Hi all,
Well first you may wonder why I have inserted a picture of a string of beads under the heading spiritual ancestry. I am using the picture to extend an analogy used by Annie Besant in her explanation of reincarnation.
From the translation by Annie Besant, Discourse ii, 18-25.
WHAT IT IS THAT REINCARNATED ?
"...... Thus successive bodily lives are linked together like pearls strung upon a thread, the thread being the living Principle, the pearls upon it the separate human lives."
Well in most peoples understanding pearls are white. (I know black pearls exist but we will leave that out for now!)
I understand that Annie Besant used the pearl analogy because pearl necklaces were common at the time she was writing. Now a days many people, especially those you might call New Age wear strings of differently coloured beads.
And this is not for nothing. Rainbow colours are used to emphasis inclusion and the umbrella nature of New Age spirituality. That it covers many different paths and traditions.
I am using the string of coloured beads in that way also but for a different reason.
Recently there has been a great surge of interest in the British media in people seeking out their ancestry. That is their physical ancestry.
Now this makes complete sense if you are a materialist, (that is you are an atheist), or if you do not believe in reincarnation. After all what else could you trace your "roots" too other than along your physical blood line. These must be your ancestors.
But if you believe in re-carnation, thinking that your ancestors can only be those linked by blood to the physical body you choose to incarnate in during this lifetime does not seem to make any sense at all. You are saying that somehow the identity of your soul and that of your body are linked in some ongoing way. That, for example, if you are born white then your true lineage of ancestry is within the white race, (which would be the case in my physical ancestry which I am using for this expamle). However, I reject this completely because, in my understanding of reincarnation, I may have reincarnated as a black person previously, (I am white in this incarnation), so how can my true lineage be in the physical ancestry of the body I have presentedly incarnated in? My answer is that is cannot be.
My true lineage, my true ancestoral line must be in my spiritual ancestry. That is my true ancestors must be those soulsI have been karmically and spititually involved with in previous lifetimes. But short of past life regression therapy, (of which I am suspect - but that is a different story!) , I cannot truly know who all my spiritual ancestors, (which I shall call true from now on), were.
It is true that I feel a karmic connection to many people I meet in my present life, and it may be true that I have karmic connections with some of my previous blood relatives but it may not neccesarily be true.
The one exception I would make to this statement is that we obviously have karmic connections to our birth parents since we chose them to be the vehicles to bring about our present incarnation. However it may not be a strong karmic connection or even an ongoing one. For example. if a person was adopted their strongest karmic connection, their true connection, may be with their adoptive parents.
So why did I used coloured beads in my anology? It was to emphasise that the chances are, that since many of us have lived possibly hundreds of lifetimes, our true spiritual ancestry can be traced through incarnations covering both genders, many cultures, many races, many sexual orientations, and any other variation you would care to mention. This being that case our connection with the whole of humanity would be self evident.
However there are still Pagan traditions that insist that spiritual ancestry and phyiscal ancestry are the one and the same thing. That one only re-incarnates within ones race for example.
This is true of some people who have misused the norse tradition of Asatru to perpetuate racist beliefs as in this paper https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/1811/6559/1/White%20Blood.pdf. However, as the author notes most Asatru followers are not racist and the racist beliefs expressed by some "followers" do not necessarily repesent mainstream Asatru. Much as most Christians would not consider the Klu Klux Klan as a Christian church but the Klu klux Klan regard themselves as so!
My main worry would be that in making physical and spiritual ancestry one and the same thing one lays the ground open to racisim and Fascism as indeed this was one of the beliefs that Hitler used in a distorted form to justify his Nazi philosopy. And it was the Nazi philosophy that gave moral impetus the regimes horrific and inhuman consequent actions.
Of course my strongest objection to seeing physical and spiritual ancestry as one and the same thing is the logisical absurdity of it as previously explained. Also with regard to race - could some-one explain to me when I become "white" or "black"? I mean what if I am of mixed race? What percentage of blood is needed to classify my predominant race type? Believe me some people have wasted their lives trying to answer this question!
I have an easier answer. There is no pure "black" or "white" race. It doesn't exist. We are all realted to each other, even on a purely physical level. Every one is our brother and sister.
We belong to one race. The human race. And it is a rainbow!
Until next time,
Bessed be!
Krystal Klere
