Prepared on invitation for Bibliotheca Alexandrina: Dauntless, a devotional anthology in honor of the Greek Ares, God of War and his Roman counterpart Mars, Father of Rome. Edited by Rebecca Buchanan.
Iona Miller is a nonfiction writer, widely published in the academic and popular press, clinical hypnotherapist, and multimedia artist. She is interested in extraordinary human potential and experience, and the effects of doctrines of religion, science, philosophy, psychology, esoterics, and the arts. She writes on archetypal ancestry, bloodline history, and transgenerational integration; she has served as a Grand Dame and Senechal in heritage societies. She has appeared in Green Egg, “The Wild Hunt”, and Bibliotheca Alexandrina anthologies on Hephaestus and Aphrodite. http://ionamiller.weebly.com
Worship of "Scythian Ares" Although Tabiti was apparently the most important deity in the Scythian pantheon, the worship accorded to the deity Herodotus refers to as "Ares" was unique. He notes that "it is not their custom [...] to make images, altars or temples to any except Ares, but to him it is their custom to make them".[4] He describes the construction of the altar and the subsequent sacrifice as follows: In each district of the several governments they have a temple of Ares set up in this way: bundles of brushwood are heaped up for about three furlongs in length and in breadth, but less in height; and on the top of this there is a level square made, and three of the sides rise sheer but by the remaining one side the pile may be ascended. Every year they pile on a hundred and fifty wagon-loads of brushwood, for it is constantly settling down by reason of the weather. Upon this pile of which I speak each people has an ancient iron sword set up, and this is the sacred symbol of Ares. To this sword they bring yearly offerings of cattle and of horses; and they have the following sacrifice in addition, beyond what they make to the other gods, that is to say, of all the enemies whom they take captive in war they sacrifice one man in every hundred, not in the same manner as they sacrifice cattle, but in a different manner: for they first pour wine over their heads, and after that they cut the throats of the men, so that the blood runs into a bowl; and then they carry this up to the top of the pile of brushwood and pour the blood over the sword. This, I say, they carry up; and meanwhile below by the side of the temple they are doing thus: they cut off all the right arms of the slaughtered men with the hands and throw them up into the air, and then when they have finished offering the other victims, they go away; and the arm lies wheresoever it has chanced to fall, and the corpse apart from it.[3] According to Tadeusz Sulimirski, this form of worship continued among the descendants of the Scythians, the Alans, through to the 4th century CE.[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythian_religion
We are, all of us, descendants of killers. With maybe a few very limited exceptions, every human being alive today is the result and beneficiary of a long line of conquerors. All of us have rape and slaughter up front and center in our lineage. Peace, where it occurs, is a precious, hard won and jealously defended prize. If one wants peace, one must first make peace with war.
ARES: ARCHETYPE & ANCESTOR Divine Descent; Mythology As Family By Iona Miller, 2016
"It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back. In fact, it may well be that the very high incidence of neuroticism among ourselves follows from the decline among us of such effective spiritual aid." --Joseph Campbell, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces", 2008. Joseph Campbell Foundation, p.7
"It is a great mistake in practice to treat an archetype as if it were a mere name, word, or concept. It is far more than that: it is a piece of life, an image connected with the living individual by the bridge of emotion." ~Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, Page 96
"Genealogy reveals the importance of ancestry to soul. The weight of human history is in the voices of the dead, in opening the mouth of the dead and hearing what they have to say. It's the actual living presence of history in the soul, the past in the soul, not just the deeply repressed or forgotten." ~James Hillman
"Over the course of the millennia, all these ancestors in your tree, generation upon generation, have come down to this moment in time--to give birth to you. There has never been, nor will ever be, another like you. You have been given a tremendous responsibility. You carry the hopes and dreams of all those who have gone before. Hopes and dreams for a better world. What will you do with your time on this Earth? How will you contribute to the ongoing story of humankind? History remembers only the celebrated, genealogy remembers them all." --Laurence Overmire
"Soul rootedness and rootedness of a medicine lineage can only happen by being rooted to source, original fire, as well as deeply in the earth. When we understand our place in the vastness of the cosmos, our deep connection with that which gave birth to all, and are able root this connection to the earth plane for the good of our communities, only then are we truly rooted." ~Theresa C. Dintino, * The Akan of Ghana, Eva Meyerowitz, Faber & Faber, London, 1958
"The Reality of War: Of course, war and the large military establishments are the greatest sources of violence in the world. Whether their purpose is defensive or offensive, these vast powerful organizations exist solely to kill human beings. We should think carefully about the reality of war. Most of us have been conditioned to regard military combat as exciting and glamorous - an opportunity for men to prove their competence and courage. Since armies are legal, we feel that war is acceptable; in general, nobody feels that war is criminal or that accepting it is criminal attitude. In fact, we have been brainwashed. War is neither glamorous nor attractive. It is monstrous. Its very nature is one of tragedy and suffering.
"War is like a fire in the human community, one whose fuel is living beings. I find this analogy especially appropriate and useful. Modern warfare waged primarily with different forms of fire, but we are so conditioned to see it as thrilling that we talk about this or that marvelous weapon as a remarkable piece of technology without remembering that, if it is actually used, it will burn living people. War also strongly resembles a fire in the way it spreads. If one area gets weak, the commanding officer sends in reinforcements. This is throwing live people onto a fire. But because we have been brainwashed to think this way, we do not consider the suffering of individual soldiers. No soldiers want to be wounded or die. None of his loved ones wants any harm to come to him. If one soldier is killed, or maimed for life, at least another five or ten people - his relatives and friends - suffer as well. We should all be horrified by the extent of this tragedy, but we are too confused." --Dalai Lama, http://www.dalailama.com/messages/world-peace/the-reality-of-war
Our Mythological Family
We are born into a family which we share with more and more contemporary people as we look further back in time. But when we are gathered to the ancestors are we met by the gods? Shall we move Ares from our archetypal altar to the family shrine? Perhaps some of us can.
We know there is power in naming. What is it to name something, to name someone, to name someone an ancestor, or even name a god as direct ancestor? It all comes down to our own name. Genealogy is a heritage-led regeneration. Tracing our lines back from our parents, we move deeper into the realm of the ancestors who gave us the substance of life and soul's self-expression. A sense of soul gives us a sense of history.
Our sacred and mythic roots inform our primordial human behavior and the timeless soul-world. They act on us through meaning as well as the world stage. This natural unconscious process doesn't need to be driven by a therapeutic or self-development agenda. In a complex and fragmented world, genealogy helps us revision the present. We look back for a context of meaning using our most personal history of being. We also recognize cultural ancestors, collective ancestors, ancestors of our land, and animal ancestors.
