Removing a family curse

I remember early in my shamanic training feeling horrified when our teacher told us that we’d gain great wisdom from working with our ancestors.

“What that bunch of drunks?” I thought to myself, “I’ve never seen them sober, especially that lot from Liverpool. You’re saying that I should go to them for spiritual advice?”

The very idea was preposterous. I’d mostly only meet them at christenings, weddings and funerals, but I was about to learn that if you do have a curse on your family line, that’s most likely where you’ll spot it.

There was one wedding reception where an altercation got so heated, a fight had almost broken out. My cousin Sheila was standing next to me, and she said: “Look, just do this. It’s how I cope with it,” as she raised a big tumbler of wine to her lips.

I thought: “Well, that would explain why so many in my family are alcoholics.”

But it wasn’t until my train was pulling into Lime Street station for Sheila’s funeral, not many years after that, that I began to get a nudge. I’d just received a call on my mobile telling me that my daughter had just gone into labour. I remember thinking then: “One it; one out.”

Sheila had died far too early, as had her brother, Steve, and her older sister, May. It wasn’t as if they all lost their lives together in a car crash. Their mother, Aunt Dolly, had had to separately bury three of her adult children after they had all died in completely different circumstances. Steve had been swept off a beach in South Africa by a freak wave. Sheila and May had died from different forms of cancer. They all left husbands and children behind them, and there was only one daughter, Betty, still alive.

At the wake after the funeral, my younger sister, never known for her tact and diplomacy, said to Betty: “Aren’t you worried? Don’t you think you might be next?”

Betty just glared at her, while I dragged her off into another room and told her off for saying the quiet part out loud. But she was quite right. It was as if they were all being taken out, one by one, by a sort of cosmic sniper.

So that’s how I realised it was going to be down to me to find out what was really going on. But I was such a young, fledgling shaman then, I couldn’t believe that I’d know how to remove a family curse. The thought of having to try to do it was terrifying. But I knew enough by then to realise that if I wanted to progress as a shaman, it was the sort of thing I’d have to learn how to do.

So once back home, I journeyed to ask my spirits about it, and they took me way back up the line of my ancestors who were all standing on the banks of a river, waving and cheering as I flew overhead. We got quite far, right up to some quite archaic looking types … and it was there that I was told the story, which was like something out the tales of King Arthur.

One of my most ancient ancestors had been a smith, and he’d forged a sword for a shaman (probably not called a shaman then, but a shaman-type). The shaman-type had been very much present during the sword’s conception and birth, using his powers to impregnate it with his magical powers. But when the sword was finished, my ancestor smith stole it … and that side of the family line had been suffering for that theft ever since.

I’d been right that I wouldn’t know what to do. I hadn’t a clue and felt quite intimidated by this shaman much more powerful than me, that had terrorised my family down the generations. But I didn’t need to know – because my spirits sorted it all out for me. They just needed my acknowledgement of the problem and permission to solve it. And so that’s when I realised why those ancestors standing on the banks of the river were all waving and cheering!

Since then, no-one on that side of the family has died prematurely. Aunt Dolly shrugged off her mortal coil quite naturally at the ripe old age of 92. And I’ve also learned how easy it is to clear timelines … you just ask your spirit guides to do it. All sorts of long-standing problems that are impossible to fix in this world are very quickly sorted in the Other Worlds. It’s a very simple procedure to remove a family curse – because the spirits make it so.

If you think you may have a curse on your family, you will probably know it because evidence of it always erupts at family events, like the bad fairy Malificent in Sleeping Beauty, and it is also the Thing – the elephant in the room of the party or wake after the christening, wedding and funeral – that no-one ever talks about.

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