HOW DID YOU EVER GET HERE?
10,000 Paths to the Passed
Each of our ancestors is a gate to our Inner Sanctum, to our soul. Genealogy is the relational mode of understanding. The tale of our genesis is our prima materia and our ultima materia, the unknown and self-knowledge.

In the beginning everything is chaotic, fluid, co-mingled, and undifferentiated. Its alchemical symbol is a 3-headed serpent or dragon, of Sulpher, Mercury, and Salt. This represents the dance of Sun and Moon, King and Queen, the archetypal superpatterns of male and female, and their material offspring. We spring from the soul and remain the child of our ancestors.

In every adult there lurks a child--an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and calls for unceasing care, attention, and education. That is the part of the personality which wants to develop and become whole. -C. G. Jung CW 17: 286

First matter gives universe its properties. It organizes into the Elements, (fire, water, air, and earth), which are the building blocks of words, thought-ideas or archetypes. It is liminal, between manifest and unmanifest. It is the spiritualized essence or soul of substance: identity, form, and function oscillating between creation and destruction.

We must go a bit deeper and realize that with the instinct of creation is always connected a destructive something; the creation in its own essence is also destructive. You see that quite clearly in the moment when you check the creative impulse; nothing is more poisonous to the nervous system than a disregarded or checked creative impulse. It even destroys people's organic health. It is dangerous because there is that extraordinary destructive quality in the creative thing. Just because it is the deepest instinct, the deeper power in man, a power which is beyond conscious control, and because it is on the other side the function which creates the greatest value, it is most dangerous to interfere with it.
~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 654.

The main difficulty here is that the eternal ideas have been dragged down from their "supracelestial place" into the biological sphere, and this is somewhat confusing for the trained philosopher and may even come to him as a shock. (Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 559-560).

"The transformation of Mercurius, as prima materia, in the heated, sealed vessel is comparable to cooking the basic instinctive drives in their own affect until their essential fantasy content becomes conscious."
“Instead of arguing with the drives which carry us away, we prefer to cook them and . ask then what they want. . . . That can be discovered by active imagination, or through experimenting in reality, but always with the introverted attitude of observing objectively what the drive really wants.” (Marie von Franz, Alchemy, p. 129)

It is often suggested the prima materia is found in "feces" or lead which is alchemical code for matter or the physical body and what gets shoved down into the unconscious. The first matter is cyclic, contains all the elements, and is the source of the Philosopher's Stone -- the egg or light of Nature; Anima Mundi or Soul of the World.

The alchemical motto Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultuum Lapidem  means “Visit the innermost parts of the earth; by setting things right (‘rectifying’), you will find the hidden Stone.”

Jung more or less identified the unconscious with the autonomic nervous system. Such sympathetic identification is integral, interiorized or internalized knowing instead of conceptual knowing: unmediated, direct perception by the body and the emotions and the intellect -- the soul. Emotions are part of the reasoning process itself -- bodily intelligence.

This psychophysical mimesis, or power of imitation, is direct experience by total submergence of the unconscious tendencies of the ancestors. So, we can visit the interior of our own earth, our physical body for the treasure of embedded ancestral memories it has hidden for good or ill.

Disorientation & Suffering.
Like any Great Work, Jung suggests that the opus consists of three parts: insight, endurance, and action. Psychology is needed only in the first part, but in the second and third parts moral strength plays the predominant role.

Working through the invisible loyalties of the family system is just the beginning of our journey back through time, the unconscious, and our genetic history. Epigenetics demonstrates that we inherit our parents' trauma and family secrets. Children of survivors may be born less able to metabolize stress, more susceptible to PTSD, a vulnerability expressed in their molecules, neurons, cells, and genes.

Vicarious Traumatization Burden
Traumas are events that induce intense fear, helplessness, or horror. Dysregulation induced by that trauma becomes a body’s default state in PTSD. Trigger a person with PTSD, and the heart pounds faster, startle reflex is exaggerated, we sweat and the mind races. The amygdala, which detects threats and releases the emotions associated with memories, whirs in overdrive. Meanwhile, hormones and neurotransmitters don’t always flow as they should, leaving the immune system under-regulated.

The result can be the kind of over-inflammation associated with chronic disease, including arthritis, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Moreover, agitated nervous systems release adrenaline and catecholamines, both involved in the fight or flight response, unleashing a cascade of events that reinforces the effects of traumatic memories on the brain. This may partially explain why intrusive memories and flashbacks plague people with PTSD. Also, extreme stress and PTSD shorten telomeres—the DNA caps at the end of a chromosome that govern the pace of aging.

Genes & Memes
The dragon's egg of the primordial unconscious or archetypal container signifies the eternal cycle of life, primordial unconsciousness, the unity of opposing forces. Jung said there is no consciousness without discrimination of opposites.

To be whole is to be full of contradictions. The unity never becomes apparent because the opposites within us operate and mingle in various ways and it is their interaction that makes the whole man. The complete human being, the hermaphrodite, is never visible. He is indescribable, always a mystical experience. (Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung - Ostrowski,)

So, the ultima materia means the total recapitulation of the species evolution beginning with conception moved by telos. Julian Huxley argued that evolution moved to the psychosocial realm and DNA was replaced by memory and language inside minds that could understand it, giving evolution a purpose.

The brain is the Tree of Life. If our reptilian brain and brain stem is our internal Tree of Life, then the higher brain and limbic system (with the amygdala) is our Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil. Wisdom of the divine becomes wisdom of the self -- the seed of cosmic consciousness and Immortal Mind. In Hermetic doctrine, a circular relationship exists between mankind and the divine. The cosmos mirrors mankind's need for self-knowledge through recognition.

Serpent's Breath
The serpent in that Tree is its numinous voice, with its active dynamic kundalini -- the Serpent Power, the Secret Fire, the life force or basic animating principle -- the quintessence of matter. Never calling it evil, Genesis 3:1 says, "Now the Serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made."

Our serpentine lines of ancestral descent recursively bite their own tails in the primordial archetype of the Orobouros. “"All human things are a circle” was inscribed on the temple at Athens.

The Hermetic "Holy Grail" was a circular crater or bowl of regeneration described in the fourth treatise of the Corpus Hermeticum. It was a font of immersion symbolizing the constant decay and renewal of all things, present in all Nature. The genealogical Holy Grail is found in royal lines that include the Arthurian legends then trace back to roots in various gods and goddesses.

For the gods, time is primordial and unstructured; for mankind it is historical and linear. In the unconscious if there is any notion of time at all, it is circular, arranging events so they return eternally and can be re-entered through myth, symbol, and ritual with no distinction between self and environment.

Grail symbolism encompasses the womb that always makes children, the horn and cup that serve drink, and the cauldron and bowl that give food. The quest for the Grail comes from these primal facts of life.

The holy bowl -- the cranium, where heaven meets earth -- is where individual souls mix with universal mind in a metaphor of immersive experience, The immersive baptism of wisdom or gnosis means 'living water' that springs up in creativity and illumination -- "the drink of the soul by the sweet stream of wisdom (Sophia)."

What Are They Remembering For Us?
Our history is our collective transgenerational memory. No people can successfully live outside of their memory. Jung tells us that, "Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force." (MDR, Page 277). The past plays one of the most critical roles in Western civilization. but it is so embedded, so obvious that it becomes invisible. The past remains with us as experiences change sperm and eggs.

Genes aren't the cause of most disease; the cause of most disease alters genetic expression. Epigenetics is revealing the biological transmission of molecular memory -- that we can pass down altered responses, emotional trauma, agitated nervous systems, under-regulated immune systems, chronic  over-inflammation, and somatic disorders.

Biological Legacy
Ancestral behavior can also mutate single genes. Everybody has a different level of tolerance for alcohol, but some people act very strangely, exhibiting reckless, impulsive, violent, or even dangerous behavior on alcohol. Finnish researchers found that a fairly common mutation in serotonin 2B receptor gene can render some prone to impulsive behavior by nature, sober or under the influence of alcohol. They struggle with self-control or mood disorders.

“One of our main findings was that the HTR2B Q20* predicted alcohol-related risk-behaviors. The HTR2B Q20* carriers demonstrated aggressive out-bursts, got into fights and behaved in an impulsive manner under the influence of alcohol. They were also arrested for driving while under the influence of alcohol more often than the controls."
“The HTR2B Q20* carriers were not alcoholics per se, as measured by average alcohol consumption, and were not diagnosed as alcoholics, but they had a tendency to lose behavioral control while under the influence of alcohol.”
http://www.sciencealert.com/common-genetic-mutation-linked-to-reckless-drunken-behaviour?utm_source=Article&utm_medium=Website&utm_campaign=InArticleReadMore

All cells have a genetic code with information to produce certain proteins to carry out vital processes. Chemical switches can turn genes on or off, or crank them up or down, so the cells know which proteins to produce and in what quantities. These switches or epigenetic tags are altered by environment, bad habits, and experience, passed on to their offspring, and their offspring's offspring.

Sperm and eggs carry genetic memories of parents' health well before conception. Even what grandparents ate and the father's behavior long before conception can influence the child's health in a range from mood disorders to mental illness. They inherit parents' psychic burdens, anxiety, low impulse control. Older people can unconsciously externalizes their traumatized self onto a developing child’s personality. The physical transmission of the horrors of the past is “embodied history.”

Transgenerational trauma is transferred from the first generation of trauma survivors to the second and further generations of offspring of the survivors by complex post-traumatic stress disorder mechanisms. Epigenetics changes the way instructions in the genetic code were translated and carried out by the body. 

We are more than our transgenerational wounds. Our essence transcends our identification with history. In healing we are not alone, we trust a path to greater freedom, and feel our relationship to the suffering of our family lineage. We feel lighter when we release the burdens of our own trauma or family history. We can make wider choices and expand our sense of belonging in the world.

The Spent Breath of Millions
We all carry and relive the primordial psyche which is reliving the soul of our ancestors. They may be gone, but primordial psyche remains alive within us, and available for interaction. Some live closer to it than others, but we all have creative, rational, and intuitive faculties. These are rooted in this primordial ground, an unalterable level of creative imagination, primordial unity, and instinctive participation mystique. As Jung says, "But in these days we live by our brains alone and ignore the very definite laws of our body and the instinctive world." (Letters Vol. II, Page 567)

Perhaps the ancestors inform us in their own way. Intuition is information that is received by the mind. But for that information to be useful, it must be analyzed and purposefully acted upon. When integrated we act on those intuitive impulses with wise judgment and confidence. Creative ideas then take shape in manifest form.

Primordial Psyche
Our genealogical lines may all look like good little soldiers lined up in neat succession. But they also have complex, nonlinear and cyclic dimensions among the patterns we can discern. This is the realm of the imaginal -- primordial images or instinctual energy which nevertheless have objective effects.

We consciously and unconsciously mourn the loss of the sacred in our lives to the abyss of evolution and our primordial relationship with Mother Earth. We've forgotten our connection to the dark animal orobouric Great Mother. Mother Nature may be the oldest motif but it is the underlying pattern of symbol-formation that is inherited.

Archetypes & Instincts
That something missing in the lives of so many people isn't found in another's form, it's found in the dark of the unconscious. In Jungian thought, when we search for our "other half" and perhaps for our ancestors, too, we actually seek the integration of the elements of the unconscious psyche. “It is always important to have something to bring into a relationship, and solitude is often the means by which you acquire it” (Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 610, Letters Vol. II.)

As Jung notes, "Whether he understands them or not, man must remain conscious of the world of the archetypes, because in it he is still a part of nature and is connected to his own roots." (Symbols of Transformation, Page 23).

If I speak of the collective unconscious I don't assume it as a principle, I only give a name to the totality of observable facts, i.e., archetypes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 567

The main difficulty here is that the eternal ideas have been dragged down from their "supracelestial place" into the biological sphere, and this is somewhat confusing for the trained philosopher and may even come to him as a shock. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 559-560

The Platonic "Idea" is in this case no longer intellectual but a psychic, instinctual pattern. Instinctual patterns can be found in human beings too. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 559-560

"Self-reflection, or - what comes to the same thing - the urge to individuation, gathers together what is scattered and multifarious and exalts it to the original of the One, the Primordial Man. In this way our existence as separate beings, our former ego nature, is abolished, the circle of consciousness is widened, and because the paradoxes have been made conscious, the sources of conflict are dried up." ("Transformation Symbolism in the Mass", CW 11, para. 401).

Inherent Nature of Man
Jung thought the "primordial images" are those expressed in the earliest life-history of the human species. They grow out of the rudimentary nature of the psyche in its pre-conscious form. These basic layers of the psyche spontaneously recur in modern psychic phenomena in ever-new forms that vary around certain deeply rooted motifs at the base of consciousness. The generic structural nature of the psyche is unrestricted to collective or group phenomena.

Water is the cosmogonic element by which the self sinks into involuntary immersion in the dimensional abysses. Our pre-historical ancestors have sunk in the Atlantis of the waters of the unconscious. This may be more than symbolic as we now know humanity has gone through a few local and global catastrophic events.

Supervolcanoes, repeated glaciation, meteor, and comet falls, massive sea-rise, and climate change are only preserved in myth and legend, leading to speculation that we have a species-wide amnesia. We have only recently found that our genome contains contributions from at least three other species -- Neanderthal, Denisovan, and another as-yet-unknown hominid.

Life is a thread interwoven with hidden archetypes which remain entangled in our eternal present. We're already in our phenomenological graves. If we can embrace the ancient soul of our ancestors soulfully and creatively, we may engage and  fall in love with the sacred again. Wisdom is recognizing patterns in life.

In our own genealogy, we begin to reveal a pattern in which we can locate a felt sense of understanding, a resonance that speaks to us within a myth or traces the path of a wounding through therapy. We can followed the thread of understanding using dreamwork, ritual, or other depth psychological methods, or experience the numinous on some unalterable level that changes us forever.

Genealogy can be our approach and return to the sacred. To understand the living we commune with the dead. We approach the phenomena of the psyche as we do the phenomena of nature. We've unwittingly buried with our ancestors any symbolic or revelatory meaning that would otherwise push its way through from the unconscious.

Modern life has short-circuited our connection with the primeval unconscious resulting in an intolerable rift -- psychic dissociation. This division separates us from the sacred, limiting our capacity to navigate divine corridors of the numinous, relegating us to lives of estrangement, isolation, and alienation.

Potentiality of Meaning
Genealogy makes us think about the nature of time and space, our own deepest nature, and cosmos -- and our relationship to it. Entering our genealogy with a sensitivity to the phenomena that might arise means we are more attuned, more likely to notice when they arise within us and what they call forth.

Genealogy becomes our altar to the sacred -- to the Great
Mystery that surrounds ideas of primordial mind, ancestral and shamanic wisdom, visionary transpersonal experiences, and other numinosum. As we become more keenly attuned to the psychophysical sensations of arising emotions, we become more keenly attuned to our ancestry, wholeness, and deep history. At the informational level, our bones are their bones, our nerve pathways are their nerves, our blood is their blood.

