Ancestors by Stuart Hough

Wintertime was always a time to think of those who had passed to the Otherworld. Long hours of darkness gave more time to think and reflect. Their missing faces from celebrations was a sad reality made more poignant by the darkest time of the year. As with many, she believed in the spirits of animals, trees, rivers, of the sky and of the land. Yet there was something else she wasn’t as clear about. She had been considering the spirits of the departed dead and their common ancestors. In many respects, her belief in the Gods and the spirits had become well defined over recent times and more straightforward.

A ‘god like figure’ stood for an individual entity. She or He would represent that.

Taranis wasn’t the god of thunder and lightning. He was the thunder and lightning itself.

Cernnunos wasn’t just the God of the wild things and the hunt. He wasn’t apart from those. He was all of the wild things, and he was the hunt, itself.

Calling upon the spirit of thunder, lightning, or rain was to call upon those elements themselves. However, calling upon an ancestor was something she was less clear about. Was it calling upon the dead themselves or the spirits of an ancestral line?

In times past, people would often bury their relatives under the foundation of their homes. It would keep their spirits close and maintain a strong link to the past. She smiled at the thought. Surely, they would have welcomed the peace? Hadn’t they been through enough during their lives in this world? Did they really want to listen to the same tiresome troubles of those generations that came after them?

“I don’t have all of the answers.” Her late father’s words echoed through her head. “There comes a point when you need to walk your own path and learn for yourself. I can’t and won’t live your life for you.” She smiled at the memory. Despite that, she would have loved to speak to her mother. Would her veneration of the woman she never knew, be able to create the sense of stability and hope she so sorely craved now?

She kept her mind active as she worked. She used her thoughts as a distraction from the deep apprehension she felt towards her task.

People leave their mark upon the landscape. A house, a clearing of trees, a ploughed field or the massive ditches and ramparts of the hillforts. This was often the obvious link to them. Through their efforts, the ancestors lived on. Would they look on also? Was the Otherworld here and now? Was it both yesterday and tomorrow? A land within a land where normal laws of everything did not apply?

If the Otherworld was both the realm of the Gods, the spirits and of the Dead, who knew? Only the ravens, probably. It made sense for the Gods to inhabit the Otherworld. They were after all, the original ancestors. Ancestors with healing powers, answers to the mysteries of life and adept with their own minds. Her ancestors along with everyone else, were the direct descendants of them. It was odd then she thought sarcastically, as to why there were so many idiots around these days. Maybe something had gone wrong with them over the course of the generations.

It had taken some time to remove the many rocks which had protected the entrance. It would probably take her even longer to replace them, she thought ironically. The smell of ancient darkness and cold stone was palpable, as she crawled through the narrow passageway. Once inside, the burial chamber was a lot bigger than she thought. Her little oil lamp once lit, smoked gently. It added a little more soot to the huge, blackened capstones of the ceiling. The floor was covered with a layer of sand. It had leaked in over time, from between the gaps of the harder stone slabs which formed the walls of the tomb. It was remarkably dry inside.

She carefully began to push the sandy top layer of the floor to one side, as she began to gently dig. Beneath the aged surface, the ground was made of up crushed limestone and shells. It must have taken a considerable amount of time and effort to move this amount of the crushed rock, from so far away.

The crushed limestone beneath was still white. She knew that the bones would be close to the surface. As she lightly removed the stone, the shape of a skull became apparent.  As she worked, she could see from the age of the bones that the skeleton was not just one person. The skull and neck were the oldest and probably belonged to the original ancestor. The jaw was old, but not as old as the rest of the head. It clearly belonged to a second person.

The human remains were inherently powerful objects. They were a part of an ancient ritual process designed to aid the living. She sat with the unearthed skull in her hands and felt a torrent of emotion crash over her. Fear, worry, and inadequacy then gave way to emptiness. She felt the smooth surface of the cranium. Her hand gently caressed the old bone. She held the skull to her chest as she wept.

The flame of the lamp flickered as she sobbed, altering the shadows on the stone. Light and dark danced across the old stones. Her tears stopped and she began to smile. “But you’ve seen it all before, haven’t you? She asked of the lifeless eye sockets. “And more.” She smiled. “All of you.” She looked and the floor and to the other uncovered bones beneath. She knew that the other unseen bones were disarticulated and comprised of the body parts of others.  “What makes me so different? Well, nothing. We are all the same you and I.”

Over hundreds of years, parts of the original body had been replaced with those of the generations that followed. They were the components of kinship which linked their ancestral lineage. The skeleton as a whole represented the various men and women that formed one body of people, throughout the passage of time. They were the embodiment of her past. She seemed to draw strength from the thought of their shared ordeals over time. Their hopes and fears would not have been very different from hers now. She began to see the future more clearly. These people were of her mother’s ancestral line. They were her family. She felt as if she knew them and that they both understood her and wished her well.

“Truth and trust.” She said quietly. “Honesty. Spirituality. A willingness to offer loving kindness to others.” She dried her tears on a dusty cuff. “Knowing your own mind and yourself. For that, I thank you all.”

She held the face of the skull to the dim light of her lamp. Her feelings were of pride and affection as she looked at the long-gone face and tried to imagine the features.

“Were you one of the old Great Kings or Queens?” She whispered to the skull.

“Or were you a God…?” and after the briefest of pauses, “…Ess?” She added, with a wry smile.