What's More Important? Ancestors or Past Lives?

General Discussion
1

We often, in various spiritual paths and even in the magickal community, hear/read about ancestors, how much we are tied to them, it is important to appease them, pray for their salvation, happiness, evolution, etc.

True, but what about our other, often neglected genealogy, and possibly our true genealogy—our previous lifetimes? What is more important—our family tree/ancestry, or all of our previous lifetimes leading up to now?

And though we may be more or less tied to ancestors (genetically, spiritually, even karmically [for those who believe in karma]), it is imperative we be free from any negative, impedimental ancestral ties that may hinder our development, success and happiness in our current lifetime.

Also, especially referring to Black people and certain other groups of people, enslavers/slave owners may have passed to us their surname, and they may even be our ancestors if they happened to have had intercourse w/ some of their slaves.

It is important all such “slavery karma” or “lineage” be broken. And you may have heard of that tale that Black people descend from Cham (Ham) or his son Canaan and inherited from Noah’s curse…

2 Likes
2

There is an argument that black people now living in the USA benefitted long-term from slavery compared to the same modern-day generations of Africans descended from those who remained behind, so that’s something to factor in - that your ancestor’s suffering laid down a long-term “bequest” so to speak, of having advantages others didn’t get.

That in NO way justifies that slave trade, I find all slavery to be an abomination, but the difference between opportunities and lifestyle a black person of the same age will have between the two continents is self-evident.

The same inheritance is true of most white Americans, many of them were actual or de facto slaves (especially the Irish) and that suffering laid down the foundations of a great civilisation, just as Europe’s bloody civil wars and various kinds of strife created our present-day society, for example the highly controversial step of printing the Bible in English, not Latin, was a direct precursor to our current highly literate society, the likes of which has not existed within recorded history (inb4 Atlantis!).

So there’s an empowering thing to be taken from even the darkest origins, I’ve posted on here before that while the spread of Christianity amounted to a cultural genocide in Europe, it ended the Viking practice of raiding neighbouring tribes and selling them into slavery; we may have lost a large chunk of our lore, and even the details of our gods, but we can reclaim those, and in the meantime, generations of Europeans were saved from short brutal lives in the Ottoman Empire.

A lot of English people, especially from northern England and Scotland, are descended from Viking invaders, either through outright rape or through the kind of marriages that had to occur after the resident men had been killed… human history is pretty brutal, conquerors leave a genetic legacy and the conquered see their lands and women seized, it was ever thus and is NOT a unique shame or burden for black Americans. :thumbsup:

To answer more directly minus the essay, IMO take whatever empowers you from either side (ancestral/past lives), and do ceremonies to sever the rest, ritual has power and you may be creating a good legacy for future lives for yourself. :smiley:

7 Likes
3

That said, the ideal (in most Buddhist schools) is not to be reincarnated as a human again, but rather ascend to a higher position. In the magickal community, some also seek to avoid future reincarnations.