talking to the ancestors

Future Ancestors,

As I look out on my land, I hear my ancestors whispering in my ear.

We are always here.

I know this, and yes, I need their strength all the time.

I did this incredibly rich ancestors' journey with Vanessa Codorniu. at Alta View Wellness Center a few years ago. I talk about this every year, so forgive me if you have heard it before. During that experience, I was just open. I love Vanessa and trust her, so maybe that is why.

I had no agenda. I had no idea who would come forward, but I journeyed to Central America, where my family is from, and saw them all there. My mother’s Abuelita Isabel with the curly hair. My grandfather’s mother Maria, who was fully Native, with her hat and pipe. Then out of the jungle, my ancestors with Mayan noses and headdresses and painted skin. Sitting in front of all of them, Vanessa asked us to talk to them. And so I did.

I had so many questions, particularly about offering of cacao to my people, and how to carry the medicine of my ancestors to my clients now. But when I went to ask them that, what came out was, “Why am I so fat? Why can’t I lose weight? Why do I have autoimmune issues that limit me?”

I had a student once tell me she was annoyed in our circle because people’s intention setting was around losing weight, and “THAT IS NOT SPIRITUAL!” She was so indignant. In my head I said, “The fuck it isn’t.” As a woman, when you are raised to see your weight and beauty as your main worth and commodity, being thin is valuable; it was much more valuable than your mental or physical health—gaining weight becomes a catalyst for old wounds opening, the spiritual illnesses of self-loathing and non-existent self-worth. How do you grow spiritually when you hate yourself?

There were times in my life when I was too poor to afford to eat regularly. I often worked in restaurants, so I would be guaranteed one meal. Other times, I just starved myself because I thought I was too big, too loud, taking up too much space. My neurodivergent hyperactive self would just break into conversation without waiting for a pause (Interrupting is STILL something I’m working on!). I wanted to shrink myself and learn how to be quiet and small for real for real. I didn’t always want to say the thing, and then, like Cliff Clavin from Cheers, word diarrhea—"well, did you know that a vultures’ stomach acid is so strong with a pH of 1—that it can dissolve anthrax, botulism, and rabies bacteria, so they can safely eat rotting carcasses that would kill almost any other animal, essentially sanitizing the environment as they go…” Cue 15 minutes of watching someone zone out. Then at night, lying in bed, replaying the conversation where I was normal. Shrinking seemed right, so I would just try not to eat, and stay small.

Self-loathing is decidedly not spiritual. It is the antithesis of spiritual, especially when your entire job revolves around empowering people to their highest expression, to coaching them on how to do the work of radically and unconditionally accepting themselves, walking hand-in-hand with them on their spiritual journey. I have taken months and year-long breaks because the self-loathing is too rough, and it feels unethical to hold space for others when I am in such a deep state of depression and engaged in this personal work of self-acceptance and self-love. So, yeah, it’s spiritual work, people.

Dare I say it:

EVERYTHING IS SPIRITUAL WORK!!

(I apologize for screaming at you.)

Back to the journey, my ancestor stepped forward and said:

You are the answer to all the prayers and wishes of all your ancestors: May our children not be hungry. May they be fat and happy. You are the child who is no longer hungry. You have learned to eat and be nourished.

When we do ancestral healing, this is what we do. We dialogue with our ancestors. We reframe. We understand. We humanize. We integrate. We break patterns. We forgive. We allow their wounds to be our wisdom.

What prayer did you answer for your ancestors?

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A few years ago, my niece said to me, "We come from a long line of witches, right?" And I laughed. It depends on how you define witch. But yeah, we come from a long line of Bitches.