We don't carry ancestral DNA from all our direct ancestors. But we remain entangled with them in the ancestral field, consciously, or unconsciously. In real, imaginary, and symbolic ways they are meaningful to our wholeness. We reflect as we find our way back. The inner life exerts its manifest influence. Emotions shape our sense of self and relationships.
Ares aggression, might and energy have controlled all of history from behind the scenes. History is written by the competitive winners who then self-describe their glorious descent from the gods, insuring their renown and divine right to rule with genealogical propaganda. It is enforced with constant wars and worldview warfare, a battle for minds.
The dragon or serpent guards the treasures of the deep unconscious, the unwritten history of mankind, and its myth-spinning capacity. The serpentine path, which is an image for our descent and return, is a way to find our instinct that has no conflicts, because conflicts belong to the discriminating conscious mind.
Archetypal Ancestors
We can leverage our genealogy to inform our spiritual development and religious practice. Our biography begins with our progenitors and Ares appears in that context. An archetypal approach to genealogy is polytheistic. Each god appears with a divine family.
We recognize spiritual and psychological ancestors, as well as genetic ones. Their influence stays with us and helps us. The gods personify soul's need for spiritual ancestors. Our sense of identity expands to one of symbolic identification.
Genealogical methods trace ancestries back to gods, dynastic animal totems, and legendary heroes. Ancestral souls resided in sacred animals, such as the wolf, serpent, or dragon totems of Ares. Oral narratives became tribal history.
Divine right to rule was traced through genealogy in Sumeria, Babylon, Egypt, India and China. Biblical begats culminate in the House of David, a royal bloodline. It has been connected to Trojan and Roman lines for prestige, propaganda and power reasons.
The Greeks and Romans linked their heritage to the gods with their ancestral blessings and curses. It was first recorded in Homer’s The Iliad, The Odyssey, and Virgil’s The Aeniad. They are all stories of a quest to answer a deeper call. They fought to become immortal, to be remembered through the centuries.
The same characters described in classical literature still show up in genealogy -- in mine, and perhaps in yours, too. Dreams are catalysts for ancestral phenomena. Our ancestors dream of us unceasingly. When we dream of them, they dream of us right back. When we actively engage, they engage.
Dreams help us work with archetypal ancestors in transgenerational integration and trauma, combining traditional wisdom with contemporary practices (Gaillard). Transgenerational legacies shape our early life, and Ares is among them. This approach to self knowledge deals with our connection to our origin. The past still influences us in the present through integration of familial, social and cultural issues, and reclaiming our true self.
Descent from the Gods
Ares is our forebear, and archetype of the Blade, as Aphrodite is the Chalice. This aggressive and muscular warrior is the psychic background of an incendiary historical drama that is still unfolding in us and the world, a specific manifestation of dynamic energy. We can only meet Ares on his own ground, but it is not always the battlefield. Ares illuminates soul's special relationship to violence and death. Such an ancestor can be a loyal protective spirit, soul-guide, or mentor.
A secret unrest gnaws at our roots, an instinct for expansion. Such urges are expressed in our emotional and sensorimotor patterns. The less we are conscious of it, the more it influences us. Carl Jung thought that inclinations, moods, and decisions are influenced by the dark forces of psyche, and they could be dangerous or helpful in shaping destiny. (CW 10, Para 332)
We take our ancient lineage as metaphorical and symbolic, not just literal. Yes, Ares’ fiery nature has been with us from Greek Fire to the Hydrogen bomb. But the ancestral approach shows us that trans-subjective facts made of our own psychophysical substance, still reside in and work on us inside as they did outside. For Jung they were part of our inherited instinct and preformed patterns.
With a bit of insight, we can read the epic story of the Trojan War and Founding of Rome from the top down in our genealogy. The collective genealogy of the World Tree is a symbol of the collective unconscious. In Book 20 of The Iliad, Aeneas recites sixty lines of ancestral history back to Zeus as the beginning of his family line. Modern genealogies may compact that descent. In the descent from antiquity the kings of England, Scotland, France, and ancient Rome all claimed lines back to Trojan ancestors.
The gods are the archai, the deepest patterns and fundamental fantasies that animate all life. Archetypes direct fantasy activity and inherited potential for ideas and action. A metaphysical assertion or "truth" is a psychological statement of the psyche.
We see with the soul's eye through the web of reality. The spirits of the dead help us bring out our character and restore balanced relationships with the larger web of ancestors and spiritual forces. We work with archetypal patterns held within our psyche epigenetics, and DNA. We all suffer from the violence that is the foundation to life; life feeds on life. Compulsive repetition is always transpersonal.
In the case of Ares, Jung thought that conflict, war and conquest is about the failure of a myth to contain personal and collective dark energies projected onto real or imagined enemies. War goes with the territory. We must endure it as we do the conflict between the sexes, and between the ego and unconscious. Ancient myths, their archetypes, heroes, and monsters still animate our anxieties.
Myth explains the unexplainable, especially when history is unreliable. Myths repeat again and again, hence the totem serpent/dragon of Ares symbolizes endless time. Everything that was outside is also inside the mythic unconscious, including the fiery warrior who 'sticks to his guns', perhaps far too long. Ares is an organ of our pre-rational psyche. If character is our genius, some have a terrible genius for war and make a career of endlessly repeating the play of dominations.
As Jung (1977) puts it, “Although the opposites flee from one another they nevertheless strive for balance, since a state of conflict is too inimical to life to be endured indefinitely. They do this by wearing each other out, like the two dragons or the other ravenous beasts of alchemical symbolism.” (CW14, Pp. 230)
When we rely on physical power, intensity, intimidation, and direct action, how often do we act and react unmindfully? When are we too primitive, too present, or too strong? We all have to cope with violence, struggle, and death. What happens to the feminine, especially the dark feminine, in a society saturated by masculine war, or blood-soaked atrocities? Can conflict become the avenue to hope and self-worth?
The secret doctrine of antiquity survives in our bloodlines. Our genes pulse down the lines with us as temporary custodians. Separated across the face of time, we have the same genetic material. We go down in history, descending from the most remote and divine characters imaginable at the edge of reality.
In genealogy, inherent meaning unites with experience; historical facts help us uncover psychological meaning. Historical facts are set in and rooted in myth. The story acts on our psyche as much as it acted in the world. Even non- or pre-historical, genealogy is a symbol of an unbroken relationship with the others and divine forces and our mortality.
