Honoring Your Ancestors: A Guide to Ancestral Veneration

As any good host knows, you can’t force a party to happen. You can send out the invitations. You can buy the food. You can make a playlist. But it’s still possible that no one will show up. Or if they do show up, they might sit quietly and awkwardly in their own worlds instead of really communing with one another. You can only create the conditions

Since your ancestors are a part of you, they’re almost like roommates. Be a conscientious roommate and keep your space clean.

Fresh mugwort can be bound into a bundle and dried in order to create a smudge stick for clearing out spaces of negative energy or ghosts.

I try to perform a mediumship session with my ancestors and spirit guides once a week, ideally on Sunday evening to give thanks for the week that has just passed and prepare for the one that is to come. This practice helps me navigate life and maintain my emotional balance.

At first this will seem like greater self-knowledge—that is, a better understanding of who you are. But then it will expand into conscious awareness that transcends your lifetime and what you think of as yourself. The story that

Understanding ourselves in the context of this narrative heals one of the most fundamental wounds that our culture inflicts on us: the myth that we are alone and without history.

Plants are born in the darkness of the earth, which is the realm of the ancestors. But they reach up toward the heavens and call down the divine energy of the sun. They bind the realms together.

In case no one else has told you recently, let me assure you: you can have what you want.

And perhaps, there’s just one amendment I would make to the obligation I was raised with: it’s not just that every generation must make life better for the next—it’s that every generation must make life better than even seems possible to them. The humble recognition that we don’t know everything opens us up to futures we couldn’t otherwise imagine.