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The Cult of Ancestors. The Power of Our Blood
Viktoria Raidos
The Cult of Ancestors is the long-awaited debut book by the winner of the sixteenth season of ‘Battle of the Psychics’ – Viktoria Raidos. The author discusses how the actions of distant ancestors continue to influence our destiny today. She also answers the most important question: Is it possible to change what is literally ‘written in the family?’ The ability to learn from mistakes and to improve is the basis of both biological and spiritual evolution. One of the most important human tools to help achieve this is conscious attention on the themes of our destiny. This is very important in relation to the history of the family: direct ancestors act on a person automatically, and in order to somehow change their influence you must first understand them. The influence of distant ancestors, on the other hand, and the help they can give is almost impossible to feel and receive without knowledge of them and their fates. Usually, in order to act correctly, you need to understand who you are and where you are. Victoria is convinced that, in many ways, this understanding comes from a kind of knowledge gained through the history of your ancestors. The force that has been transmitted over centuries from one generation to the next, which is located in your physiology and psyche, develops into certain themes that affect your very life. If you learn to see and change these stories, you will learn to change your destiny.
Viktoria Raidos
The Cult of Ancestors. The Power of Our Blood
Raidos Viktoria
THE CULT OF ANCESTORS. The Power of Our Blood
Translation by Benjamin Hugh De Courcy Jones
© OJSC Ves Publishing Group, 2017
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Искренне Ваш,
Владелец Издательской группы «Весь»
Пётр Лисовский
Introduction
Ghosts come to me.
That is just what I do – I see them and hear them.
But they also come to each of you. There is not one person to whom this has not happened, considering all our dearly departed are in fact with us nearby. They might even be here with you now as you read these lines.
My job is to see them and hear them and, as their trusted person, to pass on to people what they want to say. Remember that these ghosts were once living people, parts of whom you are carrying around in your genes – your ancestors.
And they need one thing, which only the living can give them – memory.
“Can give” and, really, must give.
Memory is even a mark of respect that we all should give to those who brought us into this life.
Those who gave us our character traits, talents, patterns of behaviour, complexion, eye color, and hair.
In many ways – our fate.
They are nearby in order to give us strength. Teach us to overcome difficulties, save us from mistakes, help us to achieve what we – and they – want.
What happens when we push away their help? When we do not think that there were millions of years of successive lives and loves of these people who led to our appearance into the world?
In a case when descendents cannot draw strength and experience from previous generations, they have no strength left for carrying on the family line. This can happen for various reasons. Sometimes a person can start considering themselves more successful, smarter and more educated than his ‘illiterate’ ancestors. Sometimes ancestors are forgotten as the result of revolutions, civil wars or catastrophes. Sometimes it might even be frightful to have an ‘undesirable’ relative or ancestor. So they get forgotten, or – to be more precise – disowned.
Disowning one’s roots is the most harmful thing a living being can do.
What happens if one disowns half (a quarter, an eighth, or even all) of one’s genes?
Imagine a tree that rejects its roots!
This is a common problem for modern civilisation. Taking the side of material possessions, pleasures and joy, people turn their backs on their history, in other words – on themselves, creating a great thirst in their souls. A thirst for AUTHENTICITY, a thirst for confidence and the righteousness of their present and future lives – their own and their children’s that can only be based on solid foundations.
We try to quench this thirst with countless adventures, travels, exotic cultures, other worlds, strange and fascinating fates, passions, fashions and ‘spiritualities’.
But to nourish a living being can we really substitute simple, real water for anything else?
When strength, flowing for millions of years from ancestor to descendent, becomes unclaimed or meets an obstacle, it is like a dam in a river. There is as much water as you need, but you feel like you are in a desert. Your garden that you have been cultivating while neglecting yourself, dries out. And if the water pressure becomes too high that the dam breaks, the torrent will be so strong that you will most probably drown.
This thirst of the modern human can only be quenched by a mother’s milk, a father’s guidance, a grandmother’s blessing and a grandfather’s advice.
By the force that comes from the soil, through the roots.
This is the knowledge, intuitively known to all living creatures, that ‘homo sapiens’ dares to ignore.
Knowing this tribal system, how a person can draw energy from their family and how to act correctly so this bloodline link does not break – but rather strengthens – with time, is useful to anyone.
Because the bloodline can give not only a strong family and good children, but a career, money, social status and successful self-fulfilment.