My story, rooted in Ares, may be your story, too, if Ares is in your lineage or a spirit in your blood. The soul has its own ancestors. We find our spiritual ancestors in "the land of the dead." Ares doesn't have to manifest in coercion, extreme rage, blood lust, or combativeness. We might be dauntless in our aspirations, inspired and sacrificing beyond ourselves, challenging our own personal best, courage and daring.
The first written words of Greek epic poetry were about the war with Troy in Asia Minor and the return from it. We now know that all wounds in war are not visible. Soul-searing post-traumatic stress persists throughout a lifetime as a disease of the soul. Shell shock with flashbacks, emotional flooding, hypervigilance and depression persists because the powerful archetypal field remains active.
The Aeniad, The Illiad and the Odyssey are stories of the soul. Odysseus failed in his long voyage home for many years, because the true voyage home is an inner journey to heal the rage, deadness and stuckness that comes from visceral horror and atrocities.
"But this much I would claim to know: that a man cannot go to war in quest of power and wealth without doing mortal harm to some portion of his soul, and once the soul is damaged and impaired then all kinds of madness follow." (Clarke, p. 272, 2004)
Not necessarily aggressive with primitive brutality, Ares is also chivalry, protection and self-protection, repressed action. We needn't be raiders, military or militant, do martial arts, collect weapons, or be sports or sex addicts. We don't need forceful exercise of the power drive to commune with Ares of the mighty heart and emotional wounds.
Courage, empowerment, assertiveness, sportsmanship, and other qualities shine when not confounded with shadow ferocity, violence, might, and impulse. Sometimes, we may be headstrong, rash, self-gratifying. We will fight for what we believe. We will risk, lose reason and restraint, again and again.
We will play tough; we will quarrel; we will be impetuous. We will be tense; we will overreact; we may surrender to despair or vengeance. Someone will press our buttons. We feel Ares as the surge of emotion, loyalty, or the urge to retaliate, but also the light generated by fiery emotions.
Soul Retrieval
Indigenous people equate ancestor loss with soul loss that can be retrieved by reintegrating our ancestral generations. Our memory gives the dead greater reality and invokes their “participation” in births and marriages. If ancestral spirits are watchful, we cease to be cut off from those relationships and feel more whole.
Since soul is the living thing in us, soul loss is depression, loss of vitality or passion about life, or feeling that something is missing in life. Body-language betrays feelings. We define ourselves by interaction. When you put human names to it, perception shifts.
Genealogy is about re-connection. It helps heal loss of meaning, survivor-guilt, direction, vitality, mission, purpose, identity, and deep unhappiness. We need to know who we are and where we come from beyond the recent past. We can follow the lines of our genealogical descent like a path, our particular path into existence. In this case it is the path of Ares, through Aeneas, through the Roman Emperors.
The ancestors, including the divine roots create the form of all our experience. By facing our soul, we face our ancestors and the gods in a circumambulation of the self. Our devotion to Ares echoes how that archetype informs our lives. There is a caution warning, an object lesson in his frenzy, irrationality, and uncontrolled lust.
Ares harks back through the Mycenaean Greeks to the prehistoric Dragon lineages of the Hittites, Sumerians, and beyond. His character matches Teshub, another Anatolian deity. Ares fought for the Trojans at the siege of Ilium. Hesiod and Aeschylus said he was the father of the race of Kadmos, who married his daughter Hermione. The warriors of Kadmos sprang from the teeth of the dragon of Ares, which Kadmos sowed.
The wolf is the totem animal of Ares, but the dragon is also his sacred animal. The nymph Telphousa bore the sacred dragon Ares begat on her. This Ismenian dragon was a giant serpent which guarded the sacred spring of Ares near Thebes.
We can follow this martial thread as a lead. Reading the line we "see through" the collective portion of a classical line of descent from Ares/Mars. It descends through Troy to the rise and fall of Rome, into the Middle Ages, and the modern world. Revisioning Ares (c. -1680) as a direct ancestor forges an emotional connection with the root archetypes, the Olympians.
We realize what Ares means from deep inside as more than an unconscious psychic factor. Giving voice to the ancestors is giving voice to the gods so their images can live and ground our being. Our lonely hearts open fully to loving reciprocity.
Recognition
Ceremonially reciting their ancestors was one of the most important things an ancient person could do. In Scotland declaring lineage was part of the battle-rattle preceding war, designed to strike terror into the heart of the enemy. We can welcome them hospitably back into our lives. Their images impress us in a way beyond the physical facts, restoring form to the formless.
Recognition is a great mystery of the psyche. The inner wealth of the soul resides in our hearts. Jung calls the unconscious, "the unwritten history of mankind from time unrecorded." (CW 11, Para 280) And he notes, "The unconscious mind of man sees correctly even when conscious reason is blind and impotent." (CW 11, Para 608). Our genealogical lines symbolically and literally encode information and express this concept.
Our family tree helps us learn the family history and the stories behind the pedigrees which trail off into the mists of pre-history. Matters stuck in limbo are lured back into life by genealogical soul retrieval and emotional reconnection to the ancestors, gods, and primordial womb of nature.
When that is part of 'what we know' we don't have to merely believe. The ancestors and divine root permeate us through the dark borderland of body and soul and unify our archetypal essence. Everything in the psychic world is real.
In Scotland, oral traditions of genealogy marked the structure and evolution of the clan by blood descent, marriage, and territorial holding. Oral recitation of genealogy was passed on to children round the fireside. The Highlanders did not use the form of a tree, but used the track of a wheel or the imprint of fingers tracing intricate relations in the dust.
Old seanchaidhean could recite the sinnsearachd, the Gaelic term used for the descent or genealogical track. So, pardon me while I idly trace the relationships and genealogical tracks left in the dusts of time, legend, and memory in the line of Ares/Mars.
What if God Was [more than] One of Us?
Myth is the DNA of the human psyche. Genes are memories, primordial and otherwise. Living myths give story and experience meaning. Genealogy is not always simple, being full of alternate matings, shared ancestry, inter-family marriages, incest, natural and disputed offspring.
Because of the genetic shuffle in chromosomes at conception, such revelations come mostly through genealogy, not genetic tests which reveal ethnic identity but few if any individual ancestors.
In his archaic form, Ares was a fertility god and reproductive drive. If the lines are to be believed his descendants proliferate in the flesh to this day. The psychic fact is that he is in us all, and remains in us and our progeny through certain royal lines of descent. The soul becomes the arbiter of truth or error.
