Finding My Ancestors at Samhain

This week, I’m shifting gears slightly from the more titillating parts of Halloween to a more somber, spiritual focus (and it’s rare for “somber” and “spiritual” to go together for me at all, so enjoy this anomoly!)

One of the traditional meanings of Samhain has been a time to honor ancestors. Not really knowing much about my ancestors and not being in a position where I can ask my family about our history has made that less appealing in the past. This is probably the first time I have my own dead to remember.

My relationship with my grandmother was complicated after I left the cult and got married; I never felt entirely accepted or loved afterwards. In fact, there was a particularly painful incident in which she opposed my father passing down an heirloom ring to me and my partner, declaring that it “stayed in the family!”

Yet with her death has come the freedom to remember our relationship in a different light. The more recent eight years of frigidity, chastising, and judgment have eroded slightly, allowing the previous 20 years to shine through more.

I can safely re-access the memories of going over to her house as a child to play. I can remember her house being a safe haven in my pre-teens where I could fall head over heals for ‘NSync.

And of course, the mortifying day I got my first period. She was there. She wasn’t the one that explained it to me, perhaps because she was embarrassed, but she arranged for a cousin to come and tell me what was happening to my body since my mother hadn’t adequately prepared me before going out of town. And she taught me how to place a pad (a hard concept for a 10 year old to figure out).

These memories return once the barriers of boundaries and pain are no longer necessary, and in some ways I feel as though our relationship is beginning to heal—that now that she’s dead, we can begin…or resume…something better than what we had in the end.

I don’t necessarily believe that all my biological relatives will be like this in the end—where their death becomes an opportunity for the relationship to heal. There are some, I’m sure, that when they die they will cease to have much tie to me at all because I’ve come to see ancestry as a somewhat separate concept from family history or biological lineage.

I’ve often found myself in strange imaginal relationships with fictional and/or dead people—mostly book characters or writers who became particularly influential in my life. After I read J. R. R. Tolkien’s biography in high school, I spent a good several months having make-believe conversations with him; the same happened with Emily Bronte, Edgar Allan Poe, and more recently Carl Jung.

Characters like Sirius Black, Edmond Dantes, and Morozko (the Russian Jack Frost, whom you can fall in love with in The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden) travel with me as unseen companions. Their stories infuse my life with wisdom and courage—and a little magic.

Often, if I am out on a walk, sitting in a waiting room, or riding in the car, I’ll be off in my own little world with a cast of fanciful spirits that I’ve collected over the years. These are the people I admire and learn from, the people I try to emulate, the ones whose lives have touched me most deeply, whether they lived 200 years ago or never literally lived at all (or only lived literarily).

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether Queen Christina was part of my family’s heritage; I can still choose her as an ancestor because of how she inspires me–a rebel woman who rejected the religious and societal mores of the day in pursuit of her own sense of authenticity.

It’s not about what blood flows through my veins. Rarely has biology been the most important part of heritage (maybe when trying to figure out the strange DNA that contributes to my body’s affinity for iron). Rather, it’s about what has contributed to my character and mind.

Thus, the ancestry I choose to honor at this time of year is the connection with those who have helped create me–the ones who gave me the building blocks with which to build myself up from the limitations and challenges of my past.

 

 

It’s Halloween! (So Let’s Talk Scary Movies) #2

On Thursday, I rewatched the first horror movie I had ever seen in a theater–actually the first movie I had ever seen in a theater, period. It was probably one of the most intentionally rebellious things I ever did as a teen. Movie theaters were “evil” places in my cult, and I was forbidden from going to them, even to watch a Disney movie.

Horror movies were also considered evil and demonic for the obvious reason that they often deal with dark topics and the cult didn’t know how to recognize a metaphor.

So, what do I do when I decide to sneak out to a theater for the first time? I go watch Silent Hill, of course.

I remember being scared shitless, but I didn’t remember much about the movie itself. Watching it this time was sort of like watching it for the first time all over again. This one quickly took a place amongst my “movies that are metaphors for the importance of darkness.”

Spoilers in case you haven’t actually seen a movie this old yet.

Silent Hill is a moody, thrilling underworld journey about abuse, revenge, and facing your dark side. Whereas IT focused on facing and conquering fears, this movie is about encountering the dark, painful parts of ourselves.

