(Re)Building Your Holy House with the Ancestors

"The ancestors are the real school of the living. They are the keepers of the very wisdom the people need to live by. The life energy of ancestors who have not yet been reborn is expressed in the life of nature, in trees, mountains, rivers and still water." -M. Somé

In Santería, being open to, working with, revering, the ancestors is a critical foundation of practice. The impact that previous generations of family have had on our lives – in both conscious and unconscious ways – and the influence of the family oversoul require us to be willing to delve into our personal and ancestral histories, facing both the good and the difficult. The process of working with ancestral spirits serves the purpose of helping us to address and purge the negative, to understand the humanity of our forebears, and to embrace the wisdom and sacred blessings that they offer us. Ancestor work can have wonderful benefits for everyone, regardless of the spiritual/religious path that is followed, and helps root our Selves to the earth, to connect us with a deep history that is part of who we are, whether we are aware of it or not. There is something sacred in that.

The other night I decided to pull a couple of cards on the topic of ancestor work:

1) In what way are my ancestors present for me? 3 of Pentacles

Prisma Visions/James Eads

These are the raw notes that I took about how this card made me feel:

Working with me to help build the foundation, base structure, of my life. Supporting me, giving advice/suggestions, then stepping back and watching how I implement them. My own personal team. Helping me find tools to work for what I want and need. Helping me to build my holy house.

That last line took me some time to actually get down on paper. It was floating through my head, and I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, but I decided that I’d figure it out eventually, so I jotted it down.

Helping me to build my holy house.

A night or two later I was reading a book* and came across a section that compared the personal impact of Orisha worship to restoring an old home:

“As you watch those old walls come down, envision your inner walls being knocked away. Close your eyes and feel the two-by-fours cracking apart within you. Watch as dirty windowpanes shatter – windows through which you might have once viewed the world clearly…Watch as workers toil, removing the house’s battered and broken parts, in order to restore its strength and beauty…Feel their jubilation along with their calluses and aching backs as they see it slowly rise before them, restored, reborn (pp. 128-29; Correal, 2003).”

As I read those words, the 3 of Pentacles with the image of the man laying bricks suddenly popped into my mind. My “holy house” is me. In this light, my ancestors work with me like the toiling workers renovating that old home, helping me to open up, break down, and rebuild into a stronger, healthier, happier, more balanced human being. That is what it’s all about.

2) How can I best take advantage of their wisdom and guidance? Hanged Man

Prisma Visions/James Eads

Again, my rough notes are as follows:

Releasing a hold on/sacrificing the ego; making time in my schedule to talk to them. Be willing to allow time for life to develop – not being quick to judge. Letting go of control and trusting them. Open up to insight. 

There is a lot to be said for learning to surrender; to get out of your head, to view your experiences from new vantage points. It has become almost cliché to say, in regards to the Hanged Man, that one must be open to “seeing things from a new perspective.” The reality is that it’s true. When you climb a tree, your entire back yard transforms; you see things you never did, or never could, before. I remember riding a Ferris wheel at a community festival down the street from our house a couple of years back. Once we reached the ride’s apex we could see lakes that we never knew were there, and even the tips of the downtown buildings were visible, driving home the proximity of important places in our environment. But those instances are exterior; we literally see things from a new perspective because our physical bodies are lifted into the sky, or hung upside down. It’s more work to be open to new angles of thought from the inside. But the analogy is potent and clear.

It’s amazing just how driven we are to do what we want to do, or not do what we aren’t in the mood to do. In a way, like with Lent, there is a certain sacrifice in not giving in to our impulses, though in another way it is also about fundamental self-control, focus; our commitment to a practice lies to some degree in the ability to remember our truest, deepest desires, our most heart-centered goals.

I say all of that because in our great rush, and our daily distractions, it’s easy to simply not take the time to sit at the ancestor altar and talk to them. Or just breathe for a few moments. To take a few seconds to call to mind your grandfather, or the name of your great-grandmother, or those nameless forebears that stream back into infinity whose essence you hold in your very cellular make-up. To hold them – even just the awareness of their existence - in your heart and mind briefly, and open yourself to their presence. So then, we sacrifice – “make sacred” – our offering of time, laying our ego out on the table because we know that in some way the benefits and blessings of that surrender might someday, stone by stone, make us whole again.

