Chapter 3
The Doors of Genealogical Perception
Transgenerational Healing through the Family Tree
Iona Miller, ©2015
Transgenerational Healing through the Family Tree
Iona Miller, ©2015
“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.” ― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Jung’s Threshold, Kusnacht
"When I worked in my family tree, I understood the strange communion of the destiny that unites me to my ancestors. I had the strong feeling that it was under the influence of events and problems that were incomplete and unresolved by my parents, my grandparents, and my other ancestors. I had the impression that there is often in the family an impersonal Karma transmitted from parents to children. I always knew that I had to answer questions already asked by my ancestors or I had to conclude, or continue on the previously unresolved issues". ~Carl Jung
"When I worked in my family tree, I understood the strange communion of the destiny that unites me to my ancestors. I had the strong feeling that it was under the influence of events and problems that were incomplete and unresolved by my parents, my grandparents, and my other ancestors. I had the impression that there is often in the family an impersonal Karma transmitted from parents to children. I always knew that I had to answer questions already asked by my ancestors or I had to conclude, or continue on the previously unresolved issues". ~Carl Jung
Genealogy can be approached as an artform and art therapy that allows us to create images not otherwise accessible to our consciousness. With it we ‘paint’ a picture of our extended family, and create the bigger stories we need to nourish and sustain us in modern life. We create a legacy for our future generations.
Emotions are concealed in such images. Much of our genealogical pursuit echoes our shamanic roots and traditions. Estrangement from our ancestors also points to the modern decay of dialogue, essential to our well-being. Instead of estrangement or entanglement, we suggest archetypal recognition -- the soul of the life cycle.
In Memories, Dreams, and Reflections (1997), Jung said when he worked his family tree his partnership with fate became clear to him. Such a partnership binds us all to our ancestors. He added, “I have always felt that I must answer the questions fate put before my ancestors, or that I must finish things they did not have the time to complete” (p, 283).
We can work back through our recent ancestors and our Personal Unconscious into the World Tree of shared ancestry. We may be surprised to find that beyond the medieval era we run into legendary and mythological characters “as if” we descend directly from them. This includes gods and goddesses like Isis, Odin, Aphrodite, and more.
Though modern genealogists don’t take such material literally, such links provide us entrée to the legendary worlds of the Quest for the Holy Grail and our mythic inheritance. While others may see this as mere fiction, we can understand it in Hillman’s sense of a “healing fiction” and embrace the notion provisionally.
This allows us a more personal relationship with the depths of the Collective Unconscious. Jung carved a motto on his threshold at his Kusnacht home, Vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit, that is, “Called or not called, the god will be present.”
Marking the threshold implies we are entering a sacred space. Our ego consciousness may be challenged with another way of knowing when we shake up our family tree and find missing parts of ourselves in our ancestors within. Such knowing is the knowledge of the soul on the road to Self.
Crossing the Threshold
In The Earth Has a Soul, Jung says, “Moreover, my ancestors' souls are sustained by the atmosphere of the house, since I answer for them the questions that their lives once left behind. I carve out rough answers as best I can. I have even drawn them on the walls. It is as if a silent, greater family, stretching down the centuries, were peopling the house.”
Genealogy is a mythic journey. The threshold is an archetype of beginnings, the initial conditions of the unfolding fractal of our psychic process. The threshold challenges us to follow the call of our ancestors and begin our adventurous genealogical quest for deeper meaning. It may be more of a crisis, a birth or death in the family that spurs the process. Our threshold moments may be full of anxiety or tentative ambivalence.
Transgenerational Integration means risking transgenerational wounding and healing. Sometimes there are obstacles to development and integration. Some of our family lines will lead to what in genealogy are known as Dead Ends or impenetrable Brick Walls. Other lines simply go extinct.
Life’s thresholds include the grief of death, the anxiety of birth, and the trepidation of the unknown. Family is the initiatory vessel in which our raw psyche is alchemically cooked and transformed. We reclaim what has been lost.
We begin our epic journey when we cross the first threshold. We begin creatively researching and working on our genealogical problems and process. Our initial meeting with our ancestors may be the most meaningful. We may encounter our core issues right away in our closest relatives – the family shadow. There will be tragedy and trauma in your family tree – beyond shock, shame, and blame. We may be poised to pass such traumas down through our offspring, through epigenetics or toxic behaviors.
Likewise, genealogy can be healing, uncovering and resolving old secrets or mysteries. Crossing the return threshold involves sharing what we have found with the family and perhaps the world. We may find new creative ways to do so and live from and with that knowledge. What are you preserving? What haunts you? What family secrets have you found, kept, or shared; which have found you?
Loss of ancestors is loss of soul. Soul knowing includes who we are and where we come from. This is the foundation upon which the threshold is built. Such knowledge is otherwise inaccessible to ordinary ego consciousness. Crossing the threshold can be serious business. We should approach threshold experiences with reverence. The grave can also be a threshold as a point of passage.
The threshold can involve change guiding toward a preferred state. Kung healers cross the threshold they call kia – the threshold of the beyond -- through dance, concentration, and song – a trance state, beyond the threshold of reality.
Threshold also refers to phenomena other than tangible matter. For example, a psychic threshold refers to the place of transition from one belief to another or the shift from one state of being to another. Thus threshold is both place and process. As place, it is the point of transition marking the boundary between two opposing regions (Barrie, 1996); as process, threshold holds together the tension inherent in duality and paradox (Eliade, 1987). The entrance, beginning, and opening to a state or action (Onions, 1955), threshold is a powerful place of communication between the opposing worlds that lie on either side of it - the profane temporal world of history, of human affairs and events, on the one side, and the sacred metaphysical world of soul or psyche on the other (Eliade, 1987).
