Walking Between Worlds: Embracing Ancestral Magic at the Equinox
Greetings Bloomers,
The Big Wheel is turning so I thought I’d offer some guidance on how you might choose to engage the seasonal shift by working with your healed and wise ancestors. The more I work as a medium and connect clients with loved ones in spirit (including ancestors they know of but have never met) the more I feel called to speak to the importance of ancestral connection.
It’s likely that you’ll hear more about this down the road, but for now, consider this newsletter an invitation to gently, and intuitively incorporate some ancestral magic into your equinox self-care and spiritual practices. Let’s dive in.
As day and night find perfect equilibrium at the autumn equinox, we stand at one of nature's most profound threshold moments. This ancient turning point invites us to pause and honor the deep wisdom of those who walked before us. According to Celtic and European folklore traditions (as well as others across the world), the season between the autumn equinox and Samhain (aka Halloween) is when the veil between our world and the spirit realm grows thin.
This belief, though rooted in ancient storytelling rather than scientific fact, has profoundly influenced how many cultures approach this special time of year. I personally feel the veil between this world and the next is thin (and accessible) all the time, but I appreciate how the connection to the unseen realms can feel particularly potent as days grow darker. That said, the folkloric understanding of autumn as a threshold season creates an especially meaningful opportunity for connecting with our ancestral lineages.
Across many traditions worldwide, autumn has been a time of:
Harvest Gratitude: Communities gathered to celebrate the final harvests, acknowledging that their survival through winter, and beyond, often depended on the wisdom, practical knowledge, and hard work passed down through generations. This theme of grateful recognition for ancestral contributions appears in countless cultures worldwide.
Ancestor Veneration: The autumn season traditionally marked the beginning of remembrance time, when families would light candles for departed loved ones and share stories that kept ancestral wisdom alive. Communities would invoke the protection and guidance of their forebears as they prepared for winter's challenges. This honoring of those who came before transcends any single cultural tradition.
Threshold Rituals: Many peoples recognized this as a time when communication with the spirit world became more accessible. They would leave offerings and create sacred spaces for ancestral communion, understanding that the thinning veil between worlds offered special opportunities for connection. This recognition of autumn as a threshold time appears across cultures globally.
Drawing from the wisdom found in ancestral healing practices, here are some gentle ways to connect with your lineage during this sacred time:
Begin by establishing a simple ancestral altar or shrine. Include photographs of known ancestors, items representing your cultural heritage, and symbols from the autumn harvest such as apples, grain, nuts, or colorful leaves. Light a candle to signal your intention to connect across the veil.
Spend time in quiet reflection, acknowledging the gifts your ancestors gave you, not just your genetic inheritance, but the skills, values, resilience, and wisdom that you carry within yourself because of them.
Consider writing a letter of gratitude to an ancestral line (your mother’s - mother’s line, your mother’s - father’s line, your father’s - father’s line, or your father’s - mother’s line), expressing appreciation for their sacrifices and celebrations that enabled your existence.
In the stillness of meditation, invite your healed and wise ancestors to share their presence with you. Trust whatever arises, perhaps a sense of warmth, a memory surfacing unexpectedly, or simply a feeling of being held by something larger than yourself. This isn't about dramatic visions but rather subtle, loving communication.
Following ancient customs, consider making simple offerings of food, drink, or flowers. This practice acknowledges the ongoing relationship between the living and the ancestors, creating a bridge of reciprocity and honor.
Please know that if you are adopted, or if you don't know anything about your lineages, you can still do this practice. Simply visualize and call into your heart all the people who came before you so you could be here, and if you wish to honor the folks who've loved and supported you in your life, call them into your practice as well.
If there are ancestors or deceased persons with whom you do not wish to connect, simply don't. Boundaries are essential when working with ancestral lineages, and many of us have family members and ancestors who caused harm or made choices that created lasting wounds. This is precisely why I recommend working specifically with your healed and wise ancestors rather than reaching out to known ancestors indiscriminately.
Drawing from Daniel Foor's framework in Ancestral Medicine, this distinction is crucial for our spiritual and emotional safety. As Foor explains, "Not all dead people are ancestors in the sense of being beneficial guides and allies. Some of the dead are stuck, confused, or even malevolent."
I personally hold a slightly different perspective. I don't believe the dead carry unresolved trauma in the same way we might imagine. Rather, I believe it's we, the living, who carry the trauma they inflicted during their lifetime, making it emotionally and spiritually challenging for us to work with them in spirit form. When we attempt to connect with recent ancestors who caused harm, we bring our wounds, triggers, and unhealed pain into the spiritual space, which can complicate the practice.
