not native fruit

devi and me

Over at my Great-Grandmother's Blog I recently posted this:

i've been thinking lately that it might make more sense to tell people that my mother was a kind of creole.  Doing research, i've discovered that academics identify a group centered in the chesapeake bay area as 'atlantic creoles.'  the atlantic creoles are a simiar ethnic makeup to the well-known louisiana creoles - french, english, spanish, african american, native american and sometimes caribbean.

Links to information about creole people can be found here:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Creole_people

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_peoples

www.frenchcreoles.com/CreolesWeAre.html - this is a nice one with music, slide-show, videos, etc

Atlantic Creoles can be searched on Wikipedia, yielding lots of links, although they do not have a page devoted to them.  I first came across the term in a text on the Atlantic slave trade when I was researching my African roots.

I know I've said before that I am grateful to all my ancestors for leading me on a search for them because I've learned so much about the world, especially Africa, Native America, and all places with so-called mixed-race populations.  I've met so many wonderful people online through the course of the journey too.

But I think the single most significant discovery I have made so far has been to re-connect with the Moorish Science Temple, to read their original teachings and realize how I absorbed them at my mother's knee.  This has always been my 'true' spiritual education, despite the fact that, on a conscious level, my mother tried to make me into a Catholic, something I continuously found to be at odds with my own spiritual experience and nature, and which I struggled with for years, and made various sorts of peace with, only to feel dissatisfied at the core.  When I studied theology at GTU, I was very fortunate that the feminist movement was active at the time, because I found people who could hear me say that I felt my real spirituality had come to me from my mother's line, and was not from 'the church' but seemed, rather, to 'ride' along with it, rather like I was doing with Catholicism at the time.  The feminists agreed that women had their own spirituality, although what they meant, and what I meant, by that phrase were not exactly identical.  What I know now is that my mother had a dual religious upbringing - one in the Catholic church, which was the societally-validated norm (in highly Irish-Catholic Philadelphia), and the Moorish Science Temple, which her father's church of choice.

My reconnection with the Moorish Science teachings and my almost irrational drive to find out 'the secret' and reconnect with my roots leads directly to my present spiritual path, with Amma,and Devi spirituality, out of south India.  My grandfather would be thrilled, and as for me, I feel ever-so-much, at long last, at home.

textured light

last night i watched a dvd called 'when the moors ruled europe.'  the info was good, nothing i haven't already read in 'ornament of the world' or other sources, but the IMAGERY was SPECTACULAR!  The film treats you to a visual stream that is simply indescribable, while at the same time you learn more about 'real' islam - for example it's phenomenal emphasis on education - and certain secrets about europe.  as i've been researching this area myself, i've become aware that many of the things i love best about christian culture - libraries, prayer gardens, contemplative poetry, the healing arts - were all done first and best by the andalusians (western/european muslims) and were, in fact, copied and emulated by christian european cultures during the late middle ages and beyond.

anyway, you all know i have written fairly extensively on my ancestors who were called 'moors' at least as late as the early twentieth century and who lived in delaware, south jersey and southeastern pennsylvania.  there is such a lot of controversy over what this term might really have meant, but i know that my line believed it had to do with a connection with morocco, and we had various 'atmospheric' elements around the house i grew up in which cultivated that awareness.  I wish I still had some of those things, which were left behind when we moved the household to california.  but here is synchronicity for you - there are elements about this house where we are living that are atmospherically reminiscent of my childhood home.  Not the same, but  similar enough. 

for example, this house has a wonderful play of light and darkness going on, similar to the effects of screens in islamic decor, and to the effects of blinds, curtains, textured glass and translucent glass which we used in my childhood home.  also, our little house here is loaded with texture, so the play of light and darkness and the various swirling textures combine to intensify this effect.  A friend of mine once said she found the light in our house a little dim - she prefers bright sunshine streaming in as many windows as possible, because of course that's always limited - but that sense of being shaded, as in a forest, as in a garden, is indeed a moorish ideal.  the house should offer a sense of protection and shelter from the brightness of the sun. 