Information Storage & Retrieval
Akash and the Akashic Records have been linked to primordial informational fields. Even Tesla says, “All perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, or tenuity beyond conception, filling all space, the Akasha or luminiferous ether, which is acted upon by the life giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in never ending cycles, all things and phenomena.” (Man’s Greatest Achievement, 1907)

Radical new proposals from physics are arising for vectors of information. Ervin Laszlo has linked it with psi phenomena and an integral theory recognizing the self-organizing interconnection of all things. He bootstraps from the Sanskrit, calling non-local interaction the Akasha Paradigm -- an entangled self-actualizing cosmos not limited to the here and now. We can connect and feel into each other. Laszlo shows the cosmos of the Akasha to be a self-actualizing, self-organizing whole. Each part is in coherence with all others and all parts together create the conditions for the emergence of life and consciousness. (2007; 2014).
http://manifestdestinytriforce.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-akashic-records-what-are-they-do.html

Igor V. Limar (2012) proposes linking synchronicity, correlated mental processes, and quantum entanglement. Mental processes of two different persons correlate not just when the subjects are located at a distance from each other, but also when both persons are alternately (and sequentially, one after the other) located in the same point of space. In this case, there is a time gap between manifestation of mental process in one person and manifestation of mental process in the other person.
NeuroQuantology, Sept. 2012, Vol. 10, Issue 3, Page 489-491.
"A Version of Jung’s Synchronicity in the Event of Correlation of Mental Processes in the Past and the Future: Possible Role of Quantum Entanglement in Quantum Vacuum"
http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/view/477/535

Approaching the Ancestors
We begin our genealogy knowing there is an art of approaching. We may yearn for that which we cannot name; we may find unspeakable secrets. Jung spoke of it poetically, "Take pains to waken the dead. Dig deep mines and throw in sacrificial gifts, so that they reach the dead. Reflect in good heart upon evil, this is the way to the ascent. But before the ascent, everything is night and Hell." (Liber Novus, Page 244).

When you step into your own Hell, never think that you come like one suffering in beauty; or as a proud pariah, but you come like a stupid and curious fool and gaze in wonder at the scraps that have fallen from your table. (Liber Novus, Page 262).

But the deepest Hell is when you realize that Hell is also no Hell, but a cheerful Heaven, not a Heaven in itself, but in this respect a Heaven, and in that respect a Hell. (Liber Novus, Page 244).

Our approach is framed with emotionally dependent perspectives, psychophysical reactions, and perceptual filters.
We become absorbed by the emotions we are feeling. Shifts in neurohormone levels affect our consciousness. They may manifest as interference patterns, psychosomatics or what might be called soma-signficance. Sometimes we "carry on" the maladies of our parents or grandparents within ourselves long after their passing. More than genetic or epigenetic  inheritance, perhaps that is one way of keeping them with us.

Soma-Significance
Our bodies are simply connected with an intuitive sense of meaning, in all its implications and possibilities. Our structure encodes the recent and deep past. The physical and its significance are in no way separate but two aspects of a non-dual reality. So, some arising emotions may 'belong' to us while others arise from an empathic identification with our ancestors, or even fusions of their energies. They may appear in the pre-sensory, sensory elements and images in our dreams.

Proprioception is how we perceive ourselves physically -- our own individual orientation, moment to moment. It is how we grasp or sense of the relative position of neighboring parts of the body and strength of effort being employed in movement. Sensory information contributes to the sense of position of self and movement.

Expressing emotions amplifies them. So we can also unlock significance by moving intuitively, by "letting go," and seeing how that feels and what it brings up. That movement itself is a primal image that communicates information not only to our senses but our entire being. It helps us sense stimuli arising within the body regarding position, motion, and equilibrium.

Contemplation of our family tree provokes reflection on our destiny. We look to the beginning to reveal the end, since like a hologram or fractal each part reveals the whole. The initial condition is archetypal. This alchemy of multigenerational marriage bridges has come down to us in the present -- as our unique embodied being. Jung cautions that, "Individuals who believe they are masters of their fate are as a rule the slaves of destiny." (Letters Vol. II, P. 520-523)

Connection to Source is the basis of creation, which manifests something unique from formless nothing. In our mundane existence we can lose sight of the wonder of life. Genealogy manifests the marriage of matter and psyche. Our family tree is a forest doubling in numbers each generation we go back.

Those who have passed are often passed over. Recognizing them, we recognize the reality of the psyche. We contain multitudes. By the medieval period, they number in the thousands, and tens and hundreds of thousands. They outnumber themselves, leading to the phenomenon of 'pedigree collapse,' when ancestors repeat in multiple lines of our descent. Collectively, they are nevertheless our particular way of descending into the cosmos and life and carrying it forward.

Increasing knowledge of self can come by knowing the Others within and renewing ruptured relationships. We can draw an analogy between the ascending and descending pathways of our psychobiology and genealogy. Emotions have bodily effects.

"Threshold events" occur when information that was formerly profoundly unconscious arises within our somatic, emotional, mental, or spiritual perceptions. Once we can locate sensations in the body, we can get a metaphor for what that experience is "like," engaging our imaginal faculty.

Multiple streams of consciousness can participate in one perspective that frees us of our amnesia. Somato-sensory pathways are information channels. The somatosensory system is the part of the sensory system concerned with the conscious perception of touch, pressure, pain, temperature, position, movement, and vibration, which arise from the muscles, joints, skin, and fascia. Self-organizing systems of mind-body communication across all levels from the cellular-genetic to the psychosocial and behavioral affect our psychobiology and natural or spontaneous healing.

It isn't about belief but directing our awareness to a different transderivational level of the system. Richness of interactions allows systems as a whole to undergo spontaneous self-organization and reorganization at all levels. We emphasize the need to deal with illness at formative levels, i.e., at the organism's initial conditions -- perinatal states, as suggested by Grof, Tart, and Mindell.  At subtle levels outer structure is only a passing reflection of this continuing deep inner evolution.

An incoming communication we cannot make any sense of whatsoever is an integral part of processing language, and of attaching meaning to communication. How we ask the question determines the information we get. For example, we can create association rather than dissociation.

One approach is to drop into the body and get a sensation for where a feeling is, following it around, if necessary. Sensory responses are evoked potentials. When we detect a response we have a place to begin noticing, remembering, and processing. At the threshold level we have a 50-50 chance of detecting our response as attention or distraction. We may feel it weakly or even wonder if we felt it at all. This way we can reactivate pretty much any feeling we've ever had or that lives in us with a new level of sensation and connection in the present. We become aware of issues by their somatic, energetic, and emotional components.

"Here, here's where we live
Here is a sea, my family
We'll always be young as we've ever been
Death will not part us again nearer to heaven than
10,000 ancestors who dream of me
Well I hear you dreaming of me
Yeah sometimes, dream of me!"
The Albatross, (Rickie Lee Jones/Leo Kottke/John Leftwich)

Exploring the unconscious through genealogy or psychogenealogy is a healing process, an uplifting engagement that is foundational to self-realization. We are no longer relegated to a single contemporary place and time. The ancestors remained an important part of daily life not so long ago, and remain so for many indigenous societies.

We Are Highly Improbable
Scientists have calculated that each unique individual is highly improbable -- apparently a rather miraculous 400 trillion to one chance. The odds of us existing, 1:400 trillion, are virtually zero. Conversely, by the 40th generation we have over a trillion ancestors. We have to consider the odds of our parents meeting relative to the number of people on Earth. Then consider the odds of contact leading further in competition with all the others we meet.

The probability dwindles of a long-term relationship and reproduction, the right sperm and egg combining, and finally the probabilities of each of our trillion+ ancestors successfully mating with all the variables of genetics that make up the chain of those all those ancestors -- the Tree of Life of perfect eternal fruits. Jung notes obviously that, "Living matter is a mystery which is beyond our understanding, if only for the reason that we ourselves consist of living matter."

You are a virtual miracle, which is simply an event so improbable it is unlikely to occur. So each life is unique and precious to the nth degree as the result of the cumulative process of increasing information. Even Jung might be challenged to call it a fortuitous series of synchronicities. We are an emergent phenomenon. There are mere chance occurrences as well as synchronicity. So, another model is self-organizing chaos in multiple systems.

Field, Form & Fate
Self-organization is the structure of creation -- a process where pattern emerges at the global (collective) level through interactions among the components of the system at the individual level. These interactions explicitly specify the global pattern. We are self-similar to our predecessors and all their reiterations. In the vernacular of chaos theory, we are “strange attractors” or patterns of order within chaos, which never exactly repeat themselves. An observer can never predict exactly what will happen, yet we display a quality of orderliness which hints at underlying “laws not yet discovered.”

As times change so do our metaphors, psychological and otherwise. Self-organization, chaos, and complexity are the basis of the new biology, but it strains the imagination to consider it operating transgenerationally. We might consider the overall effect as a transgenerational field effect -- a relationship of archetypal fields within fields. Memories are accumulating affecting the soul.

Yet here we are, unpredictable though it may be. Souls extend from other souls. Order emerges at the edge of chaos and we are that leading edge of our descent. Our life somehow dances into being. And this is precisely the Mystery of our being, formed by historical, psychosocial, and genetic forces. We are active psychophysical elements of the entire creation. Information and spiritual knowledge is accumulating if we know how to listen deeply with a close attunement to our ancestral and generational themes.

Generational Archetypes
Everything we do starts with feeling and feeling starts in the family. Authors William Strauss and Neil Howe created the Strauss-Howe generational theory. It identifies a recurring generational cycle in the last five centuries of Anglo-American history. It can be explained by four generational archetypes that repeat sequentially in a fixed pattern every 80-100 years. This is the unfixed length of a long human life the ancients called a “saeculum," which can be divided into four "seasons" of approximately 22 years each; these seasons represent youth, rising adulthood, midlife, and elderhood.

Basically, this sociological generational theory describes how the era a person was born into affects the development of their view of the world. Our value systems are shaped in the first decade or so of our lives, by our families, our friends, our communities, significant events and the general era in which we are born.

All cultures are shared unconscious fantasies about how to live life. Traditional cultures viewed time as cyclical, much as the waxing and waning of the moon, the rising and setting of the sun, the birth and death of living creatures, the planting and harvesting of crops, and the seasons of the year. The idea of sacred time as an eternal round and the symbol of the ring or wheel are cross-cultural symbols. There is a repeating cycle in historical generational values. Each 20-year long generation faces similar issues and experiences.
http://www.tomorrowtoday.uk.com/articles/article001_intro_gens.htm

Beyond the modern pop nomenclature of Greatest Generation, Boomers, and Gens X, Y, Millennials, and Post-Millennials ("Homeland Generation"), their 1997 book The Fourth Turning, expands the theory focusing on a pulsating fourfold cycle of generational types and recurring mood eras in American history. Graeme Codrington summarizes the repeating cycle.

Social Cycle Theory
[Each] 80 year period of human history, we start with a crisis period, when society has to stop and deal with an issue that actually changes institutions and structures. Children born during such a time grow up to be like the Silent generation of today. This is followed by an outer directed and driven period of rebuilding, with grand visions and big dreams, giving rise to a Boomer-like generation. This idealistic world cannot be sustained, however, and a period of disillusionment and breaking down follows, with society being reconfigured and adjusted. The children of this era grow up to be like Generation X is today. This era is followed by an inner-directed era, where leaders, institutions and society itself focuses on consolidating and building new foundations, rebuilding institutions and protecting the young. This era gives rise to the type of people who are from the GI generation and the Millennial generation today. Finally, this inner-directed focus cannot be maintained, and a crisis occurs, sparking a new cycle. If this is correct, then generational theorists are expecting a major crisis to hit global society in the next few years. This is something that will cause society to stop, reconsider and reconstitute itself. http://www.tomorrowtoday.uk.com/articles/article001_intro_gens.htm

While they focus on the history of the United States, including the Colonial era and British antecedents, they also find similar generational trends around the globe from the late Medieval period. They have defined generational archetypes in cohort groups that express the zeitgeist of their times. While such attributions are arguable they can provide a touchstone for certain eras and their collective culture.
http://www.lifecourse.com/about/method/generational-archetypes.html

They group four generations into a series of 80-year cyclic 'turnings' that include an initial 'high', followed by 'awakening,' unraveling,' and 'crisis.' Their archetypes include 'prophet,' 'nomad,' 'hero,' and 'artist' generations. We can think of such themes as collective dreams. Repeating cycles are a common theme for both individuals and whole generations.

As is the generation of leaves, so to of men:
At one time the wind shakes the leaves to the ground
but then the flourishing woods
Gives birth, and the season of spring comes
into existence;
So it is with the generations of men, which
alternately come forth and pass away.
– Homer, The Illiad, Book Six

We might benefit from the generational method in formulating our own Big Picture, as well as broad-stroke insights for our own generation within the pattern. The theory contends that each new generation entering a specific lifestage will redefine that lifestage and change it either subtly or dramatically. As generations clash there is a collision of values, expectations, ambitions, attitudes and behaviors -- the generation gap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory

Self-Generating Creativity
Prima materia is the "beginning of all," "the abyss," the primary chaotic earth, or principle of existence in general. In his 1941 ETH lecture, Jung describes how many philosophers have sought information about the prima materia from inhabitants of Hades, or in the "habitation of souls." This is the realm of psychic dark matter, what is hidden from view.

This "land of the dead" is also known as "the egg," "Adam's Earth," "Mercurial serpent," "winged dragon," and  the "entrance to the West,”  "the root of itself," the dark sky of night, the non-created, or eternity. Or, as Jung states, in Liber Novus, "Hell is when the depths come to you with all that you no longer are or are not yet capable of." (Page 244).

Prima materia is also called a neglected, rejected, and abandoned "orphan." The original "chaos" or "sea" constitutes all matter. Such self-organizing complexity is the beginning and end of transformation and renewal. This is the creative process Jung spoke about.

…a creative process, so far as we are able to follow it at all, consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypal image, and in elaborating and shaping this image into the finished work by giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life (CW 15, P. 82)

Edinger (1978) compares the problem of discovering the prima materia to the problem of finding what to work on in psychotherapy.  He gives some hints:

     (1)  It is ubiquitous, to be found everywhere, before the eyes of all.  This means that psychotherapeutic material likewise is everywhere, in all the ordinary, everyday occurrences of life.  Moods and petty personal reactions of all kinds are suitable matter to be worked on by the therapeutic process.

     (2)  Although of great inward value, the primal materia is vile in outer appearance and therefore despised, rejected or thrown on the dung heap.  The prima materia is treated like the suffering servant in Isaiah.  Psychologically, this means that the primal materia is found in the shadow, that part of the personality which is considered most despicable.  Those aspects of ourselves most painful and most humiliating are the very ones to be brought forward and worked on.