Threshold is the in-between zone where passage from one sphere or one way of being to another is made possible. Inside and outside, sacred and profane, psyche and matter, conscious and unconscious, are among the significant "regions" that the threshold both divides and brings together at its borders. At its essence, threshold is the stable center that mediates between and holds the tension of the opposites; it is a place of possibilities where both sides have the potential to be seen and where energy has the opportunity to flow in either direction. (Buck, 2004)
There is a traditional wisdom saying: “to forget one’s ancestors is to be a tree without a root.” Combining personal, familial, and collective talents can transform our destiny by analyzing and integrating familial patterns. If we are fortunate, our living elders describe both the factual and imaginal family (notable or legendary ancestors, distorted family stories, self-delusions, and misapprehensions) to us directly. If ritual is a channel to the ancestors, genealogy is such a ritual, literally as well as metaphorically.
Like a dream, this remembrance is a jumping off point for further self-exploration. While working the fractal nature of the family system, we insist on the particularity or specificity of any individual's life story and the singularity of historical situations. Genealogy can be approached as an artform -- a curatorial project. Ritual grounds us and manifests spiritual potential. It connects us to the wisdom of the ancients and the subconscious mind. Through remembrance and conscious awareness of our ancestors, we give them our attention, contemplation, and compassion.
Such techniques are thresholds that act as Doors to the Dead, which shamanic societies have always found powerful. Our ancestors are a natural part of the universal mindfield and the personal mindfield we embody. Epigenetics supports this view that inheritable non-physical changes in DNA expression -- turning genes on and off -- can change the whole system. If a single trauma can create a wound, a healing moment can transform it.
Joseph Campbell describes the beginning of the heroic journey as a ‘crossing of the threshold,’ an initiatory act that leads beyond the commonplace into the collective unconscious [more on CC] But we don’t just cross it once; we cross it over and over again, each time pushing the limits of our previous findings. We begin to discover signs, synchronicities, fingers pointing at the moon.
We leave our known limits and venture off into the unknown. Genealogy provides an unfolding narrative for just such a soul journey. It is the beginning of our own particular way – a genealogical conversion of all lineage threads -- back to the origin of all creation, the original common genetic ancestors.
Emotions are concealed in such images. Much of our genealogical pursuit echoes our shamanic roots and traditions. Estrangement from our ancestors also points to the modern decay of dialogue, essential to our well-being. Instead of estrangement or entanglement, we suggest archetypal recognition -- the soul of the life cycle.
In Memories, Dreams, and Reflections (1997), Jung said when he worked his family tree his partnership with fate became clear to him. Such a partnership binds us all to our ancestors. He added, “I have always felt that I must answer the questions fate put before my ancestors, or that I must finish things they did not have the time to complete” (p, 283).
We can work back through our recent ancestors and our Personal Unconscious into the World Tree of shared ancestry. We may be surprised to find that beyond the medieval era we run into legendary and mythological characters “as if” we descend directly from them. This includes gods and goddesses like Isis, Odin, Aphrodite, and more.
Though modern genealogists don’t take such material literally, such links provide us entrée to the legendary worlds of the Quest for the Holy Grail and our mythic inheritance. While others may see this as mere fiction, we can understand it in Hillman’s sense of a “healing fiction” and embrace the notion provisionally.
This allows us a more personal relationship with the depths of the Collective Unconscious. Jung carved a motto on his threshold at his Kusnacht home, Vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit, that is, “Called or not called, the god will be present.”
Marking the threshold implies we are entering a sacred space. Our ego consciousness may be challenged with another way of knowing when we shake up our family tree and find missing parts of ourselves in our ancestors within. Such knowing is the knowledge of the soul on the road to Self.
Crossing the Threshold
In The Earth Has a Soul, Jung says, “Moreover, my ancestors' souls are sustained by the atmosphere of the house, since I answer for them the questions that their lives once left behind. I carve out rough answers as best I can. I have even drawn them on the walls. It is as if a silent, greater family, stretching down the centuries, were peopling the house.”
Genealogy is a mythic journey. The threshold is an archetype of beginnings, the initial conditions of the unfolding fractal of our psychic process. The threshold challenges us to follow the call of our ancestors and begin our adventurous genealogical quest for deeper meaning. It may be more of a crisis, a birth or death in the family that spurs the process. Our threshold moments may be full of anxiety or tentative ambivalence.
Transgenerational Integration means risking transgenerational wounding and healing. Sometimes there are obstacles to development and integration. Some of our family lines will lead to what in genealogy are known as Dead Ends or impenetrable Brick Walls. Other lines simply go extinct.
Life’s thresholds include the grief of death, the anxiety of birth, and the trepidation of the unknown. Family is the initiatory vessel in which our raw psyche is alchemically cooked and transformed. We reclaim what has been lost.
We begin our epic journey when we cross the first threshold. We begin creatively researching and working on our genealogical problems and process. Our initial meeting with our ancestors may be the most meaningful. We may encounter our core issues right away in our closest relatives – the family shadow. There will be tragedy and trauma in your family tree – beyond shock, shame, and blame. We may be poised to pass such traumas down through our offspring, through epigenetics or toxic behaviors.
