I had a good friend come to me for a soul retrieval at the insistence of his girl friend.  This man had fallen off two cliffs while hiking.  One time he had fallen off a cliff when a chipmunk jumped from a tree in between his backpack and his back.  At other points in time, he had been out hiking, and a marmot had come out of no where and bit him on the toe.  Nature in general seemed to be out to get my friend, who actually loved being out in the wild.

Naturally, to me this sounded like a strange imprint in his underworld (or, as we laughingly put it, a critters curse)  My poor friend had taken to wearing steel toed boots while hiking.  Our group of friends had arranged a horseback riding trip, and my friend was apprehensive about going, convinced that something would happen with some small creature to scare the horse and throw my friend.

I suspected that my friend was suffering from a generational imprint when he told me stories of his maternal grandmother shooting chipmunks in her yard while sitting on her front porch.  However, when I journeyed to the underworld to take a look at what was going on, I saw a very large man, almost like Paul Bunyan, tramping around on the ferns and little creatures, and uprooting old growth trees with no thought to the destruction he was causing.

When I went into the contract chamber, I saw that this had happened a few generations back, and the forest creatures had "cursed" this ancestor into paying for his destruction of the forest.  I had never seen anything like this before---usually it's another person setting in a bad contract, but it was this ancestor's way of atoning for his mistakes.

I spoke to my friend's ancestor, explaining to him that his actions had traveled down 3 generations to affect his great grandson.  The ancestor was horrified, and ready to do anything to make the situation right for his descendant.  I cut my friend free from the chain of ancestors---this curse seemed to travel only down the male line.  Then, Spirit came in and gave my friend a list of things he had to do plus a small ceremony to achieve closure around this issue.  At the same time, in the underworld, I saw the ancestor also performing the ceremony and acting in contrition to what he had done.

As it turns out, (which I didn't know at the time) on my friend's father's side, his grandfather and great-grandfather had been loggers in the Northwest, where we both live now.

I rewrote contracts for my friend so he no longer was subject to the atonement contract.  I also included that he was now free to enjoy the outdoors and the wilderness.  My friend completed his ceremony out in nature before we went on the horseback riding trip.  I am happy to report that the horseback riding was completely enjoyable for my friend, and that no more critters have bitten his toes.

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