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On the Hermetic Afterlife: Ramifications for Religious Works

November 1, 2022 By in hermetica Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Where were we?  We’re in the middle of talking about what a “Hermetic afterlife” actually looks like and consists of, in terms of what the classical Hermetic texts have as teachings regarding what happens to us after we die beyond some vague notion of reincarnation or ascent.  There’s only a handful of texts that actually talk about this in any way, and what they have don’t always match up well between each other.  Last time, we talked about some of the details in the afterlife model we proposed earlier and what happens in some edge cases left unspecified by particular “levels” of readiness of the soul for making “the way up”.  If you need a refresher on what we talked about last time, go read the last post!

So, let’s give a recap first of what we’re looking at and working with.  Although there is a notion of some form of afterlife in the Hermetic texts which revolves around a two-pronged approach that involves both a fate-driven reincarnation of a soul across bodies as well as a salvation-ascent of the soul beyond it that frees the soul from fate, we’re not given a clear picture as to many of the specifics of such a belief.  What we have, at best, are basically snippets, either small statements made in passing that touch on the topic (like AH 28) or incomplete excerpts of discourses that begin talking about it but not in full (like SH 25).  Moreover, the most complete such account we have of an afterlife from SH 25—26 (the later parts of the text overall known as the Korē Kosmou) itself is among the least Hermetic texts out there, given how strange and bizarre it is compared to much of what’s talked about in the rest of the classical Hermetic corpora.

What we’re left with is something we have to piece together, and the model we have can be outlined as follows:

  1. The realm of the Earth (or the zeroth sphere) is the realm of living, embodied creatures, while the realm of the fixed stars (the eighth sphere, and higher ones) is the realm of divine powers.  Getting from here to there is the salvific goal of Hermeticism, but most people don’t end up there, or at least, not directly.  For the souls of the dead, there is another realm, which is the atmosphere between the Earth and the Moon.
  2. There are different zones in the atmosphere corresponding to different kinds of soul; the more noble the soul, the higher it goes into clearer, calmer airs.  Lower zones contain ignoble, undignified souls, including tortured or otherwise intranquil souls (either due to their own difficulties incurred while alive or are rendered tortured by virtue of the low zone in the atmosphere with its darker, more turbulent air).
  3. After an ensouled body dies, it rises to a station appropriate to it depending on how it lived in life in response to the activities and influences of fate.  Prior to an ensouled body being born, a soul descends according to the activities of fate.  Although souls are technically beyond the touch of fate (since they come from a place ontologically beyond it), where they dwell is still encosmic and sublunar, and so their being pulled around and pulled into bodies is also a fate-driven process.
  4. Souls that are able to rise higher than any level of the dwelling-place of souls are said to be on “the way up”, the ascent through the planetary spheres themselves up to the higher spheres beyond the realm of fate.

In general, what the Hermetic texts give us are teachings useful for fulfilling the goals laid out by Hermēs Trismegistos, which is to live a life of joyful, mindful reverence to God and to free our souls from the embodied bindings of fate that lead us to suffer.  Everything that we have in the Hermetic texts is meant to be useful towards that, and that should be the context and framing for whatever we might read in them.  Even in their incomplete state given what we see from what’s extant, it’s clear that the Hermetic texts are not (and were never meant to be) some massive endless encyclopedia of knowledge for knowledge’s sake, but stuff specifically meant to achieve a particular goal.  Whatever we see is meant to fulfill that goal directly (like texts that describe how to live reverently or what “the way up” is like) or indirectly (like texts that describe the nature of the soul and how it can be afflicted by bodily concerns).

Given how little information we find in the Hermetic texts about specific details concerning the afterlife (and given what we do have isn’t all that neatly compliant or conformant with each other), I get the impression that most of this just isn’t all that useful, either directly or indirectly, to the goals of Hermeticism.  I mean, it’s really not a far stretch to consider that trying to divvy up the atmosphere into so many soul-strata isn’t unlike asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, and trying to puzzle out what happens if a soul ends up aborting the ascent and whether it lingers there or reincarnates doesn’t much matter when such a soul is destined for completing the ascent regardless soon enough anyway.  As far as the goals of Hermeticism are concerned, we don’t need to know the details of things like this, and worrying about them overmuch leads more to distraction, to the philosophy-tainting sophistry of AH 14 or the “inane foolosophy” of CH XVI.2.  Trying to figure out something that is fundamentally so remote and distant from the lived, living human experience is often less helpful than being told how to live your life here and now, regardless of what we might hypothesize might come.

To an extent, even if we had a fully-described model of the afterlife, there would still be doubts lingering about its validity and how apt it is to describe the afterlife experience, but we don’t even have that; instead, we have an outline with a lot of variations, possibilities, and unanswered questions at this point.  However, I think that by having a model of a Hermetic afterlife and at least a little more explanation regarding the process of reincarnation and ascent is more helpful than not.  In addition to giving us a bit more reassurance about what happens to us after our incarnation this time around and also helping us better situate Hermeticism among the philosophical and spiritual traditions of its time, it also helps better tie Hermeticism into a more holistic, comprehensive spiritual practice.  After all, many people who get involved in Hermeticism are rarely just mystics, but are often involved in any number of other magical or priestly practices, too.  For many people, the near-silence of the Hermetic texts on even the mere existence of the spirits of the dead or practices involving them can be unsettling, so being able to tease out a model that accommodates their existence and utility would be a great thing to have on our side.

To that end, what are some of the other things that such a model of a Hermetic afterlife might explain, elaborate on, or otherwise impact?

Funereal Practices

One of the big unanswered questions from the Hermetic afterlife discussion is the timescale of the transitions between incarnation and discarnation, and whether the process of the soul separating from the body and rising up to its next stage is instantaneous or not.  If it is, then once the body dies, that’s it; the soul goes away and the body is just an inert, decaying hunk of flesh.  However, if it’s not instantaneous, then that would suggest that there’s a window of time where the soul either still inhabits or hangs out around the body before it moves onto its next stage.  Even as a disembodied, incorporeal entity, souls are still a kind of entity that can be interacted with, and so certain rites that work with such entities (as with many forms of conjuration or invocation or the like) would still be able to interact with souls of the recently dead.

The most obvious thing that would be impacted here would be the purpose and nature of funereal rites for the sake of the recently dead.  So long as such a funeral were to be had within a reasonable timeframe within which the soul still lingers in or within the body, various rituals may be had explicitly for the benefit of the soul as it begins to transition from incarnation to discarnation.  In addition to the actual mourning performed to help remind and orient the soul as a wake-up call to indicate that it is indeed dead and not just in some weird coma, rituals may be performed for the alleviation of the soul to help release some of the things that weigh it down, save it from some of its burdens and addictions and attachments, and to cleanse it from whatever pollutions or tormentors still afflict it.  Reading scriptures, giving teachings, or reciting instructive prayers near the body (where the soul is hanging out) would act as one last reminder-lesson for the soul to prepare it for whatever might come next.  Making offerings or sacrifices for the soul (much as one would an enshrined god in a temple) could serve to nourish it, give it whatever it was seeking or lacking in life, and otherwise empower and encourage and enlighten it to face whatever may come with dignity and grace and serenity.  The big thing that matters is making the most of this “window of opportunity” to cover any bases and fill any gaps remaining that could not be covered or filled in while alive.

