An Ancestor Ritual

Monday - Tales from the Studio

A remembering and a keening for the ancestors - Reindeer and Auroch, Bear, Wolf and Great Auk

I’ve waited days to write this post. This is Mondays post being published today - Wednesday. The delay is due to a debilitating lack of sleep, which on some days I just feel unable to function.

While I had a good sleep last night, I feel the heaviness of the US election results. I can clearly remember the morning of Tuesday, November 8 in 2016 when Trump was first elected, but I have a far deeper sinking feeling today.

I notice lots of Facebook posts expressing their regrets for the US, but Trumps politics aren’t corralled to the US, the dangerous psychology of this man will affect the entire world.

Things have just got a lot more difficult. Here’s what I think. I had no control over what just happened. None. But I do have control over how I will react to it. And I am not going to give up on the beautiful and the good, the grip on my dreams just got tighter.

Chris Packham - Wildlife TV presenter and activist

Paintings in progress. If anything - today’s election results makes working with the Ancestral mothers and stepping between the worlds an even more radical act!

A Dark Vigil

But todays post will go ahead, and a deeper dropping down into the advent which will take us to the Winter Solstice.

I wanted to honor my ancestors with this post, for it is still Samhain, and the energy of the season lasts longer than one day. Perhaps you celebrate lunar Samhain, or even on the old date (before the Gregorian calendar, which erased ten days from the calendar) of Old Hallowmas Eve on the 14th November.

I’ve been thinking of some of my oldest ancestors, the ones no longer with us, who have vanished from this land - the wingeds, the great four leggeds - bear and auroch, reindeer, wolf and the Great Auk - and the mighty Caledonian forest, although a few pockets of the forest still remain.

I had planned to create a card collage with black paper, printing out images or drawing them - but printing didn’t work so well and my white pen has run out of ink - so I made the image digitally (see the image at the top of the page).

I have lived with bears (when I lived in Asheville, NC) and on a misty morning like today as I take the dogs a walk and they sniff at the edges of an ancient hedge, I can almost imagine her snuffling on the other side - eating the last of the berries. Bear had many impacts on the landscape - including scattering seeds via her droppings, in the many miles of their territory.

What must it have been like to live with the great presence of the auroch - these great bovines which kept the last grasslands and stopped the land from becoming forest. The last auroch in Europe died in 1627 in Poland's Jaktorów Forest, their numbers dying out from intensive hunting and loss of habitat.

Click on image for source. The Caledonian Forest, Cairngorms by Richard Photography

Wolves who were once native to Scotland and studies with their reintroduction to Yellowstone National Park in the US show they brought out an unexpected ‘trophic cascade’ in the landscape.

The presence of wolves influenced the behaviour of large grazers which stopped grazing in valleys and gorges where they were easy prey for the wolves. This caused the vegetation to re-establish and re-grow, increasing biodiversity by giving food and shelter to a wider range of plants and animals.

Riverbank erosion slowed, causing rivers to meander less, channels to deepen, and small pools to emerge. This regenerating vegetation stabilized the riverbanks, altering the park’s geography and environment.

‘The presence of wolves triggered a still-unfolding cascade effect among animals and plants-one that will take decades of research to understand’ - Doug Smith, a wildlife biologist in charge of the Yellowstone Wolf Project,

This was an amazing rewilding project and wolves naturally took old and unhealthy individuals. This gives the landscape space to recover from overgrazing, and as vegetation returns, so does biodiversity.

I once spent a weekend camping in Canada’s Algonquin State Park. We pitched the tent overlooking a lake, as the moon rose it blazed a trail of sparkling light over the lake right to the tent. That night I sat awake under the moon listening to the howls of a lone wolf, and the eerie but beautiful call of a loon.

Wolves no longer roam the land in Scotland and the last wolf is said to have been shot in 1680 by Ewen Cameron in Killiecrankie, Perthshire, yet other tales suggest the wolves continued to run well into the 18th century.

I imagine how the land looked like through the ages. Back to the time of the great ice – when reindeer and those who followed the great herds into his land. Perhaps under my feet, way down in the peaty layers lies and ancient reindeer antler.

With each imagine of the collage I consider the last of the line, last of a long linage. It is generally accepted that bears went extinct in the early medieval period - between about 425 and 594 AD.

The last great auk in Scotland was killed on Stac an Armin, in St. Kilda, where three islanders captured the bird and kept it alive for three days. When the weather deteriorated, they were convinced the auk was responsible, and killed it, believing it to be a witch.

Walking the Land in Spirit

What did we lose with all these losses? With the demise of the bear we lost honoring a way of living of hibernating through the dark and celebrating her return in Spring. Knowing that when she returned she brought life back to the land and we were indeed heading to spring. The bear was most likely our very first story of descent and return.

What aspects did we loose of ourselves as one by one these great presences left us? Perhaps we’ll never know yet still feel a longing for things we’ve never known.

I didn’t know these creatures, but I honor them and their loss from the land. And all those on our red lists that we have a danger of losing.

I don’t know if we will survive, I don’t know if our demise is woven into climate breakdown. We can only live with the values we hold, without knowing the final outcome of the planet.

And so I begin my descent into the Cave, to sit around the hearth with all of these thoughts - and speak to them in art and ritual.

Sources referenced:

How Wolves Change Rivers

Click here to listen to the call of the loon