Healed and wise ancestors represent those who have moved beyond their earthly limitations and found peace in the spirit realm. More importantly for our practice, these are ancestral spirits we can approach without the emotional charge or trauma responses that might arise when connecting with those who harmed us or our family members. These ancestors have can serve as sources of blessing, protection, and guidance.
When we work with healed and wise ancestors, we're connecting with the most loving aspects of our lineage - those who can truly support our growth and healing without perpetuating cycles of harm. This approach allows us to receive ancestral wisdom and support while maintaining appropriate spiritual boundaries.
The healed and wise ancestors can also serve as powerful allies in our own healing journey. They may gently bring pain or unresolved wounds to the surface - not to harm us, but so that we might tend our pain in meaningful and supported ways. Working with them creates a safe container for this healing process, as their love and wisdom helps us navigate whatever arises with greater compassion and understanding.
Lastly, I want to add that working with the healed and wise ones in your lineage is not only a way to receive healing for yourself - it also heals the wounded world. Our long gone healed and wise ones no longer have physical bodies or a vessel to enter the physical world, which makes our work with them so important. They need us to help them heal not only ourselves, but to offer what we can to community and others in terms of being of service to helping bring healing into this world.
The Tenets of Ancestral Work
Based on years of connecting clients with their loved ones in spirit and working within the ancestral healing framework, here are the core principles that guide safe, effective, and healing-centered ancestral practice:
1. The Tenet of Conscious Boundaries
The ancestors themselves are not unhealed - it is we, the living, who carry the wounds, trauma, and unresolved pain from what they may have inflicted during their lifetime. When we try to connect with those who harmed us, we bring our triggers and unhealed pain into the spiritual space, which can complicate our practice.
Setting boundaries with certain deceased family members protects our healing space and allows us to receive guidance without reactivating our trauma. This is spiritual wisdom, not avoidance, especially when we remain committed to our personal healing work.
2. The Tenet of Emotional Safety
We work with healed and wise ancestors - those we can approach without emotional charge or trauma responses. This isn't about the ancestors needing healing; it's about creating emotional and spiritual safety as we do this sacred work.
3. The Tenet of Loving Lineage
We connect specifically with the most loving aspects of our lineage - those ancestors who have moved beyond their earthly limitations and found peace in the spirit realm. These ancestors can offer pure support without triggering our unresolved wounds.
4. The Tenet of Supported Healing
Healed and wise ancestors create a safe container for our healing process. They may gently bring our pain to the surface - not to harm us, but so we can tend our wounds in meaningful and supported ways, guided by their love and wisdom.
5. The Tenet of Reciprocal Purpose
Our ancestors need us as much as we need them. They no longer have physical bodies or vessels to enter the physical world, making our collaboration essential. We become their hands, voices, and healing presence in this realm.
6. The Tenet of World Healing
Working with healed and wise ancestors serves not only our personal healing but also helps heal the wounded world. Through us, our ancestors can offer their gifts to community and others, extending healing beyond our individual lives.
7. The Tenet of Transformative Legacy
We work to transform inherited patterns of trauma and survival strategies that no longer serve, while preserving cycles of love and wisdom. We choose healing not just for ourselves, but for all who came before and all who will come after.
These tenets recognize that our ancestors have found peace beyond the veil, while we still carry the work of healing what was wounded in the living world. Through conscious partnership with our healed and wise lineage, we become agents of healing for ourselves, our communities, and future generations.
Ancestral Tending and Healing
Sometimes our lineages carry wounds alongside wisdom. Take time to consider patterns of trauma, unhealed grief, or survival strategies that no longer serve you. This season offers a gentle opportunity to tend these ancestral wounds with love and compassion.
Sit quietly and recall a family pattern you'd like to transform - perhaps anxiety, addiction, difficulty with boundaries, or patterns around money, love, or self-worth. Rather than focusing on blame or judgment, approach this with the understanding that these patterns often began as survival strategies or responses to difficult circumstances.
Visualize yourself surrounded by the loving presence of your healed and wise ancestors, those who have found peace and wisdom beyond the veil. Speak to them: "I see this (fill in the blank) pattern in our line. I understand it served a purpose, and I honor the strength it took to survive. Now I choose healing, not just for myself, but for all of us, including those who came before and those who will come after."