When I call in the ancestors before circle, I call in all the healers and mystics in my lineage. But I also come from a long line of storytelling artists and mystics, bawdy women with good heads on their shoulders, from cooks and musicians, teachers and writers. But the drunks are there too, the ones who acted badly. I have a great-grandmother who denied her own daughter because she cheated on her husband, and gave her daughter away, only to have her son bring the girl to the house as a date to a school dance. Fula, as they called her, looked exactly like her mother, a mirror for her sins. (You cannot make this shit up.) She still denied her and forbade her son from speaking to her. Later, all the children of my great-grandmother welcomed her into the family. Fula laughed a lot and came to every family function, but my great-grandmother never talked to her or acknowledged her existence. God, that is some awful behavior. But my great-grandmother played 9 instruments, and spoke five languages, and made people laugh all the time.

I have clients and students who say, “My ancestors were awful people. What do I do?” First of all, it isn’t just you. We all have ancestors who were awful people. Some in different ways, but that is when we do the work of looking at the legacy of awfulness in your family line. If you don’t know your family line or family stories, that is something else to look at. WHY? The legacy in your family is that they do not speak the stories. Maybe they even repeat patterns over and over because nothing is ever learned or grown from. How I work with my great-grandmother, who was lovely to some of her children, and awful to one, I say, “Thank you for letting me be able to see this and break the pattern of the bad mother. Thank you for allowing me to break the awfulness.” (Instead of awfulness, you can replace that with breaker of our family trauma, pain, abuse, addiction, victimhood, etc.) When we reframe our ancestors —putting them in their historical, trauma, and family context —we can find wisdom, even if it is learning from their sins. Sometimes the deep grief of lives not lived, or their actions, can move through us. We can cry for our family lineage. We can cry for their victims, for ourselves, if we were the victim or them as a victim and victimizer.** This ancestral work is about healing and releasing. We get to be the conduit for compassion, love, and grief if we feel the ancestral lineage hasn’t been compassionate or grieved enough. We get to acknowledge the awfulness of our ancestors, too.

But we transform grief into gratitude through this process. Not for having lost, but for them having lived at all. They brought you here, after all, they created people who created people who created you.

Our Ancestors —the good, the bad, and the ugly —have lessons for us because they were human. This is the medicina they bring forth—their humanness. And not that anyone wants my opinion on this, but this is the beauty and awe of the stories of Buddha and Jesus—their humanness existed, their flaws, their character defects and defaults, but still they sought to heal themselves, then others. They found a path of spirituality that helped them and passed it on. This is also the lessons of our ancestors—that they were human and had a story, which is now part of your DNA. (Epigenetics is a cool rabbit hole to go down)

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Beyond just dialogue with my ancestors, I also think about what it means to be a good ancestor.

How do we become an ancestor vs. just another people on the family tree who died?

Writer Layla Saad, whose podcast How to Become a Good Ancestor, prioritizes this concept, as is evidenced by her podcast title. Basically, she says we need to live and work in a way that intentionally creates a more just and liberated world for future generations. That’s the idea. We live in a way that thinks about the next generations, the earth, the future. We each have a role in the ongoing story of humanity. We focus more on making a positive impact, rather than on our personal achievement. And that doesn’t happen magically, it happens by us engaging in our own spiritual, mental, emotional and physical work, such as self-reflection and understanding one's own role in family systems. Being a good ancestor requires us to break patterns of suffering, not just in our personal lives, but the karmic and ancestral patterns we all fall into that keep our children in suffering and then suffering of our community, which means dismantling things like racism, sexism, ableism…other isms (In recovery, we say -ISM stand for I-Self-Me.) We take intentional action and live from a place of hope, rather than just hoping for the best.

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I create an altar for Día de los Muertos* in mid-October, when I begin to feel the ancestors pushing against me. I call them in. Ask for their help. It is not simply because I come from a culture that celebrates this holiday (though I do), but because I am a bereaved mother. And this American happy-happy culture does a lousy job of honoring the dead and grief.

Day of the Dead is one of those holidays that has grown more and more mainstream with non-Catholic, non-Latino people creating altars, painting their faces, hanging up decorated sugar skulls, and dancing into the night. That isn't happening because others want to become or appropriate another culture, but because we are all hungry to honor our dead. We want to celebrate our ancestors. We want to walk with death, rather than hide our grief and whisper to our dead in the still of the night. It is only in recent history that the dead were hidden away from us, or that we were protected from the dying, the dead, and grief. All cultures from Europe to Asia to Africa to the Americas honored the dead.