the house is supposed to be 'spanish' in conception.  The style is usually called 'mediterranean bungalow' or 'berkeley bungalow.'  Ours has highly textured plaster walls.  This was a style popular in California in the 1920's and coincidentally enough my father was here at that time doing this kind of plastering, in which some, usually neutral, color was mixed with the plaster and then, while the plaster was being applied and textured, powdered paints of various colors were tossed in patches on the wall and then swirled over by the trowel, creating a wonderfully mottled effect.  I don't think my photos really do the textures of these walls justice, but I present what I have been able to muster.  Inadequate though these photos may be, i offer them to share some idea of the textured interior we live in, which feels so familiar and homey to me.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how easy it is to create 'wonders' when you have a lot of money.  at this time when money is less than it has been, i am reflecting that it is more interesting to me when someone can create something beautiful or interesting using minimal money but more creativity, innovation or originality.  or when something 'just happens' to come together, like our moving into this particular house - (which i initially did not really like!) - keeping the mottled walls, adding lace, getting used to the smaller size of the rooms - and then finding, over the years, that it has been perfect.  as the hindu prayer states, 'everything is perfect, and even when you take away a part of the perfect, perfection remains.' 

delaware more ties

I've been reading Weslager's "Delaware's Forgotten Folk, The Story of the Moors and Nanticokes," the book that everyone said would help to put it all together for me.  Well, I have to say it has.  One of the things that helped was understanding the mess created by the school problem in early twentieth century mixed-blood communities in Delaware, problems that affected attitudes and divisions among people during my mother's and her peers' lifetimes.  Also, of special interest to me was the notion that the so-called 'Moors,' the people my grandfather identified with, were one of the remnants of the Lenape (Delaware) native peoples, probably the ones living furthest south in that time of major movement of refugee people.  My husband's people were also probably part-Lenape, and so that confirms something he and I have felt for a long time.

I've decided I don't feel comfortable calling myself part-native-american or part-african-american, more comfortable calling myself part-white or simply 'white' (with reservations, no pun intended).  However, I do feel comfortable acknowledging that my family had a 'moor' lineage.  My chinese daoist teacher, Jeffrey Yuen, talks a lot about our inherited constitutional factors, which relate both to our genes and to our past lives, and he refers to getting in touch with our lineage.  That message has been very timely for me, since that seems to be exactly what is happening in my life. 

Outside knowledge or information is somewhat helpful, but the main stream of the lineage comes from within myself, from my own memories of my family, my early environment in Philadelphia and south Jersey, my own experiences.  Also, there is quite a bit of dream material that relates to our lineage, which of course I did not recognize until recently. 

I've also really come to understand that my father, a sailor, was not exactly an 'immigrant' to this country.  As a seaman, he traveled all around the world, and of all the possible places he chose the Delaware River area because he really just loved the indigenous people there.  He chose my mother because he loved her and because she was one of those people he already loved.  I think it came as a bit of a shock to him, a Dane by birth, that - possibly because of me - my mother was trying to distance herself from her people.  Oh, the ironies of life!  But - well, I don't know if you can understand this, but - it's been something of a healing for me to realize all of this. 

There was something missing inside me, or some rift within me, that this knowledge has healed.  It almost feels strange to share this in such a public forum, but I do so in the knowledge that sharing this may help someone else. 

Somehow all of this has been buidling to some kind of completion - or so it has felt to me - just recently, so imagine my surprise when I went to the mitsawokett site (the official delaware moor site) yesterday and found that they have posted my family's pictures.  I felt I might not have consclusive enough proof that my great-grandmother was the same Mary Carney born in Delaware somewhere between 1832 and 1835.  But I knew that she and her son, my grandfather, saw themselves as 'moors,' and that her mother's name was Louisa.  Likely that her father's name was John, as well, since that is what she named her first son who was born out of wedlock. 

