Dead Languages 3 - First Steps in Communication with the Ancestors

Part 3 - practical necromancy

I feel like I start every post with admonishing myself for not writing often enough, but it has been a helluva month - ‘tober always is of course. So lets mostly skip that part. A helluva month though…

Today we finally get to the juicy bit. I was going to split this into a few meaty posts but I’ve left it a bit late and did want to get this all out by Halloween (sigh…OK…Samhain) which is tomorrow, so here we are. One, massive chunk of personal experience and practical goodness.

None of what I post here is meant to be prescriptive, it borrows lightly from many, but does not follow any particular tradition. I hope nothing I’ve said here will cause offence - if I’m treading on any cultural toes please let me know so I can amend and make amends. Thank you.

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There are many, many methods of approaching this work - the most satisfying for a lot of witches being setting up an an ancestor altar. I’m not starting this piece there there though, I’m starting with the dryer side.

In my opinion, setting up an altar to anything - ancestors, a deity etc, should only be done when you are ready and have researched. You wouldn’t have a roommate move in without some idea of who they are, would you? I certainly wouldn’t, well not now. I did it here though…and oh, boy was that the wrong place to start…(see section 2 below)

Below I will start by outlining three research based methods and them move through practical methods. There is no real solid order here, I certainly jumped too quickly into altars and graveyard work myself - but I’m impulsive and I’ve lived to tell the tale, you do you.

1. Talking to living relatives / recording their stories.

   Now - this is not always possible, I get that. I am completely estranged from my living family, for good reason and by my choice, so it wasn’t an option for me. If you can though, do.

   Tell your parents you want to know what their childhoods were like, ask your grandparents about their favourite things to do as children, ask them what they remember of their grandparents and write this stuff down and ask for copies of photos. Even better - tell them you are looking into family history when you do this - chances are you already have an amateur genealogist in the family who will be excited to share what they have discovered. If you are adopted and have no access to blood family history you should still research your adopted family history - this isn’t only about genetics. I think of kin as love relatives not blood relatives anyway.
   
   I’ve started keeping a little book where I write down what I can recall of my childhood - as this is an act of veneration it itself I tend to focus on the positive stuff, or at least the not-horrible stuff. This might seem like erasing the past but I frame it as spotlighting the good things. I found this useful as someone with no connection to living family, as it has become a repository of memory. The act of writing things down actually helped me retrieve a lot of lost memories, not all great, and I used to record the more pleasant ones as a therapeutic act.
   

2. Genealogy (and a personal story)

   Genealogical research used to mean spending hours and hours travelling to and sitting in dusty records offices and dealing with officious and overbearing staff and waiting weeks for paperwork to be located and posted. It was an expensive and time consuming and frustrating business. Then along came the internet and like most things it made research a hell of a lot easier. I joined Ancestry.com at the start of my journey with this. I had very little information on my family - just stories from my mother and memories of my parents, aunt and maternal grandparents, up until I left home forever at the age of eighteen. I had no desire to rekindle contact but I did want to understand who I was, where I’d come from and try and heal some of the inherited traumas I’d been lucky enough to collect on the way. Research online proved invaluable but shocking.

   
   As mentioned before I am quite new to this stream of magic and am not writing this as an expert but as a log of my own practice. I only started working with my Ancestors around ‘Samhain-time’ 2020 in an attempt to heal myself. Things really ramped up in March 2021 when after a series of intense family dreams and awful catastrophes involving illness and home repairs and poorly pets, I felt I needed help. Something was up and divination indicated it was more than mere bad luck.
   
   A friend suggested I ask a Catholic church to mention my family lines at a requiem mass. I’m not a Catholic but I’m not against a little Jesus in my magic, as a treat, so booked it for 13 March 2021. Shortly before this, on 9 March, I joined Ancestry.com to start, if you’ll pardon the pun, putting some flesh on the bones of my memory.
   

   On logging into the Ancestry account I received a notification that my mother had died two years previously. She was a troublesome and vindictive woman in life, who spent a good portion of my late teens stealing from me, running me into serious debt and spreading lies about me across my home town. With me being estranged noone had told me about her death, so I had started this Ancestor work not knowing she had passed. Perhaps most interestingly, I’d booked the requiem mass for what would have been her birthday - 13 March. I don’t remember birthdays - I never have. I struggle to recall the exact date of anyone’s. I hadn’t done this knowingly and in fact was convinced hers was 22 March. After the mass, and the intercession of a sorceress friend, things calmed down. Do your research first, is all I’m saying…
   
   Through Ancestry.com I’ve discovered I have five living aunts on my father’s side I knew nothing about, I’ve found out I’m of a slightly different racial mix than the stories my mother had told me, and I found photographs of grandparents I’d heard tales of but had never seen. While it isn’t cheap, you can get A LOT done in just a month if you focus, and you can then save the info and cancel your account.
   

