Cain + Abel, the Potato Famine, and the unwanted Irish children
Today is my sister’s birthday. The one I don’t speak to, because two years ago at the family’s Thanksgiving table, she unleashed a venomous diatribe about how she’d never call me they/them, and my trans identity didn’t exist.
It’ll take an admission of injury for me to talk to her again, but I get it. In a way, it’s turnabout; fair play.
When I was a kid, I didn’t want her to be born to begin with, and even fetuses can sense that shit.
It’s not either of our faults; we’re living out eternal archetypes and ancestral karma: two siblings locked in a battle to the death for their father’s blessing and their mother’s love; the babies that didn’t want to be born and the mothers who didn’t want to have them, but had to anyway, because the Roman Catholic church killed all the herbalists and burned the healers as witches, taking away the natural medicine that served as birth control, keeping the system in balance; ensuring there was enough for everyone.
The men who wanted to cover the Earth in their seed, so they subverted the order, and made the women do their bidding.
Suddenly it all makes sense, that scene I channeled for the play a while back, where suddenly I found myself possessed, spread-eagle on the ground, screaming: SOMEBODY SAVE ME, I DON’T WANT TO HAVE THE BABIES, I NEED TO BIRTH THE THING THAT MADE ME!
The torture of having so much creative force inside me and no clear way to give it form.
But it’s clearing now, slowly, gently, in the wee hours of the morning; with Kit beside me and the dead finding their voices through my channel as I try to make it as clear as possible, within reason.
The Potato Famine is what happened when the system got out of balance: Not a punishment because we were bad and had sinned, but a simple equation that didn’t equal out anymore, and had to be corrected. The Universe is indifferent, is what I’m learning; it doesn’t have an opinion about what happens to you, really. But it will find equilibrium, the system will seek balance. And it will only last for a moment before it gets thrown off again.
But it’ll get there. For a moment, it will all be fair.
Everyone will have enough, we’ll fill our cups with the elixir of life, and be satisfied.
Before we’re hungry again. It’s kind of how it works. But we can salve the epidemic of the hungry ghosts if we take care of each other—if we learn to share our abundance with those who have less when we have more, and even when we don’t.
People from traditional societies will always share their last crust of bread with you.
As within, so without, so of course the cats I’m sitting played out this drama before the sun rose and I even realized what was happening. The older, bigger sibling emptied their bowl, then ran over to the little brother’s dish, scared him away, and started eating. I was sad and angry. Because of course, I saw myself reflected in it.
So I didn’t yell at him, but gently shooed the big, orange cat away, refilled the bowl, welcomed the little black kitten back and stood over him, keeping watch and singing; keeping his brother at bay, who looked with hungry-ghost eyes that seemed embarassed, until the dark one had licked the whole plate clean, and I gave them both treats and set them out into the day, and I knew something had been healed for all of us.
The little one gets killed by the stronger ones, but the big one becomes the scapegoat for the sins of humanity, and the weight of the world is a lot to carry.
I still remember when I was in first grade, and the kid at the Christian school gave me a cup of sand and said it was tea, and I so wanted to believe, but the mark of Cain had already disillusioned me, and I knew it was fake. I indulged him anyway, this poor vacant-eyed little kid who believed the delusion, I remember thinking I felt sorry for him. But really, I was jealous, and as I pretended to drink it, I thought, it must be nice to live in a world where a cup of sand can become a nourishing beverage.
Now I know that it can, if we resist the urge to get sucked into the sinking sands of sorrow like Atreyu in the Neverending Story, and instead believe we deserve to be here, and lift each other out of the swamp, instead of pushing each other under.
Just like the time we got caught in the riptide at Cannon Beach, and she grabbed onto me as we were drowning, and I pushed her off to save myself. I’ve still been trying to live that down. But today I think I finally turned it around, with my offering of cacao to the ancestors and gods and Irish and Callin and myself, singing the song of transmutation and truly believing that we all deserve to exist, and are forgiven.
To My Sister on Her Birthday
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Cain and Abel, two siblings locked in a battle to the death, a tale as old as time, archetypal energy that goes back to the very beginning, when love is a zero sum game, it'd scare scarcity and survival requires on plotting and planning, trying to curry your father's favor, trying to get ahead instead of help each other,
jealousy is the natural outcome when love is limited.
The answer isn't about why Cain was jealous, but why they were even being asked for offerings to begin with, as if we aren't already worthy, as if offering up ourselves as we are isn't enough, as if we have to do something different to be deserving, to get our father's favor, to wash our sins away because we're dirty, as if it isn't enough to just exist and yes, we have to work for the Lord's love, though, as below, so above.