It does help to be able to put a name to my experience and to understand the kinds of conflicts that drove my mother in a color-conscious society such as Philadelphia's was in her day. But even more than that, it establishes a warm feeling inside me about myself and my mother's family, and my father's love for her.  Out of that love I came.

sephardic tolerance

i've been writing so much about my mother and her family and very little about my father.  well, until recently, i thought i knew all there was to know about my father's family.  but now there's been yet another major familial wake-up call.  my father's family were 'danish jews.'  I put scare-marks around those words, because technically they were lutherans, however, not really.

let me try to explain.  my father told me, when i was quite young, that 'my family are the ones they call the portugese.'  as for most americans, that meant nothing to me.  at age 8, i replied to him, 'you mean you like people from portugal?'  we just looked at each other for a few minutes, aware that we were not really communicating.  but can you imagine that i remember this moment?  i think partly because i'd never seen my dad so agitated.  we had been in a roomful of men who were shouting and laughing and carrying on, and my dad suddenly took me outside and said, 'karen, there's something i really want you to understand about me.  i know you're a little young, but i want you to know that my people are the ones they call the portugese.'

okay, fast forward 50 years, and i'm reading on-line at jewishgenweb that the Danish Jews were called 'the Portugese.' 

Various other memories surface: 'our family wore yellow stars even though we didn't 'have' to' during the Nazi occupation of Denmark.  My father pointing to a picture of the Rothschilds' mansion in Denmark, saying 'they are one of our best families in Denmark.'  My mother insisted on naming me Katherine, and when my Dad pronounced it 'katrin' she changed it to Karen, assuming that it is a Danish name so it would be more suitable, etc.  He told me 'Karen is not one of our names.  Anna and Lilian, names like that are ours.'  There was all of this 'ours' and 'theirs' - not in any kind of passionate way, just quietly, matter-of-fact. 

His account of 'going to (the Lutheran) church' was that 'we' only went for things like 'the naming ceremony about a week after the baby is born,' weddings, funerals and at around age 14, 'when the boy becomes a man, we have a ceremony and the boy is given the scripture.'  He told me, 'they call it confirmation, but really it's just coming of age.'  'The scripture' was the Psalms only.  After that ceremony, my father went to sea, and began the career that would last for the rest of his life. 

Well, well.  Some of my American Jewish friends are very excited about this story, others tell me that he wasn't in any way, shape or form a Jew.  He had chosen to be 'nothing' because he wasn't really a Christian either.  But he always made it clear to me that he wasn't 'against' the Christian faith.  And, when you think about it, after all, Jesus was a Jew, so perhaps that helped at least a little when Jewish family took up a modified form of being Christian.  This kind of 'adopted' Christianity has been going on among the Sephardim since the 1300's at least. 

Apparently, from what I can glean, King Christian IV invited Sephardic Jews from Germany and the Netherlands to come to Denmark to help him modernize the country, especially in the shift to a money-based economy.  I guess it was probably fish-based before that (lol). Anyway, all of that was okay.  They also allowed a smaller number of Ashkenazi Jews to enter, especially in the area of Copenhagen.  The Sephardic population was found scattered throughout the rural districts, such as Ribe Amt where my father's families are from.  Well, in the early 1800's, social pressure was placed on these Sephardic families to convert to Lutheranism in the interest of a more uniform society (sounds like the wishes of Castilian Spain, but without the blood-purity cant.)  Most Danish Jews converted at that time.  The rest moved to either Copenhagen, or to Aalborg where there was a synogogue in Jutland. 

Well!  I have finally come across an article that talks about the high level of tolerance exhibited by the Sephardic Jews, their willingness to blend with their surrounding cultures through intermarriage, adoption of religious tenets, etc, in contra-distinction to Ashkenazi Jews who favored separation and a more highly defined identity. Not only that, but I recognize my dear father in these few pages.  He taught me always to respect the religions of others, because whatever I might think of the religion, it was very very important to the people who believed in it.  That was one of the most important, personal, private, highly-charged things my father ever said to me on one of our wonderful walks together.

Anyway, here's the link to the article on The Special Character of Sephardi Tolerance.

moorish gardens

I've been thinking about my years as a Catholic, and realizing that the things I probably appreciated most about that tradition were three: one, all the beautiful places for contemplation that I experienced as a Catholic.  Beautiful gardens, alcoves, chapels, fountains, grottoes.  The odd thing is that these were probably traditionally derived from Islamic spirituality.  In the Middle Ages, Christianity was deeply impressed and influenced by Moorish culture and spirituality.  The Moors were much admired and imitated and studied by the medieval christians, and a great deal of their culture was absorbed.