3. DNA testing

   I’ve not done this myself yet, but it is next on my hitlist. Most of the big genealogy sites offer DNA testing that can give you detail on your genetic makeup. This is then really useful when looking at some of the later things I’m going to talk about. I’ve been told Ancestry do the best testing for those of European extraction, as they can pinpoint more accurately where in the region you may hail from. they also have a huge customer database, so if you are looking for long lost relatives this is your best bet. There is also 23 and Me - but there are concerns about their use of data so I’ll be avoiding them.

   
   There are numerous private genetics labs offering similar, but they all seem to have poor reviews. I’m going with Ancestry.com and have just ordered by kit. I’ll report back in a few weeks!
   

4. Dumb Suppers
   With Samhain coming up this an especially appropriate one and something you could put in place tomorrow. It is really just about dining with the dead, so setting an additional place at the table, laying out food and drink for them, and inviting them to join you for a meal. This is typically done by witches and Wiccans at Samhain. In our coven this is a huge occasion, where everyone brings a dish to share. We are convivial until the meal begins, at which point we cast the circle, invite the dead in, ring a bell, and then eat in silence out of respect for the dead, once the meal is over the bell is rung again and talking can resume. Either before or after the meal, guests share stories of their own dead, which is wonderful. I am unable to attend our coven event this year but will be sitting down to host my own Dumb Supper and plan to also add in the Appalachian tradition of telling the dead my news after the meal.
   

5. Meditation / somatic work

   One of the easiest ways to start and maintain ancestral connection, and receive messages from those ancestors is Ancestral Contact meditation. I have had profound experiences with this over the past few years - everything from being contacted by my ancestors as a collective, to individual messages from particular spirits.

   
   There are a lot of free guided mediation activities on YouTube and these are a great place to start, however in the last few days I have been reading Ben Stimpson’s fantastic ‘Ancestral Whispers"‘ and the first meditation in there is proving incredibly useful. I have adapted it to be able to speak to ancestors with particular traits and have asked for assistance with a matter from them which is already working. Get the book - it rocks.
   

   Breathwork and movement are also wonderful ways to connect with your ancestors and I’d advise anyone interested in that to look into the work of Sophie Strand. In terms of Breathwork - this is really mindful breathing - holding the awareness while breathing that every cell, molecule, atom on this planet is a part of the ecosystem that our ancestors walked in. We are effectively drinking the same water the dinosaurs drank, that tiktaalik emerged from.

   
   Somatic work includes breathing, but is more about using the body - dance, movement and position. Try meditating in the foetal position, for example. We were all in that position in the womb, it is common to use and every human ancestor. If you know your ancestor liked to dance or paint or sing you may find using your body in similar ways helps foster a sense of connection.
   
   6. Learning ancestral skills

   The above leads us to this - ancestral skills - and I’m not talking about basket weaving and flint knapping - though great comfort can be found in those things. As mentioned above - you may come from a family of musicians and have been taught that skill from a young age - piano lessons, reading music etc. if often described as being almost ‘in the blood’ - there is an argument for epigenetics here again, as trauma and healing are passed down through the DNA perhaps so can skills. Why not explore these more deeply - perhaps you discover an ancestor who was a painter by you have never painted, perhaps they spoke French or Welsh or were dressmakers or cooks. Learning the skills and especially the languages of our ancestors can be both a great way to connect and form an offering to them. Perhaps write a song or poem or paint apiece for your ancestor altar - we’ll get to those later!
   

6. Psychopomps

   Ahhhh, one of my favourite things about working with the dead is working with psychopomps, and I’d not attempt the any serious work with the dead without them to be honest. A psychopomp is a term derived from the greek ‘psychopompos’ meaning ‘conductor of souls’ and can be used to refer to those spirits who conduct spirits to the other world after death. I work with both Hekate and Hermes Chthonios in this regard, though the ferryman of Greek mythology, Charon is another example. Those who favour the Egyptian Pantheon could also use Anubis while Christians would speak to St. Peter or even Jesus.
   
   Psychopomps often appear in myth as messengers, tricksters or shapeshifters - often having animal companions or changing into animals - such as ravens, magpies, black dogs or owls. One of my favourite psychopompic (?) creatures is the bee - who in more than one tradition are said to speak with the dead. I tend to keep this work pretty simple - using the Orphic Hymns for Hecate and Hermes before undertaking any necromantic work aside from just straight ancestor altar work. Building up a relationship with a psychopomp spirit is something I personally consider foundational in my magical practice.
   