What of the judgmental model of the Hermetic afterlife, where we are assigned a place to dwell in by the avenging/judging daimōn?  I don’t seriously think that such a daimōn could necessarily be bribed or hoodwinked, and the Hermetic belief here is that engaging with this daimōn is far more than just paying a perfunctory toll: it’s an honest judgment of our conduct while alive, our responses and reactions to fate and how we evaluated, respected, and revered (or not) the Creator and the Creation.  That said, incorporating a token nod to the daimōn, I think, would be useful in a “Hermetic funeral” of sorts: for one, it reminds the soon-to-depart soul of this daimōn and thus of what our obligations and responsibilities are according to the design God instituted for the cosmos.  However, I think there may also be a chance that those participating in a funeral may, for those souls who have responsibly earned it, give one last act of forgiveness and acceptance to the person for any wrongs they might have committed, as one last attempt to “level the balance” of sorts by lightening the burden on the soul and giving them a chance to fix themselves and get their act together before they do, eventually, come in contact with the daimōn.  And, hey, if there is no avenging/judging daimōn here, then we succeed in lightening the soul of the soon-to-be-departed regardless, and either way, help them ascend higher than they otherwise might.

Of course, this is all assuming that the soul can actually benefit from them (which I think is a safe assumption to make) and assuming that there is a reasonable amount of time for such an interval for rituals like this to take place in (which is less sure of an assumption to make).  If there isn’t such an interval, or if the interval isn’t long enough for such a ritual to occur, then the efficacy of the ritual transforms basically into a coping session for the living and fulfillment of societal obligations to pay honor for the deceased.  These are, of course, valuable things unto themselves to perform regardless, but it shifts the focus and purpose of funerals from being for the sake of the dead to being for the sake of the living.

In either case, however, the body of the deceased shouldn’t be neglected; while it is little more than an inert hunk of matter at this point, it once housed the soul and presence of someone we once knew and loved, and should be treated with dignity as one might treat the broken fragment of a temple idol one cherished and made offerings to, even if decommissioned long ago.  Besides merely showing reverence to the cosmos that allowed for the presence of someone we loved and respected, magical works may also be performed on the body to purify it and cleanse it, too, as it begins its own process of decomposition.  While matter is matter regardless, I claim that performing works of  purification on such a body as it begins its decomposition before putrescence or the like can settle in is a positive thing, since the energies that inhabit the body will soon disperse to rejoin and be reused in other bodies throughout the cosmos.  In purifying and refining the soon-to-be raw materials, we can subtly influence the overall beneficence and purity of the whole cosmos as a whole.

Veneration and Elevation of the Dead

As opposed to funereal rites that take place immediately following death while the soul is still in or around the body, rites that tend to the well-being of one’s ancestors specifically and the dead generally can take place at basically any point.  In general, the efficacy of such rites and rituals doesn’t depend on whether the transition from incarnation to discarnation is instantaneous or not; all that matters is that the person for whom the rites or rituals are performed is dead.  That said, if the transition is not instantaneous, then the rites that should be done prior to such a transition could be considered funereal and those afterwards would be considered those of veneration and elevation, yet, while there’s plenty of overlap between the two regardless, there’s still some differences in the goals and methods that might be used here.

While funereal practices would ease or help direct the transition of a soul from being incarnate to discarnate (even to the point of giving reminders or directions as to where to go and how to make the approach to other realms and giving the soul one last chance to have any sort of fulfillment in this life before they go, like a “last meal” of sorts), the veneration and elevation of the dead focuses on a soul where it already is in the afterlife, ensuring that they are comfortable, content, and at ease wherever they might be.  The major difference here is that a funeral works with the soul already present, but what if the soul is no longer present?  How do the works we engage in “reach” them, and what sorts of effects would they have?  After all, with the soul already distant in its own dwelling-place, it’s not like making an offering to an enshrined god at a temple where they already are.

One way I can envision such a thing to work is essentially by creating an “updraft”.  Consider that, in the Hermetic afterlife model we’ve been looking at, the souls of the dead abide in the dwelling-place of souls, somewhere in the atmosphere between the Earth and the Moon.  Through the use of physical offerings that burn and emit smoke, flame, or scent upwards, we literally carry our offerings up to the souls where they abide, much as we do for classically-considered ouranic/celestial deities.  However, even if we omit these physical aspects of making offerings, even devout prayer and well-wishing would still be likely to reach them; consider how some Hermetic texts like CH XI.19 suggest how the soul (at least one of a spiritually advanced person) has such power in it to go basically anywhere it wants, which suggests that the reach of any given soul can be fairly broad.  Through sincere works of venerating the dead, we essentially proffer up what we can to the souls in their dwelling-place, and they might be able to “stoop down”, at least to an extent, to receive them.

I did make the comparison above, however, that offerings to the dead like this aren’t like those we make to an enshrined god in a temple.  Such a setup basically has an idol be ritually enlivened and ensouled with the presence of that god right there, whether in part or in total or via some emissary of the god, and because of that active presence of the god, offerings made right there are easy enough to reach them.  What about making offerings at the tombs or graves of the dead?  While their souls aren’t actively inhabiting their physical remains anymore, those physical remains did once host that soul, and so there is some sort of natural connection that a particularly strong or daring soul might take advantage of to descend back to and, if not actually inhabit it, at least be present near enough for such offerings to count.  Graveside memorial services, tombside feasts, leaving offerings at the false doors of ancient Egyptian tombs, and the like are classic examples of stuff like this approach where we might make offerings to the dead for them to receive.

But why would we make offerings like this to begin with?  We should remember that any soul that is not fully ascended has some (even if very little) amount of baggage or weight that keeps them down, and the more baggage, the lower they sink and (presumably, more in some accounts than others) the more they suffer.  By making offerings and venerating them, we help ease their burden and make their stay in the afterlife more peaceful, which helps prepare them for whatever next incarnation they might have instead of just dragging along their baggage from one life to the next.  However, besides merely venerating the dead, there’s also the notion of elevating them, too, as is common in some religious and spiritual traditions.  For this particular Hermetic model of the afterlife, I think the idea here is fairly straightforward: we raise the dead from one soul-stratum to a higher one, which not only significantly improves their well-being in the afterlife, but also positions them for a better reincarnation the next time around and speeds them along the way to “the way up”.  The question then becomes: how might we achieve this?  In the same way that venerating the dead helps ease the weighty burdens of the souls that keeps them from rising any higher than they are, I claim that it’s possible to ease them enough to outright lighten them, and in the process enlighten these very same souls.

What of the judgmental model of the Hermetic afterlife involving the daimōn?  While I don’t think that this matters either way for us merely venerating the dead (much as a jail warden might not care about what guests do with or bring in for prisoners so long as the prisoners stay where they are), the possibility of elevating the dead is not quite in line with this; after all, if a judge sentences you to a particular punishment for a given crime, it’s the judge’s call to commute that sentence, not that of an amicus curiae or some well-wisher visiting a prisoner.  Despite my hypothesizing above, it’s not clear whether there can be an actual means to elevate the dead in a Hermetic model, if the status and stratum of a given soul is something fixed until after its next incarnation, especially if there’s a daimōn involved (or one that specifically watches over the souls where they are, like the Steward of Souls from SH 26.3) that enforces a particular arrangement of souls in the afterlife; in such a model, it’s not that a soul wouldn’t want to rise up to a higher level, and indeed would probably try to do so, but that they can’t since they’re otherwise bound to a particular stratum by the judgment of a given daimōn—and I don’t think pleading with such a daimōn would do much to affect their judgment.  However, just how a judge might see a given criminal as showing sincere remorse and contrition and commute a sentence already partially served upon review, it may be that helping to improve the dignity of a soul through offerings (and with them a power of moral conversion and education) may well allow such a soul to rise to a higher stratum even after arriving in a lower one even with such a daimōn’s license.  It’s an interesting idea to toy with, at least, and gives at least a little bit of hope for improving the state of the souls of the dead regardless of the daimōn or not.