We embody the survival of the pagan gods. Psyche cannot be distinguished from its manifestations. The historical tradition is conflated with the mythic tradition through genealogy. The implication is that if we were engendered by them, they continue through us. They persist in our spirit, psyche and psychology, emotions, as well as physical bodies that create our reality every day.
The gods' misty pre-historical origin is our own origin. Thus, Ares/Mars is archetype and ancestor, an instinct for physical survival. Questionable empirical reality has a transcendent aspect, including dark and mysterious areas of our experience. We are informed by his Being. Umberto Eco says, wryly, in Foucault's Pendulum that we cannot betray an ancestor who never existed nor fail that old-time religion.
The general premise of The Survival of the Pagan Gods, by Jean Seznec (1981) is that "the ancient gods survive during the Middle Ages by virtue of interpretations of their origin and nature propounded by antiquity itself."
The gods are civilizers, who founded dynasties as well as legends. They hide in astrology, science, and magic as 'astral' planetary forces. The Renaissance reduced them to mythological allegory, but the bloodlines went silently on as testimony to divine origin. Our genealogy informs our understanding of history and even the unleashed terror of a god. What happens when the warrior god culture goes too far?
Archetypal Genealogy
Truth be told, ancient genealogy is probably more about the poetics of commemoration than filial descent. Ancient genealogies are an object of belief with little evidence. The evidence for their confabulation for politics and propaganda has increased in the last decades. But they remain the basis and touchstone of classical history.
Settipani (2011) says, “The first contribution genealogy makes to history is to fix the chronology. Early chronological texts about human beings are often genealogies. The time of an event was fixed by saying "that happened at the time of my father's father .. ". Genealogy was also used to legitimize the power of a social class claiming that power because it was inherited from the gods or from kingly ancestors.”
We still have to find the point where the evidence fails and search for reliable sources. Archaeology keeps filling in the historical gaps. Traditional genealogy is an archetypal activity, recapitulating and extending humanity's oldest activities, including the imaginal root. The aesthetic response is an ethical response -- a response of the heart -- that values the ancestors and the genealogical history.
Genealogy is thus an archetypal order, an aesthetic construction, and a virtual map of the personal and collective unconscious, reflecting a principle of totality and primordial origins. Traditional genealogy considered these mythological inclusions best-practice, yet it may be more of a psychic than historical "fact."
This does not mean we need to take that literally – historically as fact -- but the connections seem implicit by their nature. Genealogy is another way for us to connect with the gods, and if we are connected to one, we are therefore related to others, as well. Jung claimed, “There is no form of human tragedy that does not in some measure proceed from this conflict between the ego and the unconscious.”
Only a Jungian approach to traditional genealogy keeps the historic/mythic gestalt of The World Tree alive as a symbol of wholeness -- a holistic resonant field pattern. According to Jung, trees are a symbolic reference to the self, so family tree is self-defining. As well as our lineage, our ancestors also form a vast symbol chain, rooted in the mythic unconscious and pre-history.
The symbolic function is beyond innate impulse and ideological bias. Through introversion, we are fertilized, inspired, regenerated, and reborn. Self-incubation, self-castigation, and introversion are closely related ideas. Immersion in oneself (introversion) is a penetration into the unconscious, the imaginal world of psyche. What is invisible to us was obvious to the ancients.
The World Tree is the Axis Mundi of genealogy, a worldwide database of genealogical connectivity. At this point travel and correspondence is made between higher and lower realms. Communication from lower realms may ascend to higher ones and blessings from higher realms may descend to lower ones and be disseminated to all. The origin functions as the omphalos (navel), the world's point of beginning.
The earliest mythologies are of the World-Tree, or Tree of Life. Aspects of the same image, sacred trees are the most common motif from the ancient world. The Tree connects our psychophysical aspects from sub-nuclear to macrocosmic scales. The trunk is the axis of psychic growth that unites Heaven and Earth, spirit and matter.
First Nations insist that lack of connection to our ancestors is one of our greatest shortcomings, so reclaiming them takes on great importance. It gives us a model of ‘how’ precisely we are connected, and just how many generations lie between. The further back in time they are, the more we can be certain we share them with most of humanity.
The mythology of our ancestors is as important as their cosmology. We can explore the mystic in ourselves and in our ancestors. Our worldview is the root of our identity and relationship to Nature and our own deep nature. Researching the cosmologies of our direct ancestors in the historical era provides a quick path into dreamwork as these ways are still half-remembered. Our common destiny lies beyond any worldview.
Bloodlust & Bloodline
According to the best practice of conventional and traditional genealogy, Ares is my 94th gr-grandfather, through Electra, some Trojan kings, Caesars, Roman emperors, Iberian aristocracy, and British knights. They are followed by Colonial immigrants, frontier pioneers and homesteaders. The theme remains space expansion and survival in extreme environments, going further and farther than any before.
The tale of Ares is the tale of the Greek, Trojan, and Roman family trees. The forms remain important for transgenerational reintegration of our ancestral spirits. Violent histories are the common core of transgenerational wounding.
Ares had four sons: Evenus, Molus, Pylus, and Thestius. My descent originates with Ares and Eurythemis, who had issue, Thestius (my 93rd gr-gr). The mother seems to have also married her divine son. We don't need to plot all the characters of the epic Trojan war, only those in the direct line of descent. The gods take sides in the conflict: Aphrodite, Ares, Artemis, and Apollo back the Trojans. Hera, Athena, Hephaestus, and Poseidon favor the Greeks, while Zeus remained neutral.
The Trojan Family tree consists largely of an unbroken paternal line sired by Erichthonius (my 88th gr-gr), King of Dardania and Acadia [ancient Turkey]. But that descent is rooted in the maternal triad of Electra of Mycenae [my 90th], Mycenean queen Clytemnestra of Troy with Agamemnon of Mycenae [both my 91st ge-gr], and Leda of Sparta [92nd], who famously coupled with Zeus as the Swan. Leda is usually considered the daughter of King Thestius of Aetolia and Eurythemis. And her daughter was Helen of Troy, (92nd gr-aunt) the catalyst of the war.
On the Greek side, Odysseus is my 85th gr-grandfather, and traces back his maternal and paternal lines to Zeus through Hermes. His gr-great grandaughter is Lavinia Roma of Alba Longa, and her son is Iulus, who founds the Julian Dynasty. So both lines of Odysseus and Aeneas merge when Lavinia marries Ascanius, the son of Aeneas, grandson of King Priam of Troy, descendant of Aphrodite, and ancestor of Romulus, Remus and the Gens Julia, clan of Julius Caesar.