In all cosmologies, there is this concept of offering, and we do need to give of ourselves to keep the energies in balance. So the question isn't why the offering? But why the competition?
Why were they in a position of one having to outdo the other? Why did God have to favor the younger brother? the little one always gets it easier. The older sibling gets the attention at first, sure, but they also get all their parents' anger unmitigated for those formative first years. In my case, it's always at age four that some memory transports me back. So that's probably when she was conceived, and I sensed then that I was under attack.
Dad abdicating responsibility. Everyone expecting me to be the answer to everything,
Expecting me to be her mom; mom expecting me to be her mom. Hell, probably dad expecting me to be his mom. And his wife. Gross.
Two siblings locked in a battle to the death for their parents' attention,
a tale as old as time, especially back then, it was a zero sum game. Not everyone survived.
She took up all the oxygen from the very beginning, when she couldn't breathe, and she gasped in as if there was never enough air to fill her lungs.
There was never enough for her.
She came into this world a gaping wound bleeding to be seen,
and it disgusted me. I guess because it reflected something inside me that wasn't being expressed. I tried to find my ways to get attention that were subtler, that so much was repressed, mine came out in tumors and injuries instead.
The bottomless pit of need, making such a big fucking deal of disappearing.
Don't you know we do that shit privately? Don't you know we die silently?
That's the Irish legacy.
She ruined all our holidays, one of those few things I had to look forward to.
she ruined my birthdays because the day she was born, I wanted her to disappear completely. And kids can feel that, and that makes me sad.
I wish I hadn’t said that. I wish I hadn’t done that.
the only person to share your existence, the only person to help you get through this insanity producing landscape, the person who's supposed to be your war buddy, doesn't even want you to exist.
How hard that must have been.
I think my energy of conception was the pride of creation; my mom wanted to make a companion, like a stuffed animal, someone to have tea parties with, so she'd feel less lonely.
It’s like when that kid at Christian school handed me a cup of sand, and said that it was tea. He genuinely seemed to believe it was real, and I pretended,
and I thought in my head, looking at his vacant smile,
what a sucker.
His dumb ass thinks there's actually tea in this saucer.
I've never felt so other.
It made me sad and disconnected.
I wished I could enter in, and I wished I could believe that the cup held more than sand, but I didn't.
I couldn't see it. I couldn't feel it.
I was too materialist. my connection to the magic was severed already by age 10,
and I spent my whole life trying to get it back again,
trying to recapture that Jesus magic that was shattered
when the teacher told us we were going to hell.
the cup turned to sand when she broke the spell
by telling us our offerings were not acceptable.
If I really believed I was worthy, it wouldn't matter if I had one sibling or 1000 or zero. It wouldn't matter if there were 20 Shamans in the maloca or just one maestro, or no one but me and my tambo.
It's about believing we deserve to be here, no matter what we're offering, but also giving something of ourselves to keep the balance, to be in community and harmony, to show love and reverence, not always trying to get ours, but sharing.
I'll never forget the day they brought her home from the hospital, and I stood outside the door of her room, looking at that banner that said Welcome Home written in red puffy paint in our godmother's fancy script. I stood staring at it for what felt like an eternity, not wanting to actually enter the room,
because once I did, it meant she was real.
It meant I wasn't the only one anymore.
I get mad at the cats for being greedy, because that's what I worry I am.
Always taking, never full, never satisfied.
Cain and Abel, I call upon your archetype.
I wanted to believe that cup was more than sand so badly.
But the magic died that day they told us we weren't worthy; that day, my sister was born and I became a parent when I was only five years old.
I never asked for that responsibility, but they put it on me, without even realizing. And she expected me to be everything that they were unable to give her. She expected me to be a mother. Someone had to do it, and children sense the dynamics, kids pick up on all those subtle energies, the tone, the subtle shifts in their expression, the inflection, the subtext, the things below the surface that won't be detected in an interview, examination or observation; the things you can't pick up in a clinical setting, the energetics, the things they say without saying.
She was begging for someone to be the mother, who would simply nurture without demanding so much in return. No one in our house could give that to her.
Some people deal with things like that by being everything they lack. But instead she just became a black hole, quicksand, consuming everything.
No wonder that scene in "The Neverending Story" with Atreyu in the sinking swamps so affected me, I couldn't get it out of my head, that feeling of being slowly consumed and unable to move, the sand slowly consuming you until you're dead, filling your cup. where you're drowning so slowly you barely even see that it's happening until all of a sudden you're up to your neck in falseness.
