Why should I work with the ancestors?

There is a question that I’ve asked myself sometimes and that I haven’t had an answer to for a long time: What do I get from working with the ancestors? From all the spirits and all the entities that I could work with – the deities, the fae, spirits of the land, egregores – why should I work with the departed specifically?

¿Por qué debería trabajar con los ancestros?

Sin embargo, hay una pregunta que me he hecho en ocasiones y para la cual aún no tengo respuesta: ¿por qué debería trabajar con los ancestros? ¿Qué gano al hacerlo? De todos los espíritus y entidades con los que podría trabajar —deidades, fae, espíritus de la tierra, egregores—, ¿por qué elegir a los ancestros específicamente?

Wiccan Pentacle Headstone at Arlington National Cemetery.

Editorial: Honoring the Dead

It’s easy to disregard the dead. They don’t have the ability to move you along if you’re loitering where you aren’t wanted. They have no control their own physical bodies any longer, nor over the space where they are interred. They can’t opt out of your pictures. They can’t tell you no.

Column: The Nebulous Rainbow

In terms of a Queer Craft, it is important to form a relationship with figures from queer history, and not just those within the Craft or occultism. Figures like Sappho, Oscar Wilde, Alan Turing, James Baldwin, and Edith Windsor each offer us an opportunity to forge spiritual bonds with those who helped to move the queer experience forward.

Samhain Blessings

We are grateful to you, our readers, who shared ancestor altars and bovedas this year. TWH wishes its northern hemisphere readers a blessed Samhaintide and a merry Beltaine in the southern hemisphere.