Ancestor

Ancestor Worship

I Am the Body of My Ancestors oil on canvas.

Purchase the original painting from Saatchi Art

Featured on the cover of Tending to the Ancestors: Isis-Seshat Journal Winter 2018-2019

While your name continues to be spoken you continue to live.

This is the fundamental theory behind ancestor worship which can be witnessed to an extreme in ancient Egyptian culture.   A study of Hatshepsut, a female pharaoh of ancient Egypt, reveals that she was condemned to non being because all references to her name and existence were eliminated by her stepson.  Only in comparatively recent times has her name come to light.

It is Hatshepsut who is the inspiration for such novels as “Jewel of the Seven Stars”.  

If you continue to live, then you can assist your descendants who preserve your existence by speaking your name and remembering your deeds.  Descendants will make requests to the deceased for assistance just as they might have prior to the ancestor’s death and in much the same way as they did in life.  The dead are regarded as family members and are a part of the greater family.  In nearly every ancient culture ancestor worship is a practice and it is the ancestor spirits who maintain the values of the culture and maintain its standards.

It is worth considering that the living hold the deceased hostage, for if the living do not get what they want they can condemn the ancestor to a second death by no longer remembering them.

Remembering and honoring one’s ancestors as being the origin of yourself is the simple act of paying thanks to those who are responsible for giving you the gift of being alive.

We should work to resonate with ancestor message vibrations that agitate our karmic thread, for this thread is the link between the living and the dead.  These vibrations, which are dream fluid, are what we incubate in so that we might metamorphose into harmonic sound cords of rich timbre to become pure cosmic notes.