Or the other way around – the family line can take away and destroy, make one repeat the mistakes of one’s ancestors or pay for their debts. It is often hard to abstain from something that has been forced onto you by the blood of your ancestors – especially when you do not even realize what is happening. Frequently, it is actions that are difficult to explain with common sense that are easily explained by problems that you have to solve as the inheritor of a particular bloodline. This task, of course, becomes more difficult – or even impossible – if its preconditions are not understood. If negative information encoded into the family line does not get reprogrammed, it will affect all of the upcoming generations. There is always something that was just ‘written into one’s family line’, but in every family line there is always the first one.
A family line, like every living thing on Earth, should change and transform to stay alive. And these changes should benefit the members of a given family line. Conditions under which a person exists are heavily dependent on the actions of his ancestors. But how you act, which life choices you make and in which direction you take your family line depends entirely on you.
In any political regime, any economic situation and cultural environment there is one solid, unchanging truth – you are someone’s descendant. And someone’s ancestor.
Ask yourself – What kind of ancestor will I be for my descendants? Are you going to be the one whom they will try to forget, considered to be the reason for all the misfortunes in the family? Or will you be the one whom everyone will thank and be proud of, whose actions they will carry on? To whom your grandchildren and great-grandchildren will want to be similar? In which conditions will those who come after you find themselves?
But to change the course of fate you need a lot of strength. And also a lot of understanding and compassion.
Human life and fate itself – the relationships we have with others, work, wealth, health, – is all closely connected to that almost ephemeral state that we call ‘psychology’. And psychology itself is tightly connected to family (upbringing) and the whole bloodline system (genes).
It is not by chance that many psychological movements of the twentieth century (for example, psychoanalysis, systemic family constellations and psychogenealogy) are based on connections of an individual with their whole family and ancestors, with many modern psychological techniques being closely related to shamanic practices. With all our beliefs in scientific research and evidence, modern humans cannot completely abandon the traditions refined by generations, so that one’s life and the lives of one’s children are not distorted or disharmonized.
In this book there will be a lot of references to folk customs and various traditional cultures. This not only pays respect to the cultures of past generations, it is also an effective tool. I tend to trust experience that is many thousands of years old. A human in tradition is a human in harmony with the universe, with nature and all of existence, capable of absorbing energy from the world around, as well as from within.
People who have kept their connection with nature (as well as with their own nature) also maintain a connection with strength. Traditionally, all individuals were in regular contact with the sacral, turning to their ancestor’s spirits and holding ceremonies to influence their present realities.
To understand the mechanism of how the family line influences humans is important for everyone, especially those who have any ambitions and abilities with magic. In shamanic traditions, the first thing you must do is to make amends with your ancestors’ spirits, because they become a conductor to the spiritual world in general. It is also better to get familiarized with the whole system of how energy circulates among humans and how the forces of life and death operate with something that you can observe closely – your own family line. This is especially important in the modern world where the inheritance of magical traditions in many cases has been interrupted and a whole host of various and often contradictory traditions prevail. In this case, great individual power combined with ignorance can lead to serious mistakes that are harmful, not only to the individual but also to his descendants.
My name is Victoria Raidos, and I am a Priestess of the Cult of Ancestors.
I cannot transmit to everyone on Earth what their ancestors want to specifically tell them.
But I can transmit to everyone what our ancestors want to tell all of us, through this book. I can remind people what they often forget, that humans always have enough strength to solve any problem – even the scariest and seemingly unsolvable. All we need to know is how to find that strength and where to draw it up.
Real strength can only be found within. You really must value this magical power that you already have and carry inside you.
Your power is in your blood.
Blood that you got from your ancestors.
The Power of Blood
We all want to live our lives meaningfully and happily. As the old proverb goes: ‘Every man should build a house, plant a tree and raise a son’. Become a respected person. Realize our potential and talents. Achieve our dreams. Each of us has enough energy to make all of this happen and to live a life that we want.
If a person feels that they lack energy, it normally means that they do not know how to use it. Most of this energy we can get from our bloodline. If many people in the family lived their lives reasonably and with content, there is no bad heredity. These kinds of families can be considered as the most respected, because it gives its descendants all the power that has been stored there for centuries. If you are lucky to be born into such a family – use this gift wisely! Remember that you hold a great power that you need to cultivate and continue.
But what if a family is weak? This happens when there are suicides, unborn children, abandoned family members and curses in the family. These do not give an individual any power, but take it away. Often, in this case, an individual seems unable to start living their own life and inevitably and constantly works on solving problems from the family line.
