For Peninah Part 2

I want to preface this story by saying if you are an active member of the LDS church you may find some of this content upsetting or blasphemous. Read with discretion. This is Part 2, you can read part 1 here.

A year ago I wandered the city cemetery in Bountiful Utah. I’ve always loved cemeteries. The quiet, the eeriness, the feeling of walking in and out of a place that lies along the border of two worlds; this world and the next. It wasn’t hard to find clusters of relatives buried in that cemetery. Descendants of Daniel Wood are everywhere around here because they colonized the area in the 1800s. I recognized the names. 4th great uncles everywhere buried next their wives and children.

I’d been longing to connect to ancestors. So many people I’d spoken with and done readings for had ancestors nearby guiding or watching over them. So many teachers in the spiritual community talk about the importance of connecting with ancestors. There was a time when I did…there was a time when I felt connected to them. The ancestry I’d felt most connected to were Mormons. I’d had dreams of them and some had even come through during mediumship readings I’d received. But when I left the church they founded, left the religion they’d dedicated their lives to, the feelings of connection disappeared. Instead, I was introduced to terms like generational trauma and the concept of healed and unhealed ancestors.

I’d wondered if the inability to connect with that ancestry was my own doing, like some subconscious block because leaving that life somehow gave them reason to reject me. But I’d had multiple conversations with other intuitives who all seemed to tell me the same thing- when your body locks down the way it does when it tries to connect (my heart would wall up and my body would resist) it’s because it’s not a safe thing to do for you right now, so try to go farther back in the line to find someone healed, someone “safe.” What exactly “safe” means is a conversation for another day. Either way, my body seemed to know what was safe and what was not, even if it’s not the way I wanted it.

That day walking around the cemetery reminded me of the last encounter I’d had with one of my ancestors I felt was Peninah. I’d felt her and a few other ancestors in a reiki session I’d had the year before, when I was working through some of the impacts of generational trauma. I felt like some of the energetic impacts of that had been removed or resolved during that session. As I walked and looked at the graves of other relatives I wondered if enough time had passed that I could connect with Peninah again. I wanted to ask her questions. I wanted to see if she was there. I wanted to see if that reiki session had done anything healing for her or if it was just me. I wanted to see if even though I’d left the religion she’d dedicated her life to, maybe we could still connect. I set my intention on connecting with her and any other ancestry that felt able to come through.

That night I had a dream. The dream was so vivid. In the dream I was supposed to meet with her and others I was trying to connect to. I saw tattered chairs so torn apart they no longer functioned so we couldn’t sit there. I dreamed of feces being on cement blocks that would have made a good place to sit and talk had there not been feces smeared all over them. I remember even in my dream the smell was nauseating, like I was truly standing next to it in real life somewhere. I walked through rooms, looked behind doors. I saw ants and general filth everywhere. There was no place that was clean for us to sit and meet. If there was a clean place to be there would be someone watching us and we wouldn’t be able to speak in private. We needed to speak privately.

I woke up feeling that that was my answer…we would not be able to meet. I could not connect with them. My heart sank and I cried when I woke up. Why could we not meet? Everything I’d read about them made it seem like they were good people. Why was it so hard now to meet? We did before, why not now?

I closed my eyes again to ask and pray for the answer. In my minds eye I saw Peninah and others with hearts of gold. The light in their hearts was bright and they were sending it to me. Their bodies however, were wrapped tightly in what looked like octopus tentacles. The tentacles were wide, black, and wound so tightly they couldn’t move. All they could do was send the glow that was in their hearts. I felt the peace from their hearts, and I understood the meaning of the tentacles.

The Völva and the Egregore

I remember when I first saw a Norse Völva (similar to a shaman) and I was just barely starting to dip my toes in to mediumship. She was the first person to tell me about the idea that when a lot of people worship together and have the same intention, it can create a consciousness, an entity. With enough time and intention toward that entity, that entity can become responsive. That entity is called an egregore. It is an egoic entity and not a divine entity meaning it is created by the energy of ego rather than the energy of source/god. It survives on the attention given to it by those that created it, those that worship it, and the energy and intentions of humans rather than being powered by source or divine energy. She told me that this is what actually is at the head of the LDS church. She said it sends energetic hooks in to people and that is why it is so hard to leave. The hooks are painful to pull out. They cause fear. She said the energy permeates the areas surrounding churches and has to constantly be cleared out of her space.

While an interesting idea, I didn’t know that I believed her right away. It was an odd concept and it sounded well…dark. However it answered the question I had about why people get different answers in and out of the church…the answers come based on what they’re plugged in to. In the church they’re plugged in to that collective church energy so the answers will fit based on what that collective believes.

