HOW DO WE HEAL INTERNALIZED COLONIALISM?
Colonialism isn’t just about destroying and taking over an existing local culture, exploiting the land and people, and maintaining domination.
Colonialism is also about eradicating the people’s memories, exploiting and twisting those memories, and ensuring any effective connection to the past is severed so the conquered are left crippled and dependent on the dominating system. Let them forget who they were (past) so they do not know who they ever will be (present and future). This is most noticeable in the myth of the angry, jealous, and punishing, father god who cannot tolerate us having any form of connection to anything / anyone other than himself; he needed to invent an enemy - the devil - as a method to instill fear and preserve amnesia. What signifies the devil may differ, but common symbols are:
Menstruation
All relating to the feminine and redness (further symbolizing menstrual blood, sexuality, creative kundalini energy, life force, celebration)
An ‘emotional’, ‘wild’, ‘erotic’, or ‘uncontrollable’ woman
Snake and Dragon - creatures of death-rebirth-death, beacons of luck and prosperity (because any success must be credited not from you or any other source of abundance other than the father god)
Dancing
Pleasure
Nature as subject rather than object (consider how wolves, hyenas, coyotes are villainized; consider how honouring the trees and the moon is taught as being associated with ‘demon worship’ or as ‘idolatry’)
Diversity (patriarchy teaches that war is the solution to differences of opinion — it is a ‘shut them up’ rather than ‘talk it out’ method; and makes the assumption that diversity is ‘bad’)
Revering your ancestors and maintaining that rooted connection to the very people who made it possible for you to be here
Any honouring of plant, animal, mineral, elemental spirits
Examining devil symbols is a method of cultural shadow work that can help revive our collective / personal memory. For me, the access points have been menstrual honouring, plant spirit medicine, and ancestral connection. What are your ‘devil’ triggers? They are your portals to take you back to your soul remembrance.
In service,
Mimi Young founder and Spirit Communicator
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