Often these bloodline problems lead to complications that seem to appear out of nowhere that a person is not able to solve: lack of happiness in one’s life, suicidal thoughts, physical or psychological diseases, complications in creating their own families (unrequited love, problems with a spouse and children or infertility). And if an individual is doing everything correctly but life still just does not come together, then it is a sign of the problems being a part of an entire family line.
So what to do? Complain about how unfair destiny is that led to this particular person to be born in this particular family?
Every individual has their own life path and a goal that he or she should achieve. And all of us have conditions in which we find ourselves as we move along this path. This can be imagined as weights on one’s legs: you have a task that you are performing but at the same time you are not entirely free, with the weights providing added complications. But even in sport, weights are not given for nothing. It is done to achieve better results, to work out some specific muscles, for example.
The same happens with fate. Our very first reaction to anything difficult is, of course, annoyance. This is so unfair! Why am I the one to have to go through this, to be born into a family where there are so many problems? A family where a genetic disease is inherited, where every other person is an alcoholic or where relatives were tortured and slaughtered? Don’t I have an individual mission on this planet besides working through the problems of my ancestors that they most often created themselves?
There are individuals whose spiritual level is high enough to understand that what is happening is no accident. They see the complicated conditions into which they were born not as sad coincidences, but conditions necessary for their personal growth and the fulfillment of their destiny.
The universe makes no mistakes when it creates the very specific conditions into which each of us are born. Everybody has a time when the universe checks how well this person has learnt their life lessons. These are the trials that an individual needs to go through to reach a new level or to confirm being on the level that they deserve. One of these trials can be working through family karma. Maybe in one of your previous incarnations you created this karmic knot yourself, leading to these present family complications. Your task is then to work on your mistake, resolving it or being punished by it. It is very complicated – almost impossible – to step out of this family programming by just wishing it. You can only cure the problems. And there was always someone who was the first one to do something for the first time.
So it might be you, the first ‘strong one’ in your family line who will change the whole family line for the better?
The Cult 0f Ancestors
The Cult of Ancestors forms the foundation of all religions and spiritual teachings. It could even be considered as a ‘family religion’ because it is the veneration of deceased ancestors of one particular family. The spirits of a family are the inhabitants of another world who, by default, are friendly towards their descendants and are ready to assist them. As the main protectors of the family, they are able to give their living relatives help and protection with all the power that spirits possess. The main thing here is to be able to accept this help. And this is exactly what one learns by carrying out rituals of venerating ancestors – the correct behaviours and attitudes towards one’s family line.
The cult of venerating ancestors is a whole worldview in which an individual is part of a harmonious world system and part of nature. This knowledge would keep us from making many mistakes and give us much value.
A great importance of ancestors can be understood just from some knowledge of biology. Our ancestors are present – or, it could be said, resurrected – in us as genes. We are made from their flesh and blood. Everything experienced by them – actions, sensations, thoughts – comes to us and then to our children. And we should pay our respects to our ancestors for at least surviving and giving us the gift of life. If it were not for them, there would be no us.
A human is not only a biological creature. People rely not only on their instincts, but also place great significance on culture, which is the main system through which we transfer our experience to our descendants. This exists on a level of universal human culture, as well as on the levels of one individual and those close to them. The culture of venerating ancestors is something that connects people. Despite any one belief system, you are someone’s descendant, and – if you are lucky – someone’s ancestor.
How do dead ancestors help their living relatives? At the moment, there is no scientifically proven explanation of the workings of the Cult of Ancestors.
We can only use it as a practical tool to get results, but not fully understanding exactly how it functions. Whether this informational and energetic connection is created through a genetic code or any other way, we simply do not know anything specific so far.
The same occurs not only in the esoteric, but in another science that studies the human soul, psyche and behaviour – psychology. The method of ‘systemic family constellations’, for example, is a psychological principle that was discovered at the end of the twentieth century by Bert Hellinger. In this method, the history of a client’s family is described as a system that works according to particular laws. The constellation itself happens in a group with random people unrelated to the client acting as the client and their family members. Yet during the session they unwillingly start acting and thinking as the person whom they are representing. This way, the client gets information about his family and understands the roots of his problems, and so can influence it. But the way this knowledge is accessed cannot be explained. In this method, there is a term – the ‘Knowing Field’ – whose working principles are simply unknown.
What remains is just to carry on centuries-old traditions.
Different cultures, of course, have cults of ancestors with their own specific features. But in all rituals, ceremonies and traditions, there are similar universal features. This is because, in one way or another, it is something common to all of humanity.
