Now is the time of remembering for many of us. We let our minds drift back to those who came before, and we honor them. But sometimes we are left with a tricky situation. We may have ancestors who participated in activities we find distasteful (or downright reprehensible). It might have been someone we knew who has passed on, someone we didn't have a good relationship with. Or it might have been someone from long ago, when people and society operated according to different rules than we find acceptable today.
As pagans, our relationship with the dead is often an active one. We don't just lay flowers on a grave, we invite them to our table. We converse with them and lay out offerings. There is a sense of exchange, a sense of knowing. And this can bring up a lot of issues.
Firstly, many people struggle with the ethics of approaching dead who may not share our faith and beliefs. Especially the more recent dead, who may have had very strong ideas about Paganism or witchcraft. Should we reach out or should we leave them alone? It is my personal opinion that creating the space for that connection to form isn't a bad thing. If you get no response, or feel a pulling away, then don't pursue it, but you may be surprised. I think that the dead have a very different perspective on things than they did when they were alive.
When it comes to dead who you had a bad relationship with in life, I think this is something each person has to deal with on their own terms. Each relationship is different, and we all have different ways of dealing with things. What works for one person, might not work for another. I would say though, that no one should be obligated to work with a spirit that they don't feel comfortable with. It kind of reminds me of the abuser/victim dynamic. It doesn't matter what therapy or reformation the abuser is going through, they can't force contact or reconciliation with their victims. It should always be the victims choice how the relationships progresses. If you abuse someone and they never want to meet you, let you apologize or forgive you, that is their right. It doesn't matter how much the dead may want to make amends, sometimes it's not something you want, and you have the right to not engage with them.
Going back a bit further, we often hear stories of our not-so-far-gone relatives (but ones we didn't know personally). You know the stories, about how great-great-grandpa used to own slaves or beat up gay people. Here we are starting to get into a different kind of tricky. Society plays a huge role in how we behave, and when you are raised to believe that certain things are okay, you may not know better. Or, you may, in your heart of hearts, feel bad doing something, but be afraid for your own safety (or that of your family) if you stand up to the status quo.
For me, the distinction comes back around to intent, and this becomes much harder to know at first glance. I have relatives that have said or done things that just wouldn't be done today. Some I know absolutely had no ill will in their hearts. They used words that are unacceptable today, because that was what they were raised with. If I were to have overheard a conversation, I might not know this however. I might think that they were a prejudiced person, and might judge them accordingly.
I think that, on some level, I want to explore my lineage, to know who my people are. I want to find out if my kin did things out of ignorance, if they did the best they could in a hard time, or if they used the rules of society to lash out and be cruel. To take a modern day example, there are people who use the internet as a mask, and because it is 'anonymous' they delight in causing pain and strife...just because they can. In many ways, to me, people's motivations are more telling then their actions.
Many Pagans work outside of their own blood lines as well. We may call on spirits who's lives inspire us, or who's words and works have changed how we think. When I am really touched by someone, I often want to know more about them. I read about their life, and sometimes troubling things come up.
It is really easy to discount someone because of one aspect of their life. But I think that people are complex beings and not only can we make mistakes (which we may greatly regret later in life, I know I have plenty of those), but we can be very right in some areas and very wrong in others.
This reminds me a lot in "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater." If someone leaves behind a legacy that has real value, but they also did some horrible things, we don't have to completely turn away from them. We can accept the good they did, learn from it, and also learn from the bad they did (seeing how other people have messed up can often save us from our own mistakes).
If someone had a big enough impact to us, we may want to honor them for it, but we feel like we can't because of the bad things they did. Some of this, I think, comes back to whether or not you feel like the dead are static or evolving. If they are nothing more than echoes through time, if they are flies trapped in amber, then what we do doesn't effect them. We can honor them, or not, and it won't change who they are. But if you believe that they exist in a way that can include growth and change, then how we interact with them becomes important.
I tend to think of spirits like I do people. If I know someone who is really amazing at a thing, but kind of a horrible person, I may express my admiration for the thing they are good at, but I would also be honest about the stuff that I don't approve of. I think we can approach our dead the same way. We can honor them for the great works they did, but not endorse the horrible behavior (whether it was influenced by soceity or not).
I think this particular line of thought is especially relevant to soldiers in historical wars. We, as a species, have been fighting each other for pretty much all of recorded history. And typically speaking, each side has thought they were in the right.
Sometimes this belief was founded in ignorance. They didn't know that those barbarians from another land were thinking, feeling people. They had grown up hearing these horrible stories, and they were fearful for the people they cared about. Sometimes they were deliberately misled by their rulers, who had ulterior motives for wanting a conflict. But, in a day and age where information was extremely limited, you only knew what you were told, and if you were told these were bad people, or not even people at all, you really didn't know any better (and even today, with all the false news out there, it isn't that big of a mental leap to see how people can believe really crazy things...because the people in charge are telling them it's true).
I remember reading stories written about war times, when I was in school. And always the characters were young and mostly afraid. They had many, many different reasons for being a part of the war. Sometimes they were forced, conscripted, drafted, enslaved, whatever words you want to use, they had the choice of fight or die. Sometimes they fought to protect the things they cared about (whether it was their home, their family, their country or their ideals). And sometimes, they fought because it was just expected and they weren't strong enough to do otherwise.
I feel like there is room to work with the dead, in these cases, without supporting the war they fought in. This is why it makes me so mad when graves are desecrated. I don't care what side of the war someone fought on, I wouldn't mess with their graves. I also think that, when we as modern people, refuse to humanize the people of the past, when we judge them as monsters because we are holding them to modern standards, we are creating space for the same horrors to keep happening.
I think we need to spend more time seeing the people in people, not seeing them only as their worst actions. And perhaps, some of this healing can come from working with the difficult dead. We never need to turn a blind eye to the atrocities of the past, but understanding why honest, goodhearted people did horrible things can help us learn how to avoid those same mistakes. And learning to recognize the difference between someone who went along with society and someone who used the viewpoint of their day as an excuse to be cruel or mean lets us see those same distinctions in the people around us.
So take a long hard look at your difficult dead. Don't shy away from them simply because of what is on the surface. But don't let the dead bully you either. It will always be your choice who to work with and who to keep away. Just because you are Pagan, doesn't mean you need to honor all of your ancestors. And remember, you can acknowledge the good that someone did without condoning the bad.
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