Likewise, genealogy can be healing, uncovering and resolving old secrets or mysteries. Crossing the return threshold involves sharing what we have found with the family and perhaps the world. We may find new creative ways to do so and live from and with that knowledge. What are you preserving? What haunts you? What family secrets have you found, kept, or shared; which have found you?
Loss of ancestors is loss of soul. Soul knowing includes who we are and where we come from. This is the foundation upon which the threshold is built. Such knowledge is otherwise inaccessible to ordinary ego consciousness. Crossing the threshold can be serious business. We should approach threshold experiences with reverence. The grave can also be a threshold as a point of passage.
The threshold can involve change guiding toward a preferred state. Kung healers cross the threshold they call kia – the threshold of the beyond -- through dance, concentration, and song – a trance state, beyond the threshold of reality.
Threshold also refers to phenomena other than tangible matter. For example, a psychic threshold refers to the place of transition from one belief to another or the shift from one state of being to another. Thus threshold is both place and process. As place, it is the point of transition marking the boundary between two opposing regions (Barrie, 1996); as process, threshold holds together the tension inherent in duality and paradox (Eliade, 1987). The entrance, beginning, and opening to a state or action (Onions, 1955), threshold is a powerful place of communication between the opposing worlds that lie on either side of it - the profane temporal world of history, of human affairs and events, on the one side, and the sacred metaphysical world of soul or psyche on the other (Eliade, 1987).
Threshold is the in-between zone where passage from one sphere or one way of being to another is made possible. Inside and outside, sacred and profane, psyche and matter, conscious and unconscious, are among the significant "regions" that the threshold both divides and brings together at its borders. At its essence, threshold is the stable center that mediates between and holds the tension of the opposites; it is a place of possibilities where both sides have the potential to be seen and where energy has the opportunity to flow in either direction. (Buck, 2004)
There is a traditional wisdom saying: “to forget one’s ancestors is to be a tree without a root.” Combining personal, familial, and collective talents can transform our destiny by analyzing and integrating familial patterns. If we are fortunate, our living elders describe both the factual and imaginal family (notable or legendary ancestors, distorted family stories, self-delusions, and misapprehensions) to us directly. If ritual is a channel to the ancestors, genealogy is such a ritual, literally as well as metaphorically.
Like a dream, this remembrance is a jumping off point for further self-exploration. While working the fractal nature of the family system, we insist on the particularity or specificity of any individual's life story and the singularity of historical situations. Genealogy can be approached as an artform -- a curatorial project. Ritual grounds us and manifests spiritual potential. It connects us to the wisdom of the ancients and the subconscious mind. Through remembrance and conscious awareness of our ancestors, we give them our attention, contemplation, and compassion.
Such techniques are thresholds that act as Doors to the Dead, which shamanic societies have always found powerful. Our ancestors are a natural part of the universal mindfield and the personal mindfield we embody. Epigenetics supports this view that inheritable non-physical changes in DNA expression -- turning genes on and off -- can change the whole system. If a single trauma can create a wound, a healing moment can transform it.
Joseph Campbell describes the beginning of the heroic journey as a ‘crossing of the threshold,’ an initiatory act that leads beyond the commonplace into the collective unconscious [more on CC] But we don’t just cross it once; we cross it over and over again, each time pushing the limits of our previous findings. We begin to discover signs, synchronicities, fingers pointing at the moon.
We leave our known limits and venture off into the unknown. Genealogy provides an unfolding narrative for just such a soul journey. It is the beginning of our own particular way – a genealogical conversion of all lineage threads -- back to the origin of all creation, the original common genetic ancestors.
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Sheelah-Na-Gig, Iona Nunnery
Sheelahs
The significance of the threshold arose in shamanic culture. The threshold can be precise or ambiguous, a moment or a process. We can presume the first thresholds – dark thresholds -- were the mouths of labyrinthine caves, which echo our expulsion from the confines of the womb, and any birth trauma associated with it.
This was expressed in the Druid’s tradition, or native folk religion, of the Sheela-na-Gig whose precise function remains unknown. But, symbolically, sheelahs represent our primordial origin, genealogical and genetic ground zero – the feminine essence of creation.
Mostly found in the British Isles, Sheela-na-Gigs are directly related to earlier Goddess/Fertility figures and the Goddess symbolism of the early pre-historic and Celtic periods. It is not certain how old the tradition is or the precise age of some of the earliest examples. The sheelas appeared during the latter part of the Early Christian (or Celtic Christian) period and they were still being erected during the later Middle Ages. No two are alike. Some may be older relics re-set into medieval buildings.
Sheelas are usually located in liminal or borderline positions, above doorways, by windows, at the springing of the gables, on corbels or quoins. While most are solid, some form passageways. There is one built into the wall of the Nunnery on Iona. It begs the question what a fertility symbol is doing in a nunnery. Only this one on the sacred isle has such an aperture.
Sheelas are religious carvings of naked women exposing their genitals, representing femininity, female deities or Goddesses. They were placed on churches, castles and other important buildings of the medieval period and, until quite recently in some instances, they acted as dedicatory or protective symbols promoting good luck and fertility. Some of these entrance shrines have touch-holes, the traces of girdles and the signs of objects descending from the genital area or lying between the legs of the figure. Some say the sheelas were to arrest the Evil Eye. (Frietag)
But their meaning goes much deeper and the fact that they were erected over the doorways of churches and castles and overlooking holy wells or gate pillars suggests that they were a very potent and powerful image. They may have been an attempt the new and old ways -- the primary religious belief of the people of that era of Christianity. Sheela-na-Gigs may have evolved from the Goddess symbolism of the neolithic and Celtic periods. Passing through such an aperture recapitulates birth with rebirth. It is also an encounter with the Dweller on the Threshold. The primary threshold is between the conscious and the unconscious.
