{"id":12034,"date":"2021-02-01T13:36:35","date_gmt":"2021-02-01T20:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12034"},"modified":"2021-02-01T13:36:35","modified_gmt":"2021-02-01T20:36:35","slug":"your-ancestors-may-not-be-what-you-think-they-were","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12034","title":{"rendered":"Your Ancestors May Not Be What You Think They Were"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Bartolomew Stanhope (or was it “Stanhope Bartholomew”?) Clifton, 1828\u20131884. Update his clothes, buy him a Ford F-250, and drop him right back into Perry County, Mo. \u2014 he would fit in.<\/p><\/div>\n

A lot of us contemporary Pagans have a problem with our ancestors. We feel like there is a huge chasm of separation between them and us. I mean, look at Stan (as I think he was known) Clifton here. He was one of my great-great-grandfathers<\/p>\n

Born in North Carolina, he lived mostly in rural Perry Co., Missouri, in or near Crosstown. Like a lot of my relatives on that side,<\/a> he is buried in the Plesant Grove Cemetery in Crosstown<\/a>, which is just a dot on the map.<\/p>\n

Pleasant Grove is a Baptist cemetery \u2014 I have been there \u2014 so what could be more different? A 19-century Baptist rural Missouri farmer((Maybe he had another trade too, I don’t know, but it was common.)) versus . . .\u00a0 me, the Pagan (now) rural Colorado journalist-professor-writer\/editor.<\/p>\n

I am not picking on Stan, may he rest in peace. He has not turned up in my dreams or anything like that. Our connection seems pretty distant, but, nevertheless, he is part of me \u2014 even though he seems so spiritually distant.<\/p>\n

It’s easy to focus on the things that separate him and me though. But there is one fundamenal flaw in thinking that way.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Recently I listtened to an episode of the podcast What Magic Is This? <\/em>called “Ancestors with Chiron Armand<\/a>.” (His personal website is Impact Shamanism<\/em><\/a>.) There is a lot of good stuff there, but this part stayed with me: Our ancestors are not frozen in amber, so to speak. Whever Great-great-grandfather is, he is not necessarily the same man who died in 1884 \u2014 that is the point.<\/p>\n

If you want to complicate things, figure in reincarnation. You not only honored Great-Grandmother, you gave birth to . . . him.<\/p>\n

While most people who accept the idea of reincarnation tend to think of lives as beads on a necklace, there are those esotericists who say, “No, it’s all happening at once, kind of sort of, if we could only see.”<\/p>\n

Which loops back to the idea that we can “heal” our ancestors of their faults and traumas. Assuming we know what those are.<\/p>\n

Your thoughts are welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lot of us contemporary Pagans have a problem with our ancestors. We feel like there is a huge chasm of separation between them and us. I mean, look at Stan (as I think he was known) Clifton here. He was one of my great-great-grandfathers Born in North Carolina, he lived mostly in rural Perry […]<\/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":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[204,368,109],"class_list":["post-12034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ancestors","tag-healing","tag-reincarnation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-386","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5282,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5282","url_meta":{"origin":12034,"position":0},"title":"‘Ghost Brides’ Keep the Family Together","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"If family and ancestors really, really matter, you can dig up a corpse and manufacture an ancestor. Ritual ghost marriages, which may date back to the 17th century BC, are increasingly rare in contemporary China \u2013 Mao Zedong tried to eliminate them when he assumed power in 1949 \u2013 but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ancestors\"","block_context":{"text":"ancestors","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=ancestors"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1280,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1280","url_meta":{"origin":12034,"position":1},"title":"A Man and an Elm Tree","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 8, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The ancestors would have made something of this story, something involving daimones and dryads.","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3472,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3472","url_meta":{"origin":12034,"position":2},"title":"Not *My* Ancient Pagan Survival","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 9, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"All right, you have put away the skulls, bats, and dishes for your ancestors, all the while humming, \"It's the Most Magickal Time of the Year.\" It's time to think about Yule! And to ponder, is this custom an ancient Pagan survival? (Slightly NSFW.) As for your pre-Christian traditional Yule\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Samhain\"","block_context":{"text":"Samhain","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=samhain"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":605,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=605","url_meta":{"origin":12034,"position":3},"title":"Ancestral facesCompared to their 14th-16th\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 30, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Ancestral facesCompared to their 14th-16th century ancestors, today's English have slightly different faces, reports the BBC, in one of those short pieces that raises more questions than it answers.Modern people possess less prominent features but higher foreheads than our medieval ancestors.Is it because back then they were rolling out of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":264,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=264","url_meta":{"origin":12034,"position":4},"title":"Robots in the Victorian Era\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 16, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Robots in the Victorian Era Visit this site and marvel at the ingenuity of our ancestors! Then backtrack to the home page for more exploration, after you realize that you are definitely looking at an alternative history of robotics. Question: Could I buy items from the gift shop with Antarctica\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8134,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8134","url_meta":{"origin":12034,"position":5},"title":"Can You Help Your Ancestors Instead of Rejecting Them?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 22, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A few weeks ago I was asked to write a cover blurb for a Llewellyn book, something that does not happen very often. It was a pretty good book. Some people might have found the title obscure, but that was not my decision. But one thing stopped me in my\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ancestors\"","block_context":{"text":"ancestors","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=ancestors"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12034"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12041,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12034\/revisions\/12041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}