So Day of the Dead, I create a space for my ancestors and my predeceased ancestral daughter, hang a painting of her and me that I painted in the early days after her death, and another of my ancestors, the ones that whisper to me in my sessions. I put calaveras and bright colors all around the altar as well as food, water, flowers and candles. In my mother's native Panama, my family walks to the cemetery to have a meal with the dead. They decorate the graves and commune as a family.

Those weeks with my Día de los Muertos altar are not simply a time to grieve, but a time to celebrate life. When we honor our ancestors, we acknowledge the wisdom they have given to us in life and now in death.

It is easy to create an ofrenda, or altar. Place photos of your relatives and ancestors in the space that feels sacred. I often use the top of my bookshelf or an undisturbed space. My mother uses her kitchen windowsill, which I always love too. You can put a candle, offerings of food, or herbs. Place a skull or skeleton (if you love the morbidity of representing the dead) and flowers. It can be as simple or as elaborate as you want. And you don't have to do this only for the ancestors you feel closest to, but also for those whose lessons were deep and difficult. Do it for your peace. If you have no ancestors you want to honor, do it for an artist you admire (Frida, anyone?), or a musician who has passed over. The days of the dead are considered October 31, November 1, and November 2nd. On October 31, All Hallows Eve, it is said the souls of the children who have died come back through the altars to the angelitos. According to tradition, the gates of heaven are opened at midnight on October 31, and the spirits of children can rejoin their families for 24 hours. The spirits of adults can do the same on November 2. November 1 is All Saints Day, when the ascended ones, saints, martyrs, and the angels are honored.

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If you are looking for a guided way to honor the dead, join me on October 31st for Cacao Ceremony & Muertos journey. We will first partake in the sacred cacao, then move into a shamanic journey to connect with the dead—whether it is your passed-over parent or loved one, your grandparents, ancestors you never met, but want to connect with, or a famous artist, sacred figure, philosopher, thinker, or religious figure. Join me on Friday, October 31st for our circle.

Lots of bonuses with this one, including a how-to guide for your ofrenda, how to make a cup of cacao, how to bake pan muerto or sugar skulls, and of course, the healing work we do together in circle. Everything is recorded if you cannot attend live.

*You can read more about El Día de los Muertos at this History Channel link. Just a quick correction, though, we celebrate it in Panama and throughout Central America, so it is not only a Mexican holiday.

**In the Body Keeps Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk , he talks about how PTSD sufferers from the Vietnam War often recounted the trauma they inflicted on others as the trauma they could not heal, because there is no outlet for talking about the awful things they did that they were ashamed of. Just to get nerdy for a minute, the unique part of training for troops going to Vietnam was the way they trained soldiers to fire at object popping up. In previous wars, they trained more as target practice, but since researched showed that a majority of soldiers in WW2 and Korea just froze when confronted with an enemy, the military decided to train them to shoot at moving objects with no faces or human characteristics, so they would freeze less. In the end, there are men responding to movement with gunfire and casualties of civilians and children were so high.

Register for this healing circle by clicking this link

I hope to see you at the circle. Until then, enjoy this playlist I pulled together for Día de los Muertos.

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Have you worked with me?

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I am looking for testimonials around my work as a shamanic earth medicine practitioner, retreat leader, tarot reader, teacher, healer, and circle keeper. Just share about what you have gotten out of an in-person or online class with me, a private one-on-one session or a group healing event you attended. If you belong to my membership group, I’d also love to hear and share your feedback about my monthly readings, shamanic journeys and FB group.

Fill the form below and share your feedback with me. If you don’t mind sharing your photo to showcase with your testimonial, awesome! (send via email at angie@themoonandstone.com) Otherwise, I will just share your words. If you had a less-than-ideal experience, I’d love to hear that too. All feedback informs how I adjust and change classes and offerings in the future. Here is the information I would love to have:

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October's Tarot Card, Earth Medicine + Sky Medicine

It's Eclipse season and the last of the two year cycle of Taurus-Scorpio Eclipses.