This story with its variants is that of the Kings of Alba Longa, from the Silvii to the Julii dynasties. His grandfather, Anchises, and his son Aeneas (my 83rd gr-grandfather), claimed descent from Aphrodite. They became important divine forebears to the Romans, who claimed descent from both the Goddess of Love and the God of War. The Julian dynasty descended from their progenitor Iulus (my 81st gr-gr).
In some Roman traditions, Iulus, the semi-divine ancestor of gens Iulia, was identical with Aeneas’ son Ascanius (Virgil). In other traditions, Iulus was the son of Aeneas by his Trojan wife, Creusa, while Ascanius was the son of Aeneas' Latin wife Lavinia, daughter of Latinus (Livy). And, in still another tradition, Iulus was son of Ascanius. My genealogy lists Iulus as son of Ascanius and Lavinia.
With Aeneas, the dramatic setting changes from Troy to Rome and its antecedents. With a host of other beliefs among them, all descendants unconsciously pay homage to the strength and courage of their ‘progenitor’ Ares/Mars and his dynamic pioneering energy. That spirit is ratified in Julius Caesar, my 59th gr-grandfather, back through Aeneas to the Trojan kings, Zeus and the Titans. Or, so he claimed.
Zeus engineered the Trojan War because there were too many generations on the earth. Earth (Gaia) complained to Zeus there were too many humans for her to bear. She laments, "The people whom I nurture now dishonor Me. This Iao has taught them not to love.” Jung noticed, "Each of us, every living being, is a small earth, one could say, because we are in intimate connection with the earth, we are partially earth, we are conscious of our earthly body, for instance." (Visions Seminar, Pages 1158-1159)
Ares/Mars supported the Trojans and the Romans. The root lines of Julius Caesar show that Electra's maternal line descends from Ares' union with Eurythemis. The descent of the Julian Family tree continues through the collateral adoptive son, Augustus Caesar, which breaks the direct genetic chain but preserves rule in the Julian family.
Divine Ancestry
In -7th BCE. Greece, Hesiod recounts the birth of Ares in Theogony 921 ff (trans. Evelyn-White). "Zeus took Hera to be his fresh consort, and she, lying in the arms of the father of gods and mortals, conceived and bore Hebe to him, and Ares, and Eileithyia."
There are a number of ways in which the idea of descent from the gods is used in ancient and medieval writings. In some legends individual heroes are said to be sons of gods or descended from a god, like Ares. Rather than literal divine ancestry and divine descent we can approach the god as a symbolic and metaphorical reality -- a lived and living connection to the Olympians as close as our skin.
Homer's story of Troy is the first written in Greek, allegedly 500 years after the events. It is a foundation of western tradition and archetypes of all sorts of behaviors and legendary heroes. Before that stories were sung about heroes and battles. In the 13th century BCE, Trojan and Greek warriors fought this long bloody battle that became an epic that still resonates through history.
The defeat of Troy was the end of the Bronze Age. It ushered in the Greek Dark Ages. More legends were born. But there are real people behind many of the legends. Trojan refugees were led West by Aeneas, who Julius Caesar claimed as his ancestor. As Romans they later returned and conquered Greece. In between, pre-history became history and empire.
Aeschylus says in Fragment 282 of Papyri Oxyrhynchus, (trans. Lloyd-Jones): "[Dike the goddess of justice speaks: ...And I will tell you a proof which gives you this clearly. Hera has reared a violent son [Ares] whom she has borne to Zeus, a god irascible, hard to govern, an one whose mind knew no respect for others. He shot wayfarers with deadly arrows, and ruthless hacked . . ((lacuna)) with hooked spears . . he rejoiced and laughed . . evil . . scent of blood."
As the gods do not appear in isolation, a relationship with Ares, implies one with his extended and immediate family – Aphrodite, Zeus and Hera, and other Olympians. Their drop lines include Rome's founders Romulus and Remus, listed as gr-uncles of today's descendants. We are reminded again of Ares and his totem wolf as the divine twins were raised by a she-wolf.
Yet, clearly, “No one can 'prove' a descent from Julius Caesar,” [my 59th]. The dynasty Aeneas Gens Iulia includes Iulus, my 81st → Ascanius, King of Alba Longa, his father → Aeneas, King of Lavinium, his father, my 83rd]
This family which spawned Julius Caesar claimed descent from the Roman goddess Venus-Aphrodite (my 84th gr-gr) through Aeneas, her son by her lover Anchises, who was a Trojan prince. My genealogy shows this in the profile of Aeneas, closely braiding the Aphrodite and Ares dual-divinity generation of this line. Aphrodite as anima mundi binds all states of being together, the totality of the psyche.
Legend says Aeneas escaped the Fall of Troy (about 1200 BCE) and journeyed to Italy where he became the tribal ancestor of the Latins and the Etruscans. This acknowledges Zeus as prime ancestor.
Aeneas was a popular figure in medieval genealogical inventions. In the Norse saga, the Deluding of Gylfe, he is called Anea. Medieval Welsh genealogies called him Annyn Tro. In one Welsh source he is called a son of Brydain, giving name to Britain) and a grandson of Aedd Mawr (Edward the Great), c. 1300 BCE. These chronologies are too confused to be credible.
As we retreat through history most people are genetically related, even if the genealogy cannot be traced. The story becomes one not of our own family, but the collective family of man. Still, it is one thing to read history in a book, and quite another to read it in the lines of one's own direct descent.
The historian Strabo has Poseidon prophetically declare in Iliad XX, “But, now I know, the lineage of Aeneas will rule over all, and so too will his son, and his son's sons, who will be born thereafter." So it seemed throughout the rise and fall of Rome, including some of the most famous names and leaders in global history.
Alba Longa was an indigenous Latin iron age settlement in the mountains near Rome today. In Roman mythology, Alba was founded by Ascanius, the son of Aeneas, as a new colony of Trojan refugees and native Latins. In some accounts Ascanius was the son of Lavinia, and grandson of Latinus. (Livy); in other versions, Ascanius was the son of Creusa (Dionysius,Virgil). Virgil claims Ascanius and Iulus were the same. Dionysius makes Iulus the son of Ascanius, the founder and first king of Alba Longa. Many claimed Iulus as the ancestor of the Julian gens.