At the time she told me this, even though I didn’t believe in many of the doctrines of the church, it was still my heritage. I was thankful to it for teaching me the language of spirituality and for the growth I experienced with it. The idea that it was headed by ego, while plausible, was not something I had thought to consider. The hooks though…they made sense. Leaving was hard. Leaving was terrifying. Leaving was stressful, so much so I did all within my power to contort myself and my beliefs to find somewhere, anywhere, I could fit in order to stay.

Her insights are backed up by a science experiment. It’s called The Phillip Experiment. In that experiment the researches were able to create through thought, intention and gathering together regularly, a responsive ghost- an actual energetic presence. Similar experiments have been done with other characters such as Lilith. While this experiment was fascinating, it wasn’t until years after my conversation with the Völva that I’d heard of that experiment. Everything between those moments of information and what I learned was based on my own personal experiences.

Binding

The first time I saw LDS rituals as being binding, and not in a good way, was during a psychic reading I did for a friend of mine. She was asking about her mother. When I tuned in to her mother, she showed up as being so completely covered in bungee cords and chains so she could hardly move. Her choices were limited. I asked to see why she was so bound, why she was so limited. The answer I heard was “it is the promises she has made.” I saw that whenever she was in need of something she’d promise “God” that if he were to provide her with what she needed she would dedicate herself more to him. That is the first time that I saw what she was promising herself to was an egregore, an egoic entity posing as god, and that is why she was bound. She was bargaining with an entity that did not have her best interests in mind but rather fed off her reliance upon the egoic entity for getting what she needed or wanted. I also saw the temple ordinances she had made as binding, rather than freeing. I saw them as limiting her will, rather than expanding it. My friend’s mother was a devout Mormon.

It’s not the last time I saw this kind of binding. It’s pretty frequent among devout LDS people. The next several times I saw it I asked why they were bound. The clarification I received was that in the temple they covenant to give all their time and talents to the church with the belief that the church represents God or is God, but that is not the case. The church is not God but rather a separate entity and created through collective intention and consciousness. In other words, the church is an Egregore, just like the Völva said. They are binding themselves not to a divine being but rather the shallow energy of ego that requires devotion to survive. That entity requires obedience and handing over your will. It is fueled by praise and worship of it. It is not motivated by love nor does it seek to free and expand the individual. If it frees others, it loses it essentially loses it’s source of life.

The cost of their temple promises is their free will, and free will is the gift we all have and need to find our purpose and destiny. And it is handed over willingly in the temples to a church, not a God. God does not require your will but that is yet again another topic for another day. As Richard Rohr said, “All God wants from any of us is to humbly and proudly return the product that we have been given - which is ourselves!” To find yourself and be yourself, you must also own your will. To hand over one’s will to anyone or anything is to comply with servitude.

One of the first lessons I learned in studying mediumship mastery is when discerning spirits, any spirit that requires your will is not a good one. The good ones will encourage choice and show you options and possibilities. They will honor, respect and encourage free will. This means they will never command because commanding anyone to do anything infringes upon free will. This says a lot when thinking about the story of Joseph Smith claiming to see an angel with a flaming sword command him to practice polygamy. If he did in fact see that, it was not an angel sent from God. Seeing people bound in cords and chains in the community I loved so much for most my life woke me up and inserted awareness in a way I never planned.

Tentacles

It took multiple readings with multiple people for me to see there was consistency in temple vows bringing some kind of binding. It was about a year later that I started seeing something entirely different, perhaps a bit scarier.

Three years ago or so I did a reading for a woman whose great grandfather was a well known apostle. I knew exactly who this apostle was because he was an a apostle from my childhood all the way to young adult years. When I think of the twelve apostles of the LDS church in my youth he’s one of them and I remember looking at his picture on the wall in early morning seminary in high school. Her first reading with me I was fairly new at doing readings for others, and I had not yet learned of the egregore or binding. I also had not yet officially left the church.

One of her questions that she asked was about what a psychic had told her a few years prior. That psychic had told her that she was followed by something dark and possibly evil. This obviously scared her, and so she wanted to ask me more about what that was. When I tuned in I didn’t see anything dark or evil following her. I simply saw her lineage and how she needed to choose what was good for her rather than comply with expectations of her lineage.

Fast forward a year or so later, I’d had experiences where I’d begun to see what the Völva spoke of. When I would tune in to church/egregore energy, especially when doing energy clearings for houses, I’d see that energy as something you might see in the show Stranger Things. I saw long black octopus like tentacles coming out of a church body. It was weird. Like Ursula from the Little Mermaid meets the Stranger Things upside down. I saw it whenever people lived near a church, and moving through the ground near temples always leading back to where the baptismal font is located on lower levels of temples. Clearing houses near those locations was hard because it didn’t respect the usual energy boundaries. I saw those tentacles following behind some, not all of the members.

