Thoughts on the Ancestors

This time of year the Pagan internet is filled with thoughts, prayers, rituals, and altars to the Ancestors and Beloved Dead.

Once upon a time, I dutifully built my altars and made noises of honor as well; a few years ago, however, I just...stopped. I had finally reached the point in my practice where I was no longer willing to go along with things just because that's how they were done; I needed a reason to do what I was doing. So I finally sat down and really thought about the concept of Ancestors, Beloved Dead, and how it all fits into my life.

I have quite a few Dead. Not all of them are Beloved, necessarily; at best some of them are Mixed Feelings Regarding Their Behavior Dead, at worst, Better Off Dead. Several, like my grandfather, fall into the category of Dead, Oh Well. This year I add my cousin to the roster: the Beloved But Rarely Seen After Childhood and Therefore Already Absent While Alive Dead. There are plenty of tombstones in the Sylvan churchyard; if I can find a picture of Michael I will add it to our altar at Samhain.

Ancestors, however, are a different story. While my coven sisters and I all have our share of Dead, whether Beloved or Hated OMG, we aren't much for Ancestors. Anything past immediate grandparents is part of the hazy designation of Ancestry, and as we are not traditional in the old sense and do not follow a culture/pantheon heavy on the Old Ones, by and large, I think our Ancestor altar is better called the altar to the Dead of Whatever Variety is Meaningful.

I in particular find the concept problematic. It will probably horrify those I know who are heavy into Ancestor-reverence, but really, I don't give much of a damn about my Ancestors. Know why?

Because, in a sense, I have none. I am adopted, and by choice I know nothing about my birth parents. And while my adoptive family is absolutely my real family, I feel no connection whatsoever to their heritage, or to any that may or may not be in my own blood. Aside from my work with the Runes and a love of kolaches I have no desire to get anywhere near Germanic culture.

If you go by my adoptive parents' lineage, I am related to a rebellious duchess who was disowned for marrying a commoner. She and her husband ran away to America to start a new life, landed in Galveston, and became my father's great-great-great whatever grandparents. On the other side, I have a Civil War general of some sort (Confederate, of course--both sides of my family are highly Southern). While I think this is a very cool piece of my family's history, it isn't my history.

Sure, I could pretend it is. I could give honor to my parents' Ancestors because that's where my parents came from. Or I could go the whole "chosen Ancestors" route and create a "bloodline" of people whose contribution to the world enables me to life the life I do. But that has always felt like makework to me--poor Sylvan has no Ancestors, let's invent some for her.

What feels right to me is simply not having any. Some people choose Ancestors; I choose to have none. It's the same thing, really--rather than deciding to make my adoptive family's forbears my own when I feel no link to them, or climbing a biological family tree that means nothing to me, I opt to be a whole tree unto myself. Rather than mindlessly go through the motions the way I did as a Baptist, I prefer to stand still.

Perhaps one day this will change. Perhaps as I get older I'll feel more of a connection to the past. But I've never been one of those Wiccans who stands on pseudohistory, so I'm not about to indulge in one of my own.

I suppose this may seem sad to some people, as if I am rootless, adrift without an anchor to hold me to my past. I actually find it liberating. It's not as if I sprang fully grown from my father's forehead, after all; I do have a bloodline, I just don't care about it. I know my mother and knew my grandmothers; beyond that, my ForeMother is the night sky, my ForeFather the forest.

I am an American, for better or worse, and despite the ancient roots of my religion, I am a modern creation. My gods are not the gods of the Old Country. The Earth beneath my feet is my heritage, because it is the heritage of all humankind. At this point in my life, that's good enough for me.

Comments

[Heather]

This is a wonderful explanation of your beliefs. I've never been into ancestor reverance either. I guess I always thought that my very Christian ancestors would be horrified at the thought of being used for pagan purposes. LOL. I'm also in the process of adopting and had thought about how to approach this aspect of paganism with my child. I tend to have a "here and now" viewpoint more than idolizing the past so that is the approach I plan on passing along.

[Tressa]

I have to admit that, even though I can trace my family back to the 1700s, I've never honored the Ancestors at Samhain (or any other time for that matter). Never felt any kind of connection to them. I name those that I know who have passed since the last Samhain as well as those that I didn't know personally but who touched me in some way (through their writing, acting, etc). I also include any whose work I have recently discovered but who passed some time ago (example; Bill Hicks - stand up comedian, passed 1994, I just discovered his work a few months ago).

