{"id":86,"date":"2018-11-13T00:48:10","date_gmt":"2018-11-13T00:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/2018\/11\/13\/all-my-ancestors-suck\/"},"modified":"2018-11-13T00:48:10","modified_gmt":"2018-11-13T00:48:10","slug":"all-my-ancestors-suck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/2018\/11\/13\/all-my-ancestors-suck\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cAll My Ancestors Suck\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

emergentanimism<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
<\/figure>\n

The number one complaint I hear from people when I tell them
\nto work with their ancestors is that their family is just awful. That they can
\nnever work with their ancestors for X Y Z reasons. I would never belittle
\nsomeone\u2019s trauma. I am certain there are a lot of people out there whose
\nfeelings on this are legitimate. I would never tell someone to work with an
\nancestor that abused them, or with ancestors that have proven beyond a shadow
\nof a doubt that they were fucking assholes. I would ask, that if your ancestors
\ndon\u2019t fit in that category you consider a couple of things. And, I have some
\nwork-arounds.<\/p>\n

One, work on forgiveness. Forgiveness is as much of a
\nblessing for you as it is for them. I\u2019m not going to sit here and outline all
\nthe benefits of forgiveness, because it\u2019s something you have to come to on your
\nown or it doesn\u2019t really work. Just think about it. Maybe take a couple of days
\nto meditate on the concept of forgiveness.<\/p>\n

Two, you may think that all your ancestors were hard-core Pentecostal\/Jewish\/Muslim\/Catholic\/etc.,
\nand they would NEVER understand what you practice. That may be true. Some
\nspirits hold onto that shit tight. Most learn it\u2019s an anchor for them in the
\nafterlife. Most spirits of the dead realize almost immediately after they cross
\nover that the cosmos contains so much more than they ever dreamed of. They know
\nthat us humans have an extremely limited perspective on the nature of reality.
\nThat includes you and I as magi my friends. The only way you will know if any
\ngiven spirit is open to your current beliefs is to talk to them. So give it a
\ntry and find out.<\/p>\n

But if you really just can\u2019t, you still have options. You
\ncan flat-out adopt some ancestors. Looking to people within your own culture
\nwould be a good start. We all come from Africa. We all come from the same
\nsource. We are all siblings on this little mud-ball we call Earth. If you pick
\nsomeone with the same ethnicity, chances are you are related in some way. Do
\nsome genealogy if you really want to know. Certainly you can at least come up
\nwith a picture or something to symbolize what they were known for to have on
\nyour ancestor altar.<\/p>\n

You can also have magical ancestors. Not just ones from your
\nown particular magical tribe. I have talked with the spirits of Jack Parsons and
\nHunter S. Thompson. I consider them ancestors of my craft.<\/p>\n

If none of that seems right to you, you could go looking for
\nyour ancestors astrally. A couple of years ago at the Babalon Rising Festival<\/a>,
\nI led a guided meditation that had people meet their most distant ancestors and
\nlearn about them. I\u2019m proud to say that a version of that guided meditation has
\nmade the rounds in several magical groups. You absolutely can go back as far as
\nyou want. If you want a magical ancestor, why not use magick to find them? If I
\nget some requests, I would be happy to make an audio recording of that guided
\nmeditation and post it here.<\/p>\n

So if you want to work with ancestors you have no excuses.
\nIt may be more work for you, but nothing good comes easy. \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

emergentanimism: The number one complaint I hear from people when I tell them to work with their ancestors is that their family is just awful. That they can never work with their ancestors for X Y Z reasons. I would never belittle someone\u2019s trauma. I am certain there are a lot of people out there … Continue reading “\u201cAll My Ancestors Suck\u201d”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tumblr.scrollofthoth.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}