Eratosthenes places the sack of Troy around 1184 BC, more than four centuries before the traditional founding of Rome, in 753. The Alban kings history neatly closed the gap from Aeneas to Romulus. It is a mythical justification for the close ties between Rome and the indigenous Latin families descended from the Trojan immigrants or their Alban descendants.
Fifteen Trojan pedigrees of the Alban kings from Aeneas to Romulus survive. In the Aeniad, Virgil claimed that Latinus was the son of Faunus, and grandson of Picus, the first king of Latium, who was in turn the son of Saturn. But Picus was also said to be the son of Mars, rather than Saturn.
The Latins attacked the intruding Trojans, were defeated, and peace was cemented with the marriage of Aeneas and Lavinia, daughter of the Latin king. Aeneas founded a town of both Trojans and Latins, named Lavinium. (Kings of Alba Longa, Wikipedia)
Founding Rome: Ares Becomes Mars
No matter which of the ancient writers or genealogies we follow for the backstory of Rome, we encounter the same names over and over, even if their links and marriages are juggled around. No one argues about their descent from Ares and Aphrodite, whether in the same or different lines.
Following the Ares descent line down through time, we come to the era and people associated with the founding and legends of Rome. Ares insinuated himself actively into the founding of Rome, as Mars. Rhea Silvia conceived the Twins when Mars impregnated her in a sacred grove dedicated to him. Through their mother, they were descended from Greek and Latin nobility. His character defined that of the Empire -- its conquering and martial nature.
Founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus are my 94th great uncles.
Romulus was husband of Hersilia of Alba Longa, an abducted Sabine;
Remus was father of Pompilia of Rome, my 1st cousin 95x removed
The Romans considered Mars second only to Zeus or Jupiter, his father, and my 95th gr-grandfather. The twin founders of Rome raised by a wolf are the mythical offspring of Ares and Rhea Silvia, Princess of Alba Longa (b. circa 808), the wife of Ascanius. Roman emperors were always priests of Ares/Mars.
Romulus and Remus were the direct descendants of Ares, through Aeneas, whose fate-driven adventures in Italy are described in The Aeneid by Vergil. The Julian family, including Julius Caesar and Augustus, traced their lineage to Ascanius and Aeneas, thus to the goddess Venus. The legendary kings of Britain allegedly trace their family through Brutus first king of Britain (my 70th gr-gr), a grandson of Aeneas. Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Benedictine monk living in the 12th century AD, fabricated this connection in the Historia Regum Britanniae.
In the Iliad, the god Poseidon prophesied that the descendants of Aeneas (the Aeneadae), would survive the Trojan War and rule their people forever. Virgil traced the divine connection down the line of Aeneas stretched through Romulus, Augustus, and the Julio-Claudian emperors down to Nero. Some Greek writers considered the Romans descendants of the Achaeans, rather than the Trojans. Or, the Romans are descended from Odysseus, one of the Achaeans, rather than his contemporary, the Trojan prince Aeneas.
Romulus and Remus were related to Aeneas through their mother's father, Numitor. He was a king of Alba Longa, an ancient city of Latium in central Italy, Numitor, 15th king of Alba Longa, was father to Rhea Silvia. Rubens depicts the Roman god Mars, identifiable with his war helmet and shield, raping the vestal virgin Rhea Silvia.
The identity of the father of Romulus and Remus generated debate. Some myths claim that Mars appeared and lay with Rhea Silvia; other myths name the demi-god hero Hercules as her partner. The genealogy shows Mars forcibly impregnated Rhea Silvia with Romulus and Remus.
However, the author Livy claims that Rhea Silvia was in fact raped by an unknown man, but blamed her pregnancy on divine conception. In either case, Rhea Silvia became pregnant and gave birth to her sons. Any Vestal Virgin betraying her vows of celibacy was condemned to death. But the king ordered the twins thrown into the Tiber River, expecting them to die of exposure. But a servant put them in a tiny boat and a she-wolf found and nursed them.
When we consider if Aeneas was their father or grandfather, consider there are more than 500 intervening years from the fall of Troy to the founding of Rome. Aeneas was the father of Ascanius with Creusa, and of Silvius with Lavinia. The former, also known as Iulus (or Julius), founded Alba Longa and was the first in a long series of kings.
Romulus named his city Roma after himself and created a government system of senators and patricians. When the male population exploded, the Roman men abducted women from the Sabines and Latins. In response to this rape or abduction of women, the Sabine and Latin men went to war against Rome. Romulus was the definitive winner of this war and this first hero’s victory was Rome's first triumph.
Psyche and History
There are, indeed, psychic powers within us that correspond to the divine -- and Ares/Mars is pre-eminent among them. The immortal soul in us surpasses the perishable individual significance.
We are links in the great chain of being, which is sometimes more like chainmail armor in its interconnections with ancestors and the gods. There remains a destructive impulse in ourselves and others that adds fire, vitality, passion, and power to life.
It is the mystery of brinksmanship -- the art or practice of pursuing a dangerous policy to the limits of safety before stopping, typically in politics -- power vs. empowerment. Personal sovereignty is the practice of trying to achieve an advantageous outcome by pushing dangerous events to the brink of active conflict to secure an advantage. But Mars will gladly bring the hammer down, too.
We have many possibilities for embracing power and genealogy remains a symbol of that human struggle, not only in war, but in class struggle, business competition, and love or sport. Genealogy gives the subject substance, "by showing us a broad experience of power, rooted in the body, the mind, and the emotions, rather than the customary narrow interpretation that simply equates power with strength." (Hillman, 2005)
In The Terrible Love of War, James Hillman (2005) noted that, "During the 5,600 years of recorded history, 14,600 wars have been fought -- 2 to 3 for every year of human history. War is a constant thing. And yet no one really understands why that is." He described his antidotes in Kinds of Power: A Guide to its Intelligent Uses (1997).
It is no accident we find Ares and the other gods at the roots of our genealogical lines. Hillman (2004) drills down into myth, into religion, and into the soul’s basement where the most basic impulses to war is seething. He suggests we, "listen to the language of the media, with its lexicon of war, battle, fight, compete, win, lose — all of these words pointing to conquest." Jung thought that how a person reacts to conflict in life arises accidentally from childhood experiences producing certain impressions – responses to haphazard conflicts.
We have not even begun to wake up to the complex and nuanced power of the god of war. Nation-states find war a normal presence. But there is a deeper mythic and religious intention behind the fog of war and its purpose. It deepens the values we hold. The Crusades, begun after the Fall of Rome, symbolize the battle of East and West that still rages. The groups change, but the battle hymn of Mars remains the same. Ideologies lead to demagogues.