[Athena]

Thank you for this article. It made me think about why I DO honor my adopted ancestors at Samhain.

For me, lineage is not genetics. It's the traditions that pass from mother to daughter. My lineage is Jannie's creativity, Nettie's practicality, Morgianna's delight in small and sweet wild strawberries. It's our accent, our facial expressions, and the shared stories and jokes that bind our family together.

I am from an old New England community where genealogies are part of everyday life. The hillsides are named for the families who settled them, and reading the road map is like climbing the family tree.

Beloved Hills and Beloved Dead. Every spring we went up to the tiny hillside cemetery. I never met Morgianna in life, but have scrubbed her headstone and planted flowers to honor her. It's only right that I honor her again at Samhain.

[Sara]

These are wonderfully important points and I thank you for this post. My own tradition places great emphasis on ancestor reverence, but this can mean many things to many people, and there are many like you who don't, and I'm glad you brought this up.

I particularly like this: "I know my mother and knew my grandmothers; beyond that, my ForeMother is the night sky, my ForeFather the forest." For me there is a deep connection between the Land *and* the Ancestors, as in, they can be one and the same. As we are all related in the awesome interconnectedness of everything, why shouldn't the Grass be our ancestor, or the Birds, or the Mountain, or the Snow? I think this is a deep Mystery. "My ForeMother is the night sky" is a beautiful and deeply resonant image...spiritually chewy as it were (the term "spiritually chewy" may not make any sense...I'm trying it out...)

-S

[Sylvan]

Sara - Thanks. :) I think "spiritually chewy" is a great phrase. Makes perfect sense to me.

[Glenys Livingstone]

Hi Dianne ...
there are some parts of the Pagan internet that are reflecting more on Beltane right now. That's one of the beauties of the global "brain" ... awareness that it is really all happening at once on this great big globe.

Spare a thought for your Pagan colleages in the Southern Hemisphere dancing around the "Novapole", and leaping the flames - celebrating the manifest form, that you there in the North are conceiving in the Deep Dark of Samhain.

I do include a memory of all those who have come before and danced the dance of Life, even in Beltane ritual.

Blissings

[Inanna]

Hi Dianne - this is an interesting and provocative post. I'm interested in honoring ancestors because I don't feel much connection to the past and, at the same time, I've wanted to distance myself from my Lutheran heritage. It's a paradoxical position. I don't like the rootlessness of U.S. culture, the way it's expected that people will up and move for a job, so we feel less and less connection to place. I don't like the assimilation that was impressed upon my ancestors do I don't know much about where they came from or what their customs were. At Samhain I find myself in this mish-mash of honoring friends who've died, saying good riddance to some family members, giving a formal thank-you-because-now-I-exist nod to distant ancestors, and honoring those like-minded, if not "like-blooded," folks who have passed over.

I've also been thinking about family, history, and ancestry with relation to adoption because my sister has just adopted a son. I believe that he's meant to be with us, and that we are "his people," even if we're not bio-relatives. I hope that as he grows up he feels the same way, though I realize he may not.

I also like very much the idea that's been mentioned about honoring the ancestors of the land. Where I live, as in so many places in the U.S., that means honoring the native peoples who were here first. But given that fraught and bloody history, I don't want to blithely honor them, or to assume that I'm in any position to do so. Still, I give them a tentative, quiet thank you for this land I love so much, and that I image they love(d), too.

[Zorya]

Hi Dianne,

I found your blog through a link in a post on Chas S. Clifton's "Letter from Hardscrabble Creek" and I've bookmarked for regular reading.

I quite enjoyed and agreed with your description of the various categories of "the dead."

I can understand the rootless feelings in regard to the Ancestors. I am a serious AF brat - grew up on military bases, served in the AF for 12 years, got out, married another AF officer and followed him a few years before he decided that civilian life was better than being a vagabond.

My connections are more immediate than distant and honoring the ancestors mainly consist of an acknowldement that I wouldn't be here without them.

For me the Honored Dead are people who have touched my life as well as beloved animal companions we have loved and lost. They are still alive in a way because I remember and cherish them.