{"id":5043,"date":"2019-12-09T09:05:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T15:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/?p=5043"},"modified":"2019-12-08T22:12:14","modified_gmt":"2019-12-09T04:12:14","slug":"what-do-your-ancestors-deserve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/2019\/12\/09\/what-do-your-ancestors-deserve\/","title":{"rendered":"What Do Your Ancestors Deserve?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This article was written for and originally published in the Fall Equinox issue<\/a> of The Center Spiral Magazine<\/a> and is cross-posted at the Kansas City Sorcerous Arts Collective.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ancestor veneration has always been a thing. It has been central to many indigenous practices for millennia; it has been a part of diasporic traditions for centuries; it is arguably the basis of saint cults. I even knew of academically minded neo-Pagans doing it in the 1990s. Watching the meteoric rise of ancestor worship among white neo-Pagans over the five years, though, has been a trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t get on the train. I keep having to ask myself, \u201cWho\nare these ancestors?\u201d As far as I can tell, for most people that question seems\nto conjure first an image of their beloved grandparents, and then of their\nfantasies of Iron Age warriors and Neolithic wanderers, with little thought of\nthe centuries in between.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I too, think of my grandparents and great-grandparents. I\nthink of the racist jokes they told. Of the way they treated my mother and my\nsister. Of how they always had a justification for police brutality. Of how\nthey ignored the AIDS crisis. How they opposed the Civil Rights movement. How\nthey may or may not have fought in the World Wars, but certainly did not oppose\nthe US genocides and apartheid state that inspired Hitler and the Nazis. How\nthey fought to preserve slavery in the Civil War. I do not find these deeds\nworthy of veneration. Do you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White people whose ancestors came to the United States\nbefore the Civil War have even less to be proud of. How complicit were they in\ndisplacing the indigenous population? Did they own slaves? Were they a part of\nthe original, most guilty, colonizing forces?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a white person, when relating to other white people, I\nalways find a more-than-academic interest in ancestry to be a giant red flag.\nThat territory is rife with phrases like \u201cChristian civilization\u201d, \u201cheritage\nnot hate\u201d, \u201cdemographic twilight\u201d, and \u201cJews will not replace us\u201d. Other gems\ninclude, \u201cthe Irish were slaves, too\u201d and \u201cwell, sure, but the Natives weren\u2019t\nreally using the land\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any white person interested in ancestor work of any kind\nneeds to grapple with some basic facts of history. The very category of\nwhiteness was invented to justify colonizing the New World: prior to that\nambition, the only pan-European identity that existed was Christendom, and the wars\nof the Protestant Reformation will tell you exactly how unified that identity\nwas. Slavery existed before white people, but one of the very first things\n\u201cwhiteness\u201d did was to invent the most horrific form of slavery to ever be\nconceived or implemented. White people implemented brutal and murderous empires\non a scale unknown in prior history. White people invented scientific racism.\nWhite people continue to reap the benefits of this rapine and murderous\nhistory, continue to hold the majority of the globe in abject subjugation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any white person interested in ancestor work also needs to\nlook to the present and grapple with the reality of which white people share\ntheir interest in ancestry. Mormons, colonizing the dead through posthumous\nbaptism. Confederate sympathizers. Neo-liberal and neo-conservative apologists\nwho hide their racism behind \u201cbut our accomplishments\u201d. White identitarians.\nWhite supremacists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White identity and white nationalist groups surged in\npopularity following the 2008 election of Barrak Obama, the first Black\nPresident of the United States. That surge included a new vigor in neo-Pagan\nfascist groups like Odinism and the Asatru Folk Association. From where I sit,\nthe renewed interest in ancestor worship by \u201capolitical\u201d and \u201cmainstream\u201d New\nAgers and Pagans that I first saw in 2012\/13 looks a lot like those ideas\nfiltering from the extreme toward the middle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not accusing every white person interested in ancestor\nwork of being a crypto-fascist. I\u2019m saying that white people interested in\nancestor work cannot just handwave history away. I\u2019m saying that white people \u2013\nwhite Pagans \u2013 cannot simply just jump from their \u201csweet old (probably racist,\nhomophobic, and imperialist) grandma\u201d to their Iron Age progenitors without\ndealing with everything in between. I\u2019m saying that white people working with\ntheir ancestors must address the crimes of our ancestors, and the\nill-gotten-gains that define our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We must ask ourselves, \u201cWhat do our ancestors truly deserve?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White people who wish to venerate our ancestors must begin\nby determining which ancestors are worthy of veneration. This is the work of\nhistory. Of education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we make offerings to those who came before us, we must\nname the deeds that make them worthy. The inventors. The scholars. The plumbers\nand mechanics and crafters. The healers and care-takers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when we make offerings to those who came before us, we\nmust condemn the deeds that make them unworthy. The colonizers. The slave\ntraders. The slave holders. The rapists and murderers. The racists, the\nmisogynists, and the homophobes. The status quo warriors of prior ages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White people who wish to venerate our ancestors must work to\natone for their crimes among the living. This is the work of feminism. Of\nanti-racism. Of anti-colonialism. Of anti-fascism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If white people \u2013 white Pagans \u2013 are to venerate our\nancestors, we must do so without nostalgia or sentimentality. Even as we lift\nup the heroes of previous generations, we must bind our evil ancestors to\nTartaros. Or Hell. Or the Void. Anywhere but the mortal world where they can\ncontinue the works they began in life. And we must fight their unrepentant\nchildren who re-commit and deepen their crimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And we must beg forgiveness from the ghosts of those our\nancestors wronged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do your ancestors deserve?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was written for and originally published in the Fall Equinox issue of The Center Spiral Magazine and is cross-posted at the Kansas City Sorcerous Arts Collective. Ancestor veneration has always been a thing. It has been central to many indigenous practices for millennia; it has been a part of diasporic traditions for centuries; … Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-1jl","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5043"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5046,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5043\/revisions\/5046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}