I think we could all be more aware of the fact that religions are not and have never been hermetically sealed vessels.  There has always been a lot of sharing and blending among religious traditions within a cultural context.  Divisions and factions have been fomented for political reasons by individuals and groups of people who stood to gain, and warfare has been carried out for generations afterward by people who stood to gain very little.  It's really a trick of the mind that leads us to think there are 'different religions.'  I've just been reading a book about early Scotland that remarks on a portrait of a Scottish Bishop who is 'flanked by a crescent moon and a six-pointed start.  Our interpretation is that all three faiths - Christian, Jewish, Muslim - were tolerated and practiced in the diocese of St. Andrew's.'  So this phenomenon was hardly unique to medieval Spain, and according to travelers I have met, still exists in Eastern Europe.

When I studied theology in the nineteen-eighties, one of the main points they wanted to bring home to us is that Christianity emerged from a large pan-Mediterranean gnostic culture, in which many different 'religions' flourished, all sharing a basic gnostic orientation.  The history, development and interrelationship of the 'Big Three' - Christianity, Judaism and Islam - is very interesting, not from the political and land-grab perspective, but in terms of human spiritual evolution.

The second thing I appreciated about my time in Catholicism are some of the wonderful people I met who had such an optimistic, positive orientation.  Obviously, not everyone shared this, but I'm focusing on those who really brightened my day, and brightened the world for me, for that matter.  It is possible to find a very positive orientation in Catholicism, but it can sometimes verge on the 'pollyanna' side, and I guess I found at some point that it was not adequate for me.  This may also be because it was not really thriving as a living spiritual tradition in my locale.  Or if it was, I didn't have access to it.

Lastly, I appreciated the ritual aspects of the worship at the time I was involved there.  I no longer feel moved by that particular ritual and have found another I find more nourishing to my soul and spirit at the present time.  But I realize that in the Western world, there is rather a dearth of that kind of ceremonial ritual which is so richly patterned deep within the human soul, so what little we still have has to be acknowledged and appreciated.

delaware moors revisited again

Maybe what 'being a Delaware Moor' had come down to, in my mother's day, was just the hoarding of 'old stuff' with no real 'meaning' behind it.  I get the impression that there were a few distinctive mannerisms, a sense of identity (both imposed from outside and nurtured within the community), and a proclivity towards certain images, such as the many variations of stars: eight-pointed, sixteen-pointed, thirty-two pointed.  There were racial 'issues' - those were real, and not just 'old stuff.'  The Moors are reputed to have denied being white, black or native.  "We are Moors," was their statement of ethnicity, according to most sources. 

I think my mother thought she was secretly colored, or might be perceived as 'colored,' but she wanted to be white.  Back in those days, 'colored' was a term that embraced a myriad of people, including the Delaware Moors.  I notice that in Pennsylvania my great-grandmother was listed as white on the census, but in Delaware, mulatto.  Her cousin (or nephew, can't remember which just now), William Carney, served in the Colored Troops during the Civil War (Pennsylvania), but according to various sources I've read, 'colored' could mean 'native american,' too.  My grandfather was a follower of Noble Drew Ali and his Moorish Science Temple, and I was brought up to revere Egypt as the source of our culture.  Yet many of the descendants of the Delaware Moors today seem especially focussed on their Nanticoke ties.   

Well, I have just recently joined a Yahoo group of descendants of the Delaware Moors, so maybe I will know more soon.

leather lampshade

I loved this leather lampshade when I was a little girl.  At that time, it sat atop a rounded orange glass base and had a plain little ball on top rather than this finial. 

If my theory is correct, and my great-grandmother was one of the 'Delaware Moors' then perhaps this shade was made in imitation of the kind of work their forbears did in the past.  It's obviously a modern adaptation, not something from the old country. 

My mother was amazed and somewhat disturbed that I 'liked' this piece so much.  But I absolutely loved it, especially when it still had its orange glass base.  I got a wonderful feeling from it.  On the other hand, my mother was convinced that it was ugly.  I think it worried my mother that I liked all the things that had belonged to her grandmother, with whom she obviously had a very conflicted relationship.  She didn't approve of that 'Delaware Moorishness,' and from what I've been able to read about them on-line, they were a group of people who for so many years 'lived apart' and had their own ways.

