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Disenfranchised
(I'm feeling haunted)
image by Richard Heeks of Exeter
The Fall Equinox marks the point in the Celtic calendar in which darkness takes the throne. Days grow shorter, and we begin to turn inward to examine how we navigated through the year.
We are rapidly approaching Samhain which is the new year among pagan practitioners: a time when the veils between worlds is most transparent and the honoring of our ancestors is observed. It is in this month of death and transition that I was born.
November 1st - "All Souls Day" will stand as a banner, for me personally, insofar as I have shifted my spiritual pursuits towards a serious exploration of my bloodlines, in an effort to know where I came from, and what memories run through my veins. The Elders of the First Nations who were so gracious to open their doors to me nine years ago, advised me that I was finally ready to take this step and it was a crucial part of my self-growth and healing.
To this day I have not come to terms with the fact that I am on foreign soil, even though I was brought here by my parents at the age of two, in order to provide me with opportunities to experience the freedom that comes with new beginnings. The fact remains, that my parents abandoned secure occupations and upper middle class status in Europe, to find themselves in a young country full of potential and bereft of much history ( as far as Caucasian invasions go ).
When we arrived in 1962 we spoke no English. My first sentence was "Sunny, with cloudy periods" courtesy of the weatherman we religiously gathered to watch on the black and white television set our landlord owned. I hardly ever saw my father, as he went to night school for English classes, worked two labor intensive jobs so he could prove he had "Canadian experience", and my mother served as a nanny/caregiver to a variety of households, as that would allow me to tag along before I was old enough to go to school.
We survived on a diet of boiled chicken and lived in a basement for five years. I nearly died of bronchial pneumonia five times before the age of seven, as the basement was damp and moldy in the winter. My parents were proud, self-reliant people who never dreamed of asking for assistance from any institution or government program. This independent, "grin and bear it" mentality, was drilled into me and has been completely internalized to this day. My mother who is nearly 80 still refuses to ask for help, even though her mobility is severely compromised.
I have been very fortunate to travel many places in my adolescent years and throughout adulthood, but the one thing that remains a gaping hole in my heart is the fact that I was denied the benefit of direct exposure to my clan. Many clinicians claim that tattoos and piercings are cries for help among those who have tribal callings that remain unanswered. I can relate to that, and yes, I have a tattoo and piercing.
Unlike my parents, the choice to migrate was not mine. I hear echoes of voices four generations back, that I can only access through Vision Quests and rituals like those performed during Samhain in which communication with loved ones who have crossed over is much easier to achieve.
The difficulty for me arises from the simple fact that the sacred oral traditions of my people, on both sides, were virtually annihilated by power hungry Roman Imperialists and Christian Zealots. The voices I hear, when I do manage to briefly connect, are traumatized and crippled by staggering loss and near extermination.
They too migrated, not by choice, away from their beloved birch forests on the Danube clear to the British Isles, until they could go no further, and either submitted to conversion or died as martyrs to their way of life. We proud Celts: fiercely independent, stubborn, freedom loving observers of the cosmic rhythms of life. These are my people, my tribe, and I hope to honor them by living according to natural law in harmony with the as above.
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