Last night during the lunar eclipse - the longest in 580 years they say, I’d been thinking about my ancestors - and all of ours - in the world that existed about 500 years ago before colonization of the global East, West, & South. Here is one of the only photos I have of my recent ancestors - my maternal grandmother & grandfather and my mother (in arms) and her older sister in Kerala, pictured only years after the formal end of British rule.
Although earlier waves of patriarchal colonization had already swept throughout Europe, Asia and much of the world via inter-continental dynasties 3000+ years before that, the conquest of the world by Europeans would only begin in the later 1400s. Most of us can't remember what that pre-colonial world looked like, felt like, sounded like, or tasted like. The stories of those times were never passed down to us orally because the weave of who we were and the transmission carried in its fibers was broken. And yet, I believe that the memory of it lives somewhere deep within each of our DNA. That soul of who we were, and still are, is ultimately inextinguishable, though ever at threat.
Today we all are still deep in the grips of colonial Empire in other guises: Fear + Greed = Empire, no matter the era or the names. And yet every taste of liberation we conjure - like we did collectively in Rites of Passage: 20/20 Vision this summer - is both a seeing forward to what could be, and a seeing back to what was. Who were we then? - and who are we now? - without the colonizer's story that we are not enough? Who are we - both colonized and colonizer - without centuries of intergenerational trauma and forgetting? Who are we without the fabricated fear of an "other"? Without the promise of infinite progress at the cost of infinite diversity?
Personally, I love that "who". I live my life in a devotion to that which we were, and that which we actually are... The "who" we could be if we were truly in alignment with the dreams of our ancient ancestors.
Today on this full moon in Taurus- my own moon, I bow to the deep truth of our enlightened ancestors - those old bright shining old wise ones who walked firmly on this earth they called home. Who knew that they were enough, that they belonged, and who knew how to love and be loved. They were both the flowers & fruit, and the gardeners of the Real. A garden in which there was enough for all. May we remember them within us today with all the compassion for what we - especially as Black & Brown-bodied people - have endured through the last 500+ years. May we all get free.
Although earlier waves of patriarchal colonization had already swept throughout Europe, Asia and much of the world via inter-continental dynasties 3000+ years before that, the conquest of the world by Europeans would only begin in the later 1400s. Most of us can't remember what that pre-colonial world looked like, felt like, sounded like, or tasted like. The stories of those times were never passed down to us orally because the weave of who we were and the transmission carried in its fibers was broken. And yet, I believe that the memory of it lives somewhere deep within each of our DNA. That soul of who we were, and still are, is ultimately inextinguishable, though ever at threat.
Today we all are still deep in the grips of colonial Empire in other guises: Fear + Greed = Empire, no matter the era or the names. And yet every taste of liberation we conjure - like we did collectively in Rites of Passage: 20/20 Vision this summer - is both a seeing forward to what could be, and a seeing back to what was. Who were we then? - and who are we now? - without the colonizer's story that we are not enough? Who are we - both colonized and colonizer - without centuries of intergenerational trauma and forgetting? Who are we without the fabricated fear of an "other"? Without the promise of infinite progress at the cost of infinite diversity?
Personally, I love that "who". I live my life in a devotion to that which we were, and that which we actually are... The "who" we could be if we were truly in alignment with the dreams of our ancient ancestors.
Today on this full moon in Taurus- my own moon, I bow to the deep truth of our enlightened ancestors - those old bright shining old wise ones who walked firmly on this earth they called home. Who knew that they were enough, that they belonged, and who knew how to love and be loved. They were both the flowers & fruit, and the gardeners of the Real. A garden in which there was enough for all. May we remember them within us today with all the compassion for what we - especially as Black & Brown-bodied people - have endured through the last 500+ years. May we all get free.
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