What is a spiritual or magical lineage? Why is it important to know your spiritual lineage? Can you practice without knowing your lineage? You can, but your practice will be much richer for knowing it!
Now, first of all, we need to know what I mean by a spiritual lineage. We know what genealogy is, and researching our family tree- our ancestry. Well a spiritual lineage is the same thing only it’s not genealogical, it’s not biological. It could be if you follow the spiritual practices of your ancestors that brought you forth into this world, but sometimes we don’t. Maybe we weren’t brought up in a spiritual aspect or maybe we walked away from it or whatever. So, your spiritual lineage is a non-genealogical ancestry so to speak of what your spiritual beliefs are. It’s the ones who came before you.
Now, I am a Reiki practitioner, a Reiki master and one of the things we learn in Reiki training is what our Reiki lineage is from who our teacher is back to the founder of Reiki. So I do know what my lineage is from the time Reiki came into being to me. I can go back and count back the generations of Reiki that it took to get from the founding to me. I know that. I was taught that. And when I teach Reiki to others I pass that lineage on to them so that they know.
Why is that important, and what does that matter if you’re not a Reiki practitioner, if you’re not Reiki attuned? Well, I was just using Reiki as an example, ok? It’s effective, or, not effective because, your magic doesn’t… your magic isn’t dependent on knowing your lineage. It’s important to know your lineage but you can practice magic, you can practice spirituality without knowing your lineage. But, I was using that as an example because that’s an aspect where we are taught our lineage.
Now why would it be important to know? So in terms of genealogy we look at our ancestry to know where we came from- to know the people that made us who we are. It’s the same with a spiritual lineage. You want to know and understand that those who came before you in terms of your spirituality or magic so that you know who and what made it possible for you to believe and practice the way that you do today.
So, by this I’m not saying you have to know your lineage by any stretch of the imagination. You can practice magical or spiritual heritage without knowing. But it enriches your practice to know who made you who you are.
Now, in terms of religion if your spirituality comes from a religion, you have the ancestry or the lineage of your religion. Christians have a lineage of Jesus, a lineage of Mary, a lineage of whatever saint that they follow or call upon, whatever. Judaism we have a lineage of Abraham, we have a lineage of Miriam, we have a lineage of all of our patriarchs and matriarchs that made Judaism. Since Judaism is not my only practice, my only spiritual practice because I infuse magic with that I have more to my spiritual lineage than just the matriarchs and patriarchs of Judaism.
So what I’m talking about here is the people that came before you and made your practice possible. And it doesn’t matter what you practice. It doesn’t matter if you are religious or not. It doesn’t matter what your spiritual practice is. I guarantee you somebody came before you. You’re not the first one to do this unless you just randomly make something up and then I’m sure somebody had some aspect of it before because they made you. You are here because somebody created you and every idea comes from somewhere.
So no matter what your practice is there’s probably been one at least person before you who had that idea. That would be your spiritual lineage- your spiritual ancestry and knowing who that person is or those people is key because it helps you to know why you believe the way you do. It helps you to understand the things that are important to you. It opens up a whole new world to your practice when you know that you’re not alone because then you have a way to research other people now and in the past who believe the same way you do which can help you to inform your beliefs further, to help you develop your practice further.
So, just as our physical ancestral genealogy is a tree of people who made us who we are today and it is helpful to know who those people were, our spiritual lineage is a tree of people spiritually who made us who we are today spiritually. They may be biological ancestors. They may not be. But it is also important to know who they are because it helps us to understand why we are the way we are. It helps us to understand we are who we are because of them.
So if you don’t know who your spiritual ancestors are, what your spiritual lineage is, do some research. And you can do this through a number of ways. I’m not going to go into that today. You can read our next post to find out. Today we’re just talking about the importance of knowing who your spiritual lineage is. So yeah, if you know who your ancestors are spiritually speaking, good for you. Do some research on them. And if you don’t know who your spiritual ancestors are, that’s ok because you can learn who they are, and you can do some research, you can do some digging and you’ll find out and it’s going to open up a whole world of possibilities for your spiritual practice. So, until next time, get to know who your spiritual ancestors are.
