Our ancestors can help us through this. The American political and societal climate is hostile towards anyone who is not wealthy, white and male. While this is not news to us, under the current administration, things have escalated at an alarming pace. And the trend towards fascism and hatred is happening all over the world. This is discouraging at best and downright terrifying the more you look at the details.
In the last few months, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the future. How are we going to survive another two and a half years of this administration? Even after those two and a half years, things are not going to swing back to sanity. It is going to take decades of work to correct the direction America has taken, and that’s if we can return our government to a democratic republic and it does not continue in the vein of white Christian nationalist fascism. And that is not taking into consideration all the damage we have done to the global economy, the damage we have done to other countries and the damage we have done to the planet. This is not exactly a reassuring picture. But perhaps there are things that can give us hope for a better future.
Hope from the Ancestors
When I am rather deep in my unhappy thoughts about America, I remind myself that my ancestors survived similar hardships. Our ancestors have lived through other economic disasters. They survived slavery, prison camps, racism, hatred, and ignorance. I won’t glorify the past and make it sound romantic because it wasn’t. Our ancestors suffered physical violence, discrimination, poverty, hunger, and plagues. They worked hard, and often for nothing.
But somehow, they did not give up. Collectively, they did not give up. Our black and brown ancestors in America have always lived in and worked for a country who did not view them as human, that refused them human rights and the freedom our country was supposedly founded on. My personal ancestors, along with many other people’s ancestors, fought in the Civil War for the Union, survived WWI, the Great Depression, and WWII. Our distant ancestors (and more recent ones) migrated from their homelands to America with very little to their name, hoping for a better life. We come from a sturdy stock of resilience. That gives me hope that we can survive the current times.
Our Ancestors Understand
Our ancestors understand what it is like to be human, to live, to love, to weep. While I love my entire Spirit Team, made up of deities, animal spirits, and spirit guides, they don’t understand what it is like to be human. Years ago I was trying to explain to The Morrigan why I was busy and did not want to take on a project she was trying to give me. Needless to say, she was less than enthused by my response and seemed to not understand that as a business owner, the end of the year was chaotic and very much the wrong time to give me something else to do. Mind you, I don’t have a relationship with The Morrigan or work with her but she sometimes has an interest in me. No matter how I tried to explain things, her response was the same. If my grandfather had shown up in a similar situation, I could have explained that I was busy with accounting and IRS work, and he would have understood.
The ancestors can also help us through hardship, because they have experienced them too. When I talk about our ancestors, I don’t just mean the people we know in our families. I also mean the people we don’t know in our family trees and bloodlines. The ancestors are people who we have no genetic relationship to, but who love us. Our ancestors can be our heroes, whether from this lifetime or from the past. Often when I talk about the ancestors collectively, I mean all of those who have lived before us. We have access to the collective ancestors, just as much as we do to our grandmothers.
You don’t have to know the names of your ancestors to honor them, or to ask them for help. You do need to have a relationship with them first though. For the most part, I do not recommend asking for things from spirits that you have no connection to. So before you call on your collective ancestry, I might advise that you spend some time feeding them, honoring them and making space for them in your life.
Help from the Unknown
Years ago I was getting a reading from a psychic medium who told me about this woman who she saw around me. She described the woman and told me she was an ancestor of mine. I did not recognize the description of the woman, and told the psychic I wasn’t sure who she was talking about. Which, is perfectly fine in a reading such as that. I trust the psychic and I also know that I don’t have to be personally familiar with a spirit for them to be around. But the psychic then explained that I would not know this woman, she was from my family’s distant past. I still don’t know the spirit’s name. But she has a place in my ancestor work, and her face often appears in my mind when I think of or talk about the ancestors.
When you are struggling, reach out to your ancestors who had similar experiences. Ask them to give you encouragement and advice. It’s June, it’s Pride month and Juneteenth is this month too. For those in the LGBTQIA2s+ community, you may not have family members who understand the struggles of being queer, but you do have a community. Your ancestors can include all the queer people who came before you, that fought for your rights and who made their own love and joy. They can show you how to find your way in this mess.
For our BIPOC communities, you do have families who know what it is like to be discriminated against in every way. You can ask your great-grandmothers or grandfathers for advice, but you can also ask your cultural ancestors for help.
The Honored Dead
In witchcraft, there is a concept of the beloved dead and the mighty dead. Generally the beloved dead are our ancestors from our family or friends circle who precede us in death. We knew them in this life and we miss them. The mighty dead refers to elders in the witchcraft community, those souls who attained enough knowledge and compassion in their last life to be a helpful and revered spirit.
There is also a grouping of ancestors that falls somewhere in the middle of these two. Distant ancestors you don’t know. People within your greater community who understand the specifics of what you are going through, even though you never knew them and maybe don’t even their names. We can’t know all the names of the lesbians who nursed the gay community through the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, but we can honor them and ask them for help when you don’t know what to do. Nor can we know all the names of every person who survived slavery, but you can still call on them to aid you when you feel oppressed and downtrodden.
We may not know them personally, but they can be our honored dead. The term honored dead refers to ancestors who are not personally known to you but who are still part of your bloodline, cultural line, or spiritual line. They are “honored” because they paved the way, even if they weren’t teachers or elders. Or we could call them the quiet dead, ancestors who lived ordinary lives, carried ordinary joys and burdens, and whose presence is subtle but steady. Some might call this group of ancestors the ancestors of spirit, people who are not related to you by blood but who share your identity, path, struggles, or calling.
It’s Time to Reach Out
We have all kinds of ancestors we can reach out to. There are the ancestors of place, those who lived on the land you now inhabit — culturally, spiritually, or literally. There are ancestors of experience. Ancestors of experience is a newer term used in trauma-informed and intersectional witchcraft. It refers to the ancestors who lived through what you live through: grief, oppression, motherhood, queerness, chronic illness, migration, poverty, artistry, priesthood or caregiving. These are the ancestors I refer to the most in this blog, those who have a shared experience with us.
All of our ancestors have something to teach us, and they can be invaluable help in these difficult times. Do not be afraid to include the people in your upline whose names are lost to history or the people in your community who only know by their name and actions. We forget that we are all humans. We may live different lives and have vastly different experiences, but we have the same basic needs and wants. In a way, spiritually and perhaps literally if we go back far enough, your ancestors are my ancestors too. As humans we share a collective unconscious and a collective ancestor-hood. Someone in the wide world has been in a situation similar to where you are now. Ask them for help. Honor them. Remember their spirit even if you don’t know their name.
It is easy for me to become disheartened and jaded by society and politics. When I get really pessimistic about it, I do try to remind myself that my ancestors (and humanity in general) has survived similar problems and worse problems. When I worry about the grocery bill, I am reminded of my great-grandmother. She already had two children when my grandmother was born in 1929. My great-grandmother and great-grandfather survived the Great Depression with four kids, two of them infants. That determination is in my blood, I just need the remember it. That determination is in your blood too. I hope this helps you remember that. This too shall pass as they say. And when it does, we will be right here – living, loving, making our own joy and thriving against the odds.
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