In this episode, Angie talks about the astrology of the month, pulls a Tarot card archetype for October (the Hermit), and the Earth Medicine allies—Plant Medicine of Mugwort and Damiana; Stone Medicine: Charoite, Moonstone + Hematite as well as work with the medicine of our Spirit Guide the Valkyrie and the Animal Guide of Phoenix

You can listen to this latest episode of Centered on Spotify (https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/VXWTngQezDb) or wherever you listen to podcasts (Amazon, I Heart Radio, Apple Music, Pocketcasts, etc) or right on my website. Or just check out my blog.

Remember these earth medicine guides can be tools for this month, and help you do your thang! A medicine bundle is for sale in my shop, as always.

You can find October's Medicine Bundle here: https://themoonandstone.com/.../oct-2023-earth-medicine...

Remember I do collective Full Moon + New Moon readings for my membership group as well as a Guided Shamanic Journey with the animal medicine of the month. We also meet each Friday for circle, and you get free bonus of Q&As with me. Check out more information here:

understanding the medicine

When we see an animal die before us, what are we supposed to interpret and understand from that medicine?

On the way to our last circle, one of my students hit a deer. She was devastated. The deer most certainly will die, or already had died. She asked me, “What does this mean?” As a circle keeper and an earth medicine walker, I found myself stumbling over my words. Why does this happen to us who walk an earth medicine path? Others chimed in with their thoughts—the deer knew you could hold space for its transition; it was destined to die; better you than someone else.

A few years ago, after a circle, I was driving home. I live in the boonies, as we say, out in the sticks, where I worry about hitting deer. Pennsylvania ranks as the second most deer collisions in the country. So, I drive slowly, cautiously through the fields, and frequently stop for all kinds of wildlife. But I was still in the city, headed home, and bam, a deer ran into my car. It hit my front quarter panel. I pulled over and the deer laid on the side of the road, panting, clearly injured. I called the police and sent Reiki. I envisioned the Reiki energy repairing the deer’s legs and head, and strengthening it. I did this Reiki for almost 15 minutes, and the deer stood up, steady and whole, then ran right out into the street to get demolished and killed by a massive truck.

The truck tore the deer apart. I shook and cried as well.

What does this mean? Is it still medicine for us if we see our medicine dead on the side of the road? And how do we interpret it?

As I meditated on the death of the deer, I could see this interplay between the deer’s medicine and the encroachment of humanity. The medicine of deer resides in its deep vulnerability. When deer interact with humanness and urban environments, we begin to see just how vulnerable these magnificent creatures are.  Humans have disrupted the balance of the predator and the prey. Our ancestors decimated the predators—wolves, mountain lion population, the bears—who would have hunted the sick and weak, keeping populations down. Massive deforestation also affects deer populations. Whitetail deer flourish in edge environments, right where the forest meets the suburbs. Streets and cars encroach on the delicate ecosystems. And hunting is down around the country with the ease of shopping for meat in the supermarket.

So, deer medicine is not only a medicine about the individual deer’s vulnerability to predators but the species. Deer, particularly those with antlers, have a strong connection to Spirit. Their antlers are said to reach high to our guides and angels as antennae for messages. Deer connects with the subtle energy system and has heightened senses from hearing to vision to smell. They are always sensing the disruption in the force.

I could not help thinking as my student told me about the deer and her accident that this was part of the critical message for her. Knowing that she is going through a beautiful spiritual opening, deer medicine can come in this way to remind us of our vulnerability during our spiritual opening. When we experience all this light and love that begins to channel through us from Spirit, we live in a bubble of good vibes. When I started opening, I just was always blissed out and only able to tolerate other lightworkers. When we take all this gentle light and vulnerability into the real world, our first encounters with the sickness of our society, the toxicity and negativity of people, the harshness of the news and the suffering of others, we experience this world just like the deer, hit out of nowhere by real life. This modern world is cruel to the vulnerable. Deer medicine embodies vulnerability, quiet, and gentleness. Nothing is more profoundly indicative of the imbalance then when nature interacts with urban life. Where we see how pollution hurts wildlife, or cars kill deer. 

