandma Harris calmed him and told him that these things happens.  Besides, Grandma Harris had a solution.  She told Grandpa to go get the old vacuum cleaner.  He did and Grandmother began to vacuum up all the crumbs, both those on the couch and those on me.  Grandma Harris was a rather practical woman.2

When I think about the kind of person I want to be, I often think of Grandma Harris.  If I manage to embody half the love, strength, and no-nonsense approach to living that she did, I think I’ll have done a great job.  And I’d like to think she’d be pleased with the man that little boy grew up to be.

[1] Grandma Harris loved making peanut butter cookies, and they are forever intwined with memories of her in my mind.  If you asked me for an honest evaluation of which cookies I thought tasted the best, I would likely say chocolate chip cookies.  But if you ask me what my favorite cookie is, I will still tell you “peanut butter” cookies more than three decades later.  It’s not about how they taste, it’s about the fact that they are the cookies Grandma Harris used to make.

[2]  Plus it gave me countless opportunities to watch people’s reactions whenever I mention in passing that I got hovered by my own grandmother.

Paganism, Religion, Witchcraft

The Underworld

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As Samhain approaches, my thoughts turn to the ancestors and the realms of the underworld.  As a witch whose practice tends to be highly shamanistic in nature, I’m quite familiar with these realms and spend a bit of time exploring them and drawing on the wisdom of their inhabitants.

Some of my friends — including Pagans who tend to focus on the brighter side of the divine and upper- and mid-world beings occasionally ask me about my interest in the darker places of our spiritual cosmos.  They find the underworld realms a frightening and daunting place.  And there wariness is not unwarranted.  The underworld can be a strange chaotic, and troubling place.  After all, half-formed and malformed things live their, including our own shadows.  As a witch, I’m thankful that I have guardians, guides, and other allies to walk with me in such places.

But just as I wouldn’t amputate an arm just because because it’s broken or is suffering from pain, the troubling aspects of the underworld are not sufficient reason for me to ignore it.  There is great power and wisdom waiting there.

In addition to everything else it is,[1] it is the home of the ancestors, those who have gone before us, built up the world we lived in, and even gave us our lives.  These are the ones who have set the stage we now walk upon and helped form the person we would become as we walked on them.  The ability to visit them, thank them, and learn from their experiences is cherished.

The fact that we come from the ancestors who inhabit the underworld is also one of the things that makes the underworld the home of all potential.  It is the place where dark — as in unrevealed and unformed — forces exist, waiting to be given shape, form, and purpose.  As a shamanistic witch, I seek to seek out and explore these potentials that lay in the underworld so that I may draw them out and pull them into something in this realm.  It is the realm which provides the source material for new beginnings.

Notes:
[1]  Indeed, trying to describe everything that can be found in the underworld (or mid-world or upper world, for that matter) is not something I can do in a thousand blog posts, let alone this single post.