Before the Speak the Sparkcourse even really begun we received our first assignment. To find a creation story that spoke to our hearts and to share it with the group.
Creation stories are the first stories…they are the stories of beginnings, of origins…the stories upon which all other stories are built. They are the foundation of every culture.
For the past several years I’ve been trying to find the thread of my own ancestral cultural lineage in this seemingly endless blanket of artificial homogenization we call modern society. It has been quite a challenge to shake loose from the amnesia of this modern mindset to reach back through the dark corridors of time and re-member the story of my people.
{See below for two powerful learning experiences that have supported this process for me.}
The Longos. My mother’s father’s family while he is still in his mother’s womb. This picture was taken in 1918 just two years after the family arrived in the US from Sicily.
Most of my great-grandparents came from Italy in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Faint traces of Italian-ness lingered into my childhood in the 1980s. I remember large meals of incredible food made from scratch, lots of loud talking and opinions, a few odd Italian phrases (mostly curse words), and the feeling of la famiglia.
The Bassignanas. My father’s family. He’s the little guy in the middle with something in his mouth. The old man next to him is my great grandfather Giuseppe who came to the US from Sienna at 23 years old in 1904.
But by the 1980s we were mostly a generic American family. The last vestiges of cultural uniqueness, language, knowledge and real stories that my ancestors carried had faded. Over the course of hundreds of years of the cultural imperialism that eventually led to what we now know as America the natural ways of my people had been forcibly obscured, demonized and done away with to make way for assimilation.
This cultural genocide started long before America was even a glimmer in the eyes of the Europeans, through the atrocities of the Roman Empire and the oppressive reign of the Catholic Church. My ancestors likely lived through the Inquisition and Burning Times. Their communities were likely torn apart and devastated as several of the women (and men) among them were accused of witchcraft and executed in horrific public displays designed to force compliance with new cultural expectations and subjugation.
This form of cultural oppression and domination has traumatized populations of people all over the world and forced them to abandon their personal cultural lineages. Yet,each and every one of us comes from a cultural lineage that, if traced back far enough, leads to a rich, unique and beautiful intact culture of people living in direct relation with the land from which they have been birthed.
To rekindle this memory and understand my own cultural origins I have been following the clues my ancestors have left behind like little breadcrumbs back to a dimly lit guess at the life my ancestors may have lived in the time before this cultural genocide when they were still living in direct relationship with the land.
This search has led me back to stories of the Goddess Diana. I can’t be sure if my ancestors revered Diana. I don’t even know if they always lived in what is now known as Italy. And I have no idea if the information that I am finding about Dianic worship is historically accurate. But I found this simple version of a Dianic Creation Story in my quest and it speaks to me.
I was so thrilled to find this story about Diana Luna. The Goddess Diana and her Greek counterpart Artemis have been powerful threads that have woven through my whole life. She is the goddess of the hunt and the moon and the woodland, associated with deer and the wild animals of the woods.
She has lived into my life in mysterious and mythical expressions, from my childhood fascination with the Moon and lifelong affinity to practical magic, to the intuitive inspiration to name my own daughter Luna. I feel that the energy of the Goddess has been with me each day of my life.
I have also always felt a strong draw to the Old Religion.
Reverence for the visceral sacredness of the natural world makes sense to me. It feels right to me.
Through inquiry, practice and observation of the world around me, my personal spiritual path has led me more and more deeply to this reverence. The magnetic longing and the wild, messy, passionate love between the sacred feminine and the sacred masculine appear to me to be the Source of all Life. This continual Creation can be seen and experienced each moment in every aspect of Life.
As I greet the Father Sun and the Mother Earth each morning I feel awe and gratitude for their life-making love. I feel the warmth of the Sun’s rays on my face and the cool strength of the Earth beneath my feet and marvel at the resonant vibrant energy field that they hold between them with their love. This narrow field creates and maintains the exactly precise conditions for life to exist. The dynamic, magnetic tension of their passion for each other keeps this whole place cooking. It births, maintains and metabolizes all of life. I can feel this timeless truth all the way down to the marrow of my bones, even in these industrial, commercialized times.
This love story between the light and the dark…the Goddess and the God…that births the whole world into being with their union rings so true to me. It feels like it plucks that thread of ancestral memory and resonates through my entire being.
Here are the learning experiences that I mentioned above that have supported my process of ancestral recovery…
Bolad’s Kitchen…Martin Prechtel’s unique and life changing school.
My family and I had the indescribable honor and pleasure of being able to study with him for two years. What we learned there transformed our souls and broke open our minds to understand the world as a much more complex, beautiful and living expression of preciousness than I could have ever previously imagined.
Martin taught us (among many other intriguing and delicious details of the world) about the roots and origins of the Indo-European dominant society we find ourselves in today. He guided us in understanding where we come from so we could understand why the world is the way it is today and how we might respond to it in a way that cultivates beauty, reconnection, reciprocity with the Holy Wild and the possibility of a viable culture for those who may come after us (gods willing).
White Awake‘s course… Before We Were White – ancestral recovery for anti-racist action
This course is facilitated by Eleanor Hancock and Darcy Ottey of White Awake. It is an incredible opportunity to awaken your relationship with your ancestral lineage as an act of creative activism and deep commitment to dismantling racism in our modern society. The instructors are phenomenal and the material goes deep.
I had the opportunity to take this course in Jan/Feb of 2018. They are offering it again in Oct/Nov/Dec of 2018. I highly recommend taking this course. If you’re interested in it and have any questions about it let me know.
