this is why you're more than yourself + claiming your lineage

Something I've found infinitely helpful as I grow as a magician and a leader is taking my magical lineage very seriously.

Now the interesting thing about magical lineage - is that it can be ancestral or formal, but it doesn't have to be.

Your magical lineage includes all the books and authors and music and artists you've drawn deep inspiration from, as well as the characters and places of your night time dreams.

Why is this matter of lineage so helpful to ponder?

Because we all have a societally conditioned habit of under-valuing ourselves, and by extension, our lineage, our magical ancestors.

It's very easy to say, "Oh, I'm just an ordinary person - sure, I've learned a lot, but I haven't had special initiations and I'm not directly descended from sorcerers, what I know is stuff that anyone could know."

But it's just not true that what you know anyone could know.

The wisdom you've learned - from your work, your family, your reading, your experiences - is specific, and it's in part inherited from your teachers - even if those teachers didn't look like shamans or Hogwarts professors.

You're valuable not just because you're you - although that's certainly great - you're also valuable because you have been powerfully valued - you were so valued by your predecessors who imagined you that they struggled mightily in order to transmit their knowledge and experience to you through their art, their actions, their writing, their music, etc.

When you truly cherish and value the specific lineage of knowledge that's poured into you in this life time, you can gain strength and inspiration to carry that knowledge forward, to pass it on through teachings of your own, in whatever form suits best (herbalism, writing, music, dance, divination etc.)

Your gratitude to those who came before you and passed wisdom to you can become a galvanizing force that lifts you up when clouds of self-doubt and self-devaluing settle in.

After all, you can't just give up the fight -- you're the repository of a rich lineage, and it's up to you to implement and live and pass on what you've learned.

(David Bowie as the Divine Masculine card, a more diplomatically-named version of the Emperor, in the She Wolfe Tarot)

You are more than yourself.

For example - some figures I cherish in my magical lineage are Queen Elizabeth I, William Shakespeare, and Alan Moore (the author of the Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and Promethea).

Also, can't forget: wise androgynous sexpot grandfather David Bowie.

I can't claim blood ancestry or personal tutoring from these predecessors - but nonetheless I've deeply immersed myself in the worlds of their stories and works, and have been profoundly changed for the better by truths absorbed from them.

So today I invite you to take 10 minutes and journal about your lineage.

Who exactly is in it?

What knowledge is now uniquely alive and mixed up inside you?

What does it feel like to know that you're more than just "you" - you're the sum of all these teachers?

Are you willing to take responsibility for living and transmitting the beauty that they've helped to transmit to you?

best,

Carolyn Elliott

author of Existential Kink