After I started to see that energy, the apostle’s great grand daughter scheduled another reading with me. This time when I tuned in I saw exactly what the other psychic saw…long black tentacles following her. And instead of it being her lineage as I saw before, I saw that it was the promises and therefore the bindings of her lineage. It was church energy, and it followed her everywhere. This time it was easy to identify because I’d seen it now follow people that had done certain sealing rituals in the temple, people who were descendants of high ranking church officials, and people who were descendants of those who likely had taken part in the Second Anointing ordinance in the temple. That tentacle was church energy that followed those descendants everywhere as if waiting for them to turn to it and come back in to its grip…following and waiting for them to “come back to the fold.”

This time when I went to do the reading for the apostle’s granddaughter, the tentacles got in the way of my contacting her great grandfather. They blocked where her great grandfather was waiting to speak to me. The interference was so bad that its like her great grandfather had to shout for me to get any words from him. And the only words I heard clearly were “get out.” She was questioning whether or not to leave the church. That was his answer. “Get out.”

When I saw my ancestors with hearts of gold being wrapped in tentacles the morning after my dream, I knew that the reason I could not meet with them was because they were bound by the oaths with the church they had made. The tentacles were the binding and grip of that energy and egregore. There would be interference from that church entity because I was no longer a part of the fold. What is also interesting to me is the church claims to have the power to bind families together forever. In reality it only binds those within it’s fold and keeps them separate from everyone else they would normally be able to speak with. It prevents them from going anywhere outside their own fold. The sealing is a limits their view and where they may progress. It is not in any way an expansion. It ties them instead to an entity within a consciousness created by ego. It looks a lot like making a deal with the devil really, if the devil were real.

Validation

Every so often I will feel the nudge to share my dreams on Instagram and one evening I shared my dream and insights of seeing my ancestors in tentacles, sending their love but their inability to come to me. After reading my stories, a friend sent me a screen shot of a talk she was reading that day. In the talk there was a quote by Orson F. Whitney from a 1929 conference report: “The Prophet Joseph Smith declared…that the eternal sealings of faithful parents and divine promises made to them…would save not only themselves but likewise their posterity. Though some of the sheep may wander, they eye of the Shepherd is upon them, and sooner or later they will feel the tentacles of Divine Providence reaching out after them and drawing them back to the fold.”

There it was. “Tentacles of Divine Providence” in the eyes of those who follow align themselves with church ordinances. But in the eyes of those that leave, binding black tentacles that restrict movement and access to others.

In the second anointing ordinance, it says “I seal upon you power to bind on Earth and it shall be bound in heaven…and thou shalt have power to redeem thy progenitors and though shalt have power over thy posterity and shall save all of them and bring them in to thy kingdom…”

And there it was, there it is. I saw on my own that those that had participated in or were the posterity of those who took part in sealing ordinances or second anointings had black tentacles that followed them. It was validated after seeing actual promises spoken in ordinances and by those in high ranking positions. In general, it’s always a red flag when there is mention of power over anything other than yourself. In fact that is essentially the definition of baneful/black magic…magic or rituals that take away the free will of another or steal power from another. To give someone dominion over their posterity is to set the intention to take power, authority and free will from their posterity…in a way force them to come back to the fold.

Breaking Free

When I read these things, combined with the dream I had about not being able to meet with Peninah, I knew that the reason I could not speak with them was because I’d left the fold. To speak with them, I would have to essentially agree to come back to the fold, agree to submit my will to that of my ancestral line, agree to be wrapped within the same black tentacle as they were, all because that is the covenant that was made by them to the church, and to that entity. It did not feel that it was still within their will to be bound anymore and it was not their will that I be bound again, which is why they sent the images of golden hearts shining toward me. But covenants are covenants. And covenants are easier to break with a body and will. Until the egoic church entity they have promised themselves to dies or they reincarnate and free themselves from the binding, they will remain inaccessible to those outside the fold. They remain inaccessible to me. That process of breaking the binding to entities other than Source/God is called overcoming or breaking a karmic cycle, ridding oneself of Karma. I hope at some point that aspect of themselves will be freed, as we have many soul aspects so somewhere they have a part of their soul that is guiding them to freedom. I’m sad that to maintain my own sovereignty I must do so without that ancestral connection.

I miss the feeling of being connected to my ancestors. But the price for freedom and awareness I feel, is worth it. I do wonder if there’s aspects of those tentacles I haven’t seen yet, since often we don’t see what we aren’t open to or aware of quite yet. My understanding so far is removing records from the church severs the binding and removes the tentacles and permissions and powers of influence. It breaks the covenant. I think that’s because the church even spells out that you lose the blessings of those promises. It would line up because I felt connection to my ancestors until I removed my records. There was something about doing that that also felt like I was helping them somehow…I don’t know exactly how though. Perhaps by loosening my binding it also loosens theirs somehow in some way. I felt like they guided me there…guided me to removing myself from the fold. They helped me by taking me as far as they could to help me find the freedom they could not. While I may not be able to connect with her any longer, I’ll thank Peninah for the awareness she helped me find. I’ll always be thankful for that.