Neumann saw the feminine archetype in "the house, door, threshold, and tomb." His three most important and eternal threshold experiences of human existence are the processes of birth, maturation, and death. In ancient China both newborn infants and the dying were placed upon the ground.
Eliade says, “To be born or to die, to enter the living family or the ancestral family (and to leave one or the other), there is a common threshold, one’s native Earth.” The Earth herself decides if the birth or death is valid. The true Mother legitimizes and confers protection. Sometimes the sick are buried for regeneration and rebirth. Initiation requires a ritual death and resurrection.
Movement toward self-integration and transgenerational integration can be another threshold. Eliade describes the shamanic roots of threshold symbolism. The threshold represents not only the difference between two spaces but also between two ways of being. The threshold is a vehicle of passage. Eliade says, “The threshold is the limit, the boundary, the frontier that distinguishes and opposes two worlds – and at the same time the paradoxical place where those worlds communicate where passage from the profane to the sacred world becomes possible.”
This ritual function extends to thresholds in human habitations and houses of the dead. In the ancient Middle East, the threshold was a judgment place. Sacrifices to guardian divinities or demons are offered here. Within the sacred precinct the profane is transcended. Communication with the depths becomes possible.
The point of reference remains the threshold experience where we go from ordinary awareness toward the synchronous and numinous. M.L. von Franz ratifies this notion: “Synchronistic events are therefore characterized by the intrusion into our "normal" state of consciousness a second psychic state, which usually remains below the threshold. In our normal state of consciousness we are seldom aware of the fact that the unconscious psyche makes a substantial contribution to our perception of reality and that we can never perceive reality as such....” (Italics in original)
The significance of the threshold arose in shamanic culture. The threshold can be precise or ambiguous, a moment or a process. We can presume the first thresholds – dark thresholds -- were the mouths of labyrinthine caves, which echo our expulsion from the confines of the womb, and any birth trauma associated with it.
This was expressed in the Druid’s tradition, or native folk religion, of the Sheela-na-Gig whose precise function remains unknown. But, symbolically, sheelahs represent our primordial origin, genealogical and genetic ground zero – the feminine essence of creation.
Mostly found in the British Isles, Sheela-na-Gigs are directly related to earlier Goddess/Fertility figures and the Goddess symbolism of the early pre-historic and Celtic periods. It is not certain how old the tradition is or the precise age of some of the earliest examples. The sheelas appeared during the latter part of the Early Christian (or Celtic Christian) period and they were still being erected during the later Middle Ages. No two are alike. Some may be older relics re-set into medieval buildings.
Sheelas are usually located in liminal or borderline positions, above doorways, by windows, at the springing of the gables, on corbels or quoins. While most are solid, some form passageways. There is one built into the wall of the Nunnery on Iona. It begs the question what a fertility symbol is doing in a nunnery. Only this one on the sacred isle has such an aperture.
Sheelas are religious carvings of naked women exposing their genitals, representing femininity, female deities or Goddesses. They were placed on churches, castles and other important buildings of the medieval period and, until quite recently in some instances, they acted as dedicatory or protective symbols promoting good luck and fertility. Some of these entrance shrines have touch-holes, the traces of girdles and the signs of objects descending from the genital area or lying between the legs of the figure. Some say the sheelas were to arrest the Evil Eye. (Frietag)
But their meaning goes much deeper and the fact that they were erected over the doorways of churches and castles and overlooking holy wells or gate pillars suggests that they were a very potent and powerful image. They may have been an attempt the new and old ways -- the primary religious belief of the people of that era of Christianity. Sheela-na-Gigs may have evolved from the Goddess symbolism of the neolithic and Celtic periods. Passing through such an aperture recapitulates birth with rebirth. It is also an encounter with the Dweller on the Threshold. The primary threshold is between the conscious and the unconscious.
Neumann saw the feminine archetype in "the house, door, threshold, and tomb." His three most important and eternal threshold experiences of human existence are the processes of birth, maturation, and death. In ancient China both newborn infants and the dying were placed upon the ground.
Eliade says, “To be born or to die, to enter the living family or the ancestral family (and to leave one or the other), there is a common threshold, one’s native Earth.” The Earth herself decides if the birth or death is valid. The true Mother legitimizes and confers protection. Sometimes the sick are buried for regeneration and rebirth. Initiation requires a ritual death and resurrection.
Movement toward self-integration and transgenerational integration can be another threshold. Eliade describes the shamanic roots of threshold symbolism. The threshold represents not only the difference between two spaces but also between two ways of being. The threshold is a vehicle of passage. Eliade says, “The threshold is the limit, the boundary, the frontier that distinguishes and opposes two worlds – and at the same time the paradoxical place where those worlds communicate where passage from the profane to the sacred world becomes possible.”
This ritual function extends to thresholds in human habitations and houses of the dead. In the ancient Middle East, the threshold was a judgment place. Sacrifices to guardian divinities or demons are offered here. Within the sacred precinct the profane is transcended. Communication with the depths becomes possible.
