Quotes on ancestors

Psychoanalysis is often about turning our ghosts into ancestors, even for patients who have not lost loved ones to death. We are often haunted by important relationships from the past that influence us unconsciously in the present. As we work them through, they go from haunting us to becoming simply part of our history. (243)

ancestors death ghosts grief healing-the-past loss memories psychoanalysis relationships

It is surprising to me that one of the great crimes of history has gone unnoticed; the abduction of god by religions. This slight-of-hand has been the cause of countless blood-shed and has been found at the root of innumerable acts of evil. The argument continues today, as to which religion the true god belongs, when what would be most healing and empowering is to free god from the shackles of religious limitation and judgment. It is by emancipating god from the ignorance of our ancestors that we become empowered to explore and express our own relationship with what god may or may not be.

ancestors empowered god history relationship religion

The songs of our ancestors are also the songs of our children

ancestors future history legacy

You are the fairy told by your ancestors.

ancestors fairy-tales future

Dychwelyd i wlad eich hynafiaid; gwaed yn galw i waed. Return to the land of your fathers; blood calls to blood.

ancestors magic wales

Many African societies divide humans into three categories: those still alive on the earth, the sasha, and the zamani. The recently departed whose time on earth overlapped with people still here are the sasha, the living-dead. They are not wholly dead, for they still live in the memories of the living, who can call them to mind, create their likeness in art, and bring them to life in anecdote. When the last person to know an ancestor dies, that ancestor leaves the sasha for the zamani, the dead. As generalised ancestors, the zamani are not forgotten but revered. Many can be recalled by name. But they are not the living-dead. There is a difference.

ancestors death-and-dying ghosts lies-my-teacher-told-me spirits

No one can be free who has a thousand ancestors.

ancestors free