      (3)  It appears as multiplicity, "has as many names as there are things," but at the same time is one.  This feature corresponds to the fact that initially psychotherapy makes one aware of his/her fragmented, disjointed condition.  Very gradually these warring fragments are discovered to be differing aspects of ones underlying unity.  It is as though one sees the fingers of a hand touching a table at first only in two dimensions, as separate unconnected fingers.  With three-dimensional vision, the fingers are seen as part of a larger unity, the hand.
    
(4) The prima materia is undifferentiated, without definite boundaries, limits or form.  This corresponds to a certain experience of the unconscious which exposes the ego to the infinite. ...It may evoke the terror of dissolution or the awe of eternity.  It provides a glimpse of the pleroma. ...the chaos prior to the operation of the World-creating Logos.  It is the fear of the boundless that often leads one to be content with the ego-limits he has rather than risk falling into the infinite by attempting to enlarge them.

The different operations to transform the prima materia follow as the natural consequences of finding the material to work on.  The imagery associated with these operations is profuse and draws from ancestors (genetic memory), myth, religion and folklore.  The symbols for all these imagery-systems comes from the collective unconscious. 

Dying to be Heard
Jung implies we cannot get rid of the unconscious and its intuitions, which are rooted in our instinctual, reflexive, and parasympathic systems. But we can go from being 'herd' to being heard. We can engage in intentional multisensory dialogue with our depths. It arises from the primordial ground of the subquantal level of every quantum particle of our being. Jung likened Hades to a black hole without an outlet.

When we enter our genealogy we enter the realm of the dead, so we must find a way to reconcile that metaphor and our surrender to the process. Jung cautions, "Under certain conditions living people can descend into Hades, but it does not agree with them. One must really be dead to go there, for it is the dark land where the dead are imprisoned; and this is a place from which this marvellous substance comes." (ETH, Pages 215-223.)

In Arcadia, the ancients sought out the Necromanteion or "Oracle of Death" where they communed with their dead ancestors in a psychoactive ritual. Though there were many oracles of the dead, the Necromanteion of Ephyra was the most important. Herodotus recounts that Periander, sent emissaries in the 6th century BC to ask questions of his dead wife, Melissa. In his nekyia, Odysseus enters Hades through the Necromanteion.

We can listen to the voice that has no words --the voice of the silence. We're all connected via the interactive sea of energy that connects us to everyone and everything in our world. It seems Hades presides over our descents and perhaps our descendancy. According to Jung, "To journey to Hell means to become Hell oneself. It is all frightfully muddled and interwoven." (Liber Novus, Page 240.)

Caves always had their own gods. The underworld with its narrow jagged gaps is essential to many spiritual worldviews. We can imagine that a notion of hell arose early in mankind's emerging consciousness somewhere between the darkness of imagination and physical mazes of deep caverns that seem like uterine spaces or living, breathing internal cavities that snake for miles. Caves -- the original temples -- were worshiped and feared as the center of the earth with miles of crumbling tunnels and steep precipitous drop offs multiple-stories deep.

Mankind has journeyed deep into them and used these dark and treacherous labyrinths that tortured and twisting passages with seemingly bottomless pits, to live, to hide, to explore, and to worship with pilgrimage, art, and rituals. But all who descend into the underworld do so at their own risk. Initiatory passageways and vertical shafts have dangerous hand and footholds etched in lava and ice, and studded with magical curtains, spires, crystals and inscriptions.

In some sense, hell was our ancient dwelling place to which we returned upon death -- a metaphorical regression to the primal epoch. With its flickering fires, smoky caverns, and hidden dangers the cave gave rise to mythic and archetypal recollections and dreams of ancestral spirits. The dreamworld became a stone cold abyss and the primordial underworld was born.

The first proto-images appeared in cave art. Men and women impulsively desired to participate in the potential transforming powers of the "insides." Hades, the devouring one, could be contacted in the dark cavern of fathomless psychic force. The dismal labyrinthine complexity gave rise to the original trope. The soul is within, below, buried deep in self as within earth itself. This is the archetypal sleepworld of Hypnos and Thanatos.

If we accept that death is not the enemy but a doorway we can rest naturally in what is. The great invitation is to accept death. Lao Tzu invites us to give up the fight against death so existence is revealed as sublime relaxation. Each moment becomes a surrender, one of ‘touch and let go.’ We must not hide, but rather be open to all aspects of being. In sublime relaxation, shadow issues can emerge, some even hidden by our nondual language and cliches. All is grist for death’s mill.

In archetypal psychology, soul remains close to death -- disease, disorder, collapse. We die to the literal and concrete world of the senses for the sake of soul. Hillman imagined Hades right alongside daily life, the invisible made visible in psychic events, soul process, and revelatory meaning. It is the gaps between breaths. The dreamworld is also the underworld of Hades. From Hades perspective we are our images. By "letting be," we can allow dream images to speak for themselves, rather than forcing them toward interpretations for mundane life.

The underworld is the primal void -- the prima materia. Underworld is psyche. It is not a place but a hidden domain of liminal experience -- a dimension not available in itself. Our concern with Hades here regarding our ancestors is the spontaneous image-making of the soul. The 'ground' is a fathomless depth.

We experience dread and resistance when we delve too deeply inside ourselves -- this is the devouring darkness of death and desolation before rebirth. Death is at the heart of alchemy. We can understand the "death experience" metaphorically and psychologically, but we still must all confront it with naked awareness without the symbols and images born of nature's own workings.

Some families never forget who they are, while others struggle with a few fragments that don't seem to fit together. Either way it's a puzzle with some missing or damaged pieces. We must keep the big picture in mind to understand the smaller parts. We all have the ability to recognize and seize the deep sense of mystery that lives in our own lives.

Undoubtedly, there is a sacred dimension to the genealogical process, more so when we do the work ourselves. In our first attempts we cross the threshold of initiation. Jung suggests, "But if you know what the dead demand, temptation will become the wellspring of your best work, indeed of the work of salvation." (Liber Novus, Page 278, Footnote 188.)

"From the middle of life, only he who is willing to die with life remains living. Since what takes place in the secret hour of life's midday is the reversal of the parabola, the birth of death ..." ~Carl Jung; Soul and death, CW 8, §800.

History, Memories, Stories
With genealogy we dig below the basement of our personal unconscious to find what lies below that still haunts or calls for us. What has been buried in the past yet is not gone nor dormant because it is part of the our psychophysical being. Our adaptive survival styles can distort identity in adult life.

To reclaim our ancestral soul we suffer through the anguish of the unknown as well as the burdens of what we do find from which we wished to protect ourselves. There is shock trauma and developmental trauma. We find things that are great and things that are tragic. Genealogy gives and it takes.

The Trail That Never Ends
Such discoveries have been popularized by media: “Finding Your Roots”‘, "Who Do You Think You Are", “Roots of Faith Ancestry”, "Genealogy Roadshow", and others. Genealogy is touted as the second biggest hobby in America. People want to reconnect with their ancestral homeland to know where and how they lived. http://b.treelines.com/in-defense-of-genealogy-as-a-hobby/

Finding Yourself
Many feel compelled to take on the project. Online genealogy sites are some of the most popular on the web. It's a thrill extending the family heritage back a few more generations or discovering that your family is related to royalty, or allegedly to the legends of history. The progenitor of the clan lies at the root of the male line.

Bi-Lateral Descent
Our own bi-lateral descent includes both of our parents. But each female in our direct descent has her own bi-lateral lines, as well. We honor not only our paternal surname (patrilineal descent), but all those grandmothers whose families keep our lines invigorated with new blood.

New surnames enter the tree with each wife. These are not easy lines to follow, retrieve, or draw without the aid of computers. Maiden names often present brick walls difficult to push beyond. Pedigrees show both family-as-child and their families-as-parent.

Algorithm Genealogy
Rather than mere family trees, massive genealogical sites with billions of records have been likened to Amazonian forests of family connections of blood ties and marriage bridges. Genealogists who explore the family tree information, weeding out false or duplicate information, call themselves "forest rangers." When genealogies were digitally archived it became possible for algorithms to find  lines of descent that included both male and female progenitors.

Thus, genealogy reclaimed the realm of the Mothers -- a return of the Feminine to genealogy where female lines are equally valued. Algorithm genealogy finds paths of mixed fathers and mothers to particular ancestors that might not otherwise be discernible. This is particularly so for ancient and legendary ancestors. Usually, the term “Descents from Antiquity” refers to modern efforts to find plausible lines of descent. However, it can also include traditional descents that have varying degrees of reliability.

Matrilineal descent is called a "mother line". An individual is considered to belong to the same descent group as her or his mother. The matriline of historical nobility was also called her or his enatic or uterine ancestry (corresponding to the patrilineal "agnatic" ancestry).

Family Relationships
Algorithms can find all family relationships. Data structure represents a genealogy or genealogies as a stand-alone date structure. Genealogy is considered as a finite, connected graph that enables storage of the minimum of family relationships and recognition of them and others like 'ancestor-descendant', 'sibs', 'twins', 'cousins', 'uncle/aunt-nephew/niece' or 'spouses'. Algorithms for genealogy retrieval are classified as vertical, lateral and parallel. In certain combinations, vertical and lateral algorithms become capable of finding any relatives, no matter if they are in a direct 'ancestor-descendant' relationship or if they have only the same ancestor(s). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8366693

Like miners for meaning we tunnel through our history encountering riches and danger below. But genealogy also has its own myths. As we proceed, we dig deeper into our multigenerational study. Like ancient navigators, we have to course correct along the way for errors, forgeries, and fictitious ancestors. Genealogy is not a mash-up of metaphysical percepts, concepts, and pareidolia. We begin with percepts (i.e. the senses, from which we initially know reality), not concepts (i.e. what we imagine the world to be or, commonly, wish it would become).

Re-Cording the Ties that Bind
Genealogy directly manifests the psyche as a transpersonal field that informs our personality and sustains us. Each ancestral couple embodies psychic polarities from exaltation to the conscious and unconscious suffering that brings positive developments such as enhanced empathy, wisdom, or spiritual development. Speaking of the opposites in his 1925 Seminar (p.85), Jung says, "Life is never so beautiful as when surrounded by death."

As we engage our ancestors we engage the numinous. We discover our mythic roots, the injured feminine, sacrifice, and other powerful archetypal forces of the cauldron of generativity -- the central theme of humanity. Sexuality, love, and spirituality play through the epic ancestral drama, uniting the opposites, again and again, shaping who we are and weaving patterns of conditioning and potential wholeness.

Genealogy can help us recapture that sense through creating a sacred space that allows us to reconnect in a direct way with our ancient past. Encounters with our ancestors, historical and imaginal, are encounters with soul. The imaginal becomes virtual and probabilistic vision. We don't need to split our subjective self from the the objective perception of the world. Perhaps "the view from death" enriches and enlarges the improbability of the gift of life. More than 10,000 ancestors are dreaming of you.

Feel It, Reveal It, Heal It
The emotional brain reacts the same way to objective or virtual information. In fact, the later may prompt a stronger brain response. Even when subliminal, the brain produces a global response to the unexpected, but it is more recognition than complex cognition. The neural correlates of conscious, global processing across the entire network are also generated during unconscious activity...even when something is perceived unconsciously, or subliminally, leading to activity over the entire network. We can speculate that waves of virtual particles might indeed create real effects.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28444-leading-theory-of-consciousness-rocked-by-oddball-study/

Physics is finding that the arrow of time does not seem to follow the standard laws of physics. Now, physicists are unmasking a more fundamental source for the arrow of time: Energy disperses and objects equilibrate, they say, because of the way elementary particles become intertwined when they interact — a strange effect called “quantum entanglement.”

The Crucible of Love
It is well-known to clergy and psychologists that on their deathbeds, people don't wish to discuss God or religion, but their own families. Many are not afraid to die but don't want to leave their living families. They speak and may even call out to their parents, their sons and daughters, or see lost spouses.

Or, we may call on our 'godparents,' those whom we've chosen as nurturing allies, known or unknown, for their inspiration and succor. Hillman noted as we become old we develop character which makes us fit ancestors and mentors.  Soul's Code (1997)

We are born into and create our lives in families and families we create. This is where we find meaning, where our purpose becomes clear. There we experience love and first give it, and are hurt, betrayed, or rejected by caregivers and siblings. In this crucible of love we begin asking big spiritual questions to which we come back in the very end. Jung admonishes us, "My friends, it is wise to nourish the soul, otherwise you will breed dragons and devils in your heart." (The Red Book, Page 232)

Those images in the conscious mirror reflect both the material and universal soul, our spiritual essence through a "sympathy," an intelligence of spirit that reflects the animation of the material world and the union of cosmic reality.

Some confess what it feels like to know that they neglected, criticized, abandoned, or engulfed and overwhelmed their children, or that drinking destroyed their family. They lament they were physically or psychologically abusive, or failed to care for those who most needed them. It isn't difficult to understand how such behavior leaves its mark on the future. All seem to know what is missing, and what was deserved by the innocent.

On their deathbeds, people often speak of the love they felt and gave away -- or didn't receive or give, or even known how to offer unconditionally. Love may be imperfect, emotionally unavailable, or entirely missing, or full of rage and trauma -- or uncertain and ambiguous. In the end the meaning of life is concerned only with love -- lost and found. Love is what matters -- perhaps the only thing that  matters in the end.

We may hope we've had a gift to give. When the love is imperfect, or a family is destructive, forgiveness can be learned. Our spiritual work as human beings is learning how to love and how to forgive. Most have a simple wish that someone will remember them fondly and that they lived and loved fully, even if they know they have not.

But it's not about fixing, or making, or doing, but being in the presence of the Mystery into which we are born and to which we return with a fully open heart. The Egyptians had a ceremony for weighing the lightness of the heart against the weight of a feather of Ma'at for balance.  Thought, memory, and emotion came from the heart. Today we speak of the neurological heart-brain and gut-brain. We might imagine weighing our own hearts for such psychic and emotional balance.

Exploring our family tree helps us explore the depths of love. We never say goodbye to those we hold in our hearts. If we listen with our heart, we make a mindful journey as we wend our way along. We won't know where it is leading. As in physics, the very act of our observation disturbs and alters the whole system through our participation.

Long buried issues come up, are unburied, challenge and lay claim to us somatically, emotionally, mentally, even spiritually. Many develop self-destructive biological processes or behaviors. We may need to reconnect with Death and our own death to reorient ourselves in life and find sanctuary. Doors are opened and closed by the mysterious spirit behind life and death.

Our dreams and the body will tell us. We may come to understand that fate itself rules and as we age we have to give up our own story, our merely personal history, to find peace. We find in some sense the end is in the beginning. Even death may need to feel our love. Death becomes our medicine.

Genealogy has a dry factual basis but the imaginal dimension is also inherent in the self-unfolding dynamics. It helps us create and cultivate an imaginal sacred space where soul and spirit unfold generation after generation. It creates  a wealth of energy that we find is a source of wisdom and containment. Inner guidance connects us with source. We awaken from our illusion of separateness by embracing our extended family.