The point of reference remains the threshold experience where we go from ordinary awareness toward the synchronous and numinous. M.L. von Franz ratifies this notion: “Synchronistic events are therefore characterized by the intrusion into our "normal" state of consciousness a second psychic state, which usually remains below the threshold. In our normal state of consciousness we are seldom aware of the fact that the unconscious psyche makes a substantial contribution to our perception of reality and that we can never perceive reality as such....” (Italics in original)
Doors to the Dead
This is the work of the soul. In many ways genealogy functions as a map of the psyche -- a map to the archaic threshold through which the ancestors await us. Doors and thresholds are primary metaphors for liminal or transformational states in ritual and burial practice. While we go through many doors, the crossing of the first threshold is special. Crossing the Return Threshold is the full-circle completion of our quest – the search for self.
Dividing inner and outer inhabited space, doorways signify transition and transformation. While the term 'portal' has become a New Age buzzword for all sorts of nonsense, out of the hands of the fabulists it remains a profound psychic reality that can initiate our spiritual journey. Just as the doors of a church or temple open into sacred space, we can enter the transgenerational story of ourselves through genealogy with a sense of reverence and mystery.
The door to our ancestral past holds the key to our own myth of origin -- the vast migrations and epic challenges faced by those who brought you here to inhabit the eternal present. Through them we are temporarily immortal. Our whole psychophysical being, both structural and ephemeral, is our memory -- personal and collective. We are informed by their presence as well as their genes. They may venture forth from the portal of sleep in our dreams.
Be the Key; Open Me
Doors or gates are often associated with guardians. Imagine you are the guardian of the labyrinth of your ancestral lines and those of your future generations. What would you do to nurture, sustain, and protect them? What intuitive and creative methods can you employ?
Opening the door in your tree itself serves as an 'entrance meditation,' the first part of the inner journey. We may feel we are answering a deeper calling to decode the chronicle of our significance. We may find exemplar characters that embody our shadow, anima/animus and our higher selves.
What family secrets might you find behind the door? We cross the threshold when we begin our genealogical journey. How we are like them is as important as how we differ, or how we wish we were different. When we confront their stories we know such things immediately. We discover that others have been there before us when the door to the World Tree of shared ancestry swings wide. There may be impressions, apprehensions, or symbols that gradually reveal themselves to our conscious minds.
‘Doors to the dead’ appear as freestanding portals, dolmans, causewayed ring-ditches, stone henges, or thresholds to grave mounds or cave shrines. The passage tomb at Newgrange has a sculpted entrance stone. Archaeologists in Transylvania discovered a "tepes", cave/mine or rath with a fire-pit dating to 5000 BCE. In the ashes they found remains of a human sacrificial victim and two clay tablets.
Sometimes, as on the ancient Isle of Iona, the dead or volunteer sacrifices were buried in the doorway to prevent the walls from caving in. Many believe Relig Odhráin has been in continuous use as a royal graveyard since St. Columba's day, 500 CE. It became the traditional burial place for the Kings of Dalriada and, later, Scotland, for many centuries. Macbeth lies there. A survey conducted in 1549 listed 48 Dalriadan/Scottish kings burials, as well as 8 Norwegian and 4 Irish kings. Those with royal lines in their pedigrees are likely to be descended from many if not all of them.
The purposes of sacred doorways included connections between the dead and the living, In creating controllable boundaries and thresholds they formed between-spaces, Such deviant spaces summoned the supernatural to obtain contact with the dead in the Otherworld, materially and metaphorically. In Iona, the veil between worlds is traditionally considered 'thin,' encouraging 'second sight.' Jung considered second sight a 'gift' that carried the burden of responsibility. Perhaps we should call it 'first sight' as it is more primordial.
Liminal Lineage
Your own genealogy and the pursuit of your lineage and name provide a metaphorical door to connect with and approach the dead. It is a key to the labyrinth of self-knowledge that holds answers to the perennial question, "Who am I?" Where we come from is related to where we are going. Doors and thresholds are near-universal expressions of social transformation, boundaries, and liminality. Genealogy can be seen as a modern cultic tradition, rooted in ancient practice rather than dogma.
Genealogy is a highly ritualized environment, with rites of contemplative or meditative research, entry work, synchronicities, documentation, initiations to genealogical or bloodline groups, and pilgrimage. This is one of the metaphors we live by that can expand our sense of self-knowledge. Each time we learn about an ancestor we knock on a door. Knowledge is the key that unlocks the door, the direct experience of gnosis. Our attention enlivens their presence.
The door controls access and marks the boundary between antagonistic and confrontational spaces or a psychophysical transition in social roles. This architectural element allows us to abandon one space for the next. Doors and thresholds are thus closely linked with rites of passage. Not every crossing of a threshold is a liminal ritual but the opportunity with many social and metaphorical implications is there.
The Soul Foretells
Like remembering the past, consciousness of the future depends on where you get your information in an intuitive leap. If we 'go to the future' we can "see" in our contemplation what is going on if we visualize the problem. And you can do this, too. As described by physicist Fred Alan Wolf and others, from the physics point of view, the future is already there, 'around the corner.' Certain potential pathways are more accessible than others, following the path of least resistance, unless you modify your path of least action.
This involves relaxing into a state where you have an awareness of yourself in that future time. You drift off into a twilight state with the thought that this is something you want to do intentionally. There is no need to force it. You can potentially 'undo' things in the past and create new potential for the future. It matters little whether such experiences, which are like ancient shamanic journeys or vision quests, are 'real' or imaginal. The effects are real and change our attitudes which changes our being.