In our imaginative engagement with conflict, we need to maintain the place of psyche in genealogical interpretations, not cutting off the mythic past from our narrative with the sword of rationality and evidence or proof. Equivalent images remain dormant in our psyches if we do not recognize and establish the sacred connection between the divine figures and our own psyche.
There is an irrational reality beyond the radical honesty of rationalism. It preserves even as it deconstructs our cherished notions about the past and self. It makes our lines no less 'real,' but it deliteralizes them, emphasizing soul's meaning is deeper connection, with or without metaphysical assertions. Genealogical history is a false but meaningful metaphor of disjunction and wholeness which mirrors our existence.
We suffer collectively if we cut off those connections and psychological truths from our conscious and spiritual lives. Myth remains the key to 'the art of seeing.' Psyche remains full of obscurities and unsolvable riddles which press against our weak and often dull comprehensions.
Genealogy opens us to emotional experience, often of both sides of any historical conflict, suggesting we have a personal connection or stake in them all, which as humans we naturally do. Genealogy -- real, confabulated, or imaginal -- is the basis of the whole western world, or at least its public face and rulership. They sought to blaze their way through the heavens.
We always remain both perpetrators and victims of forces eternally greater than ourselves – witting or unwitting pawn. The interaction of the divine and the soul remains an over-arching theme of humanity. The religious function itself is archetypal, and we continue to sacrifice at the altar of Ares in local and global conflict. When any old worldview is failing, it is pressured by a new belief system.
International quarrels are personified in the 'usual suspects', the characters and kings in the conflicting dramas of nation states, and identity, ethnicity, and power-struggle. Throughout most of European history, rulers battled with their own extended family members. They married enemies to negotiate peace. Thus, nearly all European royals are related.
Whether we call that Ares/Mars, or not, it remains a living reality in international politics, as surely as anything passed to us all through the persistent legacy of the Roman Empire. Mars casts a very long shadow across individual and collective history. Only now, through the body and DNA itself, are we realizing we are multi-ethnic at the deepest level, and even contain other species of human, and less than human DNA.
Descent From Antiquity
Genealogy, especially Descent From Antiquity (DFA) is an imaginal activity. We can view it reductively as pseudoscience, pretention, or magical thinking. Or, aware of its historical shortcomings, we can view it metaphorically like a dream, an active imagination, or a Way of spiritual connection. These are stories we carry in our blood and bones – the marrow of our life – our Holy Grail. Mythic dissociation is imposed on us by culture, disturbing the ecology and topography of our own soul, laid out in our pedigree.
Christian Settipani (2011) describes the issues: “To give you an example, it has taken ages to know if what Homer recounts in "The Iliad and the Odyssey" corresponds to what life was like during the Mycenaean period it was supposed to describe. On the whole it doesn't, but there is a little bit all the same. Another example from the "Iliad", it's a mythological tale filled with genealogies. Ever since 1800, it was thought to be meaningless. But today we're much more careful: it's been shown that the city of Troy existed, Hittite texts have been found that describe the tensions in the region at this time, with a king of Troy at the time called Alexander, as Alexander Paris in the "Iliad." There are things in the "Iliad" that can be retained even if all the heroes are not real people. The historian has to use all the texts at his disposal, including epic poems, and compare them with other sources to see if there's anything that can be used or not.”
Deliteralizing genealogy, we reject false ‘royal’ grandiosity and literalism, or concretization in favor of value and meaning that aids our individuation. They may be fictive but not untruth; they are internal and instinctual values that sustain us. The gods remain psychic factors, including the way we deal with conflict. We may not solve such problems, but we may outgrow them, adapt, and survive. We grow around them in a non-linear way.
Myth, legend, and history interpenetrate in genealogy. We don’t pretend to go back in time as an unbroken chain that transcends all forgotten things, but it arouses us emotionally. There have been genealogical forgeries in all ages for gain, prestige, or even through ignorance. It doesn’t show evolution or map our destiny. It unfurls the panoply of the past as a vast psychological and historical epic. It functions as an effective history -- sense of identity shifts.
It helps us imagine the complex course of descent that gives birth and value to our existence. We see the accidents, the false steps, the miscalculations. There are legendary and fictitious persons who are born, yearn, and die, in the traditional lineage linking ancestry to the collective unconscious. By uniting the opposites, genealogy transcends true/false, real/fiction in a coherent imaginal reality with its own truths and values.
The value systems of our ancient ancestors were rooted in tribal life and stories. If we eschew dislocated metaphors we are thrown back upon our own psychic life, understanding mythic meaning at the individual level. The fixities have been deconstructed, generating ambivalence, disquietude, and ambiguity.
Foucault (1971) quips, “The new historian, the genealogist, will know what to make of this masquerade. He will not be too serious to enjoy it; on the contrary, he will push the masquerade to its limit and prepare the great carnival of time where masks are constantly reappearing. No longer the identification of our faint individuality with the solid identities of the past, but our "unrealization" through the excessive choice of identities--Frederick of Hohenstaufen, Caesar, Jesus, Dionysus, and possibly Zarathustra."
Rather than a linear development, genealogy gives us a vast overview of emergent humanity, its governing laws, and rules of engagement. It is marked by rulers, and competing powers, not designed to temper violence, but to satisfy it. Law, itself, permits the perpetual instigation of new dominations and the staging of serially repeated scenes of violence. Humanity arose from perversion though guilt, conscience, duty, and obligation. But that process was saturated in blood. Each system has its own rules for violence and domination, opposed by resistance.
Genealogy is non-linear and accidental. It demonstrates a mobility of appearances and realities. Sometimes we go the wrong way or reach a ‘dead end’ in the labyrinth of ancestors. Sometimes we identify with a renown victor only to find the victim in our lines, as well. Tracing, deviating, and re-tracing a particular line is a sort of ‘walkabout’ trying to find our way onto the routes that continue back to meta-stories that give us vitality and validity. But, there are no pure historical origins with unbroken continuity or succession.
Genealogy recognizes the malleability of history, marriage, and generation. It’s an inside story. Genealogy effectively produces exemplars and episodes. It doesn’t try to give a history of the past as it actually was, nor its full significance. It is cyclic at the level of narrative time. It gives an interpretation, a hermeneutic of emergent events and people. It is the confabulation of a coherent and locally true narrative. Sovereignty is the unthought foundation of our knowledge, and sovereigns are the links that take us back the farthest in time.