In China, the Cult of Ancestors exists right now as part of the state religion. There they believe that the spirit of an ancestor who does not receive an annual offering dies and cannot take care of his descendants. As such, Chinese people are very strict about observing the necessary ceremonies. The level of respect for ancestors is so high in China that there is a belief that if someone commits suicide they release their parents from their illnesess.
In modern Japan, the Cult of Ancestors is also widespread, even among the young. Among Japanese celebrations, there are many and various religious practices and ceremonies directed towards the veneration of ancestors.
While praying, Muslims remember their ancestors up to seven generations back. Tatars and Bashkirs have a Cult of Ancestors that is a synthesis of ancient beliefs and Islamic traditions: the souls of the dead exist in an otherworldly place that is similar to living on Earth. Therefore, the dead should be provided with everything they need (food, tools, weapons…) and on certain days their souls can visit alive in the form of a butterfly or a bird.
In Hinduism, the Cult of Ancestors plays an important role in preserving many aspects of the traditional Vedic ritual system through thorough attention to reincarnation.
In Slavic culture, the Cult of Ancestors was quite well developed. Based on this, it can be said that in Orthodox Christianity paying respect to ancestors plays a bigger role than in other forms of Christianity. Cults of ancestors in ancient Slavic populations varied – they did not only venerate family spirits, but also the spirits of natural forces and legends of mythical epic heroes.
Even in modern society, a lot of traditions remain that are connected with the idea of the family line. In Belarus, they still have Slavic tribal rites and holidays linked with the veneration and remembrance of the dead – ‘Dedy’[1 - The final ‘y’ is stressed, as opposed to the initial ‘e’ in usual spoken Russian.] (or ‘Dziady’)[2 - Editor’s note: These days are celebrated several times a year (three to six). According to beliefs, on these days the deceased (grandparents, spirits, parents, dead) visit their homes for a memorial dinner. In English, the nearest translation is ‘grandpa’ or ‘granddad’ as a more colloquial form of ‘grandfather’.]. Many customs and traditions come from the Cult of Ancestors and the family line. For example, white for a bride’s wedding dress does not really symbolize purity (as it is often thought), but in fact mourning – a bride dies in her role as a girl and is reborn as a wife in a new family. Another custom of carrying a new wife across the threshold is connected to the fact that ancestors used to be buried under the house threshold so they can protect their family from strangers. So a new wife should be presented to them as a new member of this family. The slavic word ‘chur’[3 - The nearest translation is ‘get away from me!’] is also likely connected to the Cult of Ancestors. The word itself and its traditional use is not entirely clear, with various researchers explaining it in different ways. Folklorists of the nineteenth century thought that ‘Chur’ (or ‘Schur’ in its old Slavic form) was the name of a Slavic God of the household, the primary ancestor who guards the borders of native lands. Alexander Afanasyev traces the origin of the word ‘chur’ back to its Sanskrit root, meaning ‘burn’ – for example, the Russian word ‘kurit’ (‘to smoke’) (the sounds ‘k’ and ‘ch’ in Slavic dialects can vary. For instance, ‘chadit’ and ‘kadit’, ‘pochit’ and ‘pokoi’). The names of the materials used for starting fires are also linked: ‘churban’, ‘churka’. Gradually, the meaning of the word that symbolized respect for fire and the household (hearth) begins to change into a symbol for supporting life in the family system, and so the existence of spirits in the house. In this case, the saying ‘Chur menya!’ (‘Get away from me!’) means a request for protection from a family spirit. This version is supported by the existence of the word ‘praschur’ (‘ancestor’) that still exists today.
According to another version, the word ‘chur’ is connected to a phallic symbol, which does not contradict the idea of a family cult.
The third version is that the word ‘chur’ comes from a greek word that means ‘God’ or ‘Sir’ and means ‘God forbid’.
In general, this word means a border, line, some prohibition or condition. So, for example, the word ‘chereschur’ (‘too much’) means crossing a border or boundary. Very often, dead family members were buried at some sort of border or boundary of roads, fields or under a house’s threshold, so that they would look after their descendants. The spirits themselves are also some sort of border between the two worlds of the dead and the living. So, for an average person, this is the simplest and safest way to touch ‘another’ world.
The Family Spirit
Every bloodline has its own energetic-informational field in which it holds all its memories. It is a ‘database’ with all the information about one’s ancestors: about their biography, their acts, thoughts, feelings and hopes. It is not reality itself, but the way it was lived or experienced. Tragic events that were experienced painfully and the same event lived through more calmly are recorded in different ways.