What of souls that have already reincarnated?  This is where any sort of ancestral veneration practice that takes place alongside a belief in reincarnation gets weird, because the things we do for the dead are meant to improve their status in the realm of the dead, but if they’re no longer there, then what happens?  To my thinking, the worst that can happen is that we just end up ringing a dead number: nobody’s there to pick up, so whatever we say is just done in vain, with nothing bad happening to anyone but nothing good happening, either.  However, I can think of two other alternatives:

  1. It’d be like setting a table of food for a particular guest, but no such guest shows up.  Instead, it becomes a free-for-all, with whoever being able to participate deriving benefit from it instead so that nothing goes to waste.  If we make such offerings of veneration and elevation to a particular soul of the dead but that soul simply isn’t there to receive it, the offerings get dispersed amongst the other souls (whether in the same stratum or not) so that they receive it instead.  In this way, at least someone will still be able to benefit.
  2. Because any given soul is immortal and thus always reachable in one sense or another, it’d be like sending mail to someone’s old address and it gets redirected to their updated one.  In this case, the offerings we make to a given soul still reaches them, but it influences them in their new life where they already are.  Even if we who make these offerings make them with the assumption that their dead, we end up effectively improving their new life, just as if we were to pray for the well-being of our already-living friends or family.  This effectively improves their status, and thus indirectly improves the likelihood of them attaining a higher and better state in their next afterlife than they had in their old one.

In either case, I think it’s still good to make offerings of veneration and elevation for the dead regardless.  Besides it being just good form and filial piety to do so, it’s also true that, just how we can’t be truly certain of what the afterlife is like in detail, we can’t be too sure of the specific fate or current state of any given soul in the afterlife.  Rather than assuming that any given soul is already incarnated after some period of time (it’s not clear how long that might take, depending on the whims and directives of fate itself), I think it’d be safer to just assume that any given soul is still discarnate for the sake of ancestor veneration indefinitely, and let those offerings be received however they will.  Again, at worst, nothing happens and it just becomes ritual for ritual’s sake to uphold a culture of filial piety and love for those who have passed on, but otherwise, it can create truly blessed change for those who might need it most.

Magical Rituals

There’s lots of kinds of ritual out there that are less religious and more magical, with the word “necromancy” covering quite a few of them.  However, there’s also other kinds of non-necromantic ritual, as well, that stands to be explained or informed by the Hermetic model of the afterlife as well.  We’ll get to that in the next post!

(PS: Happy Halloween, Samhain, and All Saints’/Souls’ Day!)

All Siblings, Orphans We

September 23, 2022 By in occult, philosophy Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

As I’ve encouraged others to do so before, I have a little ancestor shrine of my own.  Because of my training and experience as a spiritist (specifically in the Afro-Cuban and heavily Congo-flavored brand of espiritismo rather than the “scientific spiritism” of Alan Kardec proper), I maintain what I call a bóveda, literally a “vault” (as in either the vault of a church or the vault of a tomb—either sense is appropriate), which is a table covered in a white tablecloth, a number of glasses of water (one larger than the rest at the center), a candle, and photos of my ancestors or images and trinkets for my spirit guides and other assisting spirits of the dead in my life.  I keep it clean, I refill the glasses every so often with filtered water, I clean the glasses once a month (or once a season if I get lazy), I buy fresh flowers for it every time I go to the grocery store, and the like.  Every morning when I wrap up my usual daily prayers over at my Hermetic shrine and after I do anything else in my temple room for the morning, I’ll always greet my bóveda and salute all the spirits of the dead in my life, familial or otherwise, and offer a short prayer for our communal and universal ascension, enlightenment, and empowerment.

The opening and closing of this short little daily chat (more like a check-in, I suppose) I have with them is basically a small back-and-forth.  To open up:

Me: “May the peace, mercy, blessing, grace, light and power of God be with you all.”
Them: “And with you.”
Us: “Amen.”

And to close:

Me: “May the peace, mercy, blessing, grace, light and power of God be with us all.”
Them: “Forever and ever.”
Me: “World without end.”
Us: “Amen.”

It’s a simple way for my dead and I to pray together.  After all, while much of my other practice has me offering prayers to a deity or enshrined spirit, with the dead at my bóveda, it’s a little different; it’s less me praying to them, and more us praying together.  To that end, while some of the prayers I recite are just me reciting it for their benefit, other prayers are ones where there’s a sort of cycle and flow between me and them, as if we’re reciting things in unison or alternating lines of a prayer.

In addition to my daily and monthly/seasonal stuff I do with them, I’ll also sit down once a week (usually Sunday or Monday evenings) and have an actual “liturgy” with them, so to speak, where I’ll light several candles, give them incense, and recite a litany of prayers while also having a good in-depth conversation about whatever it is I need to know or whatever it is I need them to know, to do work, to plan ahead, and the like.  It’s here that I’ll expand on the prayers that get recited, some of which are just me reciting them and taking the lead on the prayers, but there are also points at which I’ll let them pray, which can take one of two forms.  Sometimes it’s just sitting at the bóveda and listening to them in silent contemplation, but other times it’ll be a specific spirit who stands up and leads a prayer which I’ll tune in more closely and verbalize physically, following their lead.  Not only do I find this a good way to practice “mediumship-lite” or “mini-channeling” skills, but it also helps me bring myself closer into attunement and intimacy with these spirits while also facilitating the prayers they themselves wish to have said in the exact ways they say them.

It was one such prayer that one of my dead recited a few days ago, and the language and sentiments expressed were…well, it’s not something I would come up with or which I’d contemplate, but it moved me to a few tears.  While I can’t get the language right after the fact (think of how difficult it is to capture the beauty of an extemporaneous, ejaculatory prayer made on the spot fright from the heart after you’ve said it), I would like to capture some of what was said to share with others.

O God, look upon us, your children,
as all human creatures are your children, and so are we—
but, behold! siblings of each other as we are,
we are but orphans, lost in this world,
huddled around a single candle in a darkened church
shivering from cold, holding onto each other for warmth.
And yet, in this dark and cold church, even should none else gaze upon us,
we huddle around this single flame and draw the warmth of life from it,
we hold onto each other and draw the hope for life from one another.

Yea, though we are but orphans, we are yet your children,
and this whole world is still your church,
and even should we march out of this place—and we shall, and we will, according to your design—
still we would yet find you, and be found by you.
Even should none else look upon us, we implore you—and you do, and you will, according to your mercy—
to look with favor upon us, to offer us succor of the heart and the soul,
that we might always have nourishment for ourselves, sharing it with each other.
O God, look upon us, your children, all siblings we,
and though orphaned in the world, that we may return to you as our home.

Prayers like this don’t go on for particularly long; between my other obligations and stamina for long durations of channeling, my spirits have the good sense and grace to make their prayers punctually and sharply and then yield the time back to me so we can move on with what we need to do.  Even if something like this were to go on longer, I’m not sure how much I’d be able to meaningfully keep up with, much less recount after the fact.  And yet, parts of this prayer, the imagery involved in it—I mean, while I can’t really prove it, I claim that this is evidence that this isn’t stuff coming from me, but from them.  And they, in their many years of both life and death, have plenty of experience to draw on, not only from older liturgical and prayer traditions but also from their own lives and scenes that they beheld or, indeed, lived through.

