 As the sound season winds down I want to touch on ancestor magic. Hey there saplings welcome back to esoteric moment today let's chat a little bit about ancestors and their place and role in druidry. So I'm going to start with this is a picture which can't see super well on the video camera but this is a picture of my grandmother her three sisters her parents and all of their like husbands and the first few grandkids or the kids of my mom's generation basically. What I love about this photo is that these are the four women who started one of our favorite family traditions. We do what's called a Barlow Dunphy Thanksgiving and we invite everyone who is related to these four women to come to a potluck Thanksgiving. This Thanksgiving is hosted by a different person every year we will be hosting this year and it happens all across the US because that's how far our family has traveled and moved about. What's interesting about this family tradition is that you never know who will show up each year there are some core people who are there every year without fail with the same dish for decades but there are also cousins and fourth cousins and second removed cousins who I don't really know how they're related to me but they show up one year or 20 years later and you have such interesting rich conversations with these family members. I think it's the perfect example about why ancestors are important they are the touchstones in the stories that bring our history to life. In our practices particularly in druidry I think there is so much power and wisdom in honoring our ancestors at least yearly if not on a regular basis. So one of the simplest things to do around salad time is to make an ancestor altar. I've talked about this in some pagan perspective videos and it is basically just a small space in your home where you put up photos of family members maybe items or heirlooms of the people that mean a lot to you and then you light some candles and you tell the stories of your ancestors or you have conversations with your ancestors in this physical tangible space that allows you to connect with your history in such a rich and vibrant way. This year was an interesting year for brad and I his godfather and uncle passed away and that meant that we were adding someone new to the ancestor altar which in some ways is lovely because you're welcoming one more treasured friend or companion into this group of ancestors and also really hard and sad because you're no longer creating new stories with that person you know you're retelling the stories of your past of this person. So when we add someone new to our ancestor altar I do think it's really important to kind of recognize that and brad and I are still working out the best way for our family to kind of do that but I would encourage you if you do an ancestor altar to maybe write a formal ritual for adding someone new. I think that is a very powerful way of using ancestor magic. Another great bit of ancestor magic is to work with your family tree. Now usually we depict family trees with like the great grandfather and great grandmother and their kids down below and then their kids down below and kids and kids you know you make kind of like a pyramid or if you reverse that and you know put the two first people on the bottom it's kind of like the branches of a tree but what's really interesting is doing your family tree on the circle cutout of a tree. So if you're lucky enough to be by a hardware store or you have your own trees that have fallen down see if you can get a slice kind of like a pie slice of an actual tree trunk or tree branch then in the actual rings of the tree you can write your ancestors starting with you know the furthest back people that you know and kind of going around. A tree trunk is really interesting in that each year or few years you know it's building upon its core and it grows outward. This is really I think a much more fitting image for how we think about our ancestors and family trees because we really are building from the core you know we're reaching back through to find the stories and magic of the people who came before us while you know recognizing that we are ever growing in new spaces and in new ways. This year if you have time I would strongly recommend making sacred space taking this slice of a tree and taking what information you have leaving room for the gaps that maybe you don't have names and memories of your ancestors and make something tangible that can sit on your altar or in your sacred space on a regular basis. It's also a cool like teaching tool that's a little bit easier for kids to play around with because paper breaks and if you have old family trees like I do you never want to like rip that paper or anything like that. Of course we can't talk about ancestors without talking about like the shitty things that come up right? Not all of us like our families of origins. Not all of us have families of origin. We might not know who our ancestors were or have stories or pleasant memories of the people who came before us. This is where ancestor magic gets real because there are ways of calling on our ancestors even if you didn't know them personally that allows you to have conversations and work through the family trauma and systems of hurt that have been in place for your family. The obaad ritual for Samhain is lovely in the sense that there is a part that deals with ancestors. I won't go into it too far into detail but what I want to share with you is create sacred space and ritual language that allows you to make space and welcome the people who maybe you don't know. Welcome those from your past those from your bloodline those ancestors of the place you're living now and talk to them about the hard things in life. You know where were the unforgivable acts in your family? Where were the stories of trauma and hurt? Having conversations recognizing that in a sacred space can be a powerful way to like work through those issues and confront some of the least pleasant parts of our families. If we can confront these if we can learn from these situations that wisdom can be gained by us but passed on in the future. So hopefully we can have fewer stories of trauma and wounding from our own families. Hopefully we can help break the cycles of abuse or neglect. Hopefully we can you know make our future generations more compassionate to those who are different or other than ourselves. I certainly have had to confront some issues in our family when it comes to you know being of privilege. You know most of my ancestors all of my ancestors are white and that means that when we came to this country even though we have stories of like working hard and being picked on and bullied and sorts of things like that really we were invading someone else's country and it's important to recognize that my ancestors in whatever small or large ways had a huge impact on the native people of this country and I can't fix all of those wounds but at least by acknowledging that my privilege has a direct cost for different peoples I can hopefully start to change the conversations we have and hopefully begin to work for political and lasting change that helps remedy some of the injustices we have just put on the native people of this country. We really you know like to pretend that we have healed all of the wounds between First Nations and white people of this country frankly and that isn't always the case mostly isn't the case. Salon is the perfect time to work through ancestor magic to bring their wisdom and their follies into our lives and you know make room for a better future but ancestor magic doesn't have to start and stop with Salon it can really go into the rest of our practice on a regular basis. In the comments I'd love to hear how you work with ancestors and what sort of rituals you've done during Salon to really kind of emphasize their life and wisdom in your practice now. This week's sapling shout out goes out to everyone who commented on my Supreme Court video. I was in a really I was feeling the feels in that video and at that time and it's been a rough fall for me but I really appreciate everyone who commented on that video even those of you who disagreed with my political point of view or the things I was saying on that video. It's always good to have a conversation and I'm glad we were able to do that on the comment section and not like hate on each other too much. Thanks for watching and as always may you find peace in the sacred grove.