Ancestral burdens are emotional, psychological or cultural wounds and traumas that are passed down the generations, within a family or a whole community. Beneath our own childhood lie layers of inherited wounding: family wounds going back generations, and collective wounds going back to the beginnings of farming and the FallThe Fall. The catastrophe at the root of the whole diagnosis: the shift from animist, egalitarian hunter-gatherer life to owning, agricultural Taker culture. In domesticating other species we domesticated ourselves, cutting ourselves off from Mother Earth (Power-loss) and from parts of our own nature (soul-loss). When dated precisely, the Fall begins with the first city-state cultures, around 4000 BCE (Domestication begins earlier, with the Neolithic). A sickness, not our true nature. ‘Fallen culture’ is used interchangeably with Taker culture; the Great Rupture is a looser alternate name. Read the full answer. They are passed down through what our families did and the stories they told, and, research into epigenetics suggests, in ways we may know nothing about.
What are ancestral burdens? #
Wounds we inherit from those who came before us: the emotional, psychological or cultural challenges and traumas believed to be passed down from one generation to the next within a family or community. They lie in layers beneath our own history: “Underneath the childhood layers, the next layers down are those of earlier generations.” Shamans have always known that we are affected by many generations of ancestors before us.1
What are family burdens? #
Burdens carried down one family line. Paul Francis’s own family carried wounds that went back hundreds of years; on his father’s side, for example, the family was descended from Border reivers, whose raiding “gave us the word “bereaved”, so much misery did they cause.”2 Although the last raids were about three hundred years ago, this historical burden was still something families were carrying. Patterns of hurt are handed down too: “the cycle of violence, abuse and neglect that characterises the cult gets passed down the generations and rolls on and on”, meaning the Taker cult of our culture.3
What are collective burdens? #
Burdens carried by a whole people or culture. Beneath the family layers lie historical and collective layers, going back through history to the first farmers. These layers “carry wounds which still affect us to this day, the wounds of domesticationDomestication. The process by which, in domesticating other species, we domesticated ourselves. When dated precisely, Domestication begins with the Neolithic era, before the Fall proper, which begins with the first city-state cultures around 4000 BCE. What rewilding works to undo. More about this and the Fall.”4 In some ways our entire modern culture, spanning the last 6,000 years of traumatic human history, is collectively experiencing post-traumatic stress. See What are Taker and Leaver cultures?
How do ancestral burdens get passed down? #
In more than one way. Through how we are raised, as the cycles of neglect show. Patterns of conflict pass down too: the drama triangle “can be passed on for generations, centuries even.”5 And some research suggests burdens may be passed on in other ways too: studies of the descendants of Holocaust survivors, and of people whose ancestors endured famines, point to trauma being carried down the generations, part of the field of science called epigenetics.
Scientists still debate this. In the best-known study, published in 2016, the neuroscientist Rachel Yehuda and her colleagues found a small chemical difference on one stress-related gene in Holocaust survivors and in their adult children, running in opposite directions in the two generations.6 Critics such as the genomics expert Ewan Birney say its sample, 32 survivors compared with only 8 people who had not been through the Holocaust, was far too small to support such a large conclusion, and reviews of the field still describe inheritance of this kind in humans as controversial.7
How far back do they reach? #
Several generations, and in the case of collective burdens, much further. Indigenous cultures used to consider the impact of the seven generations that came before them, and acknowledged their influence on the seven generations that would follow. They also saw resolving their own trauma as a personal responsibility, so as not to pass it down through the generations.
How do burdens show up in our lives? #
Often as patterns we keep repeating without knowing why. Many shamanic traditions picture the past as a tentacle that tastes our possible futures: “Because it is a creature of habit, it finds one it’s familiar with based on its past experience, and then hooks onto it and drags us forward into that.” Our choices are shaped by unconscious patterns from past hurts and traumas, including the ancestral burdens we often unconsciously carry. The fuller teaching on how to recognise an ancestral burden is for students.
Are ancestral burdens always negative? #
No; not everything we inherit is a burden. A burden is, by definition, something heavy we were handed. But we inherit good things from our ancestors too, shamanism itself among them: “It is in our ancestral DNA, and literally wired into us.”8 And beyond our individual ancestors are the AncestorsAncestors. The human Oversoul: the whole of humanity held as one Lower-World being. Distinct from individual dead ancestors (small a), who are not worked with in this approach. Read the full answer with a capital A, the larger Human Oversoul from which Human Lower-World GuidesHuman Lower-World Guide. A face put on the human Oversoul: the Ancestors met through an individual form, genuinely other than us, chosen from pre-Fall hunter-gatherer humanity. Related to as a teacher, never a master. Read the full answer come.9 See How does Therapeutic Shamanism understand death and what happens when we die?
Are journeys into ancestral history literal? #
No. Shamanic journeys are mythosMythos. Metaphorical, symbolic, felt truth: the truth of art, poetry and shamanic journeys. Shamanic reality is mythologically true, not literally true, which is why journeys are interpreted, never taken at face value. More about this, not logosLogos. Literal, factual, analytical truth: the truth of facts you can check. One of the two modes of truth, alongside mythos. More about this: metaphorically true rather than literally true. “You cannot use them to find out ‘facts’. They are instead the realm of meanings, relationships and insights.”10 A journey that seems to show an ancestor’s life tells us about meaning, not about what really happened. See Is shamanic journeying imagination and how are journeys co-created?
Can soul retrieval change the past? #
No, but it can change what the past does to us. The past cannot be changed. Instead, the focus needs to be on reshaping the stories and messages we took from past events, so that we resolve past trauma and free ourselves for more conscious decision-making in the future. Soul retrievalSoul retrieval. Finding an exiled soul-part and inviting it home. In the modern psyche the fort-holder who sent it away must consent first, and the retrieval itself is a beginning: the real work is integration. Read the full answer does not undo what happened either; it brings back parts of us that were lost. See What is soul retrieval?