7. Graveyard work / local dead
   There is a very long tradition of magicians putting the dead to work for them - with many necromantic spells appearing in the PGM, for example. A great text on this is Mat Hadfield’s guide listed below and it comes highly recommended. The same series from Hadean Press also includes the wonderful Hoodoo Graveyard Sorcery by James Udung and while I don’t follow these practices to the letter myself - it has informed my process of leaving offerings when entering and leaving a graveyard and at any grave where I want to work with that spirit in greater depth. Personally, I work with the spirits of the local dead to protect my home - and find them incredible healpful in this regard. Graveyard work is riskier than just straight ancestor work and deserves it’s own post - which I’ll get to one day.
   

8. And finally…Ancestor Altars!

   Well - this is going to be a long section - and rightly so.

   
   I would strongly recommend setting up an ancestor altar, once you have established some basic knowledge about your ancestors and are certain you want to work with them. In my opinion ancestor work is the key to success is most magical endeavours, as discussed in my previous post.
   
   To do so you will need to set aside a space for a permanent altar. Opinions differ on whether this should be somewhere calm and peaceful or amid the hustle and bustle of the home. I chose to place mine on a shelf behind my sink, due to it being West facing, where the sun sets, and a source of running water - water being life and all that. The location helps me not to forget to refresh the water and candles regularly, most mornings when I’m making my cup of tea, and allows me ample time to brief little chats with the spirits as I’m cooking or washing up. The only location I would not recommend is the bedroom - especially if you enjoy an active bedroom life - if space is limited and you must have a way of closing the altar off, so try and have it in a cupboard or somewhere you can drape a scarf over - dearly departed Auntie Enid doesn’t want to see your intimate shenanigans in death any more than she did in life.
   
   The core items for an ancestor altar would be:

   • a candle

   • incense and an incense burner

   • a glass of water

   • personal items and photos of dead relatives / other dead you wish to work with (do not include photos of the living here)

   
   In addition to this you may want to include an offering bowl for food or other phsyical offerings (tobacco, coffee, alcohol - whatever you feel is appropriate for your spirits). Often though, the best offering one can give the dead, as with the living, is quality time and attention.
   
   Sara Mastros mentions using an empty photo frame to represents all the ancestors you do not have pictures of and I love this idea. I have not done this yet but plan to do so as part of my Halloween celebrations and altar reorganisation tomorrow.
   

   In terms of maintaining an ancestor altar a key thing is to under promise and overdeliver, or at the very list do not make promises you cannot keep. Don’t state you will make offerings daily or even weekly if you are unable to for some reason. Less, done well, is better than more that then fails. I try to keep to a weekend refresh - a change of water, a candle and incense, usually on a Saturday for me (day of Saturn and the dead) though I know others prefer Sundays, being the day of family gathering in Christian culture. you can also plan bigger offerings of food around birthdays and holidays.
   
   Keep the area clean - just like you wouldn’t invite a living relative to stay in a dirty bed with unwashed sheets, don’t expect your ancestors to enjoy visiting a dirty altar with mouldering food and fruit flies.
   
   As above communication is key - talk to them and listen for answers. There is a magical aphorism I cannot recall the source of - what differentiates prayer and magic is that in magic we expect a reply. Take your time here. Tell them about your day - share your successes but don’t use this as a place to dump all your trauma. Just like living parents and grandparents while they are there to support you they want to know you are doing well - many of our ancestors would consider our lives rich beyond words. most of us have access to spices, running water, flushable toilets - things they could not have dreamt of and they are happy to see in our success the success of their lineage.
   
   In terms of hearing back from them they tend to do so in ways our simple and limited human minds can understand. Dreams, synchronicities etc. You can even dedicate a particular divination tool (deck of tarot cards or a pendulum for example) specifically to ancestral communication and keep it on the altar. Though sometimes you may be lucky enough to hear a voice in your head that sounds just like your grandparent. Take that as being them, don’t write it off as mere imagination. Speak to them, and they will speak back.

   References:

Books:

Foor, Daniel, Ancestral Medicine

Mastros, Sara, The Bg Book of Magical Incense

Hadean Guides to the Underworld - Hadean Press (notably those of Mat Hadfield and James Udung)

Stimpson, Ben, Ancestral Whispers

Other:

Anything and everything by Alexander Cummins

The writings on Facebook of the wonderful Sophie Strand