And here, in this prayer that one of my spirits recited (one of my spirit guides, I should note, not one of my ancestors), we see this beautiful but heart-breaking notion: this world is hard, and all we have at the end of the day is each other and God.  Sure, to borrow a line from George R. R. Martin, “the night is long and full of terrors”, but so is the day.  The same plant that might offer fruit might also offer thorns; the same animal that might give milk and fur might also give hooves and horns.  This world is, for better or worse, a world apart from us, and despite whatever we might do to make it more hospitable to us, it is under no obligation to do so.  On top of that, there are always other people in the world who wouldn’t treat us as kindly as we might treat them, who wouldn’t help us as we might try to help them.  The world is hard, and it’s easy to become lost, to feel lost, to feel forsaken, as if the suffering we go through is all that we have to look forward to.

And that’s just not true, because no matter how hard things might be, there are people looking out for us—each other—and even if we might feel lost in this world, we still have Divinity to orient ourselves by and to head towards.  Even if a single candleflame can only give off but so much heat, it helps us all the same, does it not?  It reminds us that, even in the darkness, there can still be light, and even in the cold, there can still be warmth.  And it’s not like this is something limited to “this dark and cold church”; after all, such a church is still part of the wider world, and such a church is also a symbol for the whole world.  Whether we leave the cold, dark church of our inward despair to rejoin with the warm, bright world of the comfort and ease that others can provide us, or whether we leave the cold, dark world of humanity to rejoin in the warm, bright heaven of God, either way, we must always remind ourselves to keep on, to not give up our light and our life, to hold onto each other as we hold onto hope itself.  After all, no matter how alone we might feel in the world, so long as we have each other and God, then we’ve got all we need to get by.  “No man is an island”, after all, and it’s not like Divinity is closed off to anyone, either.

I had originally planned to put out this post on Monday or Tuesday, but life got in the way and I ended up putting this off a few days longer than I wanted.  Because I said that I wanted to share the prayer that my spirit guide shared with me, they said that it’d be okay, so long as I did so; I hadn’t yet (before now), and they kept reminding me.  If I had gotten this out sooner, I might have recalled more of the language used or the meaning that it held in that moment, but I hope that this suffices for at least a few of us who might benefit from such a thing.  I don’t share this as some sort of formal prayer to recite or implement as part of a prayer routine, but rather, as a prayer and contemplation for all to remind us that—as the days get shorter and nights get longer, as the temperatures drop and the clouds come for those of us in the northern hemisphere—there’s never truly darkness if we hold onto even the barest glimmer of Light.

On Geomantic Holy Days, Redux

January 3, 2019 By in geomancy, occult Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

Lately I’ve gotten it into my head to try my hand at coming up with some sort of devotional practice with geomancy again, and it’s been stuck there for several days now. This post, however, is having a hard time coming out in a way I like, so it’ll be a bit more of a ramble than usual, but maybe we can end up somewhere neat that we didn’t expect. Also I’m writing it as a way to relieve a headache so I can focus on doing these 2019 New Year readings (which you should totally get one while the offer’s good, if you haven’t yet!).

I mentioned a while back in my post on the notion of geomantic holy days to honor and recognize the mythological and spiritual founders of the art, the four Progenitors Daniel, Enoch, Hermes Trismegistus, and Adam, with the archangel Gabriel being their supernatural teacher and initiator into the art. Whenever we find an origin story for geomancy, whether in European or Arabic texts, we see the same deal: the angel Gabriel arrives to instruct the prophet in question in the art of geomancy. If we were to center a devotional practice around Abrahamic figures that geomancy centers on, we could easily use the feast days associated with them to come up with five major holy days:

  • Feast of Gabriel the Archangel: March 24
  • Feast of Daniel the Blessed Prophet: July 21
  • Feast of Enoch the Great Scribe: July 30
  • Feast of Hermes the Thrice Great: April 4 (entirely an innovation on my part, see the above post as to why)
  • Feast of Adam and Eve: December 24

But why stop there? We can expand this basic set of feast days into a slightly fuller set:

  • Feast of Michael the Archangel and All Angels: September 29
  • Feast of Uriel the Archangel: June 21
  • Feast of Raphael the Archangel: December 22
  • Feast of the Guardian Angel: October 2
  • Feast of Saint Agabus: February 13
  • Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi: October 4
  • Feast of Samuel the Prophet: August 20
  • All Saints’ Day: November 1
  • All Souls’ Day: November 2

Recognizing the feasts of the other three archangels makes a bit of sense to me; after all, with geomancy being heavily influenced by the number four (four elements, four Mothers, four Daughters, four Nieces, four Court figures, etc.), why not recognize the four archangels? Though we generally consider the archangel Michael to be prince of the bodiless hosts, Gabriel takes a more central importance to geomancy because he’s the one who taught the Progenitors the art. However, in my reckoning, the four Progenitors can each be associated with one of the four elements (Daniel with Fire, Enoch with Air, Hermes Trismegistus with Water, Adam with Earth), so we can also consider them each linked to one of the four archangels (Daniel with Michael, Enoch with Raphael, Hermes Trismegistus with Gabriel, Adam with Uriel). This makes a bit of mythological sense, too, considering Michael’s role in the biblical Book of Daniel and Uriel’s connection with the Garden of Eden and Adam. And, beyond that, why not recognize one’s own guardian angel as well? It’s under the tutelage, protection, and guidance of our individual guardian angels that we can all each of us learn to prosper, grow, and develop ourselves, so why not?

The inclusion of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day is, of course, a nod to our ancestors, both familial and spiritual, when it comes to any spiritual practice. This is definitely influenced by my other ancestor work, but why not recognize our ancestors in any practice? After all, if it weren’t for our ancestors, we literally could not live; their blood flows in our veins, their breath fills our lungs, and their bones provide the foundation for us to stand upon. That goes for our family as it does all the geomancers and occultists and other learned sages of the past, for such esteemed names like Christopher Cattan, Robert Fludd, Hugh of Santalla, Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad ibn ‘Uthman al-Zanati, and so forth; it’s because of them, their teachings, and their writings that we have geomancy passed down unto us today.

The other feast days I listed also make a bit of sense, or at least enough to not be inappropriate. Saint Agabus is an obscure one, admittedly, but he’s given the patronage over prophets and, by extension, diviners and seers and fortune-tellers in general. St. Francis of Assisi (yes, THAT St. Francis!) is one of the holiest and most devout exemplars of true faith in God that Christianity has probably ever produced, and his connections with the environment and stewardship of the world as a whole should be inspiration for us all. Plus, there’s an ATR connection there, too; St. Francis of Assisi is the usual syncretization with the Yoruba diviner-god Orunmilá, the orisha of wisdom and knowledge and divination, and the central deity in the Ifá cult, and Ifá is distantly related to geomancy (though I neither like nor want to conflate the two). I also threw in the feast of the Prophet Samuel into the list because he was the last of the biblical Judges and the one who anointed Saul the first King of Israel and Judah, not least because he’s my own namesake but because of his role in establishing the virtues of wisdom, priesthood, prophethood, and rulership—and gives an illustrative example to the moral and just uses of divination by means of the episode involving the Witch of Endor.

