Looking deeply into my ancestors includes researching what was happening around them, where they resided, what ideas upheld the circumstances of their lives and their socio-economic circumstances.
The stories I tell of my grandmothers are intuitive and researched based. I research, find out a few details about an ancestor, and at that point, my imagination begins a story. These are stories I co-create with what I can know and imagine. They are not strictly factual. I am one of a great many people descended from the LaRues. My grandmothers were often second wives and it may be the middle or youngest daughter joining me to this tree of life. I am sure these same forebears have different tales to lend themselves for other descendants. I hear what I need from my perspective
I attempt to reconstruct the lives of those who still existing in my DNA - and the institutions and structures my ancestors built, The past leaves remnants and these remains become stories. Thus our creations live in our imaginations, our bodies (DNA), our languages, social constructs and institutions and even the land and structures on them.
I am 65 as I write these words - as I begin this journey into the wilds of my family’s colonial experiences, my European roots and ultimately the inception of humanity. This lifetime has been devoted to thinking about the journey we humans have traveled this planet. In college, I studied anthropology. At age twenty, I determined a western world view is a toxic stew of mismatched concepts which boil down to exploitative and oppressive life ways. I began my search for an intact indigenous belief systems which could inform my thinking.
Thus began my adventures in consciousness. One cannot begin learning another worldview and other society’s precepts without changing how one perceives the world. I studied Native Americans, reading Creek myths and drawing their symbols. I lived in Central Georgia where huge monolithic pyramids loom, reminding me I lived in an area regarded as sacred by past inhabitants. The area is alive with their ancient spirits and energies. I wanted to claim them, be them, channel them.
Also in my twenties, I began an exploration the Chinese oracle, the I Ching. My anthropological background led me to see the I Ching as a creation story holding an ancient civilizations precepts and values. My mystical self seized on it as a personal assistant for navigating my life.
I steeped myself in the metaphors of nature, the binary ideas, the archetypes and the relationship between heaven and earth and human. I began to become familiar with the concepts of right relationship, cardinal directions as category containers for ideas. This decade excursion into the I Ching altered the way I see the world and it remains in my bag of alchemical gizmos to aid me in navigating life.
Besides studying the I Ching and basic Native American concepts, I also traveled the Goddess path. Eventually, in my fifties, I became aware they had cracked the MesoAmerican glyphs and we now could read and begin to understand these civilizations. In 2012, I decided to see what all the hullabaloo was about. I immediately understood, the Mayan Calendars, much like the I Ching encompassed the Mayan Creation Story and also the key concepts by which these people constructed their reality. The Mayan Calendar could be studied as a key to the indigenous beliefs populating this continent before it became contaminated and destroyed by European immigrants.
I dove into those strange glyphs and hard to grasp concepts, living each day bringing in the Mayan concept of time and the human journey through time. For nine years, I remained immersed in the concepts and time frame of the Mayans.
Within a few months of beginning this study, my cousin introduced me to the ideas:
- cultural appropriation
- ancestral work should be done with one’s own ancestors
- and the declaration that the Mayan culture was not mine to embody.
To say I wasn’t ready for this message is an understatement. I’d been searching for the key to the 1st Nations’ minds - for this map of concepts, all of my adult life.
I am a colonizer. My DNA reflects a journey from Turkey 12,000 years ago moving westward, either spreading or running from the toxic world view that was spreading westward This worldview contained ideas that land/people/animal are expendable and to be dominated. These exploitive values have traveled the earth over and landed us all in a world of trouble.
Despite my cousin’s good advice, I learned and lived and prayed with the Mayan concepts for more than nine years. Sometime in the last year, the messages of decolonization coming from people of conscience finally reached critical mass within me, and I began putting away my Mayan charts and calendars and turned my attention to my own ancestors and cultural history.
I now study those from who I descended - in all their toxic glory. I look to my grandmothers in particular and their exploitation in our colonial system. This helps me to understand more how we can be perfectly great people while also be the worst humans on the planet.
Astrology and Tarot help me to glimpse the archetypes we hold in Western civilizations. The numeric relations, the correspondence to astonomy - the concepts populating our minds mostly originate in ancient middle east and Egypt and are carried in the symbols one finds in the tarot and astrology. This is where the roots of a Western worldview began developing.
People on horses, riding in wheeled chariots, wielding medal, coming from the Caucaus mountains began invading the Middle East, disrupting grain and husbandry cultures long in the making, spreading invasive enslaving techniques to control existing socieities. These sky god societies began spreading around 4000 BC changing myths, resource allocation and building patterns in southern Turkey the Fertile Crescent and down into Egypt. These civilizations developed exploitive ways of living on the land and began a campaign of oppression and violence. It was my people, my DNA that moved westward across Europe with sheep and goats and cattle eating forests and civilizations, conquering and changing life ways formerly in harmony with the earth.
The first house in Astrology correlates with the phrase - I am.
I am a southern white woman who is 65 in the year 2022. I am telling you stories about who I am, who my grandmothers were and the lands we have occupied. How can a white person whose people are responsible for this mess look into her past and find ways to heal the world?
First, I can stop pretending the hallmarks of our civilization benefit the planet or her inhabitants. I believe those of us with of colonizing descent lines can take a good look at the ancient precepts underlying our culture and co-create a better future. We allow the voices of women, indigenous people and people of color to join and lead us in a circle of sustainability and sacredness. We white people can step back, stop pretending our control is all that can save us, when in fact, it has been what has ruined this garden of a planet. Instead of seeing ourselves as saviors, it is time to humble ourselves into a flow of radical equality.
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