Every one of us can ‘connect’ to this database in order to receive some advice or help from relatives. This often happens subconsciously: we just do something without even realising that this was the exact way that one of our ancestors acted in a similar situation. Of course, if an individual understands what is happening, then they can use this information from the bloodline in a more effective way.
This database is ‘The Family Spirit’.
This is one example of what is called ‘Egregore’ in esoteric theories.
An egregore is an energetic-informational essence that is created from the thoughts and feelings of a united group of people that can influence each of those individuals in the future. It can be called a collective psyche or spirit, which is fed by people’s thoughts, emotions and feelings. There are many egregores, both global (for example, ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’, ‘Life’ and ‘Death’) and on smaller scales. An individual can be a part of many various egregores. What is forbidden by one egregore might be demanded by another, so that an individual who is getting several contradictory instructions simultaneously can experience ‘bifurcation’ and inconsistency of action. One of the tasks of individuals is to correlate the wishes of different egregores and to harmonize them.
Every egregore has its own goal that it tries to achieve through the people that enter it. For this, an egregore gives an individual opportunities to achieve this: resources, abilities, luck, material and emotional rewards, protection and so on. If someone does not act for an egregore’s profit, that egregore can take these opportunities away from the individual. A person can change an egregore, but for that they must achieve a higher position in this egregore, as well as get some support – for example, from a stronger egregore.
The connection between an individual and the egregore (SPIRIT) of their family is one of the strongest, protecting an individual from other alien egregores that can be fatal for a human – they can take away strength without returning anything. But if this family connection is very weak or absent, an individual becomes defenseless to it.
If an individual does not feel part of their bloodline, most probably they will feel like an orphan for their whole life and will be trying to substitute this ‘psychological orphanhood’ for something else. Because every living creature has a need to belong, a need to have a safe space where they can be themselves.
Every spirit has its own character that differs it from all others. This is the culture of the bloodline that has been developing from one generation to another: family traditions, rules, rituals and so on. The experience and information that members of a bloodline receive by living their lives is something that connects a family and helps to keep its unity. The specific character of this spirit is contributed by every individual who has ever been part of this bloodline. Its strength depends on their work and on the age of the bloodline’s existence. The spirit of the bloodline affects every member of the family. If a specific bloodline has its own strong character, it probably means that there is a specific programme or aim for that bloodline. The members of this family know their direction and tasks to work on intuitively from the very beginning. A bloodline primarily forms protection, so it does not support any drastic changes or innovations. The spirit of a bloodline takes any individual walking into it as one detail of a mosaic that creates the whole picture.
From the beginning, a family is a collision of different egregores: egregores from the family lines of the wife’s and husband’s sides, the family egregore itself and the personal egregores of the individuals (the egregores of their professions, for example). Larger egregores, such as egregores of a country, religious tradition and humanity, also influence the family.
Even if a husband and wife are very similar to each other, belong to the same race and social system and share the same profession, hobbies and interests, they still come from different bloodlines, each of which has its own features and traditions. In some cases, they will even have to reconcile their behaviour with contradicting demands of different egregores. For example, a wife might have to make a choice – to make ‘borscht’[4 - A sour soup common in Eastern Europe and Northern Asia, but most often associated with its Ukrainian variant, made with beetroots as one of the main ingredients that give the dish its distinctive red color.] according to the traditions of her family or according to those of her husband’s, like how his mother used to make it for him. Of course, this is a very simple example, but what if a husband and his wife belong to different religious traditions and social systems? In many cases, contradictions between egregores are so big that individuals never manage to find any common ground. This can happen not only between spouses, but also among different generations. For example, a child is born into a family of robbers and decides to work in the police. Of course, he or she feels alienated from his own family and does not feel any support, just as his family considers him a traitor. His own children will feel the influence both of his upbringing and the ‘family calling’ – in other words, the temptation to walk the way that was trodden by many generations of ancestors. This also happens in cases when a child has not been told anything about it: they remember the history of their bloodline without consciously knowing about it.
Many cases are based on this, when somebody repeats an event that happened to their ancestors, not remembering or even not knowing about it.
As Anne Ancelin Schützenberger writes in her book The Ancestor Syndrome, it was President Kennedy who decided not to install his car with a roof (let alone a bullet-proof one) 22
November 1963, ‘forgetting’ a death threat and the fact that his great-grandfather died on 22