You’ll note that I’m basically using the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar of saints for all these feasts. I mean, that’s fair; it’s a straightforward system that’s been established for hundreds of years, the saints are almost universally known in Western culture and religion, and the use of the usual Gregorian calendar is easy. I fully recognize that not all geomancers are Christian (I mean, I’m not), but you can’t really ignore the importance Christianity (or Islam) in Western occulture generally, nor geomancy specifically. The current of faith, devotion, and power with the saints, and the mythological backing they provide to divination, is already there; why not tap into it, especially when it’s so easy to do so?

Well, let’s back up. Let’s say we don’t necessarily want to adopt a Catholic approach that uses the feast days as they are. What could we do instead? In the post about those geomantic holy days, I mentioned the possibility of coming up with a geomantic Wheel of the Year that’s based on the Sun’s ingresses and midpoints in the signs of the Zodiac at the usual places, namely the solstices and equinoxes. Why not go to something like that? Sure, except how do you map the Progenitors to those days?

Although the modern Catholic practice is to celebrate all the angels and archangels on the same day—Michaelmas, the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel and All Angels, on September 29—the four big archangels had their own feast days scattered across the year, roughly in line with the solstices and equinoxes: Gabriel’s feast day occurs roughly at the spring equinox, Uriel at the summer solstice, Michael at the autumn equinox, and Raphael at the winter solstice. (Yes, I write from a perspective in the northern hemisphere, but hear me out.) This arrangement makes sense at first blush, but that’s an odd order, indeed, isn’t it? The spring equinox is when the Sun enters Aries, a Fire sign, so the normal occultist would expect Michael to be honored then instead of Gabriel; likewise, for summer, it’d be Cancer and Water, so Gabriel instead of Uriel; for autumn, Libra and Air, so Raphael instead of Michael; and for winter, Capricorn and Earth, so Uriel instead of Raphael. A bit of a conflict, no?

Note the traditional order of the archangels being honored in this system, starting from the autumn equinox: Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and Uriel. Their corresponding elements are Fire, Air, Water, and Earth—the elemental order that’s used in geomancy. This contrasts with using a zodiacal order—Raphael, Uriel, Michael, and Gabriel, so Air, Earth, Fire, and Water—which isn’t used in geomancy. It also contrasts with Cornelius Agrippa’s reckoning in his Scale of Four (book II, chapter 7), where Michael is given to summer, Uriel to autumn, Gabriel to winter, and Raphael to spring—exactly the reverse of the usual elemental order. Since geomancy isn’t strictly an astrological art and since the strictly angelic order matches up best with the geomantic order, it could be argued well that this system would work best for a devotional geomantic calendar. This means we could start off organizing a geomantic devotional calendar by using the solstices and equinoxes for ascribing them to the four archangels:

  • Feast of Gabriel the Archangel: March 21 (spring equinox)
  • Feast of Uriel the Archangel: June 21 (summer solstice)
  • Feast of Michael the Archangel: September 21 (autumnal equinox)
  • Feast of Raphael the Archangel: December 21 (winter solstice)

(Yes, dates are approximate and can vary from year to year by a day or two in either direction. Bear with me.)

As noted above, just as there are four archangels, there are four Progenitors in this system I’m coming up with, and each of those Progenitors corresponds to one of the four elements, just as the four archangels do. While we could double up the feast days and celebrate the feasts of the Progenitors along with their corresponding archangels, I don’t like that method; for one, I try to avoid multiple simultaneous celebrations on the same day, and because Gabriel would need to be honored alongside each and every Progenitor (as he was the one who taught geomancy to them all), that means we’d really be celebrating Gabriel on each of the solstices and equinoxes, either alone (spring equinox) or along with another archangel (solstices and autumn equinox). So that’s a really messy and convoluted system.

What about using the cross-quarter days? These are the four midpoint days between the solstices and equinoxes, and could be ideal. How would we arrange the four Progenitors across these? There are several options that come to mind:

  • Angel-based: give the cross-quarter day to the Progenitor that matches the element of the angel that immediately precedes it. Thus, if the spring equinox is given to Gabriel (Water), then the cross-quarter day that follows it (Beltane) should be given to the Progenitor of Water, Hermes Trismegistus.
  • Season-middle: give the cross-quarter day to the Progenitor that matches the element of the season it falls in, reckoning seasons to start at the solstices and equinoxes. Thus, if spring is reckoned to start at the spring equinox and we use Agrippa’s association of Spring with Air, then the season cross-quarter day (Beltane) should be given to the Progenitor of Air, Enoch.
  • Season-start: give the cross-quarter day to the Progenitor that matches the element of the season it starts, reckoning seasons to start at the cross-quarter days and not at the solstices and equinoxes (as is traditional in some parts of Europe). Thus, if summer is reckoned to start at the midpoint between the spring equinox and summer solstice, and summer is associated with Fire, then this cross-quarter day (Beltane) should be given to the Progenitor of Fire, Daniel.
  • Zodiac-based: give the cross-quarter day to the Progenitor that matches the element of the zodiac sign it falls in. Thus, the cross-quarter day between the spring equinox and summer solstice falls in the middle of Taurus, an Earth sign, so this day should be given to the Progenitor of Earth, Adam.
  • Chronological: give the cross-quarter day to the Progenitor in the chronological order they appear in the biblical and mythological record. Reckoning the year to start at the spring equinox, this would mean the four Progenitors would be celebrated in the order of Adam (the first man), Enoch (ancestor of Noah), Hermes Trismegistus (though not given a strong temporal presence, he’s sometimes considered a contemporary of Moses or of otherwise Egyptian time periods), and Daniel (living in the Babylonian Exile period).
Approximate
Solar Date		 Cross Quarter
Day		 Angel Season
Middle		 Season
Start		 Zodiac Chronological
May 6 Beltane Hermes Enoch Daniel Adam Adam
August 6 Beltane Adam Daniel Adam Daniel Enoch
November 5 Lammas Daniel Adam Hermes Hermes Hermes
February 3 Samhain Enoch Hermes Enoch Enoch Daniel

For the same reasons that I give the four archangels to the four quarter days in the order they’ve already got, I think the angel-based method makes the most sense. Understanding the angelic day to “come first”, just as Gabriel came first with the knowledge of geomancy to bring it to the Progenitors, the angel-based method where the Progenitors follow their corresponding elemental archangel makes the most sense to me—if we were to link the Progenitors strongly to the archangels based on elemental correspondence alone. However, because the other three angels don’t really have as much a presence in the geomantic mythos as Gabriel does, and because Gabriel is most important to them all, this connection is kinda weak.