Imagine golden light flowing through your ancestral line, both forward and backward through time, carrying healing and transformation. You might feel called to forgive, to grieve, or simply to witness with love. Trust whatever arises and be sure to pay attention to the subtle shifts in atmosphere around you as well as in within your body.
End by thanking your ancestors for their strength and stating your intention to break cycles of harm while preserving cycles of love and wisdom.
Seasonal Reflection Questions
What ancestral gifts am I most grateful for this season? (Look for clues in your natural talents, the values that feel unshakeable within you, the ways you instinctively care for others, skills that came easily to you, or strengths that emerge during difficult times. Sometimes ancestral gifts show up as things people often compliment you on, or qualities that feel like “who you are.”)
How might my ancestors want to support me through the coming months? (Sit quietly and ask this question directly, then notice what arises. It might be a feeling of strength, a memory of resilience, a sense of being held, or practical guidance about moving forward. Trust your first impressions.)
Wisdom & Guidance
If I could ask my wise ancestors one question, what would it be?
What guidance feels like it's trying to reach me through my lineage?
Cultural Connection
What traditions or practices from my heritage call to me?
How can I explore my cultural roots with curiosity and respect?
What aspect of my ancestral culture would serve my life today?
Moving Forward
How do I want to be remembered by future generations?
What gifts do I carry that came through my lineage and want to be shared?
How can I live in a way that honors both my ancestors and my authentic self?
This season offers opportunity for gentle ancestral healing work. As we honor our forebears, we can also acknowledge that love sometimes comes with burdens. With compassion, we can work to transform inherited patterns of suffering while maintaining connection to ancestral strength and wisdom.
Autumn Equinox Ancestral Tarot Spread
This five-card spread invites connection with your healed and wise ancestors:
Card 1 / The Threshold: What energy surrounds you at this equinox moment? Place at the center
Card 2 / Ancestral Gift: What wisdom or strength does a healed ancestor offer you now? Place above center
Card 3 / Ancestral Healing: What ancestral pattern or wound is ready to be transformed through love? Place to the left
Card 4 / Your Role: How can you honor your lineage while living authentically in the present? Place to the right
Card 5 / Integration: How can you carry this ancestral wisdom forward into the darker months ahead? Place below center
Take time with each card, allowing intuitive impressions to arise. Trust whatever comes (images, feelings, memories, or simple knowing). Your ancestors communicate through your intuition.
Moving Forward with Ancestral Support
As we prepare for winter's introspective journey, we do so not alone but accompanied by generations of strength, love, and wisdom. Regardless of your cultural background, this autumn equinox reminds us that we are all part of an eternal web of connection that transcends time and space.
I'll quickly add that taking care of YOU is tending to your ancestors, because they live within you. They are you, and you are them. Knowing that, I offer this tender invitation to lean into the three-month journey we've been on where we've been exploring the top themes that come up in client sessions: discovering what's essential, understanding limiting beliefs, and understanding boundaries.
These topics tie in wonderfully with ancestor work. Engaging these specific newsletters and worksheets could be your way of honoring yourself and your ancestors. Don't forget that October's theme is all about boundaries, which is one of the most potent skills I've learned in the last few years, and I feel that in my learning to set boundaries I have done much to honor and heal many in my lineage, including myself.
May this season bring you deep connection with your ancestral wisdom and the peace that comes from knowing you are held by love that transcends time. Take time this week to step outside at sunset, feel the shifting energy of the season, and whisper a quiet "thank you" to those who made your life possible.
I leave you with this prayer I wrote for my ancestors. I share it with you so that you might include and incorporate it in your equinox practices.
A Prayer for Healed and Wise Ancestors
O, ancient ones
whose spirits now reside
in the quiet depths of time.
Healed and wise,
your souls are free from mortal bonds
that still hold me.
You’ve walked the earth,
and moved beyond the bittersweet test,
of life in physical form.
Now and forever at peace, I feel your gentle guidance,
as I move through the seasons of my evolving life.
Your love and wisdom,
kindle a hope within,
that has become my inner light -
this light is my guide,
and my connection to you.
Your strength and love,
enrich this earthly realm,
filling my soul with light.
I reach through the ages to clasp your hand,
the bonfire of your love and wisdom illuminates my way,
and I know that I am you, and you are me.
Today I honor your journey,
your legacy within my heart,
each beat an answer,
to the echo of your existence.
My reply is tender,
my reply is this -
I will tend my light,
with love and hope,
until my time comes,
to join with you,
once again.
And so, it is.