#Ancestor worship

[emeraldislewitch]

i cannot say it enough: RESEARCH IS WORSHIP RESEARCH IS WORSHIP RESEARCH IS WORSHIP RESEARCH IS WORSHIP RESEARCH IS WORSHIP RESEARCH IS WORSHIP RESEARCH IS WORSHIP RESEARCH IS WORSHIP RESEARCH IS WORSHIP RESEARCH IS WORSHIP RESEARCH IS WORSHIP RESEARCH IS WORSHIP RESEARCH IS WORSHIP

research your ancestors, research your gods, research the land you come from, listen to the stories told by your family, your community, your elders and take notes. research research research.

[southernmermaidsgrotto]

There's levels to ancestral connection, and you shouldn't skip any of them.

Take this as your reminder to first of all, spend time with your spirits, without expecting anything in return. Heavy on that last part. You don't make and maintain a genuine connection with someone just by showing up to their doorstep every time you need something from them. Treat them as people because they are. Your people. You should care for them as much as they care for you.

Be it ancestors (specifically direct blood lineage or adoptive family, any deceased human relative) or ancestral spirits (in general, that is, all ancestral allies and hereditary connections not just your ancestors). Just make time to hang out. Walk up to their space, a cup of your favorite drink in hand, give them their preferred drink and just chat. Don't ask anything in return. If you have an altar for them, do that. But it can be just going to visit their graves and giving libations and flowers, and telling them how your life's going, sharing memories together, remembrance, or just to listen. It can also be going to the beach or a river, and same thing, pour a drink and talk to them, and listen back. It can be your plant allies, while you're watering them, or putting eggshells or honey or sugar water or other good nutrients and fertilizers on their soil. It can be visiting your ancestors in dreams, and spending time with them there. There's so many ways to do this.

The second level to this is letting them sit in your body too. Listen. Become familiar with how they make you feel. With the signs of their arrival and presence. With the signs they communicate with and what they mean to you. With how they let you know they have a message, or that they're in for a visit. And let them in. Dance to your grandma's favorite beats. Sing your grandpa's favorite songs. Make a family recipe and share a meal with them, enjoy it for them and with them.

Ancestral reverence isn't just the big rituals and they're not the most important aspect of it, it is the everyday coexistence, in your little but constant everyday ways.

Do as you do but also as they did. You're an extension of them and they're an extension of you. They not only walk with you, you carry them within you.

Honor that.

[lailoken]

I have recently learned that my paternal grandfather's memorial marker—a small shrine in the Paraguayan jungle that denotes the spot where he died in a hunting accident over 42 years ago—is now used by locals as an important spiritual/folk magic site. Apparently, over the last few decades, his memorial marker has come to represent a place where locals visit in order to light candles and pray for rainfall, abundant wild game, and a successful harvest. They're not praying to him or anything either—they just view his memorial as a place which they can use to intercede with the divine.

I'm not entirely sure how this came to be, but I would guess that with how intensely remote this mountain village is, it's not always easy to get to a place of religious/spiritual significance when you're needing to. But after my grandfather's memorial shrine was erected decades ago, it became a "visibly spiritual" site in the area that ended up drawing in villagers hoping for an accessible place to seek spiritual propitiation/intervention. At least a handful of locals still remember who my grandfather was and know what the shrine originally represented, but I don't believe most people know anything beyond the fact that a man died on that spot in a freak accident many years ago.

I'm not sure how my grandfather or his death factor into the establishment of this sacred site—if they do at all—but I find the whole thing so unspeakably fascinating and surreal.

[thetranstexasgal]

Poor quality photo but I moved my queer ancestor altar inside and updated it a bit

Current ideas:

1.) Keep my HRT on the altar so taking it becomes a (more) sacred thing

2.) put pins from queer history on the altar

3. Get pictures of Marsha P Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Amelio Robles Avila, etc and put them either in frames or in a digital frame on the altar

4. Buy the most dramatic goblet/wine glass I can find to replace the $2 tea cup (I do have a drinking horn but it looked wrong on the altar)

[samwisethewitch]

Friendly reminder to witches and pagans who want to incorporate ancestral beliefs into their practice: be mindful that a lot of modern nations and their current dominant culture are relatively new, and even the concept of a national identity is very, very modern. Modern borders may not necessarily reflect the world your ancestors lived in.

For example: immigration documents record my great-great-great grandparents immigrating from Germany in the 1870s. But my ancestors weren't German -- they were Bavarian. They were both born in the country of Bavaria and fled to the USA after the unification of the German Reich (no, not that one). They wouldn't have spoken German as a first language -- they would have spoken Bavarian. And if I wanted to incorporate their culture into my practice, I would need to narrow my search to Bavarian folk practices. Other regional practices from other parts of modern Germany wouldn't have been relevant to my ancestors.

There's a similar situation with another great-great-great grandfather, who immigrated in the 1850s iirc. He was from Lombardy, near Milan, and was fleeing the unification of the Kingdom of Italy. He probably very much did not identify as Italian.

And on the other side of my family we have a Northern English line we've been able to trace back to the 1100s, and those ancestors from the Middle Ages probably identified as Northumbrian rather than as English. My "Scottish" ancestry probably actually comes from that same line, because Northumbria was a border state between England and Scotland.