We cross the threshold from the edge of the sacred, into the temenos, moving toward the numinous at the far boundaries of our mythically-rooted lines. As we stay with a family line, working our way up through the children to the parents, we get to "know" them. The sacred makes claims on us as well as offering gifts. It takes the form of personal experience.

Spontaneous fantasies with all kinds of implications will naturally arise in the genealogical process. Jung notes that such play of ideas and impression can be purposeful and valuable. Hillman says we wrestle with our spirits at night.

"The dynamic principle of fantasy is play, a characteristic also of the child, and as such it appears inconsistent with the principle of serious work. But without this playing with fantasy any creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable. It is therefore short-sighted to treat fantasy, on account of its risky or unacceptable nature, as a thing of little worth. (Psychological Types Ch. 1; Page 82).

Resonance Phenomena
Our ancestral deep field is a plenum of personalities and procreation -- a community of virtual beings and sacred space of wholeness. It pulsates with life force and the creative energy of love. We can imagine messages resonating along the many family lines -- waves of vibration that connect with the ancient past like some archaic tin-can and string 'telephone.' Such 'kindling' is an important part of our neurological process. Listening and sounding is interactive.

In The Emerald Tablet, Thoth says, "Send through thy body a wave of vibration, irregular first and regular second, repeating time after time until free. Start the wave force in thy brain center. Direct it in waves from thine head to thy foot."

The recipient then becomes a receiver and, through the process of entrainment, modulates the same frequency and the same waveform in a reversed phase. They become coupled and are no longer distinguishable from one another. In-between two physical systems, entrainment synchronizes one entity to vibrate in an identical way in metaphorical response to the Other.

"The Orphan" Soul
Nature’s ensemble of voices curiously leads to systems of increasing complexity, and hints at a collective intelligence -- the instinctual and the luminous. It may at first come as an emotional flooding or an inundation of fantasies before that massa confusa of primal material differentiates. We may experience loss and grief that things haven't worked out as we might have hoped. Powerful events can triggers such feelings.

It evokes an image of the archetypal  "orphan soul" sought by alchemists to create the Philosopher's Stone. Secret fire is the "leaded" fuel that cooks under the surface from the "heat" of awareness -- that cooks it into conscious experience. This calcination is Stage 1 of our spiritual alchemy, which is followed by dissolution (solutio) and separation (coagulatio).

We begin in a state of disintegration, of insensibility, and gradually reach greater awareness. We all have a bit of the disillusioned orphan in us. Some have living parents who were never available or are now emotionally unavailable. We may be alienated but long to belong or connect in a meaningful way. Perhaps we resonate with other orphans in our lines.

The experience of "adult orphans" is often underplayed as we consider the death of our parents 'normal' in adulthood, but it is a condition worthy of attention, and genealogy is one way to address it, to deepen it, to deal with abandonment and loss. Jung says, "When one lives for a long time in great solitude, the silence or the darkness becomes visibly, audibly, and tangibly alive, and the unknown in oneself steps up in an unknown guide."

This is no seance, spiritualism, hallucination, or lunacy, and should not be approached as such.  It is not supernatural. This is an involuntary flood of charged emotions arising from the unconscious. Often double binds and hyperarousal lead to emotional flooding -- that ocean of emotion. Much of the trauma is held in the body in structure, soft tissue, and symptoms.

It's All Relative
For example, we may have internalized the traits of one parent, as well as the other parent's loathing of those qualities. If you are overloaded you may feel swamped.  You may dream of tsunamis. Such feelings are linked to helplessness, frustration, anger, feeling trapped, remorse, guilt, and self-hate.

Orphans have to learn to not be loyal to their suffering, the abandonment,  trauma, and betrayal. But we must be willing to accept our grief and loneliness and let go. It's not just your pain or hurt, but the hurt of humanity in this vastness. We can learn mercy and forgiveness, within our Tree and for ourselves. We may transform from hating and being incensed, to the sweet fragrance of an incense tree that perfumes our sacred space.

Follow the Pain & Fear Deeper
Pain also leads us into liminal space. We can view it as an acronym for "pay attention; integrate now." When we surrender control, something genuinely new can happen. We see beyond our self-interest and security issues. The liminal opens a space for alternative consciousness to emerge.

Furio Jesi suggests the mask of pain and despair counterfeits the reality of death. He cites Dionysus as the God of pain because loss of the past is painful when the truth of the past is not mentioned. Primordial initiation was about the experience of death and rebirth -- change from one state to another, from one Time to another. The death that precedes rebirth is the abandonment of the past, but rebirth includes everything from the past that was and is alive that we don't remember.
Furio Jesi, Mythological material. Myth and anthropology in Central European culture, Einaudi , Turin 1979.

House-Burial
Some cultures wanted their dead so close to home and family, they buried them under their house. In the Neolithic era, the dead "slept" beneath the floor where their kindred continued their activities. The Greeks and Minoans interred loved ones, especially children, in jars buried in the floor. The Dravidians buried the dead in the house so their spirits could be more easily reborn as children of the same family. Poverty is another reason of under home burials.

The Cherokee buried their dead in the floor directly under the place where the person died. Some cultures later removed the bones and venerated them in the house. Sometimes only the soul of the dead is returned to the house after burial elsewhere. We likely wouldn't do so, but if we don't have an urn, we might have file boxes of photos and genealogical research "buried" in the basement or elsewhere, symbolically echoing the ancient sentiment of "housing" the dead. We may house skeletons in the basement of our subconscious.

Even grieving can be a sacred space -- a Grail space where magic can happen. We cannot get rid of the pain until we discern what it has to teach us. Much of our understandable anger is actually disguised and denied sadness, a depression.

We can learn self-compassion to carry our pain more graciously. Meditative dialogues and co-meditation with the ancestors become possible. As we penetrate the unknown we have to tolerate not knowing and maintain trust in the process and sea of people.

We are never experts in this task, as Confucious reminds us: "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." In 2009, China acknowledged a new Confucianism by publishing the genealogy of the 800-year-old Kong family on a computer database at China's National Library in Beijing.

China is trying  to revive its traditional culture, including genealogy. "The Chinese have always been interested in their past -- worship of ancestors is worship of origins." (Heinz 1999:225). Kong Ming, a 33-year-old businessman from Shanghai, began researching his family in 1998. His elderly grandfather dug up the coffin in which he had hidden the family records to escape persecution during the Cultural Revolution. Heinz, Carolyn Brown, Asian Cultural Traditions (Waveland Press, Inc., 1999).

Tian, commonly translated as Heaven or Sky, but philologically meaning the Great One, the Great Whole, is a key concept in Confucianism. "Forming one body with the universe" is a neo-Confucian ideal. As we work, formlessness congeals into form. We arose from that. Such a healing space is naturally therapeutic and traditionally described as "the center of the world."

In our case this archetypal center is the Tree of Life that connects heaven and earth. It realigns us with the Cosmos with a new perspective -- a much larger story. Our personal family tree merges with the collective World Tree. We repeat the cycle of discovering and adding ancestors and the images and symbolism of their lives. We get out of it the transformed energy we put into the process.

In Letters, Vol. I, Jung suggests, "The community is nothing without the individual and if a community consists of individuals that do not fulfill their individual telos, then the community has no telos or a very wrong one" (p. 464). The only thing we need to know is ourselves, the greatest secret, the greatest gnosis.

Pleroma
In Liber Novus, (Pg. 274, Fn 75), Jung notes that life is an energetic process with its own goal. "But every energetic process is in principle irreversible and therefore unequivocally directed toward a goal, and the goal is the state of rest ..." Jung's plenum is a field of universal potential, unbound luminosity and infinite awareness. Space isn't an empty vacuum but characterized as a fullness and creative flow.

Science tells us the ultimate state of rest is the virtual vacuum of absolute space, the Zero Point, zero-phase geometry. It is the groundstate of being and has been likened to the Akashic Field and universal memory by Ervin Lazlo (2007).

This subquantum coherent field is pure information. Rather than linear lines of ancestors, we might think of them metaphorically as superpositions of our deep ancestry -- a superwave "reaching over" with interference peaks, information states with entangled and partly coherent stimulated emissions.

Jung called it the Pleroma, after the Gnostics.  The non-dual is beyond all distinctions, a field that is the only reality. "Emptiness is Form, Form is Emptiness." In it thinking and being cease, because the eternal is without qualities. There is no one in it because they would be differentiated from the Pleroma, according to the Red Book. We must watch out for what we believe, but we can entertain many notions.

All These Paths Lead to You
The call to adventure is the call to the future and interiority. Genealogy makes it graphically obvious that many paths lead to the central experience and facilitate the other paths that lead there.

An underground stream runs through the hidden ground of our being.  We can meander through the furthest reaches of the transpersonal imagination, purposefully seeking that which remains as-yet-unknown in the depths. It is just a matter of being present with our experience, open to what is found along the way, be it answers or ambiguity.

Mankind has wandered in the fields of reality seeking its true nature since the dawn of time. A fiercely lived life is an artform -- illumination in action, based on discipline, practice and service. The specific “Art” is alchemical, a merger of inner and outer reality in One World. Jung said, "To live what is right and to let what is false die, that is the art of life." (Liber Novus, Pg 274, Footnote 75).

Rootedness
Conscious experiences belong to slipstreams of consciousness, and these streams are part of nature’s process. They can be described in physical and psychological terms as our sacred journey.

Experience is a process rooted in the stream of consciousness and happens “to” a person in that stream of consciousness. Each person is an aspect of nature’s process whose stream can flow forth like a fountainhead to quench and nourish many over the course of time.

Whose Trauma Is It?
Whether your genealogical methods are clinical or intuitive, you face your lineage as an individual. Each ancestor relationship you form is special to you because intuition is never completely conscious. Regardless of our style of genealogy practice, we need to approach recovery of our deep identity with a sense of balance. We want to recover our ancestors, not reinvent them. We want to recontextualize them and reinvigorate that spirit. At some point all family lines fade into historical amnesia.

Trauma can be physical or psycho-emotional impact. We may seek specific trauma recovery while a variety of behavioral, emotional and physical conditions are rooted in unresolved traumatic experiences, whether in real-time crisis or post-event disorder. Anger and hate may be there but so is our inner guidance system, the capacity to love and accept.

Transgenerational Inheritance
Our inheritance from ancestors is both good and burdensome. Their issues become our issues through genetics, epigenetics, and shared trauma. Not only our emotions, but what we eat and breath affect the genes of our descendants. The environment affects up- and down-regulation of gene expression and disease development.

Upregulation and downregulation can also happen as a response to toxins or hormones. An example of upregulation in pregnancy is hormones that cause cells in the uterus to become more sensitive to oxytocin.

Transgenerational integration suggests that trauma can become displaced in time, leading to symptoms and repetition compulsion. Freud saw repetitious compulsions or symptoms as a way of “working through” or exorcising the pain of traumatic events and thoughts. But it is also re-traumatizing. Working through requires some degree of re-living of events as we re-enliven emotional and mental patterns.

Metaphors Be With You
However, we can safely use metaphors rather than the historical dimension. How we know what we know is expressed naturally in metaphor. Images arise as self-generating metaphors -- what is happening and what it's like.  Thus, we can dig up our buried sorrow, or release bottled-up anger.

We can express our experiences symbolically. Metaphoric expressions are tied to our unconscious or implicit experiences. They are inherent to our language. Metaphor functions like dreams and symptoms that simultaneously express material from different dynamic, structural, and topographical psychic levels.

With metaphor we can link our experiences across diverse times and situations. Change the root, change the reaction. We treat the figurative language as real. The figures of the subconscious pictures or constructs are treated as real. Resistance is also information from which a metaphor can emerge. Such metaphors are naturally healing.

Lacan reversed Freud's conception: Symptoms help us reorganize our life so we continue to derive a secret enjoyment from something that, on a conscious level, we want to be rid of. We may not really enjoy it, but what is "familiar" from family life, even chaos, is often more comfortable than what is healthy.

Trauma Crosses Generations
Trauma in one generation can be transmitted consciously and unconsciously to later generations. For example, three or more generations can share similar traumas, such as early loss of a parent, and/or early loss of a spouse. They may all share multi-generational denial, repression, triggers, PTSD, unresolved grief and attendant depression.

The contradiction between conscious aversion and unconscious enjoyment actually warps our symbolic-imaginary spacetime, causing the strange tail-chasing, repetitive “orbiting” behavior of all neuroses and obsessive behavior. Our miseries or dreary compulsions conceal, 
preserve, and protect a vital and enlivening unconscious dimension. Genealogy and therapy help us unbury these toxic attachments from our genetic tree. Expressive therapies address intergenerational trauma and psychophysical conditions.

There are numerous changes at the physical, neurobiological, emotional, and spiritual levels. There are phases of response after trauma. We can map traumas across our own lives and related others in a timeline revealing personal challenges and stress triggers. For self-care and self-regulation we can make a stress management plan. Some might choose to use expressive or genogram techniques for trauma integration.

Often it is necessary to clarify a vague content by giving it a visible form. This can be done by drawing, painting, or modeling. Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.” (Jung, CW 16, Para 181)

Cross Time Communication
Paradoxically, our most personal past is a telos. This emergent aim or purpose pulls us forward into our deep past through a process in the present. In genealogy, it is one thing to know what to look for and another to know where to look. The red thread passes through the eye of the cosmic needle.

Like Aboriginal song-lines from the Dreamtime, our genealogical lines reveal place names with their own stories. We have to sense our way along, to navigate through the terrain of the unconscious. Such dreaming-tracks cut through the wilderness of the unknown. We catch the rhythm and 'observe' the landscape. By such a path, through sacred movement of the soul we discover our Self, a dynamic emancipation of our life energies and self-actualization.

"Our concepts of space and time have only approximate validity, and there is therefore a wide field for minor and major deviations.
In view of all this, I lend an attentive ear to the strange myths of the psyche, and take a careful look at the varied events that come my way, regardless of whether or not they fit in with my theoretical postulates." (Jung, MDR, Pg. 300)

Reassume the Past
Our ancestors embody our innate unconscious metaphors and archetypal autonomy. Archetypes give form to chaos and intuition. Jung said, "An archetypal content expresses itself, first and foremost, in metaphors." In this sense, genealogy has a transcendent function, concerning the meaning of being in time -- psyche's innate purposiveness, aesthetics, and biocultural evolution.

False Trails
We must watch our conditioned responses directly. As we engage in this Great Work, we encounter merge issues, dead ends, and false trails. We cannot rewrite the past. We must be willing the surrender understanding we thought we had found if it proves fallacious.

We must frame and reframe our pictures of the past as it grows and changes each time we access our genealogy, each time we contemplate it within. In that process we will make many concretizations and assumptions, commit cultural errors, and encounter lacuna we cannot fill with any evidence. The gap in time is also a gulf in mores and ways of life, so be careful making anachronistic personal judgments from today's standpoint.