Honestly, because of that reason, I’m most inclined to go with the chronological ordering, which also makes good sense: if we consider Gabriel to have come down and instructed the four Progenitors in the art of geomancy in successive revelation, and if we consider the spring equinox to be both the feast of Gabriel and the start of a new solar year (which is definitely a thing!), then it also makes sense to celebrate the four Progenitors in the order in which Gabriel taught them. This way, each year can be considered a retelling of a revelation of geomancy, and honoring the four Progenitors in turn would instill that same sense of revelation and continual, continuous discovery and learning in the art. Since I would consider the non-Gabriel archangel feasts to be of secondary importance, we would only need to be concerned with five primary feasts for a geomantic devotional practice on approximately the following Gregorian dates (with specific solar events that would mark them properly from year to year):

  • Feast of Gabriel the Holy Archangel, Teacher of the Progenitors: first sunrise after Sun ingress Aries Aquarius (approx. March 21)
  • Feast of Adam the First Man, Progenitor of Earth: first sunrise after Sun midpoint Taurus (approx. May 6)
  • Feast of Enoch the Great Scribe, Progenitor of Air: first sunrise after Sun midpoint Leo (approx. August 6)
  • Feast of Hermes the Thrice Great, Progenitor of Water: first sunrise after Sun midpoint Scorpio (approx. November 5)
  • Feast of Daniel the Blessed Prophet, Progenitor of Fire: first sunrise after Sun midpoint Aquarius (approx. February 3)

Why mark the feasts by the first sunrise after the specific solar event? Personally, I like to mark such holidays and special days by being the “first full day” with the full event, because for me in my practice, I mark days for spiritual practice starting from sunrise. So, if the Sun makes its ingress into Aries at 7pm my time, then that say still started when the Sun was still in the previous sign, so it makes more sense to me to celebrate the first full day with the Sun being in Aries on the first sunrise after that. If that solar event happened at the very moment of sunrise, all the better; it would count for my purposes.

Anyhow, now we have a cycle that’s tied less to Catholicism or purely zodiacal concerns, and one that’s grounded in the mythos of geomancy while still being tied to the natural cycles of seasons. A geomantic new year is celebrated at the spring equinox, which is specifically dedicated to the archangel Gabriel, the angelic patron of geomancy and geomancers and who teaches and reveals the art to all its students. The year progresses in turn being marked by the feasts for the four Progenitors, each of whom were taught by Gabriel to pass the art of geomancy down into the world. Celebrating the new year with the spring equinox dedicated to Gabriel also has a fun coincidental Islamic connection; in some sects of Islam, this date is reckoned to be the solar calendar equivalent (Persian Nowruz, based upon the earlier and still-practiced Zoroastrian New Year festival) to when the angel Gabriel appeared to the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ to give him the first revelation that started off the Qur’an (though that’s usually reckoned to take place during Laylat al-Qadr during Ramadan in the Islamic lunar calendar).

I actually feel pretty comfortable with this novel arrangement. Though there are five main feasts that would be celebrated, which would be an odd number for geomancy, it’s really more like four feasts of the Progenitors plus a special feast that they all center around. They could be balanced by adding in the other three feasts of the archangels to yield a constant and balanced eight feasts per year, sure, peppered with the other feasts throughout the year for the other saints and days taken from Catholic (or Orthodox) tradition. For me, though, it suffices to have these primary five (really, four plus one) feasts to act as holy days for a devotional geomantic practice. I can easily envision having lead-up days, such as one to four days of fasting immediately prior to the feasts of the Progenitors or four to sixteen days of fasting, studying, and praying leading up to the feast of Gabriel at the spring equinox, too, which would also work to deepen and focus devotional practices. Heck, we could give these fancy terms, too, like “Days of Cultivation” for the period leading up to the feast of Gabriel.

So, let’s give an example. For this year 2019 CE, the spring equinox happens at 5:58 PM Eastern US time on Wednesday, March 20. This means that we’d get the following dates to celebrate the above feasts:

  • Days of Cultivation: March 5 (starting at sunrise) through March 20, 2019 (ending at sunrise the following day)
  • Feast of Gabriel the Holy Archangel, Teacher of the Progenitors: March 21, 2019 (starting at sunrise)
  • Feast of Adam the First Man, Progenitor of Attainment: May 6, 2019 (starting at sunrise)
  • Feast of Enoch the Great Scribe, Progenitor of Dedication: August 8, 2019 (starting at sunrise)
  • Feast of Hermes the Thrice Great, Progenitor of Wisdom: November 8, 2019 (starting at sunrise)
  • Feast of Daniel the Blessed Prophet, Progenitor of Judgement: Feburary 5, 2020 (starting at sunrise)

And, just to complete the set, the feasts for the other three archangels:

  • Feast of Uriel the Holy Archangel: June 22, 2019 (starting at sunrise)
  • Feast of Michael the Holy Archangel: September 24, 2019 (starting at sunrise)
  • Feast of Raphael the Holy Archangel: December 22, 2019 (starting at sunrise)

What about one’s guardian angel? That one really doesn’t fit into any of the above systems, and that’s fine, because it’s such an intensely personal spirit to begin with. While you could give that one October 2 in general, just taking it directly from the Roman Catholic calendar, but there are two other opportunities that come to mind:

  • If you’ve already attained formal contact (e.g. K&CHGA) with your guardian angel, a la Abramelin or the Headless Rite or some other practice, use the anniversary on which you established contact as your own personal Feast of the Guardian Angel.
  • If you don’t yet have formal contact, use the day before your own birthday, being the day which you came into this world as an independent human being to celebrate your own personal Feast of the Guardian Angel. Using the day before avoids any conflicts, and allows you to honor your guardian angel as a preexisting force that gives you a foundation to live and grow.

What about a day or feast to recognize the blessed dead, whether familial or spiritual, by blood-lineage or tradition-lineage? Again, you could use All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days for this, or other culturally-appropriate Day of the Dead-type holidays; for specific ancestors, you could use their birthdays or their deathdays. Though, given the above system, I think we could do one better. Those Days of Cultivation, the days of fasting and study and prayer leading up to the geomantic new year and the Feast of Gabriel? Why not make the day before that dedicated to the dead? After all, it’s because of them that all this we have can come to pass, and by “starting” the Days of Cultivation with them, we give them their proper due and respect as we would begin our own period of intensive study and prayer and preparation for the New Year. So, that means that the Feast of the Blessed Dead would be 17 days before the Feast of Gabriel:

  • Feast of the Blessed Dead: March 4, 2019 (starting at sunrise)

The other secondary feasts I gave up above don’t really matter as much, just being plucked from the Roman Catholic calendar for the sake of it; it wouldn’t be bad to recognize them, but it’s not needed, either. I think that with these five (or four plus one) primary feasts of Gabriel and the Progenitors, and the five (or three plus one plus one) secondary feasts of the other archangels, the guardian angel, and the blessed dead, plus at least one major period of fasting and praying, we end up with a good number of events for a devotional geomantic practice.

Now to actually give it a whirl and develop devotions and practices to go along with it! After all, it is still the beginning of the year, and I do still need to make my 2019 ritual calendar. I’ll get on that soon enough…once I get some of these readings done first!

Everyone’s Got Troublesome Ancestors

April 18, 2018 By in occult Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

This post is a little late in the making, but it’s something I definitely wanted to bring up after my earlier post on ancestor veneration 101.  If you missed out on that post or forgotten about the basics of working with your ancestors, take a look at that old post before reading this one.  Who knows, you might have some new insights along the way, even if you did read it before!

So, when you get right down to it, everyone’s got ancestors, and ancestor veneration practices are available to everyone in pretty much any way.  Every culture has some way to recognize ancestors, whether it’s nothing more than praying for the dead or culminating in a week of offering full burnt sacrifices at their tombs.  For magicians, priests, and other spiritual practitioners, working with our ancestor is a powerful practice that we can adapt to our own cultures and traditions that can yield huge blessings, often without much of the fuss or hassle that other rituals might demand of us.  After all, the dead live on through us, and we stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us; working with our ancestors can often be mutually beneficial.  Before any god or goddess, our ancestors should be and often are our first go-to spirit allies for defense, prosperity, and succor, and their insights can help guide us throughout our lives in so many ways, including teaching us new methods of working or simply easing things in difficult times.