Prisma Visions/James Eads

*Finding Soul on the Path of Orisa/Crossing Press/T.M. Correal

Creativity and Wisdom

Today I am officially back from vacation. I had two weeks full of travel and spending time with family and old friends. My two littlest children are back with us at home, and our oldest will come back in a few weeks. All I really need today is a cup of good coffee and a quite place to relax....

Yesterday evening, about a mile past the Florida-Georgia line, and 3 hours from home, I drew two cards for the week ahead (being very careful that they wouldn't fly out the window).

The 3 of Pentacles fell from the deck (hey, I just pulled this card last week!). It's perfectly fitting as today I headed back to work! And in reality, the rest of July in terms of my job will be pretty packed, but as I've been on vacation for nearly two weeks, there are a lot of details I need to iron out in regard to my schedule and overall workload. I will be relying on others to help make things flow as smoothly as possible, so I expect a lot of discussions and arrangements to be organized over the next week. Fortunately I received some positive news this morning about a course I'm teaching which will lighten my responsibilities, and it wouldn't be possible without a little help from my friends. So that's all well and good.

Morgan Greer Tarot; Goddess Knowledge Cards

As a follow-up I decided to draw a card from my new Goddess Knowledge deck with art by Susan Seddon-Boulet. The backstory is that my mother bought me a shaman poster by this wonderful artist when I was 12 or 13 years old, and it hung on my door for ages, until the corners were entirely ripped to pieces from the thumb tacks holding it up. I always thought it was my spirit guide - I adored that image! While I was in the north last week, I was in a shop and saw this deck and immediately purchased it. It's not meant to be used for divination, per se - rather its main purpose is to display and teach about many different goddesses across a variety of world cultures. However I've found that it's wonderful for meditation and guidance, and have been using it quite a lot lately!

I drew: Athena.

Athena is the goddess of wisdom and war, and battles are won with clear thinking and good strategy. These are elements that will be important for me this week as I jump back into the work circus. I don't want to feel overwhelmed, and Athena's creative depths, her rational mind, her confidence and skill will help me to navigate my path ahead. One other aspect of this card speaks to me not so much from Athena herself, but from this rather unusual depiction of the goddess. Here she appears rather child-like, surrounded by delicate phases of the moon, and framed by a serpent. She looks to be clothed in autumn leaves. What strikes me most powerfully about this image is the connection to nature. One of the things that I was very aware of over the past couple of vacation weeks is just how much nature calms and nourishes me. So in another sense, I hear Athena telling me to draw on nature's healing and revitalizing energy any time that I might start to feel stressed - to sit outside, to go for a walk, to watch the stars in the night sky.

I like that there is a creative element to both of these cards. We often think of creativity in terms of forming something new and original, but sometimes it's not about being unique in the product we create, rather in the way we approach our work. Success through creative strategizing will be my motto for the week ahead!

3 of Pentacles: Bringing It All Together

I've been on a vacation of sorts for the past week. It started with a road trip through the southeast; first the endless highway pecan signs through southern Georgia, then into the rolling, verdant hills at the Tennessee border. Kentucky's wide open curvaceousness gave way to the flat farmland of Indiana. Eventually the landscape transitioned into the countryside of Michigan, replete with deep pine greens shot through with birch-white.

I drove straight into the arms of my children and extended family. Overall it's been a great visit, and I've had the opportunity to see many old friends, and bask in the glory of a crisp, almost Fall-like, northern summer. I haven't had a lot of time to pull daily cards, but I'm in a momentary lull (in part due to having picked up a light cold, unfortunately!) and so I made some time to pull a card from the Navigators Tarot of the Mystic SEA this afternoon:

Navigators Tarot of the Mystic SEA
J. Turk

It's not lost on me that the image on this 3 of Pentacles is so particularly fitting. Blogging is a regular practice for me - part of important work that I do, and a way in which I connect with community.  It's been thrown a bit off-course for me since embarking on my voyage, and I'm finally carving out a special place for it in the midst of all the movement going on around me. So the depiction of a person typing away at the computer is a perfect reflection of what I'm doing right at this moment!

The 3 of Pentacles also calls forth the idea of working with a team to produce results. It's interesting how that manifests on vacation time with the extended family! Everyone has particular needs, varying expectations, and a multitude of different ideas about how to execute mutual plans. Communication isn't always crystal clear, and flexibility is essential, but somehow things just seem to come together in the end!

How well do you work with others?
What practices create the foundation of your day?
In what ways do you embrace flexibility in the context of group projects?