Hypnoidal Dynamics
We all have our own wounds and our ancestors did, too. The wound healing cycle is an instrument of recovery. Pathological traumatic stress (PTSD) has hypnoidal dynamics indicating unresolved trauma. Fostering resilience with direct suggestion, metaphor, and transpersonal methods that bring healing from beyond the self is another long-term recovery tool. Analytical methods help internal conflict resolution and transformation. Bio-energetics and hands on methods help the physical and energy body.

Because the brain accepts the imaginal as real, changes take place at a physical and mental level. Looking at what lies ahead becomes part of our noncausal interpretation of the past, an emotional movement from darkness to light. We live nested in two levels of personal and transpersonal being. We should be watchful for our own projections and distortions.

We must bear in mind that we do not make projections, rather they happen to us. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 563.

Of course you really don't make projections: they are; it is a mistake when one speaks of making a projection, because in that moment it is no longer a projection, but your own property. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1493.

Ghosts and Spirits. These phenomena are projections from the background of the psyche, autonomous inner images of a subjective nature, obeying no conscious intention, but coming and going at their own volition. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 40

Those wounds teach us something about ourselves that effects a holistic re-patterning. Going through our wound means realizing we will never again be the same once we emerge from this initiatory process. All forms are dissolved in the underground stream, the rushing stream of consciousness, in a  baptism or healing immersion in the vast ocean of deep consciousness. We ride the dragon on the backs of our ancestors to the realm of the Unborn, returning to the pure creative energy of the cosmic womb for the mystery of alchemical rebirth.

Going through our wound is a genuine (ego) death experience, as our old self "dies" in the process, while a new, more expansive and empowered human potential is born. Thus, the Grail is not only about birth, it is about catalyzing transformational rebirth into a nonlinear, nonlocal expanded sense of self beyond mere ego inflation. Self-actualization or self-realization implies the stabilizing or grounding of the spiritual fruits of inner exploration. This is gnosis.

Marie-Louise Von Franz, said "the wounded healer IS the archetype of the Self (our wholeness, the God within) and is at the bottom of all genuine healing procedures," resulting in a more open-ended and expansive sense of who we think we are, and who we imagine others are in relation to us. The wound is not only a personal experience, but a doorway, a hyper-dimensional portal into the transpersonal / archetypal realm, which is a higher order (in terms of freedom) of our being.

Self-Compassion
Both future and past operate in the present, symbolizing our as-yet-unlived life potential, including extension into eternity. Anticipation fuels the process, but everything cannot happen at once as we need time to digest it. We tend to overlook the infinitely vast scale of time at every moment. Genealogy helps us keep such insights in sight by softening the boundaries of birth and death in our narrative, exposing us experientially to the unbound sweep of deep time.

We are neither gods nor demons, and neither were our ancestors though we are all filled by archetypal potentials, their archetypal pathologies, and symptoms. Our collective unconscious -- the primary phenomena -- informs the experience of being. Suffering merges with hopeful transcendence. Instead of dissociating, we experience it by creatively collapsing the future-past timeline, reflectively and reflexively interpreting that experience. We remember the past but not the future because of a buildup of correlations between interacting particles. From some perspective there is a single psyche and a single subject that is not acquired through personal experience.

Archetypal Merger
All individual lives are simultaneously participating in the collective unconscious, as graphically depicted in our genealogical charts. Jung links the realization of withinness with the image of the World Mother, Mother Bride, rebirth, and the archetype of vision of what is waiting to be seen and known -- a symbolic within. Our revelations express the aims and instincts of the soul which invites us into the sacred marriage with psychic life. Our story is a living symbol of eternal mystery, personal and collective.

We participate in that Royal Marriage, the telos of Jungian work, when we lovingly hold those opposites, all those couples that metaphorically and literally express the union of personal and archetypal mediators, anima and animus. Authentic and genuine relationship is complimentary.

Genealogy is thus another way to experience and integrate the concept that psyche is matter, and matter is psyche. What is-is, and it is divine. Jung says, "In this deification mystery you make yourself into the vessel, and are a vessel of creation in which the opposites reconcile." As St. Augustine said, "For it is secretly, and in the hidden depths of the spirit, that the soul of man is joined to the word of God, so that they are two in one flesh." This is the marriage of heaven and earth, the eternal and transient.

The divine is a divine couple, the father and mother of souls, who give birth to the divine child in the depth of winter. Jung speaks of the path of soul as a phenomenological path -- the soul lives and knows. This is Gnosis. It is a psychic fact we are born in the divine world to the divine couple. The divine is within the unconscious but autonomous. It gives birth to the divine child, to possibility, the potential of the soul. Our spiritual task is to protect the child.

Sacred Marriage, Sacred Feminine
Perhaps the archetypal appeal of sacred marriage -- the union of alchemical opposites, hierosgamos, or Mysterium Coniunctionis -- is one reason many people become fascinated with royal lines almost to the exclusion of others. Yet it is only the royal lines that have epic historical scope and are hypothetically traceable back to ancient times.

Spiritual marriage recalls the union of archetypal figures in the rebirth mysteries of antiquity.. These are ancient rites of fertility, regeneration, and psychophysical transformation, an archetypal drive inherent in our nature and a primordial mystery of sexuality.

Myths come to life in ways that resonate with our own lives. According to Jung, the deeper mystery of the unifying myth represents the psychological process of "individuation," the "inner marriage" of the opposites within the psyche - masculine/feminine, conscious/unconscious, divine/human - giving birth to the archetype of wholeness.

Naming Our Ancestors
When writing appeared in the 2nd and 3rd millennium BC,  “a new concept of creation enters religious thinking: Nothing exists unless it has a name. The name means existence.” “Naming has profound significance in the Old Mesopotamian belief system. The name reveals the essence of the bearer; it also carries magic power . . . What is important to observe here is that the concept of creation has changed, at a certain period in history from being merely the acting out of the mystic force of female fertility to being a conscious act of creation ” by merely expressing “the name”. (Gerda Lerner, 1986)

As preparation for eternity, the ancient Egyptians made a priority not only of preserving the body but also preserving the name of the deceased.  The body, a combination of the non-physical ka, ba, name and shadow, was thought to make a person complete in this life and in the next.

So, perhaps in this archaic sense, we complete our ancestors as we recollect and re-member them. Just as archaeologists can only tell so much from digging up artifacts and interpreting archival material, psychologists and genealogists can do no more.

Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood? --Jung

Archai (Greek, noun, plural)
Universal principles, original forms; the fundamental essences and primordial forces that animate the cosmos. Archai derives from the Greek word, arkhe, meaning beginning. In archetypal psychology, the root metaphors of psychological function.

 GENEALOGY FACTS & FICTIONS
WHEN WE ARE DEALING WITH ANCESTORS,
WE  KNOW WE ARE IN THE REALM OF IMAGINATION

Most people are nothing special, except perhaps to those close to them. Descent is one of the Mysteries of everyday life. What 'matters' about our past is more than only the biology of our descent, though this is the premis of genealogy. We are not only related to each other in family and in social relationships, but are related to all nature.

Among genealogists the battle still rages, whether to cut off once and for all disputed, fictitious, and legendary lineage, or to allow its traditional use to remain, even though some may be misled in their own minds by mythological material. Their issue, on shared trees, is having to repeat the same corrections over and again, especially in the medieval era. Fake lines to royalty that arise in the 1800's are also common, so they get re-added as often as they are removed. The same mistakes are copied over and over.

Who's Genealogy Is It?
In the medieval and ancient lines the whole research landscape changes. Monks in early Christian eras invented genealogies taking the lines of kings back to Adam. If the kings were no longer descended from the indigenous gods, then they must be somehow descendants of figures from the Bible, from Troy, and from Rome.

Then, starting in the 1200s and reaching a peak in the 1600s, royal propagandists were competing to collect every old tradition and invent new ones if necessary to enhance the prestige of royal and noble families.

The French kings, for example, produced the Grandes Chroniques de France that claimed to show they were the heirs of a small band of Trojan refugees who established the Frankish people. Not to be outdone, Habsburgs followed a conscious policy for centuries of creating propaganda to show they were the heirs of the Trojan hero Aeneas through Julius Caesar. The idea that Julius Caesar was descended from Aeneas is just a much earlier, Roman example of the same kind of propaganda.

Still, radical amputation is a non-issue in Jungian work, which approaches mythic material with an "as if" on a regular basis. No one is confused there about the imaginal nature or depictions of mythic material and narrative. In many genealogy sites, such lines questioned by 'realists' are clearly marked as such. There will also, as well, always be fantasy-prone individuals who will believe what they wish to believe about such subjects.

Genealogy is a systems concept of emergence -- our emergence. It is a creative process within a formal system -- an ecology of ancestors we foster and conserve, not merely a causal chain of linear descent. We create most of what we think of as reality through the stories we tell, even in science. Lately, scandals in science and medicine suggest as much as half of the published studies are erroneous, and yet are disseminated and allowed to influence public opinion and behavior.

Even profiles that contain only names and dates are still story telling. They say, "I come from people who lived here and went there." They connect into history. And history can be scholarly history, which depends on evaluation of sources and the creation of logical arguments, or it can be family history, which depends on the stories being passed down through the generations, or it can be even older oral history, which existed before writing, and eventually made it into manuscripts and then into print.

Though the lines often blur, a generic distinction is the source of such stories. Biases in story telling needs arise in relation to genealogy and the World Tree:
we need to see how we might be connected to history, or we need to know that we are special somehow, or we need to be able to see a path that connects us to our gods. All such stories are "real," since they are valued and retold, giving people a picture of who they think or imagine they are.

"Imagined" Family
But, none of them are "real," in that even with as much good evidence as we can muster, good solid scholarly sources have their own biases, and will have included some things and left others out. The self-narrative of individuals is notoriously unreliable, and second- or third-hand evaluations probably moreso, despite well-meaning research. In genealogy as in life we mostly relate to our illusions of family, rather than a fixed reality, at best based on skimpy information.

With any sort of balance or psychological perspective it is easy enough to recognize when we step from the ordinary world into that imaginal world, which is more than illusion or fiction, if less than or merely different from hard fact. Some of our heritage comes from specific places and people while the deeper parts come from  the Far Country. By "traveling" in such foreign territory we learn other kinds of things about ourselves and our origins.

"Foreign Countries"
For example, in Masonry “Foreign Countries” do not mean the various geographical and political divisions of the Old World, nor a realm of external feats. “Foreign Countries” is used as a symbol. Like all symbols, it has more than one interpretation; but, unlike many, none of these is very difficult to trace or understand.

Through such travels we gain a new perspective on our origins, life, love, and ourselves. When we visit such 'foreign lands' we must use the laws of that land as well as customs and traditions - deciding what is right and what is wrong. In this regard a Jungian approach offers the most leeway without succumbing to literalisms or fantasy-based illusions.

Like genealogy, Freemasonry itself is a “foreign country” in which the initiate will travel; a world as different from the familiar workaday world as France is different from England, or Belgium from Greece.  The standards are different. Surely such a land is a “foreign country” to the stranger within its borders; and the visitor must study it, learn its language and its customs, in order to enjoy and explore it.

Professional genealogists trying to revision traditional practice need not shepherd the public like over-protective parents. The fantasy of professional genealogy as some sort of factual reality is erroneous in itself. It remains an aid to learning, discovery, or problem-solving by experiment and trial-and-error methods.

Reconciling Pedigrees
Sure, we can rely on the data, but only to a certain limited extent. A quick review of more recent census data shows it is riddled with multiple incorrect spellings and data recording, just for starters. If you can get a line back to the early-1800s you have a good chance of connecting to extant research, especially American colonial lines.

Further back, most family lines disappear by 1500 or so, and there are no proven lines from before around 700. Statistically, our descent from Charlemagne is (virtually) certain, but the details of who, how, where, etc. could be laughably wrong or contain gaps.

All family trees go back as far as anyone else's whether you know it or not. You are real and so are your ancestors, even if they are hiding. Hidden ancestors are as real as you are in this process of "Hide and Seek." Our job is to effectively release the hidden information and forms, even where 'inaccurate' information proliferates as much as reliable data. Cliches, such as "Like father, like son" are necessarily abbreviated 'truths' that stand up to scrutiny in some instances and utterly fail in others.

Genealogy's Shadow
Genealogists and Curators need to realize they are always and only dealing with a symbolic landscape, even though some factual hook is available. To imagine otherwise is psychological naivete. They need to realize that no matter how they approach it or annotate the lines, or discuss the medieval flaws in the system people come to genealogy for their own reasons -- no longer the legal issues of legitimacy, inheritance, or succession. We all risk inaccuracy together.

People are inclined to believe what they want to believe in terms of literalisms and metaphors for their own psychic needs. Whatever impressions we form, including those about our parents, remain mostly that. Psychological pay offs feed into self-narrative, the stories we tell ourselves, a social construct much like Jung's persona archetype.

Most of us understand the notion that history is written by 'the winners' and is riddled with propaganda and deliberate falsehood or retrofitted  'spin'. Historical accuracy outside the story is likely unattainable, much less something genealogy is capable of re/producing. Can we not logically discern, for example, that we all descend from archetypal evil, whether we find the Mark of Cain in our pedigree or not?

Archetypal Assumptions
We approach the family tree in full comprehension this is an archetypal phenomenon. The only certainty in genealogy is the archetypal imagination. Pedigree is way to help us imagine our origins. Genealogy is a template; in the beginning a tabula rasa upon which we construct a family "history." Often even the timeline is weak or ignored.

Like a Big Dream genealogy requires heuristics, any approach to problem solving, learning, or discovery that employs a practical method not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect, but sufficient for the immediate goals. Heuristics is a discovery process of gaining knowledge or some desired result by intelligent guesswork rather than by following some preestablished formula -- "trial-and-error" learning or using "a rule-of-thumb." In other words, we interpret all the data.

In certain situations it is not enough to simply cross that threshold; we must wait for the image to penetrate, work in the depths, gestate, and emerge from its own path. Such phenomena can be treated the same as all psychic phenomena.

People's capacity to tell the difference between fantasy and reality varies to the degree to which they use accurate 'reality testing' or are being sucked into the stories they are telling themselves about their family. 

These include religious beliefs, 'royal' pay offs, romanticizing, feeling superior, self-delusion, and identity issues and needs. Rather than redacting the traditional lines, such issues are better dealt with individually in Transgenerational Integration.

After all, we really can think, even if not with an absolute independence from nature; but it is the duty of the psychologist to make the double statement, and while admitting man’s power of thought, to insist also on the fact that he is trapped in his own skin, and therefore always has his thinking influenced by nature in a way he cannot wholly control. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 83

DRAGON OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
DRAGON: early 13c., from Old French dragon, from Latin draconem (nominative draco) "huge serpent, dragon," from Greek drakon (genitive drakontos) "serpent, giant seafish," apparently from drak-, strong aorist stem of derkesthai "to see clearly," from PIE *derk- "to see." Perhaps the literal sense is "the one with the (deadly) glance."

