history

Actually, I Get Ancestor Worship

by

In my readings on religion and spirituality, in my own spiritual journeys, I keep coming across practices of Ancestor Worship. As time goes on, I honestly see the value of it in general. I’m not even talking any possible supernatural benefits.

What kicked this off was some post I read online about a person respecting a well in a place they grew up in. Someone had ensured the community with that well and led them to discuss the purpose and value of Ancestor Worship.. So I figured I’d collect and share my thoughts so far on Ancestor Worship for discussion and of course to try to put them into words.

First, Ancestor Worship provides awareness of history. Understanding where you came from and why is important, and like any kind of history it makes you stop and think. It also means you stop and think about what you’re doing for the future. Are you going to be the Ancestor remembered or the one forgotten?

Secondly, Ancestor Worship has the benefit of essentially ritualizing history. One connects with their past, understands where they came from and so on – all bound in the power of ritual. This has a way of energizing our connections and bringing and sustaining their meaning.


Third, Ancestor Worship encourage what I’ve called an “ecosystem” approach to life, which I’ve written of a number of times. To look to the past and the future, to be aware of history and connection, to bring it to life in ritual is to understand the connectedness of the world. Like other practice I’ve discussed (contemplation of correspondences, worship of gods, etc.) it keeps life organic.

Fourth, Ancestor Worship encourages (hopefully) respect for what one has. To understand why you have where you live, the people who worked on your community, etc. is powerful. It’s a reminder of how we got where we are. Your possession isn’t yours, it’s history – and eventually someone else’s.

Now having enumerated my thoughts on the benefits, a few thoughts in turn on healthy ways to engage in said Ancestor worship.

  1. “Ancestors” aren’t blood relatives. Ancestors are people who helped us be who we are now and who we respect. Your grandparents may have been awful so forget them – but maybe you honor the founder of your profession.
  2. “Ancestors” aren’t perfect, and I view “Ancestor Worship” as a way to build on their good and make up for the bad. If they’re flawed people worthy of respect, then part of Ancestor Worship is doing good with what they left us – while not carrying on their flaws.
  3. Ancestors can be respected a number of ways, but it should be ritualized. It may be as simple as giving thank, or donations, or celebrating their birthday. Make it organized and also meaningful.
  4. Ancestor Worship doesn’t have to involve any supernatural elements. That’s optional.

Granted these are not thoughts for an organized practice or anything. I myself don’t do much more at the time than occasionally express respect for certain people responsible for the books I read, or acknowledge the lineage of where I work. But maybe organizing them will give me direction – and of course provide my readers and friends with something to read and discuss.

–Xenofact

Threads and Validity

by

Previously I’d written on ways people tried to claim spiritual authority – Ancient Tradition and/or Initiation – and the flaws of both. I’d mentioned a bit on how I validate spiritual teachings and advice, and wanted to share that next.

And considering I get into things like “did this 3000 year old sword hilt indicate breathing exercises” yeah, this kind of thing interests me. Well, I also like breathing exercises.

So as regular readers know, Taoism is a large part of my spiritual practice. Taoism has a convoluted history going back thousands of years, of which the famous Tao Te Ching is a major milestone, but not the only milestone. Taoism includes breath work, philosophy, psychological exercises, folk religion, I Ching commentaries, a sprawling collection of immortals, mystics, and weirdos, and more. It also includes what I call “Taoist Diss Tracks,” and trust me you have to see what kind of snark people who emphasize “doing by not doing” can get up to in order to appreciate it.

Note that Taoism isn’t particularly restrictive, and my spiritual practice includes many other elements. But I’ll just focus on Taoism for now.

The question is how I make sense from my Taoist readings and learn useful techniques and teachings? I mean there’s a lot so there has to be something there, but also there are also Taoists poetically accusing others of being weird perverts, so you gotta do some sorting.

The best way I’ve found to describe my methods are Threads and Validity.

When studying such a sprawling tradition, I look for Threads that endure throughout the various teachings. Is there something that persists between enough of the works I read and over a note able time period that represents A) a teaching with a history, and B) that is applicable and can be actioned.

Note that I say teaching with a history. This may mean a consistent practice, but also means a practice that you can see discussed, analyzed, and maybe even evolving. It may be argued about, it may be relatively unchanged, but you can look at it and say “yes, I can see what that is and why it is.”

Also, note it should be actionable. You can have some kind of consistent or evolved teaching but if you can’t do anything with it then it’s sort of hard to try out.

