Making Peace With the Ancestors

Making Peace With the Ancestors

"Dear ones in the house of the dead,
Can you forgive
An old woman who was your proud
Daughter, who now too late
Returns your love?"
   ___ Kathleen Raine, "The Oracle in the Heart"

   We often do not understand those who are closest to us until it is too late. This is especially true of our parents, upon whom we heap the faults of our upbringing. Parents struggle to do the best thing for their children, but these efforts are seldom appreciated until the children themselves become parents and enter into the war of attrition that we call growing up. When we are adults, our activities take us far from our parents' domain. The death of parents is perhaps the last part of growing up, usually happening when we are raising our own children, so that we stand midway between youth and age. Those who now find themselves in the eldest generation of a family discover new respondibilities: as they become grandparents, they look to the new generation to solve old, long-standing problems. This ancestral bequest tends to gather weight and momentum as it rolls from generation to generation, sometimes becoming too heavy for any one person to carry.

  Making peace between ourselves and our ancestors requires two things: the ability to speak the truth lovingly, and the ability to forgive and let go of issues that have muddied the way between us and the dead. We need to offer a work of love, a sign of admiration or praise, a visit, a gift, even a phone call - some direct communication while there is opportunity, before the time for regret is all that is left.

"Make a soul flight to a place where you and a relative who is now dead used to meet together. Speak words that you would have liked to say before death intervened. Listen to the words that your relative speaks to you. Thank and bless your relative."
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]


The Inner Cauldron - Reclaiming

   The quarter of Samhain teaches us about our Shadow: all the fears, blind spots, negativity, and unresolved issues about ourselves and life in general that must be recognized, accepted and reclaimed before we can become whole. Much of the power of Celtic spirituality lies in this willingness to embrace our dark side. Rather than insisting we turn ever toward the light, as certainly New Age spiritual paths would have us do, the Celtic Dark Goddess takes us down to bring us face to face with our own hidden darkness, for, as Jung once said, "One does not become enlightened by imaginary figures of light, but by making darkness conscious." 

  The Cailleach, the Morrigan, and all Hag aspects of the goddess play the role of Dweller on the Threshold, the figure who guards the entrance to the inner planes. She is the Queen of Air and Darkness, who embodies our Shadow in a fearsome manner, yet she is not evil in herself, she is merely reflecting back to us our own weaknesses, illusions, and fears. If we cannot face our own negativity, we are not ready to proceed further on the spiritual path. But if we can meet the Shadow with equalinimity, its formidable appearance dissolves, and we are initiated into deeper truths and realities.
[From "Kindling the Celtic Spirit" by Mara Freeman]