Friday, August 19, 2011
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Tree of Life
Calling up the Ancestors...
I began a genealogy project in the mid 1990’s when the LDS records first came on line. I happened to hear the announcement on a morning news show and my curiosity was piqued. It led to discovering a body of research that a great aunt had compiled when she was researching a membership for the DAR and/or the Mayflower Association.
I knew she was interested in the subject because she would visit with carefully handwritten diagrams on graph paper and point out the names with the point of a No2 yellow pencil.
I recommend the experience to anyone who has the time, and resources to follow their personal "Tree of Life " down from these leafy branches toward the roots from which we all spring.
My family is a an incredible mix of national origins.
I was able to trace my maternal grandfather's line back beyond the 1100's in Europe and found records that dated to the Crusades and beyond...
A common theme, all through the branches, was religious separation from the ruling institutions.
Some ancestors arrived in this country as early as 1600, others arrived as late as the 1930's. Some 40 family groups made their home on Cape Cod and in New Hampshire, and Vermont from 1600 until the frosts of the "year with no summer", in the early 1800's, drove them West to seek more generous lands and climates..
My grandfather was both a sailor and a marine who married a woman from Nicaragua. Was she descended from native people of the Central Americas?? Who bequeathed her Spanish surname?? Where did they come from??
I managed to locate handwritten records of births and deaths and marriages in the Civil Registry of Managua and discovered the names of an aunt , a cousin, and my great grandparents from Santo Domingo, a district in Managua.
The experience opened some fascinating doors and led to new ones which may never be breeched..
Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Germany, England, Switzerland, Kentucky were all represented in my grandfather's family.
Sailors, miners, a civil war prisoner who died in Andersonville,
My mother's Dad was just one of four grandparents...
who were the rest...??
Where did they come from??
The quest seems unending and nearly every day adds a fact or a photo or a connection.
Finding their names and even identifying some of their faces seems to make history speak inside my cells.
I found this quote by an anthropologist
“When you go to traditional cultures, shamanistic cultures in the Amazon and put this question to them, they answer without hesitation ...
they say ‘Oh, yes, those are the ancestors, those are the ancestor spirits with which we work all of our magic.’
This is worldwide and traditionally the intercession of a helping spirit, who is a creature in another dimension, is the answer that you would get from shamans if you were to ask them how they do their magic.
We may imagine many things, a future of technological and social innovation,
but I think very few of us have imagined the possibility that shamanism would be part of it, and that shamans are actually people who have learned to penetrate into another dimension, a dimension where, for want of a better image, we would have to say the souls of the ancestors are somehow present.
Tree of Life: art and archetype
The tree is a symbol of the patterns of the universe. As above, so below.
A tree can be a symbol for an unending curiosity and reverence for the symmetry and beauty of nature and the archetypal energies that organize and shepherd them...
It represents these perfectly in its ability to adapt and change according the cycles of the sun and weather, it's leafy vision growing upward to sky and it's occult deep root structure buried in earth's nourishing breast.
It reflects the whole of manifestation, the synthesis of sea (water) air (wind), land (earth) and sun (fire)...
Dynamic life, as opposed to a static life like stone .
Imago mundi and axis mundi, the 'tree in the midst" unites the three worlds and makes the communication between them possible..
It is rooted to the world center and in contact w/ the waters it grows into the World of Time.
Evergreen, it may be the everlasting life, undying spirit, immortality. Deciduous, it may be the world in renewal, and regeneration.
It bears fruit and nuts. It has been said to impart knowledge and wisdom through them. It spoke w/ the voice of his God to Moses in the desert of Egypt.
It is diversity in unity, many roots, many branches, one main trunk.. The union of heaven and earth.. The dying god in myth, legend and faith is killed upon a tree..
The Sephirotic tree, the Tree of Sweet Dew, the Tree of Life, the Cosmic tree, the Singing tree, the oracular Oak of Dodona, the Arabic tree of the Zodiac, the Bo tree of Buddha,
"Brahman was the wood and Brahman was the tree that the world was shaped from "(Taittieriya Brahmanah). Parajita perfumed the whole world with its blossoms..
St Zenobious is represented by a tree. The Arica tree enclosed the body and coffin of Osiris...the Mount of the Olives...the Celestial tree atop Mt Alborj in Iran. The Sakati bonsai represents nature in its austerity and wisdom...In Mexico the Agave and falcon are the power of the sun and the liberation of the new moon..
Every family has one and it's phylogenetic.
Then too, the Christmas tree, to cut a tree was, throughout the Celtic world, a crime punishable by law.To cut a tree required a ritual act of sacrifice and surrender to the numinous forces that intervene in human affairs, the relinquishing of the old for the new and unknown.
Cu Chulainn's charioteer, Laeg, described the ancient tree at the entrance to the Otherworld. “At the entrance to the enclosure is a tree from whose branches there comes beautiful music...It is a tree of silver, which the sun illuminates...It glistens like gold..."
Poets and prophets break new ground and bring new thought to awareness...
If you accept the invitation of the trees you will begin to explore undeveloped talents, and inclinations...sustained periods of exploration may be ahead of you.
The garden and the forest are an Otherworld, joyous and delightful and never dreary. Take root there, and invoke the qualities of exploration and expansion.
