Where do you come from? Who were your ancestors? Why are you the way you are? If you have questions that can’t be answered and a sense that something is missing, this may be for you.
An elder of the Marapu tribe in Indonesia described living without knowledge of your ancestors or their land as being “like a nut without the shell”.
Does ancestral continuity give you strength, meaning? A sense of belonging or acceptance? There is much mystery about my family’s history. My father’s side was full of secrets, shame and unanswered questions. My mother escaped from communist Czechoslovakia, her grandmother escaped the Pogroms in the Ukraine. The feeling of displacement was a strong theme in my childhood.
The paltry clues about the people in my family tree and the places they lived are things I have had to seek out. Facts and details seem to be frustratingly subjective, depending on who you ask, or completely absent.
When we don't know where we're from, we cling onto any clue, however much of a pale imitation of the truth it might be. Beech trees, cling onto their old leaves, rather than shedding them throughout winter, holding them even until the new buds burst forth! They are a shadow of their green and fresh former selves but the tree holds them close all the same.
Found on the beach at Lyme Regis. The ammonite fossil in this rock was subtle. Sometimes working from observation feels effortless and sometimes it’s a slog. This session was hard work and I am giving myself a pat on the back for making time and space to do it. I find it a bit mind boggling to think that this impression is from an animal thousands of years old. Hidden and undiscovered until the sea erodes the rock. It’s like time travel. Will we leave traces behind us for others to wonder at?
In a similar way, a shed snake skin gives a physical memory of the owner, the way that a pair of shoes may take on the shape of feet and retain their form long after their owner has gone. This adder skin gives us a shadow of the snake. The complexity of the pattern, the scales, the texture. But without the animation and solidness of the creature itself, it’s a pale echo of the source.
We’re left with artefacts, stories warped in the re-telling, that give us a hint of what we might have lost.
Many thanks to Isaac, the boy who kindly loaned me this Adder skin found in Norfolk to draw from.
These are literal links to my heritage. I never knew my mother's father. He was only permitted to leave Communist Czechoslovakia once to visit his daughter in the UK, when I was a tiny baby and he was in his dotage. He died before the Berlin wall fell. But I do know the gold of his watch chain (and his grandfather’s before him) from my mother’s mouth!
This is all that is left of his pocket watch chain. It has a very high carrot of gold and every time any member of the family needed a filling (often) a few links were removed, melted down and used by the dentist. I remember looking at all the gold in my mother's mouth in wonder when I was little. A literal measure of how bad the oral hygiene was, is how short this chain is!
Back at Cambridge Zoology Museum. I was very kindly met by Matt Lowe, Collections Manager. He had already prepared some cuckoos skins for me to draw. A whole drawer-full actually!
The variation in size and colour, as well as plumage from juvenile to adult was incredible. Also mind-boggling to think that these birds are older, much older than I am! The specimens I was working from, were from 1886.
I was struck by the fact that some eggs and specimens came from the village I live in. I imagine the bird hunter walking the same streets as I do, maybe having a drink in our local pub once he had successfully killed the beautiful bird after its long migration and stolen its eggs, and the nest and eggs of it’s host.
The ring of cuckoo feathers forms a boundary around my Spell For Lost Heritage. If you feel like you don’t know where you came from, maybe you need to look beyond what’s in front of you. Where do you feel like you belong? Maybe you don’t need to modify yourself to fit it where you are? You might just need to spread your wings instead?
The cuckoo flies halfway around the world, from Africa to the UK to lay its egg in someone else’s nest. When the chick, who looks nothing like is nest-mates hatches, it uses it’s new little leg muscles to push out the other unhatched eggs, or even other chicks out of the nest to their death.
The adoptive parent doesn’t seem to notice the completely different appearance or vast size difference between the cuckoo chick and its own. And the parent bird has to work around the clock to feed a creature so much bigger and more demanding than it’s own offspring.
This feather ring was a big undertaking and took weeks of patience and observation to capture.
This pupa died in it’s cocoon. Who would believe that this unpromising hairy pod contained a potential Emperor Moth. Moths and butterflies actually break down their whole bodies into a sort of goo and reform as their winged adult selves. If you are in your chrysalis phase, who knows what you will become!
The pod itself was amazingly strong. It took a lot of cutting to get it to open. And the little pupa inside was perfectly preserved.
This is a spell for those of us who are trying to work out who we are, to create our own meaning and be the ancestors we wish we had.
If your family of origin is a mystery, makes you feel unsafe or “home” doesn’t feel like your home, know that you can reach beyond these limitations. You can create your own supportive inner circle and chosen loved ones. Blood ties aren’t always the strongest and don’t have to define you. You have the power to write your own story and hand down a future you would be proud to inherit.
Use this Spell to remind you that you have choices in all your interactions, whomever they’re with. And you have the power and strength to be the one to change inherited patterns, even when that's painful.
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