Ancestral sin
[1][2] It exists primarily as a concept in Mediterranean religions (e.g. in Christian hamartiology); generational sin is referenced in the Bible in Exodus 20:5.
[3][4] The classical scholar Martin West draws a distinction between an ancestral curse and an inherited guilt, punishment, adversity or genetic corruption.
[5] The most detailed discussion of the concept is found in Proclus's De decem dubitationibus circa Providentiam, a propaedeutic handbook for students at the Neoplatonic Academy in Athens.
The main point made is that a city or a family is to be seen as a single living being (animal unum, zoion hen) more sacred than any individual human life.
[14] The Greek theologian John Karmiris writes that "the sin of the first man, together with all of its consequences and penalties, is transferred by means of natural heredity to the entire human race.
Since every human being is a descendant of the first man, 'no one of us is free from the spot of sin, even if he should manage to live a completely sinless day'.
Original Sin not only constitutes 'an accident' of the soul; but its results, together with its penalties, are transplanted by natural heredity to the generations to come.
"[15] With regard to breaking generational curses, clergy of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal have developed prayers for healing.
[20] Some holy writing in Hinduism states,[21] The thin bamboo rod in the hand of the Brahmana is mightier than the thunderbolt of Indra.
All of the gods, save Demeter, who was too concerned with the abduction of her daughter Persephone by Hades, knew not to eat from Pelops's cooked corpse.
After Demeter had eaten Pelops's shoulder, the gods banished Tantalus into Tartarus where he would spend eternity standing in a pool of water beneath a fruit-bearing tree with low branches.
The gods brought Pelops back to life, replacing the bone in his shoulder with a bit of ivory with the help of Hephaestus, thus marking the family forever afterwards.
King Menelaus's wife, Helen of Sparta, would leave him for Prince Paris of Troy, thus beginning the Trojan War.
The seer Calchas told Agamemnon that if he wanted to appease Artemis and sail to Troy, he would have to sacrifice the most precious thing in his possession.
Clytemnestra, the wife of Agamemnon and mother to Iphigenia, was so enraged by her husband's actions that when he returned victorious from Troy, she trapped him in a robe with no opening for his head whilst he was bathing and stabbed him to death as he thrashed about.
Because of the noble act of avenging his father's at the expense of his own soul and reluctance to kill his mother, Orestes was forgiven by the gods, thus ending the curse of the House of Atreus.
[27] Another includes karmic debt, a concept suggesting that actions in one's own past life--especially negative ones--carry on with them through reincarnation.
William Hathorne was a judge who earned a reputation for cruelly persecuting Quakers, and in 1662, he ordered the public whipping of Ann Coleman.
[34] As he lies dying, in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet Mercutio says, "A plague o' both your houses", blaming both the Capulets and Montagues.
"[38][39] In the 2007 South Korean psychological-supernatural suspense horror film Someone Behind You, a young woman named Ga-In (Yoon-Jin-seo) sees families and friends slaughtering and attacking one another and realizes that she is followed by an inexplicable curse causing those around her to get rid of her.
Ga-In has hallucinations of those who would attempt to attack her, then sees a disturbing vision of a monstrous being warning her that the bloodshed will intensify.
