Cults

You know reading Mati’s blogs lately about the Catholic ‘cult’ I’m wondering if this has not indoctrinated my hubby.

For years after we first got together he denied that there was such a thing as evolution and that everything in the bible was ‘gospel’ truth.

He is still dubious – the fear very deep within him and…he is very sceptical about Darwin’s theory, etc.

He doesn’t go to church and hasn’t done so since his teens but the indoctrination is still very deeply entrenched. Although when we met his mother had moved from the Catholic Church to the Anglican Church over some upset that had her questioning the Church's ethics. So hubby was then an Anglican but raised with the same fierce beliefs. His sisters are still devout Catholics...and have the same pessimism about life that hubby has.

This made me think about my own childhood. My parents sent us to Sunday school at the local Methodist church only because they thought it was their duty to do so, but they never went themselves. When I turned 12 I said no more and my mom merely shrugged and told me it was up to me. So I stopped.

She then told me that my grandparents had been searching for years, joining different religious movements, trying to find something that made sense to them but so far had not found anything.

My grandmother had mediumistic abilities of which she was terrified and it was a hush-hush subject. I knew because my dad told me. He and his sisters used to ‘play’ with the Ouija Board until one night something happened that scared the bejeebers out of them and since then they’ve left well alone. He never told me what, but I gather it was horrible and completely freaked my gran out.

When I started on my journey, my grandmother was terrified for me and tried to talk me out of getting mixed up in something I might not survive. Talk about fear mongering…anyway I obviously didn’t listen, cos here I am still walking the path.

We have an ointment in the family called ‘Granny’s Ointment’ which was channelled through my grandmother’s great grandmother. It was given to her by her guide, a doctor who’d passed over and it was in Latin. It took weeks to make and my mother always used the same pharmacist to make up huge batches of it for the family. It cured anything and everything according to family lore.

It was passed down from the oldest son to oldest son – when my great grandfather arrived in South Africa from Scotland he had it with him as he was the oldest son. I remember it being on a very fragile piece of paper in spidery handwriting that my mother kept in a ‘special place’ (my father being the oldest son who got the recipe). It was a closely guarded secret…until my cousin got hold of it.

He’d married into a family who run a health company – health foods, vitamins, aromatherapy, ointments etc. and one day decided he would tweak it a bit and sell it as Granny Everson’s ointment. The whole family was angry but you know I figure it’s silly to keep something close to our chest. Why not share its healing properties with others? Good luck to him. As a result it is no longer being passed down from son to son – my brother couldn’t care less, quite frankly. I’m not sure who has the recipe now or if my cousin is still manufacturing it.

I did feel saddened at the time that it was the end of an era. I got a few bottles from my cousin but have never used them. I keep them for ‘old time’s sake’.

I figure this is a form of cultish behaviour too. A case of ‘bugger you jack I’m fine…I’ve got my special ointment to help with any ailments…you can’t have any’.

Funny you know, now that I think about it, I seem to have come from a long line of mediums and this includes my mom’s side. She had a Spanish grandmother who was a tarot and crystal ball reader – but there was no fear on my mom’s side of the family – only a healthy respect which my mother passed on to me.

I often wonder if having these genes was intentional by them up there and these genes are culminating in what I am doing today. No-one else, in either family, seems to have picked up the mantel created by these contributions except me. One or two dabble on the outskirts.

Interesting, isn’t it – how generations of ancestors have contributed to this place in time and space.

How many of us are picking up on these contributions from our ancestors?

Sorry hubby, you have no chance of a compliant wife…the full force of years of genetic modelling lives within me…hehe. Is this the locking horns of two streams of belief or the working together?