The story opens with Sharon, an adopted little girl, sleepwalking and dreaming about this place called Silent Hill. It’s implied that these types of episodes have been going on for quite some time, with no response to medication or medical attempts to manage the sleep walking. Her mother discovers that it was a town in the state in which she’d been born that had become a ghost town after coal caught fire in the mines and drove people away. Thus, Rose decides that the only answer is to take her daughter back to this burning town to see if they can figure out what is haunting Sharon.

Rose and Sharon end up separated, and the movie follows Rose’s attempts to find her daughter in a land that has become a nightmare. Her searches eventually lead her to discover a bullied little girl who had been burned by religious fanatics for being a witch. Down in the bowels of the hospital where Alessa was put on life support after her burns, Rose encounters a little girl who looks exactly like Sharon…if Sharon were a demon.

Rose learns that Sharon is “what’s left of Alesssa’s goodness.” Her look-alike is Alessa’s revenge. They had sent Sharon to Rose to be cared for, eventually calling both of them back.

Rose also learns that the religious extremists plan a similar fate for her daughter. Although Alessa’s mother, a member of the cult, had abandoned her when the group had chosen to “purify” her, Rose has an opportunity to save her daughter from the religious extremists by taking in the darkness of the other half and carrying it to the church where the extremists hold their meetings.

It’s a powerful movie with so many characters playing off each other that my Jungian heart goes crazy with the possibilities for analysis.

The movie points out that “to a child, mother is god,” highlighting both the incredible power that mothers hold over their children. Most children, even when their mothers are harming them, still see their mothers through rosy glasses, requiring the child to take on the interpretation of “if good mother is doing these things to me, it must be because I am bad.” It’s nearly impossible to consider, as a young child, that mother might not actually be good. In keeping with this theme, Alessa’s mother is never actually touched by Alessa’s revenge. Even though she’s one of the people that Alessa could easily blame, she doesn’t.

In a similar way, cults like these ones often portray God in a similar light. It takes a lot for a member to question whether the group (which represents God) is doing the right thing, whether life circumstances are indeed deserved. Alessa’s mom wasn’t a good mom because she hated her daughter. She failed Alessa because she herself was under the same spell with the group.

Rose is contrasted with Alessa’s failure. Rose is able to save Sharon the way that Alessa’s mother should have saved Alessa. In some ways, I like to think that Rose is the internal mother that can be developed to heal from religious trauma, but I think the literal interpretation of her being an adoptive mother is also legit.

In turn, Alessa is contrasted by the split girls, identical except that one is good and one is…not exactly evil, but definitely dark. The good child, Sharon, is easy to love. The one that carries Alessa’s pain and anger is harder because she’s scary and unpredictable. But Rose can’t save Sharon without accepting Sharon’s other half.

Alessa’s mom is horrified by the shadow side as she watches her take her revenge on the religious fanatics, but there’s an interesting question even in the violence. Who is the true monster? Yes, the fanatics have been hiding from this dark child, but they also were the ones who created her. They burned Alessa, blind to the evil they themselves perpetuated. We also find out that they’re dead too—that they died in the fire they started, but that they are avoiding awareness of how they have destroyed themselves until Rose forces them to confront the shadow they have created.

Right towards the end, after Rose has managed to cut Sharon down from the stake (technically a ladder more than a stake, but serving the same purpose), she’s holding her and rocking her. Suddenly, the dark duplicate appears and looks into Sharon’s face. The scene cuts away then, and Rose and Sharon wake up later and head home.

It’s unclear from the movie whether the dark one just leaves Sharon alone after she looks at her or if she and Sharon reintegrate with each other in that moment, but my guess is that they integrated because neither were whole on their own. They had been split by the horror of what happened (good metaphor for trauma), and the healing came through Rose offering the corrective experience of a mother who doesn’t abandon her child. Rose needed to love both the shadow and the light in order for the little girl to fully heal.

Befriending my Shadow Totem

Spiders

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with them. I’ve always been fascinated by them…from a distance. I love pictures of spiders. I think they’re awesome in books. My heart thrills when I see them behind glass where they can’t get to me. But up until recently, if you put me in the same room with one, I made Ron Weasley look brave.

When I first moved into my apartment, the porch looked like a freaking horror movie. The ceiling was a blanket of spider webs with dozens of spiders sitting up there. I had to cross under them in order to get in my door. Then inside, they were everywhere. I would have done anything to get rid of them. And oh, did they love to drop in on me! Literally! When I wasn’t hunting down and killing the spiders in my apartment, they were descending their silky threads from the ceiling trying to land on my head.

