From Elder to Ancestor

A practical guide to becoming a good Ancestor

For millennia people connected with the Ancestors as part of their regular spiritual practice, seeking wisdom and inspired vitality from those who came before. Each member of a community grew up guided by sage elders, naturally walking the path into fit elderhood themselves and, upon their good deaths, becoming wise, capable Ancestors to whom their descendants could turn.

Revealing how to restore the path from fit elder to wise ancestor, S. Kelley Harrell explores the spiritual, cultural, and ancestral aspects of aging well and presents practical exercises and rituals to help you intentionally craft yourself as a fit elder on the path to Ancestorhood. She explains the importance of creating a direct personal connection with Nature and of respecting the spirits who surround us, including asking their permission before engaging them in ritual or healing work. Exploring the concept of animism and how it is key to becoming an elder who will go on to become an Ancestor, the author shares exercises for awakening and deepening your animistic connection to the world around you as well as rituals for embodiment and grounding.

Examining the most powerful obstacles to dying well, the author explores deep spiritual work with the Sacred Self, including shadow work, the initiatory rite of heartbreak, and how to honor the traumas that created your shadow parts and their dysfunctional patterns. She looks at Ancestor work, including forging a supportive connection with our Sacred Parents, the first Ancestors, as well as specific practices to help you heal your family line. She shows how recognizing that you are Nature, part of the sacred order, allows you to begin rewilding and how honoring your own sacredness, the divinity of your inner cosmology, allows you to identify and value what you have to offer your community as an elder.

Showing that initiation into elderhood is the work of our lives, this book explains how, through personal introspection and engagement with the living world around us, we can cultivate our unique way to elder well.