“The serpent, if it wants to become the dragon, must eat itself.”
- Francis Bacon.

Blavatsky claimed that the universal “religion of the ancients” was the worship of the Dragon and the Sun.  She said, “The tradition of the Dragon and the Sun is echoed in every part of the world, both in its civilized and semi-savage regions.  It took rise in the whisperings about secret initiations among the profane, and was established universally through the once universal heliolatrous religion.  There was a time when the four parts of the world were covered with the temples sacred to the Sun and the Dragon; but the cult is now preserved mostly in China and the Buddhist countries.  …  We find (a) the priests assuming the name of the gods they served; (b) the ‘Dragons’ held throughout all antiquity as the symbols of Immortality and Wisdom, of secret Knowledge and of Eternity; and (c) the hierophants of Egypt, of Babylon, and India, styling themselves generally the ‘sons of the Dragon’ and ‘Serpents’."

The Serpents in our Tree are the individual lines of descent from various common ancestors. They lead us to question who and what we are, what we know and what we thought we knew about our roots. Like it or not, they are all still a part of our Truth -- that we are born and we die, and we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.

"We fear our serpent," Jung said, ''as we also fear the numinosum - so we run from it. . . .
All we have to give the world and God is ourselves as we are.

"My soul you-are you there? I have returned, I am here again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you again. Should I tell you everything I have seen, experienced, and drunk in? Or do you not want to hear about all the noise of life and the world? But one thing you must know: the one thing I have learned is that one must live this life. This life is the way, the long sought-after way to the unfathomable, which we call divine." --C.G. Jung

For him who looks backwards the whole world, even the starry sky, becomes the mother who bends over him and enfolds him on all sides, and from the renunciation of this image, and of the longing for it arises the picture of the world as we know it today. ~Carl Jung; The Sacrifice; CW 5; Par 643.

Depths and surface should mix so that new life can develop. Yet the new life does not develop outside of us, but within us. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 239.

THE HOUSE OF LIFE

---

SHADES OF OUR PAST
If you’re vaguely of European extraction, you are also the fruits of Charlemagne. A fecund ruler, he sired at least 18 children by motley wives and concubines, including Charles the Younger, Pippin the Hunchback, Drogo of Metz, Hruodrud, Ruodhaid, and not forgetting Hugh. This is merely a numbers game. You have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on. But this ancestral expansion is not borne back ceaselessly into the past. If it were, your family tree when Charlemagne was Le Grand Fromage would be over a billion ancestors – more people than were alive then. This means pedigrees begin to fold in on themselves a few generations back, and become less arboreal, and more web-like. In 2013, geneticists Peter Ralph and Graham Coop showed that all Europeans are descended from exactly the same people. Basically, everyone alive in the ninth century who left descendants is the ancestor of every living European today, including Charlemagne, Drogo, Pippin and Hugh. Quel dommage.


Nature | News
Most Europeans share recent ancestors Genetic sequences link far-flung populations and bear marks of historical events.

• Ewen Callaway 2013

 Any two Europeans are likely to have had a common ancestor several centuries ago.  Whether they are a Serb and a Swiss, or a Finn and a Frenchman, any two Europeans are likely to have many common ancestors who lived around 1,000 years ago. A genomic survey of 2,257 people from 40 populations finds that people of European ancestry are more closely related to one another than previously thought, and could help to bring about new insights into European history.

The first efforts to trace human ancestry through DNA relied on ‘uniparental genetic markers’ — DNA sequences from the mitochondrial genome, which is inherited through mothers, or on the Y chromosome, which men inherit from their fathers.  Those studies captured the broad strokes of human history, such as Homo sapiens' migration out of Africa less than 100,000 years ago and their subsequent colonization of Europe and Asia. But uniparental markers do little to inform more recent history, in part because they represent only a single lineage in a family tree — such as a mother’s mother’s mother, and so on.

In recent years, researchers have looked to the rest of the genome — the DNA that can come from either parent — to understand ancestry. In the latest study, population geneticists Peter Ralph, now at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and Graham Coop, at the University of California, Davis, looked to the entire genome to reconstruct European ancestry. Their work is published today in PLoS Biology1.

The researchers' approach relies on the way in which genes are reshuffled each generation, when an individual forms new egg or sperm cells by mixing and matching the chromosomes he or she inherited from each parent. As a result of this process, a person’s genome is made from interspersed chunks of his or her ancestors’ chromosomes. The locations where DNA sequences are swapped are different each time, so that the uninterrupted segments a person passes down become shorter with each generation. For instance, the chunks of DNA shared between first cousins are longer than those shared between second, third and fourth cousins.

Gene-sequencing companies such as 23andMe, based in Mountain View, California, use this property to connect distant cousins enrolled in their databases. Ralph and Coop looked for even more distant relatives by identifying stretches of the genome shared by people living throughout Europe. By looking at the length of these chunks, the researchers were able to determine approximately when distant cousins’ common ancestor lived.  They found common ancestors from as recently as 500 years ago mainly within populations. Older stretches of DNA, however, connected more geographically distant Europeans.

The work also uncovered genetic signatures for key events in European history, such as the migration of the Huns into Eastern Europe in the fourth century, and the later rise of Slavic-speaking people there. Present-day inhabitants of Eastern European countries share many ancestors who lived around 1,500 years ago, Ralph and Coop found. Italians, meanwhile, are connected to other European populations mainly through individuals who lived more than 2,000 years ago, perhaps as a result of the country's geographic isolation.

Studies such as this one have the potential to solve longstanding historical questions, says Coop. It has been unclear, for instance, whether the expansion of Slavic languages was driven by migration of Slavic-speaking people, cultural diffusion or both. Genetic studies “can tell us how people moved, rather than just what’s in the written record”, Coop says. John Novembre, a population geneticist at the University of Chicago in Illinois, says that the study marks “a huge step in that direction”.
Naturedoi:10.1038/nature.2013.12950 References Ralph, P. & Coop, G. PLoS Biol. 11, e1001555 (2013).

http://books.google.com/books?id=XLqEWwa7fT8C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
ALL-AMERICAN ANCESTORS
Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists
Who Came to America Before 1700
By Frederick Lewis Weis

At least 38 presidents of the United States and 14 royal houses of Europe are descended from Hugh Capet, king of France from 987 to 996, and his son Robert II “the Pious,” king of France from 996 to 1031. They in turn are descended from Charlemagne, king of the Franks from 768 to 814 and Emperor of the West from 800, and from King Clovis, the first Christian king of the Franks from 481 to 511. The current or most recent members of the royal houses of Austria (Habsburg),...

The “gateway ancestry that links modern America to he ancient and feudal world.”
As kings and conquerors had children, elder sons usually took the crown or leadership, while younger sons and son-in-laws received lands and titles. These had children, where again the younger siblings took lesser roles and lesser titles. In England, Scotland or Wales the younger sons and son-in-laws became leading merchants, lords mayor or aldermen, clergymen, Anglican bishops and early Puritan leaders, lawyers, bureaucrats, etc. It is from these lesser titles and positions from which come the “royally descended elite that settled the American colonies”
epidemic of false medieval ancestries for colonial immigrants

The genealogical community is plagued by an epidemic of false noble medieval ancestries of immigrants to colonial America.   Some of these false lineages have been disproven for decades, but the bogus information is still very much "out there" on the internet.  Some of them are based on groundless speculation that has been repeated as "fact" at places like ancestry.com, familysearch.org, the World Family Tree, and various collaborative family trees including wikitree.

This is an issue of special concern to wikitree projects which deal with immigrant ancestors to colonial America, as well as the Magna Carta project -- there are far too many bogus pedigrees linking immigrant ancestors to Maga Carta barons.  The presence of so much garbage ancestry damages wikitree's credibility.

How big is this problem?  When I first came to wikitree, I found that about one third of my immigrant ancestors to colonial Plymouth Colony had false ancestries, usually going back to medieval noble families.  Since then I have found repeated evidence that this is part of a widespread general pattern.  And repeatedly, as I have detached false lineages, I have encountered resistance from well-meaning genealogists who are strongly attached to their imaginary ancestors!  I try at all times to be tactful, but sometimes people just don't want to discuss evidence or the lack of it.

So... how to distinguish genuine medieval lineages from false ones?  For immigrants to colonial America, the starting point is the list of recognized proven "gateway ancestors."  The Magna Carta project has a list of these gateway ancestors here: http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Gateway_Ancestors_-_Magna_Carta_Project

If you see a colonial immigrant with an illustrious noble ancestry who is NOT on this list of gateway ancestors, then the ancestry is almost certainly false.  If it is not false, then that immigrant should be added to the list of gateway ancestors!

Further tips for sniffing out false medieval lineages:

1. Check the sources on the wikitree profile.  If the only source is ancestry.com, be suspicious.

2.  Do a google search using the names of the parents of the immigrant ancestor.  If the only results are links to un-sourced personal family tree sites, this is cause for great suspicion.  Proven lineages almost always have at least one high-quality webpage with good documentation.

3.  Check the dates!  Many of these false ancestries are woefully incompetent, showing a parent born ten years before the child (for example), or a parent born a hundred years before the child.  Sometimes the immigrant ancestor has proven grandparents, but it is an earlier generation that has a false link.

4.  Look for sudden jumps from one county in England to a different non-adjacent county.  This often shows that somebody arbitrarily linked two families, based on nothing more than a common surname.

Now, for some examples of bogus medieval pedigrees:

--Robert White (c. 1558 - 1617) of Shalford, Essex at http://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=White-255&public=1 -- all of his children came to America and I've seen the claim that he has more proven American descendants than anybody else.  He has a widely publicized imaginary ancestry, and his wikitree profile gives an example of how to handle false parentage -- detach the "parents" and add links to them in the text.

--Henry Adams (1583-1646)) of Braintree, Massachusetts, ancestor of two American Presidents, at http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Adams-277  -- in this case, his royal ancestry was disproven a while ago (as discussed on his profile), but the bogus ancestry got merged back in, until it was recently pruned.  Lesson here:  these false lineages are like weeds, they keep growing back.

--Here's one from Virginia, that still has its false imaginary ancestry (conclusively disproven by DNA evidence) attached at wikitree:  Ralph Shelton (1685-1733) at http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Shelton-52

And finally, here's a newly-discovered set of possibly bogus nacestral lines needing further research, the family tree of Isaac Howland, grandson of Mayflower pilgrim John Howland: http://www.wikitree.com/genealogy/Howland-Family-Tree-97

This tree shows Isaac's maternal grandmother Mary (Atwood) Lee descending, up the Atwood tree a bit, from Margaret Grenville.  If this is correct, then Mary is a new gateway ancestor, because Margaret Grenvill has proven Magna Carta ancestors.  More research needed!  A preliminary google  search gives this suggestive website: http://www.genealogy.com/users/l/e/e/Janet-Lee/FILE/0006text.txt

Isaac Howland's paternal grandmother, Mayflower passenger Elizabeth (Tilley) Howland, was the daughter of Joan (Hurst) Tilley.   Wikitree currently shows Joan's paternal grandmother as Agnes (Dalton) Hurst, which appears to be the worst sort of absolutely groundless internet fabrication.  A good summary of what is actually known about the Hurst family, mentioning reputable published sources, is here: http://www.boydhouse.com/michelle/gorham/henryhurst.html

Genealogy - A Yearning for Wholeness
Until the End of Death

ANCESTRAL MEMORIES
YOU MAKE IT MATTER
The World Is About You
(c)2012-2014 - Iona Miller, All Rights Reserved
"But I was no longer the man I had been, for a strange being grew through me.
I had absorbed the life of both my friends; a green tree grew from the ruins of the temple…
I talk with trees and the forest wildlife, and the stones show me the way…". ~Carl Jung; Red Book; Page 227

HERITAGE HOUSE
Digital Ancestry
In the Future Someone Will Remember Us
Trees of Ancestry
DISCLAIMER: This family material is for educational purposes only. I make no claims that it is 100% accurate or authentic. While it may provide useful leads for researchers, all lines should be drawn using primary sources and genealogical best practice. Your lines of descent from the same root ancestors may be through colateral lines, descendants from different siblings born of the same parents. Thus, we do not share direct descent, but do share common information further back in time. So you may find some hints here that way.

The relationship calculator uses a brute force approach and with a distant ancestor such as Charlemagne, the number of routes that exist and have to be tested to find the best route is enormous. Charlemagne can be both a 1st cousin and my great-grandfather several different ways. At that distance in time we have billions of ancestors and Charlemagne would occupy many slots.

In 2002, the journalist Steven Olson wrote an article in the Atlantic about Chang’s work. To put some empirical meat on the abstract bones of Chang’s research, Olson considered a group of real people–living Europeans.

The most recent common ancestor of every European today (except for recent immigrants to the Continent) was someone who lived in Europe in the surprisingly recent past—only about 600 years ago. In other words, all Europeans alive today have among their ancestors the same man or woman who lived around 1400. Before that date, according to Chang’s model, the number of ancestors common to all Europeans today increased, until, about a thousand years ago, a peculiar situation prevailed: 20 percent of the adult Europeans alive in 1000 would turn out to be the ancestors of no one living today (that is, they had no children or all their descendants eventually died childless); each of the remaining 80 percent would turn out to be a direct ancestor of every European living today.

Where possible genealogies should be referenced and curated, and every family is responsible for doing so in their own records. When the stories veer into legendary and mythic realms, the only solution is to view them provisionally. Naturally, interpretations will differ and depend on the eye of the beholder. Knowing what is false is often as important as knowing what is correct, but people do not spend time on them. My main interest is not to catalog royalty, but to help people who descend from the immigrants. My particular vision is rooted in the hermeneutics of the Jungian and post-Jungian views of "as if" and imaginal realities. <http://jungiangenealogy.weebly.com> That said, clearly we come from somewhere, for here we are, indeed.

Into the Mists of Time
The earliest drawn lines, trace back to Enki in Sumer, whose symbol was the serpent-dragon, who came to symbolize the pre-Biblical time through the Garden of Eden story. Some now believe the 10,000 year old temples at Gobekli Tepe, which developed grain agriculture was that garden, or gave rise to the myths and its astrotheology. Enki is the root of the Grail Quest and the Merovingian story, with its underground stream.
So it is no surprise now that we find serpents on the walls of the most ancient temples, since they are places for spirit in all its forms to manifest. On the household walls of Roman families we find the Lararium, which depicted the guardian spirits of the family. A snake would often appear under the central Lar, the founding ancestor of the family. This snake here first represents the continuous line of ancestor shades in the family going back to the original ancestor, who is pictured as the central Lar. Secondly it is the living genius2 of the family bloodline itself, personified as a spirit. In other examples, one finds the Ouroboros, or snake biting its own tail. This was simply an image of the eternal birth, death and rebirth of the Spirit in manifest bodies. Of more importance to the Ophidians is the image of the Priestess holding a serpent, which shows that she is a liminal gateway for spirits, as shall be explained in more detail in later chapters. In many instances throughout history the Ophidians do not anthropomorphize their Goddess, the Great Liberating Mother who has gone under many, many names. Rather, we prefer to instead show an image of a serpent or Cobra alone, or a Priestess holding serpents.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?
Search for the missing roots and a fabric of meaning, beginning with a humble image, a fragment, or a wisp of myth. Here you can find nurturing soil for the imagination, and discover the dimensions of significance in which everyday bare surfaces of psyche are embedded.