Written about at the turn of the last century, an author stated that they still kept to many of the old 'moorish' ways, but he did not enumerate any of them.  I'm recollecting those pieces of coin jewelry, this leather lampshade, my great-grandmother's Tuareg cosmetic case, dagger, and Moroccan tea-glasses.  Perhaps these are some of the things he was referring to.  Anyway, I think my mother wanted to assimilate, and found this branch of the family 'too backward' - this was the reputation of the Delaware Moors in my mother's day, let's say, the 1920's.  They don't seem to really exist any more.  The 1970's opened the way for them to really assimilate, I suppose.  They are now a part of America's past.

tuareg jewelry

Still on my quest for familial knowledge.  I've found this absolutely beautiful book that must be 'the last word' on Tuareg jewelry, and it is available  from the author Helene E. Hagan, or at Amazon.com and other places.

When I began looking at the work in this book, my first thought was exactly the same as my thought about our necklace - you may recall I am trying to remember the details of a necklace that was in our family - and that first thought was, 'this is just a bunch of scratched lines - is that all this kind of jewelry is?'  So, that was my first clue that the jewelry in this book was indeed related to our necklace.

There is one big difference between the jewelry in this book and ours, and that is that the jewelry in the book is exceedingly beautiful. As I recall our pieces - we had others besides the necklace, although the necklace remains most vividly in my memory - my memory tells me that our pieces were much more plain and, as it were, crude by comparison.  In fact, I wondered if the necklace might be something other than Tuareg, perhaps gypsy or Native American.  A lady on the Nanticoke page wears a coin necklace, for example, although it is hard to see.  When I asked my mother why there was a necklace made of coins among her costume jewelry, she said very dismissively, 'oh, the old-time people used to make them like that.'  'Who were the old-time people?'  No answer.  The Delaware Moors were apparently related to the Nanticoke at one time, so I wondered if perhaps our coin necklace might be one of theirs.

Well,  when I finally came across this picture, I realized that at last I'd found something I recognized!  Yes, this motif, crude and unsymmetrical as it is, was on our coin necklace. This is the kind of 'look' our coins had - very uneven shapes, not centered, imperfect, mere 'scratchings,' etc.  From this book I also recognize the 'star' design, and others.  In addition, I realize that some other pieces that my mother  let me believe were merely costume jewelry, were in fact a kind of cylindrical men's 'brooch.'  Some of the other specific kinds of jewelry in the book may have been among our collection as well, but I don't recall them as clearly. 

I found it interesting to discover through this book that the Tuareg had their own alphabet.  Finding this out gave me a little bit of a 'tickle' because as a child I had developed an alphabet that somewhat resembled the Tuareg one. I used to sit on our porch writing and/or translating bits of writing into my special alphabet.  Just a kid thing to do. I know this is not very significant, but it's one of those peculiar little synchronicities that occur in life that entertain your mind with 'possibilites.'  A while back I tried to recreate some of the letters.  Here's what I came up with:

Cute, huh?  Below is an example of the Tuareg alphabet from Helene Hagan's book:

tuareg necklace

As you may recall, I've been cudgeling myself over losing the antique coin-necklace, but I do remember it, so let me try to describe it for you.  The coins were strung together with very simple large link chain.  The largest and heaviest coins were in the middle.  My recollection is that they were all sanded on one side, and stamped with designs like the 'prickly crescents' I described in a previous post, and with other shapes as well.  On the reverse, they were quite dirty old coins.  One in particular had a huge serpent with many 'turns' or 'coils' to it.  I always feel I would recognize the coins if I could see them, but I do recall that they weren't a lot of the European 'heads of state' kinds of coins. We used to have a coin purse full of Arab and Iranian coins, with swords or lion-and-sword motifs, but I always thought they were gathered by my father.  In this assumption, I now know I was wrong, but just which coins came from him and which from my mother's family I can no longer discern, as all those old coins have been mixed and some given away.  Anyway, if I remember rightly, the largest coins seemed to have a layer of metal around the outside to protect the edge, and/or to make the necklace heavier.  I read somewhere that Berbers valued less the size of a necklace and more its weight.  In any case, this necklace was a very poor one compared to many that you see in books displaying Berber jewelry.  I can't remember if it had two or three tiers and I believe it had five or six drops.  The two outside drops were made of very small thin coins that had been polished to a very light sheen and were slightly curved, as if placed over a finger-tip and smoothed until it fit the contours of a finger.  At least, as a girl, I used to press my fingertip inside these curved coins and they fit perfectly.