The Mindfield
We don't have to take it literally, nor dismiss it. If we don't sense it, it isn't there. We have to make a move in that direction. It is already out there for us to experience, certainly in terms of healing and transformation. Faith and trust in our ability to be on the right track increases creativity.
And the same is true moving through your genealogical lines. How would you describe your relationship with your grandmother, with your ancestral women? Have you ever had a vision of a female wisdom figure? How do the men in your pedigree differ from the men of today? How might our ancestors have affected our relational and spousal choices?
Because much of genealogical best-practice includes mythic and fictional characters, the process is best approached with a Jungian orientation, rather than as hard historical fact. In terms of the collective unconscious it has psychic reality, and Jungian and post-Jungian practices allow us to interact poetically with such material in a deeply meaningful way that enhances personal and trangenerational integration.
The Taking In of Solace: The Many Into One
The Portuguese word "Saudade" cannot be directly translated, but describes the feeling of intensively missing something -- a yearning for the future or connection to a destiny in time that is NOT YET. It may be a particular skill or gift of the genetic serpent inhabiting time itself.
This deeply emotional state is profound melancholic longing for an absent beloved who might never return, such as a lost lover, or a family member who has gone missing, failed to thrive or moved away, separated, or died. Or, maybe they are unborn.
Saudade is "the love that remains" after someone is gone. Emptiness is an integral aspect of mind/matter and psychophysical being. This emotional vacuum can be likened to the Void or absolute vacuum of space which is actually a plenum of infinite potential. Sad and happy feelings come all together.
Self Initiation
Hillman said, “the community of the dead …. are already there, like presences waiting for you.” Like the ancient Egyptians, we can open the mouth of the dead. And you can reunite through genealogical practice without dying. Ritual initiation requires a formal symbolic ego-death and rebirth but this occurs as a natural effect of engagement with our depths.
Jung said transpersonal psychic life "is the mind of our ancient ancestors, the way in which they thought and felt, the way in which they conceived of life and the world, of gods and humans beings. The existence of these historical layers is presumably the source of belief in reincarnation and in memories of past lives,” (Jung, 1939, p.24).
In 'Extending the Family' (1985), Hillman says, "With the passing of time a sense of its power grows within one's psyche, like the movements of its skeleton inside one's flesh, which keeps one in servitude to patterns entombed in our closest attitudes and habits. From this interior family we are never free. This service keeps us bonded to the ancestors." Some report a sort of "calling illness" until they respond to the ancestors calling them to do the work. So, why think about your ancestors at all? It is life-enhancing.
He also suggests we “turn the trap of entanglement in the personal family into an archetypal recognition of family as the supreme metaphor for sustaining the human condition,” (pg. 6). In this sense, our genealogical work signifies a Homecoming. Like the homecoming quest of Odysseus, it extends beyond meaningful connections of the nuclear family into our vast archetypal family with its full imagistic panoply.
Such family therapy isn’t restricted to standard theories and practices but to the epistemology that informs them. It is not an investigation of historical causality, but a circular, synchronistic, non-linear epistemology with archetypal considerations. The influence is interactional with the positive teleological functions of the symptoms. Within the pedigree we encounter representations of the actual forces of epoch-making political, economic, philosophical, and religious collectives.
A 2011 study appearing the European Journal of Social Psychology hypothesizes that thinking about one's genetic origin (i.e. ancestors) provides people with a positive psychological resource that increases their intellectual performance. They tested this by manipulating whether participants thought about their ancestors or not (manipulation of ancestor salience). Then, they measured their expected as well as actual intellectual performance in a variety of intelligence tasks.
“Four studies supported our assumptions: participants show higher expected (Study 1) and actual intellectual performance (Studies 2–4) when they are reminded about their ancestors. We also have initial evidence that this effect may be fuelled by increased levels of perceived control and promotion orientation. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. It is certainly desirable to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors. (Plutarch 46–120 AD)” (Fischer, et al).
Genealogy is a process of self-initiation. Initiation simply means “beginning,” a dedication to a sacred practice. Once you get the ball rolling, it rolls of its own momentum. You make the first gesture, an explicit commitment to realize your potential within the method.
Genealogy is a vital part of the Great Work, much like alchemy or meditation can be. The meaning of this commitment unfolds slowly over a lifetime. The World Tree contains ample opportunities for both self-realization and the experience of chaos, multiplicity, and disintegration. In this sense, genealogy reflects the nature of the soul: 1) makes all meanings possible, 2) turns events into experiences, 3) involves a deepening of experiences, 4) is communicated in love, 5) and has a special relation with death. (Hillman, 1977, p. xvi, Hillman, 1976, pp. 44-47).
We can apply much of what we learn in our genealogical explorations to our lives. The recollection of feelings, experiences, places or pleasurable events and well-being stimulates the senses and guides us toward living into our psychophysical potential. Tangible, symbolic, and imaginal experience of our ancestors and progeny can have real effects on our attitudes and compassion, and the main effect is Transgenerational Integration. By embracing the World Tree we find transgenerational healing.
This is the work of the soul. In many ways genealogy functions as a map of the psyche -- a map to the archaic threshold through which the ancestors await us. Doors and thresholds are primary metaphors for liminal or transformational states in ritual and burial practice. While we go through many doors, the crossing of the first threshold is special. Crossing the Return Threshold is the full-circle completion of our quest – the search for self.