You have to believe in magic to get out of that swamp; to turn that sand into tea; to remember our mystic legacy and heal from Copernican materiality.
You have to believe in magic to heal from that family. Can I go back and be the sibling for both of us that I wished I had been? Can I go back and turn things from sinking sand into the wells of Avalon, the healing waters, in the trecena of Imox, the vision? swimming and floating into the night, the dreamy waters that are also milky skies, starry starry night, can we transfigure this and become not Cain and Abel, but Vincent and Theo, siblings reclaiming our narrative, alone together?
I’m still haunted by that time at Cannon Beach where we almost drowned, and I didn’t save you. I’m sorry. I don't know if I'll ever live down that feeling of guilt and shame when you grabbed onto me to save you and I pushed you away, when I pushed you onto his side of the bed, when I pushed you away from me because I couldn't handle it, because I could barely save myself in the sinking sands, the swirling ocean, the Riptide drawing us under, sucking us deeper and deeper.
It was more powerful than I was. So instead, you turned into an open wound, and I turned inward, trying to self destruct so someone would notice without me saying it. I'm the one in theater, but you're a lot more dramatic, and the show must go on.
Let's go back and rewrite this story. Let me open that door to the spare room where that banner hung. And welcome you. Hold you in my arms and love you. Tell you, you belong here and all help take care of you, but I'm not your mom. That is not my responsibility to save you, but I'll be here to love you and support you, to actually be your friend and companion and helping each other see what really happened, and helping each other get out of that environment, and helping each other individuate and be independent and build our own lives.
Let's go back to the ocean, and instead of pushing away, let me wrap my arms around you and swim like an otter to the surface and save us and take us back to the shore. Break that bottle on the ground and wave it in dad's face and tell him to take us back to our mom's house right now. Whisk us away to the rainforest. Whisk us away to a happy place for each of us.
Let me protect you at school. Let me protect you from dudes who would take advantage of you. Let me protect you from the wolves in sheep's clothing whose dens I led you into.
I'm so sorry.
Let me go to the house of sinking sand and pull us up. And then stand you on your own two feet. Dry you with a towel. warm you up and help us both go home.
I'm sorry. Let's try this again. Let's start over. Allow me to introduce myself.
I'm Riordan. I'm your sibling, and I'm trans. I hope one day you can accept me.
I'm sorry that I couldn't be your mommy, but that was never my job to begin with.
I'm sorry that I couldn't be your friend. That's something I wish I did back then, but I can do it now, if we can start again, as long as we come from a place of mutual respect and understanding.
I'm sorry I pushed you away. I'm sorry I didn't save you. I'm sorry that I let the wolves in sheep's clothing devour you. I should have done a better job protecting you, but I wasn't able to. I was just a kid broken too. I grew up in a different family than you, but one that was equally broken, and I had my techniques that I learned to survive in the family that I grew up with, which was a different family than you had, and you had different techniques that you came up with. So our methods just didn't work the same way, and our interpretations of reality don't seem the same, but we are teammates. We are companions.
Okay, we never really have been, except for these certain windows where the stars aligned. But I like those times, and I want to get along, and I want to walk each other home. But I don't want to get gaslit and I won't be abused.
All I can do is try to show up and help you see
that what's in your cup is tea, not sand,
and lend you my hand
to help you pull yourself
out of the quicksand.
AI Summary:
Transmutation of Family Dynamics and Historical Trauma
- Holly Regan discusses the competition for attention and affection within their household, likening it to a black cat disrupting sleep.
- Speaker 2 (which is me but not-me? wonder who this is) and Holly Regan explore the archetype of sibling rivalry, drawing parallels to historical and personal experiences.
- Holly Regan reflects on the past, mentioning the limited resources and the struggle for attention, particularly among Irish Catholic children.
- The conversation touches on the repression of natural birth control knowledge by the church, leading to the potato famine and subsequent suffering.
Rewriting Family Karma and Transmutation
- Holly Regan emphasizes the importance of rewriting family karma and legacy, particularly in the context of their own experiences.
- They describe standing watch over a black kitten to ensure it gets enough to eat, symbolizing protection and care.
- The discussion highlights the powerful and intelligent nature of the medicine being used, which helps in processing and healing past traumas.
- Holly Regan reiterates that love and attention are not limited resources, and they aim to fill others' bowls abundantly to counteract past jealousy and competition.
Transmutation of Historical Suffering and Abundance
- Holly Regan continues to explore the transmutation of historical suffering, particularly the potato famine and its impact on Irish Catholic families.
- They discuss the importance of understanding that love and resources are not zero-sum games, and everyone deserves to be fed and loved.