But…well, there’s always gonna be some hitch or difficulty inherent in a practice, innit?  Of course there is.  When it comes to ancestor veneration, sure, there’s always the issue of doing rituals inappropriately or offering them things taboo to them within the culture, or desecrating their memories, or any other obvious-as-hell mistake you can make, but there’s one issue that we’re all (quite literally) familiar with: that one damn relative we just don’t get along with.  Or two.  Or a dozen.  Or quite a bit more.  While we can often ignore these troublesome relatives when they’re alive, putting up with them politely once or twice a year when we have to endure their presence for holiday dinners, it’s a little more tricky when they’re dead and hanging out at your ancestor shrine.

So, what can happen when a particular ancestor is acting up and causing problems?  What sorts of problems can they make?  Honestly, the effects can be as varied as the number of ways they can make your life better; they can interfere with your personal relationships among the living, cause health issues, stymie progress in the things you’re working forwards, or other things all the way to causing actual mayhem and chaos which can result in your injury or death.  They might not do anything, of course, depending on how patient they might be with you or based on the type of relationship you have with them, but they might also just ignore your pleas for help when you actually need them to do something, or they can turn your other ancestors against you as well.  It depends on the specific ancestor’s temperament, how badly they’re offended, and how badly they want to bring your attention to the offense, but in general, when the dead are upset, it can cause any number of issues in your life.  Untended and ignored, the ancestors can become overwhelmed by wrath and anger and turn into truly fearsome beasts of spirits, potentially even becoming enemies of their own family that can cause untold trouble across multiple generations; it’s not uncommon for familial curses to be rooted in an upset ancestor that, essentially, curses their own bloodline.  It’s unfortunate, but it does happen; in such cases, the way to break the curse is to appease that ancestor or remove them entirely from the situation.  Essentially, upset ancestors can be a pain, and it really is best to deal with that pain as soon as you can so you can avoid more pain down the line.

There are lots of reasons why we might find a particular member of our ancestors to be a pain in the ass.  To rule out the most obvious case, there’s always a chance we could have done something to offend one of them.  For instance, if we promise a particular ancestor something, such as giving them a cooked meal or refraining from doing a particular thing, it’s not uncommon or unlikely that they’ll take offense to our having neglected or broken our promise, and we’d need to work it off and mend the relationship we have with them.  This goes for any kind of spirit you have a relationship, of course, which is why we can bring this up and set it aside first; as I’ve said before, try to refrain from making vows unless you absolutely need to, but even if you make a small promise of payment, a promise is a promise, and you’d best keep your word.

One of the most common issues for beginners that can result from ancestral work is the fact that, once they start to realize that you’re reaching out to them, they often flock to you like moths to a flame, especially if you have the ability to see, hear, and speak with spirits as opposed to simply making offerings and prayers in their name.  Not only can this happen with our own ancestors, but it can also happen with any passing spirit of the dead, whether or not we’re related to them by blood, tradition, or culture.  In short, some ancestors want attention, sometimes for an actual reason and other times because they miss being tended to or cared for.  This isn’t as much a problem in cultures where ancestor veneration is common, but in modern Western societies where we hardly ever tend to our family graves or make offerings to our dead, it’s increasingly a problem that we tend to forget our dead, and when they have problems, they can cause problems for us.  The simple approach here is to simply work with them as much as you’re able, not overextending yourself or draining yourself dry, but working with them as you can to make sure their needs are met.  In the process, you often learn more about your heritage and ancestry, you learn specific ways and workings from and with your ancestors that can make things easier for you and them, and you find newer ways to make your ancestor work more efficient and effective.  This can take any number of forms, but one major caution I’d recommend is that you set boundaries with your spirits; they may not be able to get everything they ask for, even if it’s just attention (especially if it’s just attention), and many of us can’t tend to our ancestry all day every day.  After all, we living have needs, too, and if the ancestors make big demands, then they need to give big assistance.  If all they want is attention, tell them (kindly, politely, yet firmly) to back off and enjoy what they have, and if they have a specific need, make sure you understand why they need it or if they just want it.  This sort of problem can develop or undevelop depending on the spirit, and sometimes it can be useful in situations where you need to pass along messages to the living in order to keep the living from coming to future harm.  Just take it easy, so long as you take your relationships seriously and take your work further as best suits you.

There can often be a problem where it’s not so much with our relationships with our ancestors as with the fact that we simply don’t know who we are.  Unless you’re big into genealogy or have good connections in your family with genealogists, we simply may not know who it is we descend from, especially in our modern age when keeping up ties with the extended family is becoming more and more difficult, as well as more and more uncommon in Western culture.  While I won’t say that everything’s fine, this won’t necessarily cause you problems; if you know even one name of your ancestors, such as a grandparent you vaguely knew who passed away, that can be your key to learning more about the rest of them.  That particular ancestor can act as a gopher and go-between that can bring you in touch with the rest of your ancestral family.  Working with this single ancestor can open up the door to working with all the rest of them and bring you into a closer relationship with those whom you might have forgotten or never knew about.  Genealogical research is only a boon in this case, and I highly recommend everyone be able to trace their ancestry back at least a few generations if not further; this may not always be the case due to records that were lost, destroyed, or suppressed, but information is information, whether you get it through historical research or spiritual investigation.

A special case of this is were someone is adopted and has no ties with or knowledge of their blood family.  In this case, hope is not lost; for all practical purposes, the ancestors of your adoptive family become your own ancestors.  Although kin is primarily determined by blood, it is also determined by name; being adopted means being made part of the family into which you were adopted, and being accepted into a family means that they accept you from now all the way back into time.  It can often be a painful shame for those who are adopted and truly have no means of connecting with their blood family, but again, just as with the other case of not knowing who your ancestors might be, you’re not bereft of ancestors just because you may not know who they are.  Family is family, either way; ancestors of the adoptive family can just as easily bridge the gap between you and your blood family just as a known blood ancestor can connect you with your unknown blood ancestors.  As above, information is information, whether you get it through historical research or spiritual investigation.

One particular issue with our ancestors that often arises is that we simply might not like them or agree with them on important philosophical, spiritual, or political views.  For instance, it’s a common issue where many outcasts in our day and age are cast out by their own family for any number of reasons, such as converting to another religion, being queer of some sort, differences in views on human decency and bigotry, or other relationship-breaking things that can cause us suffering in life when dealing with them personally as well as in death when we have to deal with them spiritually.  I can attest to some of these things myself; coming from a European American family with roots going back to the founding of the country, I have proud slaveowners and slavedrivers in my lineage, and not all my ancestors from those lines care for the fact that I’m initiated into an African diasporic religion and affiliate myself so closely to the faith of those that they subjugated and thought subhuman; other of my ancestors find the fact that I’m gay to be confusing and problematic for them, if not disrespectful to their notions of tradition and righteousness.  It’s unfortunate that they think this way, but in general, once people die and get used to being an ancestral spirit, I have noticed that their viewpoints tend to soften somewhat; they might hold on to particular strongly-held views, but they do tend to be more accepting in death than they were in life.  At points, however, these issues can be difficult to overcome; in those cases, I work with other of my ancestors who do like and accept me to either facilitate relationships and communications with them, or simply pay my respects to the ancestors who dislike me and move on.