It is a way of interacting and imagining beyond therapy or history, while maintaining the traceable and plausible family histories. The Domesday Book (William the Conqueror, 1086) introduced surnames. We can find records traceable to early 1500s, and disputed connections back to 13th century English royalty. As a model census, the Domesday Book became an exemplar for historical record-keeping that encouraged more reliable ‘proofs’ of descent, in civil and parish records.
Ancestral Soulwork
Can we go back to the Titans or Adam and Eve, or Noah? No, we cannot, not with documentation. But we can trace the history of our developing ideas. In this context historical characters arouse more emotions in us through identification. We find a way back that illumines our origins and Western history. The cosmological nature of Ares that relates us to universals is different than his in-group/out-group effect in the social field.
We look to the past because of present concerns. What has been remembered sheds light on what has been forgotten. It’s a story of survival as much as origins. Myth is visionary. It calls for a fertile and disciplined imagination. It calls us to repeat the question, “What is my myth?” When cultural myths collide there is global conflict – projected disdain and aggression. Winning can come at too high a price.
Are we served or impeded by ancestral influences? What does it mean to create a life with a heroic fantasy, and ego fantasy of being in control and on top of the situation? What are we pursuing? In search of who knows what? We are locked in a struggle of the higher and lower nature of our soul and must be willing to recognize this dominating nature.
Still, things turn out in the same old ways. We need linkage to an order of meaning larger than ourselves and current culture. We need connection with the transcendent other. By what authorities are we living our lives? The living myth is an internal reference. Genealogy is part of an inward individual search. We build our own experience of that deeper dimension through meditatively working within our genealogy, our illustrious ancestors. It opens us to the transpersonal.
Do we have a learned, personal relationship with our ancestors? What god are we serving? The challenge of our inner warrior remains finding peace without victory. We can retreat honorably through a pilgrimage of the soul toward our own origin in the Compassionate Warrior. Mars is exalted in the Taoist notion:“to act but not to compete.”
By activating our genealogy rites, we participate in the myth. We see through our actual life problems with mythological considerations that open a mystery dimension and insight on the right use of power. Genealogy marks the points where mythic thought ran headlong into religion and fundamentalism, and other systems of social control and engineering. Ares th econqueror repeats demands for veneration and still suggests, "I am in control because I am divine."
REFERENCES
Boccassio, Wilkins, Ernest H. (1927), The University of Chicago Manuscript of the Genealogia Deorum Gentilium of Boccaccio, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Clarke, Lindsay, (2005), The War at Troy, HarperCollins (April 2, 2010).
Easter, Sandra, (2015), Jung and the Ancestors: Beyond Biography, Mending the Ancestral Web, Muswell Hill Press.
Faulkes, Anthony, Descent From the Gods http://www.vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/Descent-from-the-gods.pdf
Gaillard , Thierry, (2014), L’intégration transgénérationnelle: Aliénation et connaissance de soi, Ecodition.
Giglio Gregorio Giraldi, De deis gentium.
Hillman, James and Sonu Shamdasani, (2013), Lament of the Dead: Psychology After Jung's Red Book, W. W. Norton & Company.
Homer, (1999), The Iliad & The Odyssey, Barnes & Noble Books.
Jung, C.G. (Author), Gerhard Adler (Editor), R. F.C. Hull (Translator), (1970), Civilization in Transition (The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 10) 2nd Edition, Princeton University Press; 2nd edition.
Jung, C.G., (1975), Collected Works 11, Psychology and Religion, Princeton University Press; 2nd ed. edition (January 1975).
Jung, C.G., (1977), Mysterium Coniunctionis, (Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.14), Princeton University Press.
Jung, C.G. (Author), Claire Douglas (Editor), (1997), Visions : Notes of the seminar given in 1930-1934 (2 Volume Set) (Bollingen), Princeton University Press.
Marsh, Danielle I. Marsh, (2013), Heroes, Saints, and Gods: Foundation Legends and Propaganda in Ancient and Renaissance Rome Eastern Michigan University, Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations.
Settipani, Christian, and Patrick van Kerrebrouck, (1993), La Préhistoire des Capétiens, 481-987, première partie : Mérovingiens, Carolingiens et Robertiens.
Settipani, Christian, (2011), Interview with Christian Settipani, http://worldancestors.blogspot.com/2011/06/interview-with-christian-settipani.html
Rowland, Susan, PhD, (2007), Journal of Jungian Scholarly Studies Vol.3, No. 1, 2007, "Writing about War: Jung, Much Ado About Nothing, and the Troy novels of Lindsay Clarke".
Schützenberger, Ancelin A., (1998). The Ancestor Syndrome: Transgenerational Psychotherapy and the Hidden Links in the Family Tree. London: Routledge.
Seznec, Jean, (1953), The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in ..., Mythos: The Princeton/Bollingen Series in World Mythology, Princeton University Press.
Virgil, The Aeneid of Virgil, (Bantam Classics) Reissue Edition.
Wagner, Anthony, 1975, Pedigree and Progress Essays in the Genealogical Interpretation of History. London: Phillimore.
We are born into a family which we share with more and more contemporary people as we look further back in time. But when we are gathered to the ancestors are we met by the gods? Shall we move Ares from our archetypal altar to the family shrine? Perhaps some of us can.
We know there is power in naming. What is it to name something, to name someone, to name someone an ancestor, or even name a god as direct ancestor? It all comes down to our own name. Genealogy is a heritage-led regeneration. Tracing our lines back from our parents, we move deeper into the realm of the ancestors who gave us the substance of life and soul's self-expression. A sense of soul gives us a sense of history.
Our sacred and mythic roots inform our primordial human behavior and the timeless soul-world. They act on us through meaning as well as the world stage. This natural unconscious process doesn't need to be driven by a therapeutic or self-development agenda. In a complex and fragmented world, genealogy helps us revision the present. We look back for a context of meaning using our most personal history of being.
We don't carry ancestral DNA from all our ancestors. But we remain entangled with them, psychophysically, conscious of it or not. In real, imaginary, and symbolic ways they are meaningful to our wholeness. We reflect as we find our way back. The inner life exerts its manifest influence. Emotions shape our sense of self and relationships.
Ares aggression, might and energy has controlled all of history from behind the scenes. History is written by the competitive winners who then self-describe their glorious descent from the gods, insuring their renown and divine right to rule. It is enforced with constant wars and worldview warfare, a battle for minds playing on anger, greed, and anxiety.