It's a shameful and sordid story. Basically, my maternal uncle moved to Chile, adopted a local boy under the pretense of Catholic kindness, and then molested him. He died an agonizing death as a result -- the doctors said it was a "spider bite," but I think I know what happened.

However, it took me years to figure all this out because my family is severely dysfunctional, and one person in particular is a lying sack of, well, you know; and Not At All A Nice Lady. In the meantime, I had given my only child his middle name after this uncle, because he was a painter like me, and I had kinda liked him.

I feel very much ashamed and sad about this. I also do not want my uncle's sins to be visited upon my sweet and kind son, who is just 18 and my biggest joy.

I want to make a sacrifice of some kind in atonement. I was thinking of something gold that is precious to me, and a little of my own blood. I'm not sure about the correct deity I would appeal to, and the proper ritual details. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks.

Sacrifice some of what is truly our individual most valuable possession - your time, to the deity of the future, in such a way which will prevent some future injustice towards a child somewhere.

Good answer. And I have a profound respect for the Ineffable.

But you see, I already do that. For a variety of reasons; mostly because I think kids are awesome.

For this I was hoping to do something specific, specific to the culture, because my gut feeling is that otherwise the name may be unfortunate.

Thank you for the loving response. Seeing if I understand better -

Are you concerned that your son may be targeted by persons in Chile due to his name?

Peace and Love

you are a panther in my eye, i do observe that you do well. kind individual. be a kind individual. usually it will know which way to be. and the way. in general. --always come here to ask these questions peoples-- we will grant you what you need. through magick , or other menans. we love you. in true concern. of what should have been. or what shouldn/t be, we never know to true concern, but from a distance i can see your kind heart shiine, oh let it shine.

be the way.
there is no deietly of lost yourself, you will know that.
take upon LIFE instead of DEATH you will see the way.

Maybe do some good for other children that have faced abuse growing up. You know, some gestures to make their lives better / happier / healthier. Volunteer maybe. Also remember that none of this was your fault.

I dont understand what it is you have to atone for.

You did nothing wrong, you were deceived by a clearly horrible person and when you discovered this deceit you seem to have been suitably disgusted to show that you are a good person, this along with already doing good work for children and loving your son would point out, to me at least, that any feeling responsibility is misplaced.

What happened to that boy has no real conection to you or your son, and the fact that you gave your son a middle name of someone you thought was a good person is neither here nor there, as i assume you would not have given him the name if you would have known the true nature of this uncle.

Again, you have done nothing wrong in any way and were horribly deceived by a devil. There is no connection between yourself and the actions of a disturbed person, family member or not.

I strongly suggest you to read Psychomagic by A. Jodorowsky! J. explain very well how we all tend to unconsciously inherit, generation after generation, traumas. He also explain how to get rid of this source of negative behavior by creating a symbolic act/ritual.
Love and Light

It was suggested to me that I make something clear which I am mortified to see that I did not do originally:

This happened 25 years ago. Long before my son was even conceived. When he was born and I gave him his (middle) name, I still had no idea of the truth. In fact, I only figured it out about a month ago. No one ever told me that this is what happened. Therefore, it is technically a guess; but what happened was that while in a meditative state, several facts which I had assumed were unrelated suddenly coalesced, and I knew. I am certain of it.

Anyway, an amazing thing happened the same night I made the original post: I went out on an errand, and when I came back, I felt something poke my hand, and I looked down to see my gold ring, the only gold I wear, which I've worn for at least 15 years, had broken in such a way that I cannot wear it.
Now, it wasn't the gold thing I had in mind. But it is, in all honesty, far more precious than the other thing, which I value but do not wear. Ha ha, moded. I guess that means the sacrifice was accepted.

Oh, one more thing: no, I am not afraid of retribution from Chilean people. It's more a "sins of the fathers" kind of thing. (or, you know, great-uncles.) He is my child. He was named for someone who harmed a child, though I didn't know it at the time. I guess you could say it's superstition, but it's important to me.