I began a genealogy project in the mid 1990’s when the LDS records first came on line. I happened to hear the announcement on a morning news show and my curiosity was piqued. It led to discovering a body of research that a great aunt had compiled when she was researching a membership for the DAR and/or the Mayflower Association.
I knew she was interested in the subject because she would visit with carefully handwritten diagrams on graph paper and point out the names with the point of a No2 yellow pencil.
I recommend the experience to anyone who has the time, and resources to follow their personal "Tree of Life " down from these leafy branches toward the roots from which we all spring.
My family is a an incredible mix of national origins.
I was able to trace my maternal grandfather's line back beyond the 1100's in Europe and found records that dated to the Crusades and beyond...
A common theme, all through the branches, was religious separation from the ruling institutions.
Some ancestors arrived in this country as early as 1600, others arrived as late as the 1930's. Some 40 family groups made their home on Cape Cod and in New Hampshire, and Vermont from 1600 until the frosts of the "year with no summer", in the early 1800's, drove them West to seek more generous lands and climates..
My grandfather was both a sailor and a marine who married a woman from Nicaragua. Was she descended from native people of the Central Americas?? Who bequeathed her Spanish surname?? Where did they come from??
I managed to locate handwritten records of births and deaths and marriages in the Civil Registry of Managua and discovered the names of an aunt , a cousin, and my great grandparents from Santo Domingo, a district in Managua.
The experience opened some fascinating doors and led to new ones which may never be breeched..
Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Germany, England, Switzerland, Kentucky were all represented in my grandfather's family.
Sailors, miners, a civil war prisoner who died in Andersonville,
My mother's Dad was just one of four grandparents...
who were the rest...??
Where did they come from??
The quest seems unending and nearly every day adds a fact or a photo or a connection.
Finding their names and even identifying some of their faces seems to make history speak inside my cells.
I found this quote by an anthropologist
“When you go to traditional cultures, shamanistic cultures in the Amazon and put this question to them, they answer without hesitation ...
they say ‘Oh, yes, those are the ancestors, those are the ancestor spirits with which we work all of our magic.’
This is worldwide and traditionally the intercession of a helping spirit, who is a creature in another dimension, is the answer that you would get from shamans if you were to ask them how they do their magic.
We may imagine many things, a future of technological and social innovation,
but I think very few of us have imagined the possibility that shamanism would be part of it, and that shamans are actually people who have learned to penetrate into another dimension, a dimension where, for want of a better image, we would have to say the souls of the ancestors are somehow present.
Tree of Life: art and archetype
The tree is a symbol of the patterns of the universe. As above, so below.
A tree can be a symbol for an unending curiosity and reverence for the symmetry and beauty of nature and the archetypal energies that organize and shepherd them...
It represents these perfectly in its ability to adapt and change according the cycles of the sun and weather, it's leafy vision growing upward to sky and it's occult deep root structure buried in earth's nourishing breast.
It reflects the whole of manifestation, the synthesis of sea (water) air (wind), land (earth) and sun (fire)...
Dynamic life, as opposed to a static life like stone .
Imago mundi and axis mundi, the 'tree in the midst" unites the three worlds and makes the communication between them possible..
It is rooted to the world center and in contact w/ the waters it grows into the World of Time.
Evergreen, it may be the everlasting life, undying spirit, immortality. Deciduous, it may be the world in renewal, and regeneration.
It bears fruit and nuts. It has been said to impart knowledge and wisdom through them. It spoke w/ the voice of his God to Moses in the desert of Egypt.
It is diversity in unity, many roots, many branches, one main trunk.. The union of heaven and earth.. The dying god in myth, legend and faith is killed upon a tree..
The Sephirotic tree, the Tree of Sweet Dew, the Tree of Life, the Cosmic tree, the Singing tree, the oracular Oak of Dodona, the Arabic tree of the Zodiac, the Bo tree of Buddha,
"Brahman was the wood and Brahman was the tree that the world was shaped from "(Taittieriya Brahmanah). Parajita perfumed the whole world with its blossoms..
St Zenobious is represented by a tree. The Arica tree enclosed the body and coffin of Osiris...the Mount of the Olives...the Celestial tree atop Mt Alborj in Iran. The Sakati bonsai represents nature in its austerity and wisdom...In Mexico the Agave and falcon are the power of the sun and the liberation of the new moon..
Every family has one and it's phylogenetic.
Then too, the Christmas tree, to cut a tree was, throughout the Celtic world, a crime punishable by law.To cut a tree required a ritual act of sacrifice and surrender to the numinous forces that intervene in human affairs, the relinquishing of the old for the new and unknown.
Cu Chulainn's charioteer, Laeg, described the ancient tree at the entrance to the Otherworld. “At the entrance to the enclosure is a tree from whose branches there comes beautiful music...It is a tree of silver, which the sun illuminates...It glistens like gold..."
Poets and prophets break new ground and bring new thought to awareness...
If you accept the invitation of the trees you will begin to explore undeveloped talents, and inclinations...sustained periods of exploration may be ahead of you.
The garden and the forest are an Otherworld, joyous and delightful and never dreary. Take root there, and invoke the qualities of exploration and expansion.
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