A few examples from my interest in Taoism:

  1. Breath exercises seem to go back very far in Taoism, predating the Tao Te Ching. Slow, even breath seemed to be a major part from the start.
  2. Post Tao Te Ching teachings that involve “spiritual alchemy” have some pretty consistent metaphors for mental elements and psychological effects of meditation – or at least the authors I have an interest in (which seem to come from the same school so not surprising).
  3. Political and social advice for Taoists seems pretty consistent, from avoidance of greed to a mistrust of intellectualism. There’s debates over implementing that, but the Tao Te Ching seemed to embody and promote some teachings that stayed relatively consistent for people who you know cared.

But all this aside, this history and ability to action things doesn’t matter if you can’t find some Validity in the spiritual works. You have to put them into action and see what happens.

And that’s where you have to get to work, try it out, and see if it works. Does the breath meditation seem to work for you? Do ethical teachings help you out (which requires a lot of self introspection)? Do you connect with this god or that?

Spiritual practices require you to actually dive in and try out what you’ve found. Which also requires you to ask what do you expect to happen, what are your goals? This is challenging, since the answer may be “to see what happens” – in fact in some meditative techniques that’s kind of half the goal. Sometimes having a goal actually messes things up, like forms of meditation, which makes it more a challenge.

Yes, I include ethical and social practices in this as well. Thinking about your ethical choices, how you act, and what happens really helps you grow. Even if sometimes it’s growing by confronting things about yourself and your society.

But it’s up to me to learn, to apply things, and see what happens. I take responsibility for what I’m doing so I can learn, put things into practice, and be better. My regular readers know there are some things I don’t comment on as I’m not sure I know enough to do so safely and effectively. You gotta dive in to learn.

So that’s how I validated spiritual teachings. I look for histories and consistencies that I can put into action then I give them a try. It also means putting in the work and taking the responsibility.

–Xenofact

Creating Across the Centuries

by

Art Connects us, art is part of bigger things.

Digital collage is one of my artistic media, and one that I didn’t expect to become such. I originally picked it up for my work in zines, and then it just became “my thing.” Now I regularly examine public domain art resources, usually museums, for interesting images and such to work into my mashups.

My collage work is, for those aware of it, rather surreal. This originated out of my early zine days, punk, and the Church of the SubGenius. It was honed by an interest in alchemical and spiritual diagrams of yore and the Surrealists themselves. I combine images from across the centuries to create something new – many times something that surprises me as Surrealist work is Rorschach blots in reverse.

Once when poking around for some backgrounds to work with and inspire me, I searched the Welcome Collection, I stumbled across a lot of lovely, colorful prints. These were meant to be part of something called a “Toy Theater,” which I’d never really heard of. So I took a break from my art-searching to learn a little history.

Toy Theaters, to judge by the Wikipedia article I found and the art I had discovered were “a thing” in the 19th century, with interest surviving to this day. You could buy backgrounds and kits at theaters and operas, scripts were available, and there were of course fancier and self-made versions. Imagine going to the theater and then your parents buy you the kit so you can reenact the story you saw!

Toy Theaters, to an extent, were the same as merchandise and action figures we know from our mass media movies, albeit more personal. You’d assemble your own theater, you might customize it or alter it, you may even have cutout actors based on people you had seen the night before. They were also stages of the imagination.

Despite having scripts and the like, we all know people like to create. I’m sure over the decades that there were romances and battles and skulduggery among casts that would never have met. I’m sure people got silly, had fun, or got serious. They could mash things up, do things there way.

Then, across the decades, I realized they were like me.

Here I was, looking at images of Toy Theater backgrounds, finding inspiration just as someone would unpacking their Toy Theater kit. I combined disparate elements in a fury of inspiration, no different than someone playing with the Theater or taking a stab at the equivalent of fanfiction. There, across ages, I was doing the same thing that those people with their Toy Theaters did – creating my own world out of the parts.

Every artist who’d made these backgrounds and printer who’d printed these prints was having their work still used by people like me. Every parent who lovingly saved their child’s toys, toys which eventually were donated to museums, were seeing their effort live on in how that art was seen and used.

I felt both small and large, part of something bigger but also just me, there, a guy behind a computer playing with graphic programs.

Art, art has so many connections that it lets us feel the largeness of it all. A hundred years ago a family happily assembled a Toy Theater. Now I create strange and wonderful surrealist work. And we’re all the same, part of the same thing.

–Xenofact