Dispatches from the Abyss
With everything going on in the world, I struggle at times trying to cling to the last shred of hope in humanity. I've been doing a lot of ancestral and genealogical workings - not just for personal reasons - but for times like these. Healing gives us sustenance to keep going. Working with my ancestors has helped me to understand myself better - but also the world at large.
All these cycles keep repeating and history shows us every step forward comes with violent push back. It never ends. We keep fighting the wars of our ancestors assuming that they want revenge and vindication. Sometimes they do, but I am finding many want to find peace and healing in their bloodlines. They want to be understood for their actions and how their lives were in ways we cannot understand.
This is why I am working heavily on ancestral trauma healing and integration -- and believe me since most of my ancestry is Eastern/Central European -- my ancestors have spent a lot of time warring with each other for centuries maybe a millennia or longer. I'm pausing on that end before I autistically info dump the histories of the region.
I am still scared sometimes, but I think that might be the gift of ancestry. I mean I wouldn't be here if my more recent ancestry didn't get out of Ukraine when shit started going down in the 1910s.
"Ya' gotta know when to hold 'em know when to fold 'em know when to walk away know when to RUN."
The fear though, maybe that's from being a distant cousin of Rebecca Nurse who was murdered during the Salem Witch Trials and John Alden Jr. who was accused and jailed, but later acquitted as he escaped jail and was shuffled around through the trials and turned himself in after things died down a bit.
As I have been deep diving into the history of the Bathory family - yes that Bathory family of which we get the Blood Countess Elizabeth Bathory. With a dozen genetic connections to the family, I would wager that she would have been a distant cousin as well, but trying to connect the dots genealogically speaking. It is said that she was allegedly introduced to demonology and sorcery by an uncle -- but also that much of her sordid lore was the result of being a powerful nobleman with even more power after her husband Ferenc Nasdady's passing. It wouldn't be the first time a powerful woman was lied about and taken down by weakass jealous men. Her cruelty cannot be denied, but we may never know the truth - but we do know that history is written by the victors and that many stories are embellished a long the way as such with Bathory's legendary cruelty.
How will history remember us? After all this is said and done? Probably not kindly. They will ask the same questions we have of the generations that came before us.
Dark Blessings,
Jennifer