RAYMOND MOODY and REUNIONS Visionary Encounters With Departed Loved Ones

Raymond Moody, whose book LIFE AFTER LIFE came out about 1973, was a ground breaker in the field of past life recall. In 1993 he followed that book with REUNIONS, written with Paul Perry.

REUNIONS is a good book about an ancient art updated; MIRROR GAZING. This is a means to revisit with passed on loved ones, through visions. It's something the Greeks once did, maybe the Egyptians too, and there's a way to build a little room with a mirror in it to get the same effect.

On page 100 they write: "Like the ancient Greeks, I had designed a psychomanteum, to which people would come to consult with the spirits of the deceased. It was clear that given the proper preparation, people could see apparitions of departed loved ones using these techniques.

I found this to be an exciting and useful notion. People who are saddened by the loss of a loved one could handle their grief in a more direct way. Instead of telling a therapist how they feel about losing a spouse or child, they could talk to the loved one directly.

Through my work in near-death studies I know that seeing departed loved ones is tremendously therapeutic. Encountering dead relatives is one element of the near-death experience that keeps it from being a frightening or traumatic event. Research has shown that near death experiences transform people's lives by making them less fearful of death. One reason they become less fearful is that they see that dead relatives are happy in the afterlife.

LINK TO RAYMOND MOODY BY CLICKING ON THE TITLE ABOVE.

A 57 minute Google Video is linked to the right!

ALL SOULS... HALLOWEEN... THE ANCESTORS

This blog is called ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY because I think that genealogy IS a form of ancestor worship... And Halloween is the time when they say that the "veil between the worlds" is the thinnest. Be it the Catholic celebration of All Souls in early November, or the Mexican tradition of THE DAY OF THE DEAD, remembering those who have passed on is tradition in many cultures...

EMBOSSED ARMOUR 1565

Back when men wore hose. This was not cross-dressing!

VIDEO RECOMMENDATION : HALLOWED GROUNDS

PBS HOME VIDEO
HALLOWED GROUNDS
America's Overseas Military Cemeteries
Robert Urth Director
Glenn Marcus and Robert Urth Writers

You may have seen the genealogy databases, microfilms, or books, titled something like "Veterans Interred Overseas."

This is the video to watch if you want to know more about how 125,000 American military men and women - including the famous General George Patton, band leaders, and nurses, ended up in cemeteries in Europe and the Philippines. Now the cemeteries are beautiful, and places where the living can show their respects. And indeed many Americans are still making a stop at an American cemetery in France, for instance, part of their vacation.

This video will bring a few tears to your eyes if you have an ounce of Patriotism. It will remind you, sadly, that wars have been fought in the past by Americans who were barely here; immigrants new to the country who had not yet their citizenship -and Japanese-Americans whose families were in concentration camps in California.


But like all good cemeteries, these are for the living to make peace.

LOOKING FOR CARROLL BECKWITH by CAPTAIN ROBERT L. SNOW ; ANCESTRY WORSHIP BOOK REVIEW

LOOKING FOR CARROLL BECKWITH
The True Story of a Detective's Search for His Past Life
C 1999 by the author
Daybreak Books

"Looking For Carroll Beckwith: by Captain Robert L. Snow, Commander, Homicide Branch, of the Indianap0lis Police Department is a short but highly interesting account of a man with dogged determination and research skills on a quest; to prove if the visions he had under hypnosis are accurate. Carroll Beckwith proves to be the artist he believes he has either genetic memory of or who he's the reincarnation of. In the end Snow is able to verify a number of facts that would indicate that his vision was accurate.

Like many research quests that seem at first fruitless, after hundreds of hours of research, Carroll saw the painting he remembered in a gallery when he wasn't looking for it, after he has pretty much given up. His research lead him to the artist's diary and unpublished biography.

On page 79 we read, "At the end of the wall, an easel stood in the corner holding a portrait. I gave it a glance and started on past,. but then stopped abruptly, as if running into a glass wall. Whirling around, I started open mouthed at the portrait, reliving an experience I'd had once when I grabbed onto a live wire without knowing it, the current freezing me in my tracks as huge voltage surged up and down my arms and legs."

On page 89 we read, "My whole belief system was no longer just teetering. it was falling. Everything around me suddenly had such a surrealistic feeling to it that I could have been in a Kafka novel...."

The artist lived from 1852-1917. He was a contemporary of John Singer Sargent. The book contains images of the artist as well as examples of his art.

C 2009-2025 Ancestry Worship Genealogy - BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

JOHN LENNON by PHILIP NORMAN - WAS JOHN LENNON A REINCARNATION OF YOKO'S GREAT GRANDFATHER?

JOHN LENNON
The Life
By Philip Norman C 2008
Ecco an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers


A couple years before John Lennon was shot and killed he went to Japan with his wife Yoko Ono Lennon and their son Sean.

page 762 of the hardback...

"A particular memory of the Japanese trip was to haunt Yoko in years to come. One day, leafing through a magazine, John happened on an old photograph of her maternal great-grandfather, Zenjiro Yasuda. Since the deal had always been that they talked only about his family, he knew nothing of the great Zenjiro, the Emperor's de facto banker, who enjoyed national fame at a pop-star level half a century before such things were dreamed of. Nor had Yoko herself ever put together the several ways in which Zenjiro's life paralleled John's - coming from the north of the country, being a musician and poet as well as a moneymaking phenomenon, having his portrait hung in homes and workplaces as an inspiration to others, always insisting on full partnership with his tiny but dynamic wife. Though Yoko did not learn this until much later, Zenjiro even had the same birthday as John. The only thing while, seemingly, marked him as from a different culture and more dangerous times was his fate at the hands of a young man professing to be his admirer.