Suppose that human history is driven by images and myths. These symbols and narratives contain, and in turn are contained by, raw psychic energy from the generation of being. After thousands of years of dis-jointed culture we cannot tell whether the myth shapes the energy into its form, or whether the primal energy makes and re-makes the myth. Symbols emerge in changing communal situations and experience, and are enacted in myth.

Ancestors are those people you directly descend from, not extended family members! An ancestor or forebear is a parent or (recursively) the parent of an ancestor (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent, and so forth). Ancestor is "any person from whom one is descended. In law the person from whom an estate has been inherited."

Also keep this in mind, once you get back to a certain point, the only records kept were for the upper classes, which usually meant the nobility.  It is just a matter of numbers. We all have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, 16 great-great grandparents, 32 great-great-great grandparents, etc.

Charlemagne comes up as my 36th great grandfather. In theory, he is just one of my 274,877,906,944 36th great grandparents. Now, since there were not 274.8 billion people in the world in 775 (there are only 7 billion now), there are a lot of places where the family tree does not split. There is no doubt if you will, if you haven't already, find a lot of cousins, even first cousins, marrying.

If Eleanor of Aquitaine is your 25th great grandmother, you have many other 25th great grandmothers. In fact the number of great grandmothers at that level is 268,435, 454. The blood shared here is so diluted that not a drop would be the same. If you have British in your ancestry you have a 99.9% chance of having William the Conqueror as a distant relative. I too am related to Charlemagne but then so are millions and millions of other people.

If you are a direct descendant from some of the first settlers from England, many were members of noble families who where in positions where they would not inherit land because of their birth order or they were fleeing for religious or political reasons. Even if your tree is filled with indentured servants in the beginning, within a few generations in the new world, those distinctions of class mattered less and less and the grandchildren of indentured servants became wealthy in their own rights.  This is not an excuse to be sloppy or lazy in your own research, but it should ease your mind when you come across famous ancestors whose descendants now number in the 10s of millions.

Once you have located what is known as a gateway ancestor, one who links your family to a known noble ancestry, the door opens upon a world of recorded and published pedigrees that can lead back to royalty.

He may be a vicar or a tradesman perhaps; he will probably stand out against the background of more humble contemporaries. Any mention of “Esquire” or "Gentleman” should be pounced upon and fully investigated.

Search widely and stay vigilant for the right signs and you will give yourself the best chance to find a royal ancestor.


Would you like to find out if you are descended from an illegitimate line of royalty? The power of the mathematics of genealogy is vastly underrated. From just a few royal bed hoppers who lived many hundreds of years ago there are estimated to be millions of descendants walking amongst us today.

The 13 monarchs who reigned between 1066 and 1485 fathered at least 40 bastards between them. Henry II leads the field with around 20. Descendants of Edward III, legitimate or otherwise, are believed to be in excess of 4 millions. Some experts believe that practically everyone alive with British ancestry will have a connection with this king.

So statistically, there is a good chance that you are descended from royalty. This may not be from the direct, legitimate line so you may be at some remove from the throne. If the chances of a royal connection are good then how do you go about finding out if you are descended from the Kings and Queens of England?

Surnames are not usually a good guide to this. The fact is that descents can be quite convoluted. Illegitimate offspring were sometimes, but not always, recognised. Those that were favoured were fortunate indeed. They were no threat to their father because by virtue of their known illegitimacy they could never claim the throne. They could though often enjoy the privileges of wealth and position.

Those that were not overtly recognised entered the melting pot of the gentry and the middle classes. Quite often, the youngest sons and daughters of once grand families married professional people like lawyers and churchmen and their youngest children in turn might find their marital opportunities limited to farmers and tradesmen.

The paradox in social terms is that high fertility can lead to impoverishment. Thus, the Royal Diaspora made its way into the general population.
http://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/tutorials/miscellaneous/are-you-descended-royalty

[At the Dawn of the 21st Century what do we do for our Dead?]

"What the ancients did for their dead! You seem to believe that you can absolve yourself from the care of the dead, and from the work that they so greatly demand, since what is dead is past. You excuse yourself with your disbelief in the immortality of the soul. Do you think that the dead do not exist because you have' devised the impossibility of immortality? You believe in your idols of words. The dead produce effects, that is sufficient. In the inner world there is no explaining away, as little as you can explain away the sea in the outer world. You must finally understand your purpose in explaining away, namely to seek protection." ~Carl Jung; Red Book.

SangREALITY NOW

Genealogy and Genetic Genealogy are now the second most popular subject online. Large numbers of people are discovering their Colonial histories and following their ancestors back to the homelands. Around the globe, some were never transplanted; others never forgot who they are or where they are from. Whatever the Grail is, we embody that.  Some deny the Sangreal, yet here we are in the flesh.

Some question our archaic heritage but arguments pale alongside the results of our own genealogies, which include the proofs of best practice in that field. Your own genealogy is very compelling evidence. Despite the fact that some ancestors are fictionalized or mythologized, our trees are still one of the best indicators of our origins. Genetic tests tend to confirm the pedigrees, not in terms of ancestral names but through the evolution and mutation of genetic markers and tribal migrations.

Many of those find that their lines of descent go back to certain Royal Families and nobles, who made a point of intermarrying to keep their heritage in the family. But what happens when an otherwise ordinary person finds that they are now essentially wed to the vast historical epic of mankind in a very personal way? Time seems to simultaneously shrink and dilate. It may be the closest we can ever come to time travel -- awakening ancient memories, intuitions, and inclinations that draw us into a vortex of new meaning and connections.

This discovery can come as a conscious shock. We can approach the subject lightly or with gravitas. It takes time to embrace a new self-image. Some fall prey to common psychological pitfalls -- grandiosity, identification, or possession by archetypal forces or ancestral resonance. Some overlay their own beliefs, delusions, and wishful thinking on the universal symbolic material. Others seek questionable glorification or act-out their immaturities.

There is no shortage of claimants to reincarnations of the famous, or being Mary Magdalene, Jesus, the Antichrist, the Men Who Would Be King, or other characters.  Others bury themselves in deciphering hidden codes or endlessly searching for treasure or relics, even bodies. All the symbolism of the unconscious can mobilize in a fugue, overwhelming the ego. Different memes (popular disinformation) capture our attention, sometimes to the point of obsession.

A grounded approach with discrimination and wisdom helps moderate such behavior. Trouble arises when we take mythical material literally and try to concretize it. This is how fraudulent movements and personality cults arise as societies, subcultures, courts, schools, churches, and fraternities, recapitulating history and contending powers with competing agendas. This is the Game of Thrones, which is always in play, locally, globally, and nonlocally.

Jung suggested a provisional or "as if" reality for the universal forces of the psyche. Otherwise self-delusion will invade our perspective and distort our worldview. With that proviso we are free to enjoy the "Avalon" of our heart and perhaps work toward the new "Camelot" of a Once and Future King. The nature of myth is that it is always happening but never occurs.  Sacred Unity is the archetype of archetypes.

Our  aim is to explore the Sangreal bloodline with archetypal psychology, history, mythology, art, science, and spirituality in traditional, academic and popular formats. We hope to flesh out a multidisciplinary immanent approach to the sacred, which values spirituality as a subjective truth and spiritual arcana as psychic facts. We are willing to take myth and symbolism seriously. We also recognize sometimes we have to just stand in the naked Mystery of our being.

Any psychophysical reactions can be met with tried-and-true techniques from the depth psychologies which encourage individuation and personal transformation. We can develop a conscious relationship with what has been unconscious. These techniques can be adapted for self-care and self-regulation to maintain balance while self-identity widens out to embrace a qualitatively larger sense of self. Because of the nature of our heritage some of us may be called to a destiny beyond our personal sphere.

The problem in adjustment and digestion of such a massive influx of meaningful information is compounded by the mythical and legendary material of numerous cultures. It is not easy to assimilate. So, many turn to others online who are already familiar with the scope. Some of our best learning comes through our foreign kin who know their local lore and traditions best.

Some new acquaintances fit and some do not. Different groups and subcultures who share the Sangreal descent may help them sort out their self-discovery projects and further their own quests or vocation. Several of them have hidden or commercial agendas. Everyone with a book is a stakeholder in the spiritual supermarket. Each of them have something new to add to the dialogue but some of it needs the proverbial "grain of salt".

Many are called but few respond to the ancestors. Some of us may be gifted with 'second sight', which we could call telepathy, ESP, or nonlocal communication in modern terms. Some may be healers, sages, or dreamworkers. Some are shamanic; others deeply religious or spiritual.

No particular practice is recommended but originally the family was a shamanic ancestry worship cult of the Sun as Sky Father and the Earth Mother. Today we need greater respect for the incandescence of the Sun and the vulnerabilities of Earth. The four quarters of the equal-armed cross mark the four elements as well as the four directions that map the tangible and sacred landscape which the Sun and Moon illuminate.

Even with all these factors, we can respond to one another and together as family, near and far, expanding our understanding to create new bonds. This alone creates a new form of consciousness that is our shared awareness. Our rich descent is not only about the past; it is about NOW, and how we can transform ourselves and our families today to meet the challenges of tomorrow, individually and together.

We suggest our ancestral memories can aid us, and that we can develop a conscious relationship with our deepest essence through remembrance. We've found that in this journey our lines of descent, which migrate across continents and cultures, are our best guides to the history and mystery that form the very fabric of our sacred being.

To transcend our small selves we need bigger stories. The deep context of our global heritage is it -- a mythic perspective suited to our age, culture, and sensibilities. Symbols are the currency of consciousness and the highest symbol and value is the Grail.

A Puzzle of Flesh
Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?
~Carl Jung

I think what you mean by science is a way of authentic knowing, whatever that may be. But most, or many of the things that matter to us, are neither outside nor inside. Like the kind of experiences I work with (Mack 1999), they are powerfully internal but have an element from the outside, and I think this is probably true of most phenomena that matter to us. [My question then is this]: How do we use science to study something that is not simply the inner world, nor is it the outer world, but is a resonance of the whole reality system? --John Mack

THE GENE BANK
Deciphering Your Historical & Genetic Genealogy
WAYS OF KNOWING
"The last stage is reached when, in the highest tension and concentration, beholding in silence and utter forgetfulness of all things, it [the soul] is able as it were to lose itself. Then it may see God, the fountain of life, the source of being, the origin of all good, the root of the soul. In that moment it enjoys the highest indescribable bliss; it is as it were swallowed up of divinity, bathed in the light of eternity." --Plotinus

"A burgeoning new model however, depth thealogy, as a Jungian-influenced psycho-religious discipline, accepts that all of the above are happening, creating a union between science and religion—as the psychological and the religious are intricately connected within the individual. A byproduct of my study, depth thealogy is the psychodynamic and thealogical phenomenological analysis of religious experience and praxis; it is firmly rooted in personal Divine experience and based on the adherent’s understanding of the Numinous’ immanent and transcendent nature. (Proudfoot, 1985)

It is an appropriate and useful unifying model for understanding the current Western paradigmatic shift. Within the realm of depth thealogy and the shifting Western paradigm, the religious, the psychometric and the psychological combine into a unifying personal religion seeking direct connection with a Numinous that is both immanent and transcendent, both sublime and profane – both present within--and part of--the sacred spaces that inhabit our Earth."
--Patricia ‘Iolana. The Sublime and the Profane:
A Thealogical Account of Psychometric Experiences Within a Sacred Space
They Come In Dreams: They Give Us Faces

For those we love most, both in time and beyond...
Through those who came before...and those who are not yet born...
There is no need for us today to give up the relational, to forego meaningful connection and traditional language, even when we move beyond the supernatural belief systems of our ancestors.

The Portuguese word "SAUDADE" has no English Equivalent: it describes the feeling of missing something very intensively. The Portuguese also say: "To Yearn for the Future" - Feeling for the connection to a destiny in time that is NOT YET, may be a particular genetic skill of the serpent...  inhabiting time itself..

Ways of Knowing

They come in dreams, in revere, in ritual, with the gentle assist of a "library angel" or other surprise clues, and they inform our being literally and figuratively. They carry mystery in their wake, often with cryptic messages or information that can later be verified or found in the physical world. They inspire our spiritual studies and humanitarian efforts, our self-expression, proclivities and desires. They compel our loves and help create our children, perpetuating the line. We are theirs and they are ours. We are family; we are Blood. We feel their experience from their point of view. As we collect them in name, we collect their experiences, integrating them into our own meaning.

Ancestor worship has been a vital part of Chinese life since prehistoric times. Ancestor worship is expressed in numerous ways, some of them very practical and physical, as well as ethereal. Cultivating rows of graves resonates with cultivating relationships and providing boons for the dead in the afterlife -- cultivating kinship meant cultivating virtue as well as communication and reverence. Most believe that ancestors can help in difficult times. In China, ancient human sacrifice has given way to modern tomb-tending ceremonies, but the dead still make demands. The practice of ancestor worship has existed since ancient times, and it emphasized continuity of family lines and filial piety.

Tending RESTLESS SPIRITS is described by Peter Hessler for National Geographic:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2010/01/chinese-afterlife/hessler-text

There was only one day each year when they looked backward, in April, during the festival of Qingming. The Chinese name translates as "day of clear brightness," and for more than a millennium it's been celebrated in various regional forms across China. Ancestor worship goes back even further. More than 5,000 years ago, the cultures of northern China were venerating the dead through highly systemized ceremonies. Echoes of these traditions still survive today, and during my first year in the village, when the holiday came around, I accompanied my neighbors on their ritual journey to the cemetery.

Only men were allowed to participate. All of them were named Wei, and a dozen members of this extended clan left before dawn, hiking up the steep mountain behind the village. They wore simple work clothes and carried flat wicker baskets and shovels on their shoulders. They didn't make small talk, and they didn't stop to rest. They had the determined air of a work crew—tools at the ready, trudging past apricot trees whose fresh buds glowed like stars in the morning half-light. After 20 minutes we reached the village cemetery. It was located high on the mountain, where simple piles of dirt had been arranged in neat rows. Each row represented a distinct generation, and the men began their work on the front line, tending the graves of the most recently dead—the fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts. They weeded the mounds and piled fresh dirt atop. They left special gifts, such as bottles of alcohol or packs of cigarettes. And they burned paper grave money for use in the afterlife, the bills bearing a watermark that said, "The Bank of Heaven Co., Ltd."