- The conversation shifts to the transmutation of unseen and unheard children, emphasizing the need for abundance and celebration.
- Holly Regan reflects on the importance of filling cups with cacao, symbolizing life, death, and resurrection, and the need for everyone to feel worthy and loved, symbolizing the abundance and life-affirming nature of the practice.
Undoing the Mark of Cain and Celebrating Abundance
- Holly Regan talks about the Mark of Cain and its association with jealousy and competition, aiming to undo this legacy through celebration and abundance.
- They emphasize that no one needs to starve or die to get attention, and everyone deserves love and affection simply because they exist.
- The conversation highlights the importance of sharing and understanding that love is not a zero-sum game.
Action Items:
- Protect and ensure a black kitten gets enough food to eat, chasing away any older siblings who try to take its food
-Transmute feelings of not wanting to share or feel threatened by younger siblings
(These action items are so precious, I can’t even handle it)
AI Summary:
Cain and Abel: The Archetype of Sibling Rivalry
- Holly Regan discusses the archetypal story of Cain and Abel, emphasizing the theme of limited love and scarcity. - They question the necessity of offering to gain favor, suggesting that simply existing should be enough. - Holly reflects on their own experiences with sibling rivalry, noting the favoritism often shown to younger siblings. - They share a personal anecdote about their own childhood, feeling under attack and expected to be everything for their sister.
The Impact of Parental Expectations
- Holly describes the burden of being expected to be a parental figure to their sister, feeling like they were being asked to fill their mother's role. - They recount how their sister's constant need for attention and validation made them feel suffocated and resentful. - Holly expresses their frustration with their sister's public displays of need, contrasting it with the private suffering they experienced. - They acknowledge the generational trauma and the pressure to be a beacon for the family, ruining holidays and birthdays.
The Search for Validation and Belonging
- Holly reflects on their desire for validation and attention, leading them to seek out subtle ways to gain it. - They discuss the impact of their sister's dramatic behavior and how it repelled them. - Holly shares a memory of pretending to drink tea in first grade, feeling disconnected and materialistic. - They talk about their early loss of connection to magic and their lifelong quest to reclaim it.
The Role of Worthiness and Offerings
- Holly emphasizes the importance of believing in one's worthiness, regardless of external validation. - They discuss the concept of offering to maintain balance and harmony within a community. - Holly reflects on the idea that offerings should be accepted simply because one exists and shows up. - They share a quote from Ben, highlighting the significance of belief in one's worthiness.
The Struggle with Responsibility and Parental Dynamics
- Holly talks about the responsibility placed on them by their parents and their sister's expectations. - They describe the subtle energies and dynamics in the household that their sister sensed and responded to. - Holly reflects on the concept of being a third parent and the impact of that role on their sister's perception of them. - They share a memory of feeling like a stuffed animal, expected to be a companion to their mother.
The Impact of Religious Teachings
- Holly discusses the impact of being told they were going to hell and how it shattered their sense of worthiness. - They reflect on the loss of magic and the feeling of being othered as a result of these teachings. - Holly shares a memory of pretending to drink tea in first grade, feeling disconnected and materialistic. - They talk about their early loss of connection to magic and their lifelong quest to reclaim it.
The Desire for Belonging and Connection
- Holly expresses their desire to believe in magic and the feeling of being othered as a result of religious teachings. - They reflect on the impact of being told they were going to hell and how it shattered their sense of worthiness. - Holly shares a memory of pretending to drink tea in first grade, feeling disconnected and materialistic. - They talk about their early loss of connection to magic and their lifelong quest to reclaim it.
The Struggle with Responsibility and Parental Dynamics
- Holly talks about the responsibility placed on them by their parents and their sister's expectations. - They describe the subtle energies and dynamics in the household that their sister sensed and responded to. - Holly reflects on the concept of being a third parent and the impact of that role on their sister's perception of them. - They share a memory of feeling like a stuffed animal, expected to be a companion to their mother.
The Impact of Sibling Rivalry on Emotional Health
- Holly discusses the emotional toll of sibling rivalry and the impact on their mental health. - They reflect on the constant need for validation and attention from their sister. - Holly shares their feelings of guilt and shame for pushing their sister away and not being able to save her. - They talk about the impact of these dynamics on their ability to self-destruct and seek attention.
The Desire for Reconciliation and Healing
- Holly expresses their desire to rewrite the story of their relationship with their sister. -They reflect on the need to believe in magic to heal from family trauma. -Holly shares their wish to be the sibling for both of them that they always wanted to be. -They talk about the importance of mutual respect and understanding in their relationship.
