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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in DNA

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Thoughts About My Ancestor Mystery

I've been cogitating about my previous post, Solving an Ancestor Mystery with DNA, and what the new information means to me. Firstly let me state that the Cherokee Freedmen were culturally Cherokee regardless of DNA, so when I talk about the revelation that my supposed Cherokee ancestor was "really" African, I'm not implying that anyone else's Freedmen ancestors were not "real" tribespeople. I'm only talking about me, and my personal ancestors.

There must have been a good reason why my dad's family were not living in a Cherokee tribal community at the time of the earliest living memories to which I was exposed growing up, and the stories I've previously heard about why that was are now suspect. It seems likely that my Freedmen ancestors left because they could, because they were freed. My dad's early spiritual teachings to me were Native American in character, not African, referencing the corn spirit and other spirits native to this continent. His teachings set me on an animist spiritual path in harmony with the land spirits, which I continue as an Asatruar. He never specifically stated what tradition he was, though.

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  • Erin Lale
    Erin Lale says #
    Oh, cool! Does Finland have a tradition about that?
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    When you mentioned that you call your drum Grandmother Elk I immediately thought of Finland.

Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Solving an Ancestor Mystery with DNA

Asatru is one of the paths that includes ancestors among the beings we honor. That doesn't always have to be one's own personal literal biological ancestors, as explored in a prior post. However, many heathens go in for genealogy, and for those who have done so and hit a wall, or for adoptees and others who don't know anything about their ancestors, the corner where modern science and capitalism meet has provided home DNA tests.

My brother has extensively traced our family genealogy and uncovered some interesting things, but there was one mystery the paperwork could not answer for us. We had been told that we were part Cherokee. The summer after I graduated from college, which was about a year after my father died, I went looking for my Cherokee roots and drove across the country, all the way from California to the Qualla Boundary reservation in North Carolina. I utterly failed to connect to the land spirits, the people, or even the artifacts in the museum. I went camping nearby in the Great Smoky Mountains and did not connect to the land there either. I tried looking for records, and whether I approached via writing or in person, I hit a wall of silence everywhere I went. I tried to connect spiritually, and decided that was not the path for me. I had already been following a heathen path at that point, but that was about when I found a local California Asatru organization, and when I went there I felt right at home, welcome and connected, so I was affirmed on my path. But the unsolved mystery of the elusive Cherokee ancestors stayed in the back of my mind.

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Ancient Mothers

I’ve recently had my DNA analyzed through 23andMe (a birthday gift) and the most fascinating thing has turned out to be my maternal haplogroup. The mtDNA is found in the mitochondria, and is not subject to recombination at sexual reproduction, and a copy (which can mutate occasionally, which is how subclades and new haplotypes begin) is passed down from mothers to their children, but only daughters pass that same sequence on to the next generation, so it’s a direct matrilineal lineage back to a common ancestor, who was an ancient woman, and my great-something grandmother. In the case of my haplogroup, she was the woman who started the haplotype “U” fairly soon after humans left Africa, and her lineage goes back to the earliest common female ancestor of all humans, in Africa, (called "Mitochondrial Eve") who started the haplotype “L”.

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  • Carol P. Christ
    Carol P. Christ says #
    I have been on this quest too: https://feminismandreligion.com/2012/02/27/a-clash-of-cultures-in-our-genes-by-carol-p-christ/

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Researchers Identify 'Witch Gene'

AP: Minneapolis, MN

Are witches born or made?

According to the results of a genetic study to be published in next month's Scientific American, the answer is: A.

Dr. Stephanie Fox of the University of Paganistan's Department of Genetics and Epidemiology, announcing the results of a 40-year study, told reporters yesterday, “The Great Witch Families of Europe have long contended that witchery runs in families. We can now say confidently that genetics back up that claim.”

Although the so-called “witch gene” is predominantly present in mitochondrial (maternal) DNA, the study found that it can also be transmitted Y-chromosomally (in the paternal line) as well.

Interestingly, the “witch gene” has been found to be present in every human population so far studied.

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
DNA and Ancestral Ritual

Science and magic meet. I won't choose between mysticism and science. They can feed each other.

My ancestors are spiritually important to me. So I'm combining science and spirit in a deeply personal way: I ordered an AncestryDNA test kit

A mystic, I travel through the blood in my veins, back through time, to discover the ancient ways my family once practiced. Today, the logical rational side of me does the same by spitting into a vial. This test tube becomes a chalice that arrived by mail, enclosed in plastic. Two supposedly disparate halves of me come together to feed my spirit. 

I mailed my saliva, part of my sacred body, to scientists, who will analyze it to reveal my ethnic background. They'll go back through many generations, the same way my meditations have. Their work will expand my otherworldly travels. 

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  • Arwen Lynch
    Arwen Lynch says #
    Honestly I was a bit bummed. My husband had a more interesting mix (and surprising to find out he has a significant amount of Nat
  • Francesca De Grandis
    Francesca De Grandis says #
    Arwen, I can see how that would be a bummer. But you're such a gorgeous woman, your ancestors must've been beautiful too.
  • Arwen Lynch
    Arwen Lynch says #
    I did mine and it was as I expected. European to the very core with that 5% nod to the Sub-Saharan wanderers.
  • Francesca De Grandis
    Francesca De Grandis says #
    Arwen, was it an interesting experience to have what you had always been told confirmed? My dad's side of the family turns out to
  • Kin Roberts
    Kin Roberts says #
    I just received my DNA kit from Ancestry. Looking forward to the results.

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