I've just ordered a book called "Tuareg Jewelry" and I'm hoping to find a similar example there.  I'm also keeping an eye out for the kind of short sword we had in the family.

tuareg?

A couple of neat things have happened in the last week.  I found out from Mustafa at 'Sahara' that the type of wooden cosmetic case my great-grandmother had was Tuareg, and then this past week I found a photo of 'Tuareg earrings' that had the same kind of stamp on them that the coins in my great-grandmother's necklace had.  The design looks like a prickly little crescent moon or half-circle.  This kind of stamp was on the coins on the old necklace we had.  I feel so badly about losing the necklace, but I ought to add that it was not spectacularly beautiful or anything.  It was very plain, really, just a couple of chains of old coins joined together.  But it would be so cool to have it now.  At least I remember it well.  So, anyway, the evidence is stacking up that my great-grandmother had Tuareg ancestors. 

And there is more evidence from the dna side as well.  I may have mentioned that in my most recent 'update' at dnatribes, my number for sub-saharan african dropped, but my number for East African shot up quite high, and of course, I still had a high North African number. I wondered about the East African reading.  Dnatribes includes Egypt, Mozambique, Ethiopa and Kenya in their 'East African' group.  Also, Madagascar, Mauritius and Reunion Island - the latter two places I have visited with my spiritual teacher, Amma in 1993.

Anyway, to help clarify this new mystery, I've found this passage in "The History and Geography of Human Genes" by L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazza, pages 172-173: "Among speakers of Berber languages are the Tuareg, who inhabit mainly southern Algeria and northern Niger, with fewer in neighboring countries (Libya).  We are confronted with the new finding that, although the Tuareg speak a Berber language, they show a closer genetic relationship with the Beja.  The origin of the Tuareg is not fully understood.  There are indications that they may have moved to the center of the Sahara in order to escape Arab attacks in the 7th and 11th centuries A.D., but their earlier whereabouts are not known.  They have always been a very mobile people, being pastoralists who may have been among the first in Africa to make extensive use of horses, and later, camels.  Up to modern times, the Tuareg have been the major camel traders on the traditional caravan routes across the Sahara.  The Tuareg have dark-skinned slaves, and there is considerable variation in skin color from the nobility to the servants.  IT is possible that their genetic similarity to the Beja and Ethiopians is a consequence of their having some black admixture, but Tuareg slaves have ususally not been sampled, or were sampled separately.  Although the Tuareg are classified with Berbers on linguistic grounds, it is clear that they show important ethnic distinctions form Berbers and have a developed culture of their own.

"The Beja or Bega are a group of nomadic pastoralists speaking a Cushitic language and may have long inhabited the area that they now inhabit in Sudan, between the Nile and Red Sea.  Egyptian records indicate they have been in this region at least since 2700 B.C. as independent pastoralists."  The Tuareg and the Beja are estimated to have separated about 5000 years ago.  Both Tuareg and Beja belong genetically to the Ethiopian group, although there is no marked similarity of either the Tuareg or the Beja with Ethiopian groups.  "At this stage the hypothesis of their common origin shall be considered as a serious possibility."

I have to say that the strength of the evidence that my great-grandmother was Tuareg in heritage is much greater and more specific than anything I had believed likely to emerge. Although I had hoped to make specific discoveries, this really outdoes my expectations!

Also, just as a side note, at our ashram there is a table where we sell (to raise funds for charitable projects) the things that have been donated for our annual auction that didn't sell.  For a couple of years now there has been a small figure of raku-fired black woman wearing a coiled blue turban and blue robes.  The blue is variegated with gray.  I've always noticed her, but about a month ago I felt compelled to buy her, and I did.  I just thought that she might be one of the Blue People of Morocco, and even though I now believed I was no longer related to them, since my Berber and Moroccan values had dropped after my update, and the East African values were now higher, I just wanted to have her, and I was also considering giving her as a gift to a friend, after I had enjoyed her for a little while.  Well, you can imagine how I feel about that now! 

By the way, we know the figure is a woman because she is not veiled.  Tuareg men are always veiled, probably as a protection against blowing sand.