Modern resources like Ancestry.com and other genealogy sites will use modern country names and borders, which can sometimes give us false understandings of where our ancestors actually came from. This is why it's important to do your own research and fact-check outside the ancestry documents.

[buriedpentacles]

Why I Don't Have An Altar

One definition of an altar is:" in religion, a raised structure or place that is used for sacrifice, worship, or prayer" from Britannica and they have a number of different forms but typically in Pagan or Witchcraft communities they're a surface dedicated to a deity, spirit, ancestors or just their general craft. They're super common and a lot of people take real pride in them, as they should.

But I don't have one.

I used to have one just a year or two ago. So why did I get rid of it?

In a way, I didn't. Not entirely. I no longer have a set place to worship Mother Nature or Commune with my Ancestors but my altar is now scattered across my living space - my plants sit on my windowsill, my tarot cards are wherever I choose to keep them that day, I have crystals all over my room and pieces of nature on my bedside table and desk. I don't have a dish for offerings, or a place to perform spells.

The reason is because I realised that my altar would never give me the feeling of closeness and connection as the world outside gives me. When I prayed before my candles and crystals I felt connected to my Goddess of course, but praying to the wethered old oak in the woods, or to the waves that crash onto cliffs, or to the mother fox that watched me from across the stream is when I *knew* that she was there, that was when I felt her so intensely and deeply.

My altar was performative, it was an act I put on because I felt like I had to. Now, I don't feel that pressure. Now, I feel my ancestors more deeply because *I* am the altar - I am their blood and soul, so I worship them through myself. Now, I feel Mother deeper than before because I am actually experiencing her - not the faux version I had built inside a box.

It is, of course, all personal preference. In the future when I hae a more permennat home I may built an outdoor altar or have a small one for my ancestors, I might not. But, you don't NEED one, and you definitely don't need to spend a lot of money building the biggest and "prettiest" altar. If you want one, build an altar that suits you and whatever purpose it will serve, not one built for a performance.

[mannyblacque]

"They're all around you, all the time"

Reservation Dogs S2 E9 "Offerings"

[witchofthenorthernshores]

Hail to those who have passed through the veil

From life to Death, to Earth from Breath.

Hail to those who suffered to gift me with blood,

Hail to those who survived to gift me with body,

Hail to those whose songs gift me with inspiration.

Hail to those whose memory I carry with me like a word of comfort,

Hail to those who left this land long ago,

Whose names I honor like a word of hope,

Or if I know not their names, whose lives I honor still.

I live and love because you lived and loved,

I speak and struggle because you spoke and struggled,

You live in me, as I will live in those who come after me.

Grant me the patience, O my beloved dead,

To see the long view, and remember that what I do

Affects a million million souls I will never know.

~ from “Northern Tradition for the Solitary Practitioner,” by Galina Krasskova and Raven Kaldera

[god-blog]

My altar!

Some of the images are my own, some are from the internet, and some are from the following artists: @eclipse89, @eluneth, @darkearthsuggestions, @hymntoapollo, @apolloforetoldus, @just-pagan-things, @obsidian-pages777, @etherealtrash

[thetownsendsw]

It has occurred to me that, given the number of options in Pathfinder that are or could be flavored as drawing power from one’s ancestors, you could conceivably build an entire party of ancestor worshippers. And wouldn’t it be fitting if they were all family?

A phantom Summoner who’s a kid,

Their parent is an Ancestors Oracle,

Their parent is a Spirit Barbarian,

Their parent is an Animist,

And THEIR parent is the kid’s Eidolon!

[pagan-stitches]

From:

Goddess Embroideries of the Northlands by Mary B. Kelly, 2007

Personal library

[thesixspokewheel]

Ancestors beyond blood are important to my craft. What I mean by ancestors “beyond blood” are my ancestors that are not a part of my biological lineage. For me these include one of my grandmas’ lineage (she’s my mom’s stepmom) as well as community ancestors—usually mighty dead or forgotten dead. These ancestors are very important to me because they have had a great impact on both my craft and my social life. I know and do things because my grandma taught me, who was taught by her mother and her by her mother, etc. My community ancestors are the reason I love my life in the environment I do today. I think often people overlook lots of their ancestors in favor of blood, which can be the path for some but a lot of people are unsatisfied with ancestor work and don’t know why when that’s usually the reason. Contact an ancestor beyond blood, most likely you will be pleasantly surprised.

Note of caution: ancestors beyond blood can still have “deal-breakers”. It’s important to do research when calling on these ancestors with a specific person in mind, and be specific about who you want present when calling upon a general population of ancestors.

[akonoadham]

[lailoken]

An act of simple but loving veneration, given to the spirit of my grandmother on the anniversary of her birth. ♡

[thetranstexasgal]

A Dumb question about ancestor worship

So I know ancestor worship is something I’m interested in, but my blood ancestors are, generally speaking, not great people. Do I have to worship blood ancestors or could I worship my LGBTQ+ ancestors? Busts of Elagabalus and Sappho, pictures of Marsha, Sylvia, Stormé, and more, etc..

What is y’all’s opinion on this?

[samwisethewitch]

A lowkey offering to my queer ancestors and heroes. 🥰