Dividing inner and outer inhabited space, doorways signify transition and transformation. While the term 'portal' has become a New Age buzzword for all sorts of nonsense, out of the hands of the fabulists it remains a profound psychic reality that can initiate our spiritual journey. Just as the doors of a church or temple open into sacred space, we can enter the transgenerational story of ourselves through genealogy with a sense of reverence and mystery.
The door to our ancestral past holds the key to our own myth of origin -- the vast migrations and epic challenges faced by those who brought you here to inhabit the eternal present. Through them we are temporarily immortal. Our whole psychophysical being, both structural and ephemeral, is our memory -- personal and collective. We are informed by their presence as well as their genes. They may venture forth from the portal of sleep in our dreams.
Be the Key; Open Me
Doors or gates are often associated with guardians. Imagine you are the guardian of the labyrinth of your ancestral lines and those of your future generations. What would you do to nurture, sustain, and protect them? What intuitive and creative methods can you employ?
Opening the door in your tree itself serves as an 'entrance meditation,' the first part of the inner journey. We may feel we are answering a deeper calling to decode the chronicle of our significance. We may find exemplar characters that embody our shadow, anima/animus and our higher selves.
What family secrets might you find behind the door? We cross the threshold when we begin our genealogical journey. How we are like them is as important as how we differ, or how we wish we were different. When we confront their stories we know such things immediately. We discover that others have been there before us when the door to the World Tree of shared ancestry swings wide. There may be impressions, apprehensions, or symbols that gradually reveal themselves to our conscious minds.
‘Doors to the dead’ appear as freestanding portals, dolmans, causewayed ring-ditches, stone henges, or thresholds to grave mounds or cave shrines. The passage tomb at Newgrange has a sculpted entrance stone. Archaeologists in Transylvania discovered a "tepes", cave/mine or rath with a fire-pit dating to 5000 BCE. In the ashes they found remains of a human sacrificial victim and two clay tablets.
Sometimes, as on the ancient Isle of Iona, the dead or volunteer sacrifices were buried in the doorway to prevent the walls from caving in. Many believe Relig Odhráin has been in continuous use as a royal graveyard since St. Columba's day, 500 CE. It became the traditional burial place for the Kings of Dalriada and, later, Scotland, for many centuries. Macbeth lies there. A survey conducted in 1549 listed 48 Dalriadan/Scottish kings burials, as well as 8 Norwegian and 4 Irish kings. Those with royal lines in their pedigrees are likely to be descended from many if not all of them.
The purposes of sacred doorways included connections between the dead and the living, In creating controllable boundaries and thresholds they formed between-spaces, Such deviant spaces summoned the supernatural to obtain contact with the dead in the Otherworld, materially and metaphorically. In Iona, the veil between worlds is traditionally considered 'thin,' encouraging 'second sight.' Jung considered second sight a 'gift' that carried the burden of responsibility. Perhaps we should call it 'first sight' as it is more primordial.
Liminal Lineage
Your own genealogy and the pursuit of your lineage and name provide a metaphorical door to connect with and approach the dead. It is a key to the labyrinth of self-knowledge that holds answers to the perennial question, "Who am I?" Where we come from is related to where we are going. Doors and thresholds are near-universal expressions of social transformation, boundaries, and liminality. Genealogy can be seen as a modern cultic tradition, rooted in ancient practice rather than dogma.
Genealogy is a highly ritualized environment, with rites of contemplative or meditative research, entry work, synchronicities, documentation, initiations to genealogical or bloodline groups, and pilgrimage. This is one of the metaphors we live by that can expand our sense of self-knowledge. Each time we learn about an ancestor we knock on a door. Knowledge is the key that unlocks the door, the direct experience of gnosis. Our attention enlivens their presence.
The door controls access and marks the boundary between antagonistic and confrontational spaces or a psychophysical transition in social roles. This architectural element allows us to abandon one space for the next. Doors and thresholds are thus closely linked with rites of passage. Not every crossing of a threshold is a liminal ritual but the opportunity with many social and metaphorical implications is there.
The Soul Foretells
Like remembering the past, consciousness of the future depends on where you get your information in an intuitive leap. If we 'go to the future' we can "see" in our contemplation what is going on if we visualize the problem. And you can do this, too. As described by physicist Fred Alan Wolf and others, from the physics point of view, the future is already there, 'around the corner.' Certain potential pathways are more accessible than others, following the path of least resistance, unless you modify your path of least action.
This involves relaxing into a state where you have an awareness of yourself in that future time. You drift off into a twilight state with the thought that this is something you want to do intentionally. There is no need to force it. You can potentially 'undo' things in the past and create new potential for the future. It matters little whether such experiences, which are like ancient shamanic journeys or vision quests, are 'real' or imaginal. The effects are real and change our attitudes which changes our being.
The Mindfield
We don't have to take it literally, nor dismiss it. If we don't sense it, it isn't there. We have to make a move in that direction. It is already out there for us to experience, certainly in terms of healing and transformation. Faith and trust in our ability to be on the right track increases creativity.
And the same is true moving through your genealogical lines. How would you describe your relationship with your grandmother, with your ancestral women? Have you ever had a vision of a female wisdom figure? How do the men in your pedigree differ from the men of today? How might our ancestors have affected our relational and spousal choices?
