ancestral spirits.
Ancestral work is broad, vast, and incredibly important to any personal magical and spiritual practice. Ancestral work is part intuition, part dialogue, part deep listening. It can be research and reading based.
Just added to your cart
Ancestral spirits is engaging with the practices, food, medicines, stories, and beliefs of your cultures. Ancestral spirits it is appropriate, it is about honoring and listening to the spirits of those in your lineage who have walked before you. If appropriate, it is about engaging in a generative relationship with your ancestor or ancestral spirits.
Ancestral work can help everyone. If more white people spent more time researching and in engagement learn more here their lineage, they would be less ancestral spirits to steal and appropriate the work of Black, Brown, and Indigenous cultures. They would feel more rooted and connected, which would result in less violence. Today, I'm sharing some ideas to explore your ancestral lineage and incorporate ancestral work into your life from of my own personal process.
Ancestral work has allowed me to determine what trauma and ingrained beliefs were passed down to me, and thus work on repairing and reconciling in this lifetime. Depending where your ancestors came from—and their own, unique a story—your process and angle will be quite different. My thoughts and practices have been informed by people who specialize in this work: Shayne Case, Chiron ArmandDori Midnightand Ylva Mara Radziszewski all have extensive practices and teachings on ancestor work. The term "well ancestors" comes from Daniel Foor and his book Ancestral Medicine. My friend Milla has written about this quite a bit—check out her site.
Navigation menu
As I always say: take what you need, and leave the rest. If you know your lineage Connect to non-activating ancestral practices first : If you know approximately where your ancestors came from, there could be quite a bit of information to explore.
Connect ancestral spirits the food, the folktales, and the spieits.
Look up art from the area s your ancestors are from. Listen to their folk music. Ancestral spirits if there are any spirits, goddesses, or deities from your background read article you relate to. Ancestral spirits ancestors might be incredibly ancient—this is spriits trust is required. Can you create a ritual that invites in the spirits of your well ancestors? Can you connect psychically or spiritually with them? Create an altar, make them offerings. Sing to them, talk to them. Ask them to visit you ancestral spirits dreams, in meditation, while you are journaling. Repairing harm : I believe that white people specifically need to repair the harm our ancestors created. All white folks carry the demon of constructed whiteness inside of them. Looking to how your ancestors caused harm may give you clues on how you carry white supremacy spiritd of you. For example, my ancestors were complicit in that they were quiet, did not speak up about injustice, and chose to hide in assimilation.
I am assuming this was a trauma response to stay safe, as both sides of my immediate lineage were persecuted. They also might have been actively here. I can only guess that choosing whiteness by assimilating meant adapting and engaging in other forms of white supremacy.
What repairing that specific harm looks like for me is speaking up against racial injustice in person and in public. White people have to look at, face, and examine the harm they are accountable for. Ignoring this is complicity.]
The theme is interesting, I will take part in discussion.