"John was fascinated by Zenjiro's photograph, which - especially since his conversion to Japanese clothes and manners - seemed to bear a more than passing likeness to himself. "That's me in a former life," he told Yoko.

"Don't say that," she replied. "He was assassinated."

C 2009 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy

QUEEN MARY CUNARD LINE

The Queen Mary is in Long Beach California and it is said that it is haunted. I recall the scene in the 1956 book Marjorie Morningstar that took place in the swimming pool... You would have thought it was a mile long beach but the pool is so very basic there is hardly any room to really recline in one's bathing attire! The pride of the Cunard Line, which also brought thousands of immigrants to the United States of America!

GENEALOGY CANNOT BE COUNTED ON TO HEAL A FAMILY

A dysfunctional family is unlikely to be healed because some member decides to unify it with genealogy research! Still, persist! For you may just heal yourself in the process!

I've had students who were so lucky to have united family that documents seemed to arrive in their mail every week. They were able to create warm and fuzzy memory books with ease - never mind actual research. But announcing that you have a genealogy project - for the benefit of every family member - does not seem to cause cooperation when you need it, and you may find that some of your family informants will fall from their pedestals when your research proves that they are full of stories that are not true.

Such was the case when one student heavily relied on her aunt, the matriarch of the family. This matriarch spoke with authority and claimed credit for naming her siblings (some who proved to have been born before she was). She had also faked wedding dates to cover unplanned pregnancies and claimed a first wife had died rather than that there was a divorce and the kidnapping of a child.

She could be credited for INVENTING family, perhaps where there was none...

FORGOTTEN ELLIS ISLAND HOSPITAL

Just watched the PBS video "Forgotten Ellis Island" about the immigrants who were kept at the hospital before being deported back to their home countries or released as well into their new country. It's a terrific video so I recommend you get a copy to watch! You'll see the decay of the buildings themselves...

The link above goes to a web site for the hospital....

It's being refurbished!

READING THE CENSUS and CALCULATING FOR INFLATION

Ever wonder if your ancestor was rich or poor? Ever compare siblings in different states and notice that one owns a home worth $10,00o in one state, while another is renting for $50 a month? Just how rich is rich and how poor is poor? Real estate has always varied a lot by location.

I found a calculator on line that I like called The Dollar Times Inflation Calculator. I learned that ONE DOLLAR in 1930 is equal to $12.22 today. That means that one of my relations house in Jersey would cost $165,000 today. Now is that $165,ooo in Los Angeles (good luck finding that shack!) or a great middle class home in, well, Jersey!

Try this calculator and see what you think! Click on the title above or on the link to the right!

BLISS BROYARD : ONE DROP

ONE DROP by Bliss Broyard


From Page 315 of her book about discovering her "one drop" of African Ancestry;
Bliss' father Anatole Broyard, a New York literary critic, who became quite successful in his career, died having just revealed that he was from New Orleans Creole ancestry. Her search for her father and her heritage took her to archives and into interviews with previously unmet family members...

"When you love a family member of close friend, people tell you, to console you, that your loved one will always live on in your memories. They act as if this process occurs involuntarily; a biological trick to offset your grief, just as the brain suppresses traumatic memories that are too difficult to handle. Your friends don't tell you to record everything that your remember about the dead person because you will indeed forget many things over time. Nor do they warn you that your memories will become irreversibly mortared into a monument of the "dearly departed" --- some myth that your fashion to help organize your recollections to better retrieved them. Nor are you told about the contaminating influence of other people's stories, which seem all the more vivid compared to the familiar old statue in the corner of your brain. And absolutely no one will suggest that you might begin to wonder how well you knew your family member or close friend in the first place, now that it's too late to learn anything more firsthand."

THE MONIED METROPOLIS by SVEN BECKERT : ANCESTRY WORSHIP BOOK REVIEW

The MONIED METROPOLIS
New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie 1850-1896
by Sven Beckert of Harvard University C 2001
Cambridge University Press


America as a "classless" society? Only perhaps, compared to the Old World. For by the mid 1800's class was very much forming in America, and the rich elite of New York set the tone for who was who, as the merchant class rose to meet the Old Families. Sexism? The role of women was to enhance their families lives, and create the refuge away from the business world, to create society and culture in their time.

(On page 39) "Beyond these distinct gender roles, merchants defined their shared world by the design of the family dwelling. Its layout served to create the illusion of a sphere removed from the harsh realities of the market - a world in which "gentlemen" could recover from the world of exchange. Thick carpets, heavy curtains, and ornate wallpaper insulated the abode from the outside world, offering a physical retreat from the noises, odors and visual blur of the metropolis. Portraits of living or deceased family members lined its walls, denoting continuity, tradition, and stability...."

(On page 40) ... 1855, the average upper class New York household (assessed to have more than $10,000 in wages paid), had only 2.3 servants. (Servants who appear on census records are usually LIVE IN servants by the way!)

The women were leading the way when it came to entertainments and charities. And raising their children to Upper Crust manners and norms.

(On page 154) "Nothing quite expressed the confidence of the city's merchants, industrialists, and bankers better than the blossoming of social life among the economic elite's wealthiest ranks after the Civil War. in a distinct departure from the antebellum years, social events of this select and powerful group became more elaborate and more public than ever before. The social season following the war - one historian has estimated - saw 600 balls, and the amount spent on dresses and jewelry for these affairs ran to about $7 million."

This was the advent of the society column and reporters! Flaunting wealth became acceptable. Money started to speak up for those who earned it! And the broke aristocrats of the Old World were happy to trade titles for the income of a newly rich American bride or groom. And so came the day when the Churchill family of England demanded more of a dowry from the Jerome's of New York... Yes Winston Churchill's mother, Jenny, was an American (from prior reading I learned she was part Native American!)

If you love studies of the American Class System as I do, this book is a must read for you!

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