Each villager pays special attention to his own close relatives, working through the rows from father to grandfather to great-grandfather. Almost none of the graves had markers, and as the men moved back in time, from row to row, they became less certain of identities. At last the work was communal, everybody pitching in for every mound, and nobody knowing who was buried beneath. The final grave stood alone, the sole representative of the fourth generation. "Lao zu," one villager said. "The ancestor." There was no other name for the original clan member, whose details had been lost over the years.

Genealogy

We cultivates our own rows or lines of ancestors through genealogy, the pedigree of our origins. Genealogy and even genetic genealogy are pursuits that require interpretation of assembled data, not literal interpretation, due to hidden variables and a variety of other factors, including the interpretive bias of the researcher. Thus, they are essentially Hermetic pursuits and should be approached as such, seeking both their wisdom and their subtle misdirection, outright lies of the past and present, misrepresentations, and other Trickster elements.

Even today, grandiose speculation often passes for science. Those unfamiliar with either subject are most likely to misinterpret their own family's functional relation to others, and likewise to misinterpret the evidence of their alleles in relation to antic origins and their meaning. Identifying SNPs from deep common ancestry, or rare SNPs related to shared characteristics helps us recognize one another as kin.

Genetic Genealogy

Genetic genealogy is the application of genetics to traditional genealogy. Genetic genealogy involves the use of genealogical DNA testing to determine the level of genetic relationship between individuals. Genetic genealogy is a science in great flux. In April 2000, Family Tree DNA began offering the first genetic genealogy tests to the public. This offering marked the first time that a personal theory on the Y chromosome could be tested outside of an academic study. Additionally, Sykes’ concept of a surname study, which by this time had been adopted by several other academic researchers outside of Oxford, was expanded into online Surname Projects (an early form of social network) and the effort helped spread knowledge gained through testing to interested genealogists worldwide.

In 2001, Sykes went on to write the controversial but popular book The Seven Daughters of Eve, which described the seven major haplogroups of European ancestors. This work has been superseded, by in the wake of the book's success, and with the growing availability and affordability of genealogical DNA testing, genetic genealogy as a field began growing rapidly. By 2003, the field of DNA testing of surnames was declared officially to have “arrived” in an article by Jobling and Tyler-Smith in Nature Reviews Genetics. The number of firms offering tests, and the number of consumers ordering them, had risen dramatically.

Another milestone in the acceptance of genetic genealogy is the Genographic Project. The Genographic Project is a five-year research study launched in 2005 by the National Geographic Society and IBM, in partnership with the University of Arizona and Family Tree DNA. Although its goals are primarily anthropological, not genealogical, the project's sale by April 2010 of more than 350,000 of its public participation testing kits, which test the general public for either twelve STR markers on the Y chromosome or mutations on the HVR1 region of the mtDNA, has helped increase the visibility of genetic genealogy. Such tests show biogeographical and ethnic origins and revealed vast patterns of human migration.

Even with scientific linkage to specific ancestral groups, self-discovery should not be confounded with personal mythology though both necessarily overlap. There is what the evidence shows or suggests, then the narrative which we construct from that limited evidence, which suggests certain things about our families, current and former cultures, and the future of society.

Hermeneutics is the study of theories and methods of the interpretation of systems of meaning, including interpretations of experience, or human behavior generally, including language and patterns of speech, social institutions, and ritual behaviors. It is a specific method or theory of interpretation, such as Freud or Jung's depth psychologies, for example. The word hermeneutics is a term derived from 'Ερμηνεýς, the Greek word for interpreter. This is related to the name of the Greek god Hermes in his role as the interpreter of the messages of the gods. Hermes was believed to play tricks on those he was supposed to give messages to, often changing the messages and influencing the interpretation thereof. The Greek word thus has the basic meaning of one who makes the meaning clear. A DECODER. DNA still manages to preserve its deepest secrets about who and what we are. The bounds of fact and fancy blur in an incoherent reading -- creative misreading of SNP mutations, much like a dream interpretation.

Most people with a lot of New England ancestry descend from one or more ‘gateway’ ancestors – i.e., early colonists who descend, themselves, from English kings, primarily the Plantagenets. The latter, in turn, have their own gateway ancestors, through whom we derive our longest possible ‘ancestral lines’ – into the Dark Ages (roughly A.D. 450-750),
and perhaps (though far more conjecturally) even the Classical (Greco-Roman) and Ancient (Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian) worlds. ALL such descents are hypothetical – that is, all entail many filiative links that are not, in fact, attested in writing, but postulated by scholars on the basis of an assessment of the known chronology, ethno-political situation, and onomastic patterns of the relevant era, locale, and race. In short, ‘ancient’ pedigrees have many ‘dotted lines,’ which are plausible, even likely, but NOT susceptible to proof.

Unfortunately, popular American genealogical literature is rife with supposed ‘ancient’ pedigrees which are neither likely nor plausible, and in some cases provably bogus, passing, as they do, through long chains of supposed personages who never existed. How, short of acquiring a comprehensive knowledge of many phases of world and national history, half a dozen ancient and modern languages, the various branches of philology, and an immense (and highly specialized) research literature (surely a job for several lifetimes!), is the ‘lay’ reader to tell the plausible from the preposterous, the reasonable from the ridiculous? We can identify the major geographic areas, ethnicities, and pre-Plantagenet ‘gateway’ ancestors through whom we MIGHT descend from Dark Age, Classical, or Ancient kings, warlords, consuls, emperors, and pharaohs, and can outline the major sources of data and forms of reasoning upon which such descents are predicated. It will also draw your attention to proposed ‘ancient’ descents which are known to be false, or have been seriously questioned, and identify the absolute historical limits beyond which it will never be possible to go.

At about 360 years, or just short of 15 generations an individual living today would carry only three thousands of 1% (00.003052%) of the DNA of an ancestor who was “pure” anything 15 generations ago. So even if one ancestor was indeed Mediterranean 15 generations ago, unless they continuously intermarried within a pure Mediterranean population, the amount would drop by 50% with each generation to the miniscule amount that would be found in today’s current generation. With today’s technology, this is simply untraceable in autosomal DNA.

"What is it we are questing for? It is the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us. Questing for it is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. There is nothing you can do that's more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a signal, transparent to transcendence; in this way you will find, live, become a realization of your own personal myth." --Joseph Campbell

COMMON ANCESTORS OF ALL HUMAN BEINGS
http://humphrysfamilytree.com/ca.html
USING GENETICS:
http://humphrysfamilytree.com/ca.genetic.html
By following only the female-female or male-male paths, we ignore the billions of other ancestral paths we could follow, thus pushing the common ancestor much further back into the past. The MRCA in any line will be much more recent than Mitochondrial Eve or Y chromosome Adam. DNA studies have a problem in telling us about the MRCA. As [Chang, 1999] notes, the MRCA will be much more recent than any MRCA that could ever be found in DNA studies, even if one were to study the ancestry of every single gene. The reason being that we are considering people who are simply ancestors, through any route, whether or not any of their genes actually survived the journey. Conclusion - Within historical times, you have ancestors from whom you have no DNA. All Common Ancestors in DNA studies will be much older than the Most Recent Common Ancestor, MRCA. Archaeology is also of limited use in telling us about the MRCA. For instance, even the MRCAs found in DNA studies will exist much more recently than the paleontologists might imagine looking at the fossil evidence - for the simple reason that they are merely "statistical artefacts" of no real importance to the overall story of human evolution. It would be totally wrong, for example, to imagine that the CA lived in an important or influential place or culture.

Genealogy, like my Royal Descents page, has the problem of only focusing on the ancestors for whom records survived, not all your ancestors. However, despite the sketchy records, it still provides strong support for the suggestions above from mathematical models and computer simulations of an MRCA in historical times. The huge number of proven descents of people from common European royal ancestry in historical times, when considered with the vastly greater number of descents that must exist but are not among the rare few that can be proven, suggest strongly that everyone, in the West at least, is descended from an MRCA in historical times.

Research suggests, for example, that everyone in the West is descended from Charlemagne, c. 800 AD. Quite likely the entire world is descended from the Ancient Egyptian royal house, c. 1600 BC.  Quite likely almost everyone in the world descends from Confucius, c. 500 BC. These findings do not necessarily have any implications for our DNA. To descend from someone does not mean you necessarily inherit any DNA from them. Probably sixty percent or more of the American people are descended from kings. These findings do not conflict with the idea that most or all of your DNA is inherited from your local area. Even if you do descend from the Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs, that does not mean this can be detected in your DNA. In fact, there may be no evidence at all of these findings in humanity's DNA. And yet the findings can still be true. The MRCA of the West is in historical times, quite possibly as recent as 1000 AD. We pick him as an example because he is the proven ancestor of some people alive today (for example, he is a proven ancestor of my children). Hence probably the ancestor of all people alive today. By the same reasoning, as well as from Continental/pre-Norman figures like Charlemagne, quite likely everyone in the West descends from figures like:

• The English/Saxon/pre-Royal Cerdic, c. 500 AD.
• The Irish/Celtic Niall of the Nine Hostages, c. 450 AD.

All humanity is interrelated many times over (contrary to what an endless procession of racists and tribalists throughout history have claimed). For any two humans in history or today, it is not a question of do they have a common ancestor, it is only a question of when was the most recent one. If we had full genealogical records for all history, then any 2 living people on earth could identify their closest relationship to each other. Or indeed any 2 living organisms on earth, since DNA probably did not evolve twice. One could also pick any famous person, alive or dead, and show your closest relationship to them. For they are all related. See pre-historical estimates for Common ancestors of all humans.

Showing descents from successive English monarchs is probably the most convenient way of tying the West together. You will be aware, of course, that later monarchs are descended many times over from earlier ones. So it allows us show short descents from the most recent monarch (rather than every descent needing a long tail going up to some very remote common ancestor). Some continental descents, though, may have to go all the way up to Charlemagne, from whom all English monarchs since William the Conqueror descend. Anthropologists claim everyone on earth is a 40th cousin" (i.e. any pair of 2 people can find at least 1 common ancestor since about 800 AD).

Royal Descents of famous people - Common ancestors of all humans
In genealogy the term direct line refers to a relationship of one person to another in a direct line. A direct-line ancestor is someone from whom you descend in a direct line, parent to child, grandparent, great-grandparent, etc. Direct-line research refers to genealogy research focused on one's direct-line ancestors. By contrast, collateral line is a term used to describe family relationships not in the direct line of descent such as siblings, spouses and children of siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.  Researching direct-line ancestry is a common focus of genealogists and family history researchers. Proving a direct line of descent is generally required for membership in heritage societies. Collateral line research is also important for revealing clues to direct-line ancestors.

Blood alone moves the wheels of history.
~Martin Luther

All the soarings of my mind begin in my blood.
~Rainer Maria Rilke

Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?
~Carl Jung

Exploring the Physical, Psychic, Symbolic and Spiritual Aspects of Being
Our ancestors are the foundation upon which we build our own lives. We stand upon their shoulders to see not only with our own eyes, but with theirs. We carry their hopes, their dreams and their prayers within our very souls. Our blood relations, or as author Raven Grimmasi calls it, the ‘Red River of Memory’, is within each of us. The Ancient Egyptians had the belief that our akhu or ancestors, once they passed to the Beautiful West, or underwent their 70-day long journey to that place and passed through the Halls of Ma’ati, were closer to the Netjeru or the Gods than we on Earth are. From the place where they passed to, they could more easily intercede on our behalf. Nearly everyone in antiquity did some practice of honoring their ancestors. From having household shrines, to visiting the tombs and having a family picnic outside of it in order to invite the departed to partake with them. There have been found letters to the dead as well. There has always been a necessary human desire to reconnect with those who did build the foundation upon which we stand.

The idea of venerating ancestors has been misconstrued by those outside the practice as “ancestor worship.” Honor and worship are, to my mind, not at all the same thing. Leaving tobacco or food out on a stone or putting up a shrine to our ancestors or akhu is not any more eyebrow raising or difficult than our ancestors having had a telephone table where they would sit with the telephone and chat during the times of the week when the phone rates were the cheapest to talk to family and relatives, about what’s been going on – sometimes for hours at a time. They would simply dial the number and the person would be there on the other end of the line. Passing to the West, as we call it, is a bit like that. Death, in spite of its inevitability and sense of never being able to see a person or interact with them again, does not necessarily have to be the case. The person who leaves this world of form is not necessarily gone, but has rather moved to a different address and changed their number. The forwarding contact information for that person, their essence in the regard that we interacted with them is still available and at the very least, still inside of us.

You don’t need to believe in the fact that the dead are not “gone” any more than a plant needs to actually ‘believe in’ photosynthesis in order to turn green. That connection does not leave in spite of death’s finality. Cultures the world over know that ancestors are there to assist and to guide us. Sometimes they can provide answers to us that we might not have considered otherwise.

According to Celtic scholar, Caitlin Matthews, we have ancestors that are closest to us by family and those who are ancestors to all of us, collectively of humanity. If we go back a mere seven generations, then we have over 200 people in just our immediate, or father / mother, grandfather / grandmother line. That does not take into account the aunts, uncles, cousins and others that are alongside. When you think about it, there is an army of people in our ancestral background to whom we can go for insight and guidance. Then there are the ancestors to whom all humanity has a kinship. These are the men and women who have changed the world and have inspired us over history. These persons have continued to live through the generations and veneration that they receive by those who have come after.

It is immaterial whether we can sign on to a site such as ancestry.com or anywhere else, or send off with a DNA sample to prove that somehow we have superior ancestors. Too many get caught up in the trap of what I call Blood Quantum B.S. There will always be those in the world who will ask you to “prove” or cite your lineage, or to produce some sort of documentation outside of the color of your skin or the shape of your features in order to ascertain that you are in the right spiritually, or that you are not trying to culturally misappropriate the ways of another Clan or Tribe or Nation. There is nothing wrong with saying,’Thank you” to the departed who have sometimes become part of the spirit of a specific place regardless of your heritage. Anyone who tells you otherwise, more often than not, is a bigot, most likely insecure in their own heritage and spirituality and should be ignored.

In my own practices, I leave offerings of food and water, and sometimes alcohol and tobacco for the akhu. Sharing a conversation and maybe leaving an offering of something that the particular ancestor liked in particular is perfectly fine. In Mexico on Dia de Los Muertos or the Day of the Dead, family members will share a meal with the departed, setting a place for them, or even venturing out into the cemetery to sing songs, stories or even food with them. The key, according to a close friend of mine, is “to make sure you have a good relationship with your dead people.” The spirits of the dead, whether you believe in ghosts or not, can make the life of those left behind easy or in some extreme cases, can cause headaches for those still amongst the living. Saying, “Hello,” offering water, or just remembering who they were to us and what they gave us is one of the most important gifts we can give to ourselves as well as to them. Someday, all of us will be ancestors to the ones who come after us. It’s good to have such traditions in place and to keep those lines of communication open.
http://fannyfae.com/2012/06/18/a-is-for-akhu-ancestors/