Because much of genealogical best-practice includes mythic and fictional characters, the process is best approached with a Jungian orientation, rather than as hard historical fact. In terms of the collective unconscious it has psychic reality, and Jungian and post-Jungian practices allow us to interact poetically with such material in a deeply meaningful way that enhances personal and trangenerational integration.
The Taking In of Solace: The Many Into One
The Portuguese word "Saudade" cannot be directly translated, but describes the feeling of intensively missing something -- a yearning for the future or connection to a destiny in time that is NOT YET. It may be a particular skill or gift of the genetic serpent inhabiting time itself.
This deeply emotional state is profound melancholic longing for an absent beloved who might never return, such as a lost lover, or a family member who has gone missing, failed to thrive or moved away, separated, or died. Or, maybe they are unborn.
Saudade is "the love that remains" after someone is gone. Emptiness is an integral aspect of mind/matter and psychophysical being. This emotional vacuum can be likened to the Void or absolute vacuum of space which is actually a plenum of infinite potential. Sad and happy feelings come all together.
Self Initiation
Hillman said, “the community of the dead …. are already there, like presences waiting for you.” Like the ancient Egyptians, we can open the mouth of the dead. And you can reunite through genealogical practice without dying. Ritual initiation requires a formal symbolic ego-death and rebirth but this occurs as a natural effect of engagement with our depths.
Jung said transpersonal psychic life "is the mind of our ancient ancestors, the way in which they thought and felt, the way in which they conceived of life and the world, of gods and humans beings. The existence of these historical layers is presumably the source of belief in reincarnation and in memories of past lives,” (Jung, 1939, p.24).
In 'Extending the Family' (1985), Hillman says, "With the passing of time a sense of its power grows within one's psyche, like the movements of its skeleton inside one's flesh, which keeps one in servitude to patterns entombed in our closest attitudes and habits. From this interior family we are never free. This service keeps us bonded to the ancestors." Some report a sort of "calling illness" until they respond to the ancestors calling them to do the work. So, why think about your ancestors at all? It is life-enhancing.
He also suggests we “turn the trap of entanglement in the personal family into an archetypal recognition of family as the supreme metaphor for sustaining the human condition,” (pg. 6). In this sense, our genealogical work signifies a Homecoming. Like the homecoming quest of Odysseus, it extends beyond meaningful connections of the nuclear family into our vast archetypal family with its full imagistic panoply.
Such family therapy isn’t restricted to standard theories and practices but to the epistemology that informs them. It is not an investigation of historical causality, but a circular, synchronistic, non-linear epistemology with archetypal considerations. The influence is interactional with the positive teleological functions of the symptoms. Within the pedigree we encounter representations of the actual forces of epoch-making political, economic, philosophical, and religious collectives.
A 2011 study appearing the European Journal of Social Psychology hypothesizes that thinking about one's genetic origin (i.e. ancestors) provides people with a positive psychological resource that increases their intellectual performance. They tested this by manipulating whether participants thought about their ancestors or not (manipulation of ancestor salience). Then, they measured their expected as well as actual intellectual performance in a variety of intelligence tasks.
“Four studies supported our assumptions: participants show higher expected (Study 1) and actual intellectual performance (Studies 2–4) when they are reminded about their ancestors. We also have initial evidence that this effect may be fuelled by increased levels of perceived control and promotion orientation. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. It is certainly desirable to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors. (Plutarch 46–120 AD)” (Fischer, et al).
Genealogy is a process of self-initiation. Initiation simply means “beginning,” a dedication to a sacred practice. Once you get the ball rolling, it rolls of its own momentum. You make the first gesture, an explicit commitment to realize your potential within the method.
Genealogy is a vital part of the Great Work, much like alchemy or meditation can be. The meaning of this commitment unfolds slowly over a lifetime. The World Tree contains ample opportunities for both self-realization and the experience of chaos, multiplicity, and disintegration. In this sense, genealogy reflects the nature of the soul: 1) makes all meanings possible, 2) turns events into experiences, 3) involves a deepening of experiences, 4) is communicated in love, 5) and has a special relation with death. (Hillman, 1977, p. xvi, Hillman, 1976, pp. 44-47).
We can apply much of what we learn in our genealogical explorations to our lives. The recollection of feelings, experiences, places or pleasurable events and well-being stimulates the senses and guides us toward living into our psychophysical potential. Tangible, symbolic, and imaginal experience of our ancestors and progeny can have real effects on our attitudes and compassion, and the main effect is Transgenerational Integration. By embracing the World Tree we find transgenerational healing.
References
Buck, “Home, Hearth, and Grave”,
http://jungiansociety.org/index.php/home-hearth-and-grave-the-archetypal-symbol-of-threshold-on-the-road-to-self
Iona burials: http://www.findagrave.com/php/famous.php?FScityid=404505&page=city
Jung, C.G. (19 ), Memories, Dreams, Reflections,
Miller, Iona (2015), Sacred Wounding: The Family Shadow - Transgenerational Wounding & Healing, http://jungiangenealogy.weebly.com/sacred-wounding.html
Miller, Iona (2014), Jungian Genealogy: Bridge of the Spirits
http://jungiangenealogy.weebly.com/sacred-wounding.html
Miller, Iona (2015), Ancestors & Archetypes, http://ancestorsandarchetypes.weebly.com/
von Franz, M.-L., Projection and Re-Collection in Jungian Psychology, Reflections of the Soul p. 195
(c)2015; All Rights Reserved, Iona Miller, Sangreality Trust
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Fair Use Notice
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
