When many of us hear the term ancestors, we think of our grandparents or great grandparents, but ancestors go beyond the recently departed, and although commonly connected with lineal ancestors, can also include non-lineal ancestors.
Whatever your cultural background, you won't be hard pushed to find rites, beliefs and practices that value and honour ancestors. Most cultural and even religious practices, at the very least, recognize the importance of those who came before us.
Who are "the ancestors"? Ancestors can be understood to be wise souls that have risen in knowledge and power into the ancestral realm. They are seen to interchange and aid the living as to bring about harmony and good interrelationships within a family, community/ies and ultimately, the world.
Specific ancestors can work more closely with certain individuals for a variety of reasons. Nonetheless, ancestors assist, support and guide the immediate living, as well as generations to come. He/she/they help to guide (if we let them), our choices, life paths and daily choices and engagements - and in the case of Isangoma - work through us for the betterment of our families, communities, as well as the people, in general.
Some suggest that we should think of ancestors like angels, but ancestors and our interrelationships with them is beyond the notion of angels (which is more of a Eurocentric concept); not only that, but ancestors are not always angelic! For example, an ancestor that has not been "taken care of"--meaning, their pain, trauma or presence hasn't been acknowledged or addressed and their requests or guidance hasn't been heard, valued or adhered to, or, necessary rites haven't been conducted--funerary, or direct ancestral requests answered through appropriate socio-cultural practices--can expect their lives to become very messy!
Ancestors require us to hear, feel and know them. We are tasked with caring for them and surrendering to their guidance, ultimately with love, respect, discipline, certainty, trust and humility. Tangible offerings (specific to each of them), direct and ongoing engagement, heeding to help, and other forms of interchanging; are pivotal to this process and these ongoing sacred interrelationships.
Ancestors are in us. We are of them and they us. We are not separate. Ancestors permeate not just our blood, genetics and family characteristics; they also influence our gifts, flaws, desires, preferences and specific ways of knowing and being, every day, in the world.
By ignoring or avoiding our ancestors, or coming to believe that they cannot be valued or engaged with because a religious doctrine "doesn't allow it"; is a fallacy. The Old and New Testaments clearly illustrates the valuing of ancestry and even ancestral veneration.
Stepping into ancestral knowledge and ways of being, allows us to embody our truest capacity and power, and is, in my humble opinion, how we begin to heal from inter-generational pain and oppression, colonial abuses and lost identities; and move forward in regaining socio-cultural, personal and collective identities, power and empowerment.
Most of us carry the paradoxes of oppressive and oppressed ancestors – with some heavier than others. Ancestral work is where things get "taken up", where hurts and wounds that aren't easily vocalized can be addressed. Where self, familial and community reflection occurs. Where patterns of behaviour and processes of recovery, reclamation and reconciliation can occur. In these places and spaces, ancestral ritual, veneration and honouring, allows for the showing, telling and speaking of truths.
When you open yourself up to interrelating with your ancestors, you are forgiving, loving and caring for yourself. You are also doing the work for those before you who couldn't, those in the present who won't or can't, and for those to come, in the future. Through ancestral work, you can discover your place in a cosmological continuum, as well as the gifts that you were born with and are meant to share with others. One day, you may also be an ancestor and how you speak, behave, think and conduct yourself, now, reflects who you will become when you go home--return to spirit.
Why is connecting with ancestors more important than ever? Because we have lost our way, individually and collectively. We must remember each other, ourselves and the people, our story/ies, and the stories within stories. Our survival both tangible and otherwise is dependent on our interrelationships with earth, each other and our ancestors. Their wisdom is available to us, it lives and breathes in us, and through us. It is us.
Ancestral acknowledgement also involves coming together, preparing and sharing food, sharing ourselves and sharing in ceremony. We isolate from togetherness at our peril. Our ancestors know this. Think of your granny and her granny… what methods did they use to "get by", and overcome life's challenges? Maybe bush tea in the yard, regular and heartfelt prayer, visits to the sea to "clean up", and drinking herbs to "clean out".
Empathy, giving to others, an open door and open heart, all lives in you. Knowledge, compassion, truth… all intersecting within you, in a unique way.
Your ancestors want to see you shine and want to see your gifts fully manifested. They want to support your needs and to keep you purposeful.
Our way back is simple…community, togetherness and faith (of various and loving kinds).
For those suffering from (real or perceived) hardships, as well as those feeling a diminished spirit, a tired beyond tired, the answers, the power, the healing salve; lives in you. It hasn't gone anywhere! It's about finding your way back to remembering and letting your spirit come alive in the way it is meant to.
Ancestral work, spirit work is also an antidote for the toxicity of capitalism. We are complicit and affected by the ravenous consumption of resources. Capitalism gobbles up hearts and souls--it's a system that is never satiated and deprives people of wholeness through systemic and ongoing poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, patriarchy and other forms of oppression.
Ancestral work is where we come to feel and be safe. To be cared for, guided and affirmed.
My work with the ancestors, as well as ongoing facilitation of ancestral work with people for over 23 years, has taught me many things, mainly, I've learned that if I make, create, maintain and regularly visit places and spaces of ancestral connection; I can find myself, again and be reminded of what I am here to do, as well as how to do it. I am also shown that by being present with my ancestors and in togetherness; I am home.
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