Author Topic: Ancestor trouble (Read 830 times)

Ameline · « **on:** April 26, 2017, 06:54:29 am »

Hi everybody, I'm not sure if this is the right place, but it's a pretty basic topic, so here it goes:

I have a problem with calling upon ancestors. I would have never done it myself, but after years of solitary practice I joined a group. Ancestor calling is a part of every ritual. I am not comfortable with it. I feel like a contaminant due to my family history.

My whole maternal line seems to be riddled with mental illness and suicide and cycles of abuse and neglect (and few deeply religious folk-witches from my grandma’s side. In fact, I used to dream of one of them as a child, she was helping me a lot and explaining stuff to me. My grandma recognized a picture I drew of her as her mother. But in the last dream few years back she said she’s proud of the person I became and that I don’t need her anymore, so I think she's out of the picture). My father was absent, but I met him in my 20s. He’s also deeply spiritually inclined, but his family line is not anymore dysfunctional than average, from what I gather.

I recognize ancestors are not only the immediate family and there were decent folk there, but it's as if there was a gravitational pull towards the bad stuff. I don't know if it's just my own internal problem, but there's some old family stories that seem like some pretty sketchy occult stuff as well (great to have a family that actively records everything for the past two centuries and constantly tries to explore even deeper).

Jenett · « **Reply #1 on:** April 26, 2017, 11:57:58 am »

Quote from: Ameline;205523

I recognize ancestors are not only the immediate family and there were decent folk there, but it's as if there was a gravitational pull towards the bad stuff. I don't know if it's just my own internal problem, but there's some old family stories that seem like some pretty sketchy occult stuff as well (great to have a family that actively records everything for the past two centuries and constantly tries to explore even deeper).

If you're working with a particular group, this is something worth discussing with them (or at least someone regularly leading rituals there) - different groups and paths go about this differently, and some solutions may make more sense in some cases than in others.

The tradition I work in invites ancestors at every ritual, but we're explicit that those might be ancestors by blood (kinship), community (shared identity), or other groupings.

So a harvest festival that's actually working with harvested food might invite farmers of old, a ritual for initiation might invite witches, both specific and general, who contributed to our line of practice. In personal rituals, I fairly regularly call on librarianish ancestors related by shared professional commitments. Only a few rituals are explicitly blood ancestors (mostly Samhain) and that, we expect to have some messy and complicated stories involved, and plan for it in the ritual structure and approach.

Some options might be to focus on specific individuals you feel comfortable with (an invitation, not a command performance), or to otherwise limit it in a "ancestors of mine who are of good will and interested in X" (whether that's in your head or explicitly outloud.)

The other thing to consider (and this is complicated to work through, but sometimes fruitful) is that sometimes that kind of gravitational pull is a sign there's a thing we need to work on some more. Not forgiveness, necessarily, but getting things to a point where they're no longer so damaging, or where we understand better some of the pressures that lead to a particular pattern, or where we've disconnected our reaction to that pattern so it's no longer overwhelming (the 'that's a lousy pattern but it can't hurt me now' approach.) Sometimes going further back in history, if you can, can help with that, because it's a bit easier with people whose day to day lives were a lot different in a lot of practical ways.