This grounded, counter energy to very high vibrational work is part of the medicine lightworkers need to carry as much as the light message of our power animals.  When you open in profound ways, you are, of course, more susceptible to those deep wells of grief and compassion. But it goes deeper. There is nothing natural about carrying vulnerability or being an empath in a narcissistic world. We also have to experience and learn about the shadow medicine of our animals. Shamanic work is not always easy or light or fun. It is mostly about challenging ourselves to go beyond the surface, to experience the more profound message, to become stewards of the Earth, spokespeople for the Mother. When all of this starts, we want to live in that amazing Other World of Spirit. When we practice earth medicine, we become intrinsically tied to Mother Earth and Grandmother Moon, and their incredible cycles. Life and death, happiness and grief, masculine and feminine—this delicate balance becomes second sight to us We can see it without trying. Impermanence and suffering of life and of the human condition is part of our medicine and the spiritual experience. We must hold space for both light and darkness, birth and death. As we begin our opening, this can be a harsh reality.

If this happens to you, or you are driving and notice an animal sacred to you, dead on the side of the road, my suggestion is to begin asking what is the medicine for you—both in the animal’s living experience (how does it live, love, eat, hunt, raise its young, etc), then as your medicine interacts with the brutality of this world. 

The prayer stick I created for the Vulture I harvested in 2016.

The prayer stick I created for the Vulture I harvested in 2016.

We can also show reverence for the medicine of that animal by creating a prayer stick. This is a way of honoring your deer and helping its Spirit make its way upward. You take a stick. I suggest about a foot to a foot and a half long. I would walk in an area where the animal was killed, or an area sacred to you. Do not take a stick off of a living tree. Forage on the earth for it. Remember to sing and leave an offering for found objects. Tobacco is traditional, but lavender, a piece of hair or other offering is proper. Hold the stick, and commune with it. Talk to it.  Take all the bark off of it. Bark represents the ego, and we take the bark off to humble ourselves before Great Spirit. Sanding the stick, and working with it in some way is important to connect your energy to the tree energy. You can decorate it with red leather or red fabric, crystals, feathers or other offerings. You can paint it with colors, or symbols. Attach leather or yarn to float in the wind. Feathers are traditional because they carry the prayers to heaven, also the soul of the deer or animal hurt.  Take some red flannel and make a little offering or prayer tie to Spirit (tobacco or sage is traditional) and tie it to the Stick. Some traditions use a Y shaped stick. Then place it in the earth. This grounds your prayer and gives it a solid foundation. Also it connects Mother Earth and Father Sky. If you want, you can place it where the deer was hit, or you can place it in a sacred place in your yard. Sing a song to offer its soul to heaven/Great Spirit. I did this for the Vulture I harvested last year, and it felt important and honoring of the medicine and nature.

If you are able and feel up to it, take the hair or an item from the animal that was killed (always remembering that if it stinks, it will always stink. If it has bugs, your house will have bugs, so only newly killed animals can be harvested, but that is another post) and use it in ceremony. As medicine keepers, we need to honor the medicine and the allies and giving them a good death is part of this process. You can use that medicine you harvested on your altar or in a medicine bundle.

One thing I know is that none of us aim for the deer or squirrel or bird, so release guilt. Guilt is the illusion of control (if I did something different, it would have changed the outcome). Just be with the profound grief. That is enough suffering. Create a ritual of honoring the medicine of the deer. Sit in the discomfort of your humanness and the ways in which we can mitigate the harshness of our living on the earth. Allow the tears their flow. Fall into ritual and ceremony. 

