The Changing of Ancestral Guards

..well, guard, actually.

I've known for some time now that one of my personal ancestral contacts was leaving. She has been fading in and out for a couple of months, my time - by which I divined that it might be time for this fragment of my mother's soul to be moving on.

I don't strictly subscribe to one organisational map of the planes, the otherworld or the afterlife; I reckon we'll all remember what we need, eventually. But I do know that the ancestral counsellor once known as 'my mother' has formally taken her leave of my shamanic group, and that her mother has stepped up to fill the breech.

Gran Banning - or Dorothy George, as she asks me now to address her - was a bit of a cypher in my life in that, although I was very fond of her, I knew very little about her apart from what was obvious - that she was a strong and independent woman who had suffered and survived much.

So I was always a little afraid of taking on her shade as a confidant and advisor. Until her husband barged in, for a brief space, that is. I need Ernst von Banning like I need a hole in the head. Dorothy George I can certainly deal well with.

Last night I saw the revenant of my mother off with a little gathering of shamanic companions - under the Tree, beside the River, we sat in a circle and Mom and I exchanged outpourings of Love and Trust for what might be the last time in a long while before she left to rejoin the rest of her spirit. And Gran Banning moved up to fill her space.

I might be a while integrating this soul fragment into my group, but I don't foresee any problems.

No more than would normally happen during a full Capricorn Moon conjunct Pluto, that is.

Beautiful pic is titled Holons