That’s one of the core methods of working with troublesome ancestors, by the way; even if you don’t like them or if they don’t like you, it doesn’t change the fact that you’re still their kin and descendant.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m as supportive as anyone else about the whole “blood doesn’t determine family, your love determines your family” notion that’s common among the youth of today, but there’s still something to be said for blood ties that really does matter spiritually and physically that Platonic or romantic bonds alone cannot approach or approximate.  All ties to your ancestry are indelible and unalienable, and no matter what you might think of your ancestry or heritage, whether you’re proud or ashamed of it, you cannot change the fact that they lived and did whatever they did.  No human alive or dead was wholly good or wholly evil, and all of humanity of the past, present, and future has a particular dignity that we need to recognize and appreciate.  For the mere fact that their works contributed to the world we live in today, for good or for ill, and that their lives contributed to the possibility of your own, I claim that your ancestors should be honored across the board and unconditionally.  I consider it to be an obligatory form of filial piety that crosses the boundaries of life and death.  In my case, of course I despise the fact that my ancestry played a direct role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and supported the inhumane institutions of slavery, and I am ashamed of it and for their propagation of racism that still blights my country today; however, I cannot help but honor the fact that I am related to them, and without them I would not and could not live, and that even amongst their works that I consider evil and baneful to the happiness and health of humanity, there are also good works that encouraged those same things.  In seeing the good in them, I can help bridge what might otherwise be an unsurpassable chasm that would only cause problems, and perhaps swing their viewpoints to see how their actions caused both harm and help in their time and in my own, maybe even remediate them to help correct what I see as negative.  If not, oh well; I pay my respects to them all the same for what can be respected, and ignore the rest of what can’t, and move on to the spirits that don’t cause me such conflict.

It can be exceptionally difficult for some people who tend to their ancestors, however, who were abused by them in life or were close to those who were abused by them.  Consider the case where a young child was abused by their grandmother they lived with, or where someone was raped by their uncle; having grown up and with the abusive relative now dead, how might the person approach this situation?  It’s difficult, I admit, and I feel somewhat at a loss to discuss this particular topic because I haven’t been the victim of family or domestic abuse; in lieu of or in addition to my own thoughts which I offer here, I bow to the guidance and advice of those who can better speak to such a situation.  The pain from being emotionally, physically, sexually, or spiritually abused can often never be forgiven nor forgotten, and I don’t suggest that the abused should simply move on with their lives and pretend that everything is hunky-dory A-OK now that their relative is dead and hopefully enlightened; I know some people who would sooner condemn their parents to the bottom pits of hell with bell, book, and candle before uttering a single good thing to their name for all the abuse they put them through.  There are different approaches you could take in this case, depending on where you are emotionally and spiritually.  If you’re at a point where you can offer forgiveness or are looking for closure, then you could do exactly that; you might not work with that ancestor as an ally or treat them as you might your trusted, close-knit dead, but you could offer them forgiveness and acceptance for who they were and what they did, and work with them so as to bring to them the pain they brought you so you both can work towards bringing it to an end so that you don’t have to carry it anymore as a burden in your life.  Alternatively, if you’re not at that stage yet, simply don’t work with them, don’t call on them, and don’t try to give them attention if doing so brings you more pain than peace.  If such an abusive ancestor starts acting up and demanding attention, have your other ancestors cut them off and protect you or to help you figure out how you might placate them at arm’s distance so that, if nothing else, you aren’t pained by them any more with their wants when they didn’t do a damn to help you.  In other words, if you find that you can’t work with them in a good mutually-beneficial way, don’t work with them at all.  Even if all humanity has good and bad in them, if all you can see is the bad, then not only should you refrain from attempting to work with them for good, but you’re rendered unable to do so because of the hurt that you’re still healing from.  Take your time; you’re not responsible for the abuse they gave you in life, and you’re not responsible for their amelioration in death, either.  Work with abusive ancestors only as much as you’re capable of doing so, and work with your other ancestors instead to help you with your own healing as well as working on your behalf to isolate, remediate, elevate, or otherwise correct the patterns of abuse that might be present in your ancestry.

If you’re in a relationship like a marriage or otherwise long-term arrangement, especially where you’re living with a partner, there’s a particular issue that can crop up that might not otherwise be expected.  It can sometimes be the case where you and your ancestors get along great, as do your partner with their ancestors, but your two ancestral courts have a feud or other issue between them.  Think like what would happen if the descendants of the Hatfields and McCoys of American fame got together, or if Shakespeare’s Juliet of the House of Capulet and Romeo of the House of Montague got married instead of killing themselves overdramatically; even if the living descendants of these families made up and ended their feuds, the dead ancestors of these families might still have beef between them.  Such problematic ancestors might cause issues for the living couple in ways that might threaten to break up the relationship, if not start the feud anew or prolong it in dangerous ways for the couple or their respective families.  Breaching such a problem can often take the involvement of both you and them, as sometimes trying to convince the ancestors in question to make up and play nice can be trying at the best of times, especially if the beef is one-sided and you happen to be on the opposite side (and therefore considered an enemy).  Protection works can help, as can getting your ancestors who do play nice with the other side set a good example for facilitating peace between your different courts of ancestors; other magical works similar to happy marriage or peaceful home workings can be done on your ancestries much as you might get two quarrelsome people to play nice in life.  If the feud was caused over a particular event or item, it might be good to repair that breach in familial relationships by giving in to the demands made of the offended party, whether symbolically or in actuality; for instance, if the feud was started over a stolen horse, giving a representation of a horse to the offended spirit or dedicating a horse’s growth and training in that ancestor’s name can often repair the feud and break any further hostilities.

You might start to see see something of a trend with all these solutions to these problems, dear reader.  All the problem-solving, diplomatic, political, and interpersonal tactics and strategies we might use in life among the living to solve problems are often the most realistic, approachable, and effective ways to deal with sorting out problems with the dead.  Our ancestors, after all, were human just like us, and just because they’re dead doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve forgotten how to act like humans, because in almost all cases, they still are.  That said, we’d still need to approach them how they might expect to be approached; I wouldn’t approach my ultra-Orthodox Jewish Ukrainian ancestors from way back who died well before my parents were born the same way I might approach my more recently-deceased bacon-eating gentile cousins whom I knew personally and familiarly, and those who come from radically different cultures will often find that there is no one-size-fits-all approach.  Still, once you understand the rules and nuance of culture, the problems often present solutions of their own accord.  Treat your ancestors as human with human wants and human needs, and you’ll often figure out that the best way to deal with problems is an extrapolation of how you’d deal with the living, just in the realm of spirit.

This can’t always be done, however; there are times when problems get too big to handle for simple solutions, such as when the spirit of an ancestor degrades or transforms into something much more wrathful and dangerous than a powerful human spirit, when an honest-to-God generational curse is involved, when whole branches of the family declare you an enemy to your own kin, or in other particular situations.  There are ways to deal with these, but these go well beyond what might be expected for simple solutions, and often require investigation, divination, and multi-pronged approaches that bring in other entities of your spiritual courts for direction, protection, elevation, or isolation unique to the particular situation you’re in.  Every problem has a solution, of course, and it’s rare that an issue caused by an ancestor is a predicament and not a problem.  Just as your ancestors should be your first line of defense and line of aid because of their once-human status, it’s often the case that the best way to approach and work with them is as humans, both in times of peace and in times of conflict.

Do you have any particular stories of working with troublesome ancestors?  Are there any techniques, tips, or tricks you’d like to share when figuring out or fixing up problems with them?  Is there any advice you might like to offer to know when a problem might occur and how best to deal with it?  Let us know in the comments!