Remember anything, all of our human experience, can become our medicine. To ignore the death, suffering, and violence inherent in our animal medicine is to ignore the full power of its medicine. May you walk gently on the Earth, friends. 
 

altar creation spread

If you didn't know, one of my passions is altar making. I have an altar 100% of the time on my bookcase in my meditation room. On one side, i always have a crystal grid going, just to raise the vibration of the room and my soul work. On the other side (because the bookcase is long and thin), I place a statue of a goddess or angel, or a picture, or a statue or fetish of the animal medicine I'm working with. Then more crystals, ones that work with the crystal grid or medicine wheel I have on the other side. I change it out depending on the holy day or sabbat, my soul work or journey work, shadow issues that arise, messages I am getting from Spirit, Animal Medicine, health or family crisis...whenever I am facing a new challenge, passion or phase in my life, I look to the altar first. 

I have been facing so many different exciting changes and circumstances. My health journey has been challenging this year. My work life has expanded with hibiscus moon and then my client base in harrisburg is always expanding and changing. My soul work has been on a nice even keel, and then I went to SouLodge Earth Medicine Gathering and uncovered many layers of what I need to do. Where do I even start with all this?

Well, that was my question. Where to start? Where does Spirit want me to start with all that information? Being an intuitive isn't always so clear cut. I get tons of messages. Right now, my dreaming is through the roof (Last night, i dreamed an incredible dream, and then when it was done, I decided to have that dream again, and then reworked it into a new dream with a new ending. Talk about lucid dreaming on steroids!) And sometimes I get that analysis paralysis, or rather information overload!

Because of all this soul work, I have rededicated myself to morning journaling and daily tarot pulls. AND WOWEE! it is awesome. What is awesome is finding a new passion for something I do so often for other people. When you pull tarot for clients, you often don't pull for yourself. Part of it is that i easily dismiss my messages--yeah, yeah, I need to stop being so hard on myself. Okay. Scoop up the cards, and immediately forget the message. So, journaling keeps you accountable, and I decided to play and explore some new decks beyond my beloved Rider-Waite, specifically the Chrysalis deck by Toney Brooks and Holly Sierra as well as Motherpeace by Karen Vogel and Vicki Noble. I've been using the BOOK! (I always joke with my students about getting OFF BOOK! and now I am back ON BOOK [and incidentally loving being on book. I even went on Rachel Pollack's book with the Rider Waite just to keep it going.]) 

All of this is to say, this morning, I tweaked a spread I do for myself for creating altars when I have a short attention span and cannot figure out what to focus on. It incorporates Oracle decks with Tarot; in fact, it incorporated four additional oracle decks--Visions Crystal Oracle, my own oracle deck called Cycles, of which there is only one deck and it is all about ritual, The Wild Unknown Animal Spirit deck and the Ascended Master deck by Doreen Virtue. Then I used the Chrysalis Tarot deck for my main work, which has guides in and of itself. (Such a fantastic deck. I was at first obsessed with the pips, but now, I cannot get enough of the Majors. Ariadne is stalking me, I swear. And Kali for that matter.)

Anyway, here is the spread as I pulled it:

So much of what this reading said to me was that it was time to allow transformation to happen. The shadow work here is around letting go, surrender and joy. I often struggle with joy. Joy is a bugger for me. So, this work with snake centers around this shedding of control and desire to figure it all out. The ritual card here is one I created called Enso, Imperfection. I used to have a fairly steady and daily enso painting practice. I don't paint ensos anymore--life got complicated with my adventurous two year old. But I decided to paint a rock to remind me of this for my altar, using this enso ritual as a jumping off point to explore an imperfect creative practice to funnel some energy.

Here is the altar and grid that arose from this spread:

You also can play with this spread, as I have compiled a little easy Tarot Layout for you to incorporate into your practice. In fact, I created a few of these for Pinterest, since I use SO MANY pinterest layouts these days, having not so recently discovered that they exist. Enjoy and share, if you can. It is great to have a Tarot community to bounce ideas off of. LOVE to YOU!