I’m not a bug-killing person. I have a strong empathy with the little critters. I used to catch bumble bees and let them loose in my room as a pet. I’m more likely to put a hornet outside than kill it. And the one time that I decided to experiment with salt on a slug, I ended up crying and begging the poor thing to forgive me for hurting it (I’m still bitter towards the cartoons that portrayed it as anything but a traumatic event for slugs and snails). So the fact that I hated spiders enough to drown one slowly in a steady stream of Lysol bothered me.

About a year ago, I started researching spiders, seeking for some way to change how I viewed them. It didn’t take long to identify the spider as my shadow totem. I’m far from an expert on totems, but that one was pretty obvious. I’m probably more comfortable in a pit of snakes than I am with a single spider, yet I find myself inconceivably drawn to them in every aspect except physical proximity.

The key to shadow totems, as with any shadow work, is that you have to face them. They have powerful things to teach you about yourself, but you can’t learn from them as long as you’re running from them. So I forced myself to stop killing the spiders when I saw them and started trying to understand what it is about their nature that speaks to me. So far, there are three major areas:

• Creativity
  Spiders have long been symbols of creativity. They’re artists, creating intricate and beautiful displays every night. Fittingly, there’s little doubt in anyone’s mind after meeting me that I’m a creative soul. I love creating things. I love the creative process. Oh, but I also fear it. I fear not being good enough. I fear not being able to finish. I fear it being worthless. So while I value creation as much as I regard spiders, fear often prevents me from experiencing either. But what the spider teaches me is that it’s okay to create something that will not last, something that isn’t perfect. A web, as beautiful as it is, usually doesn’t survive longer than a day. It’s not designed to. I might ask myself why bother creating something beautiful that will only be destroyed, but then I might as well ask myself, “why not?” I don’t know why spiders create webs with such beauty. Surely other methods would be equally effective. But I like to think that maybe they just get some freaking joy out of making their daily tasks beautiful. It challenges me, can I do the same?

• Attraction
  Spiders also symbolize the power of attraction. They are such crafty little hunters because they do not hunt. Their prey comes to them. They pick a spot that they like, set up their webs, and wait patiently for what they trust will come along. Now, as I get into this, I’m not saying that I can prevent people from harming me. Those that are intent on doing harm will find a way to do it. But I have learned that there is a lot of boundary-setting that can happen with my own intentions. I can attract quite a bit of emotional bullshit to myself by simply being too scared to say no. If I don’t see myself as worth sticking up for, I’m not going to attract too many friends or acquaintances who respect me. But as I stand up for myself and see myself as someone worth standing up for, the relationships I build are going to be with people who value me as I value myself. Again, not an easy lesson because I have a really hard time saying no and setting boundaries with those that I care about. My default is to assume that their happiness is more important than my own, thus allowing my own needs to be overlooked. The fear of conflict has a tendency to make me deny my own desires in favor of “keeping the peace,” but how can I expect others to care about or even know about my needs and desires if I myself am too afraid to express it? We’ll see how that continues to develop as I learn to set boundaries.

• Fate
  Lastly, and perhaps slightly more metaphorically, spiders teach me that I can be the weaver of my own destiny, the master of my fate. I do not have to be at the mercy of external circumstances. I’m not at the whim of some puppet master. My life is mine and no one else’s. I always have a choice. I actually do believe in fate, but like Rilke, I believe that fate comes from inside me. So long as I think it’s outside of me, I will react blindly to the cues of others. But when I recognize that it is not the external circumstances that determine my choices but my internal compass, I can break away from the Pavlovian response cycle and choose to forge a new path and, by doing so, choose a new destiny. This is probably the one aspect of spider that doesn’t scare me. It thrills me. I want to be my own fate, to write my own story. But that was not a power I could recognize immediately. It was one I could only come to by facing the shadows and befriending my shadow totem.

Lately, I find myself smiling when I see a spider and wondering how I’m going to put its lessons to use. I welcome them in my home, and have discovered the delight of them keeping me free of other pesky bugs. And while I haven’t gotten to the point of wanting to touch them, now if I see one dangling above my head, I don’t scream. I’m sure they have many more lessons to teach me, about things that I fear in myself and about powers I didn’t know I had.