Ancestral Medicine

Daniel Foor, Ph.D., is a licensed psychotherapist and a doctor of psychology. He has led ancestral and family healing intensives throughout the United States since 2005. He is an initiate in the Ifa/Orisha tradition of Yoruba-speaking West Africa and has trained with teachers of Mahayana Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, and different indigenous paths, including the older ways of his European ancestors. He lives in Asheville, NC.

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part One
Foundations of Ancestor Work

One My Personal Journey with the Ancestors
Making Initial Contact • Family Research and Personal Healing • Learning and Teaching Ancestor Work

Two Who Are the Ancestors? The Dead Are Not Dead • Family and Remembered Ancestors • Older Ancestors and the Collective Dead

Exercise One: How Do You Feel about Your Ancestors?

Three Spontaneous Ancestral Contact Dream Contact • Synchronicity • Waking Contact in Nonordinary States • Waking Encounters in Ordinary States

Exercise Two: What Are Your Experiences with Your Ancestors?

Four Ancestor Reverence and Ritual Common Intentions for Ancestor Rituals • Practices to Sustain Ancestral Connection

Exercise Three: Ritual to Initiate Contact with Your Ancestors

Part Two
Healing with Lineage and Family Ancestors

Five Family Research and Initiating Ancestral Healing Gathering What Is Remembered • Considerations before Working Directly with Your Ancestors • Choosing a Focus for Lineage Repair Work

Exercise Four: Attuning to Your Four Primary Bloodlines

Six Meeting with Ancestral Guides Ancestral Guides • Using Ritual to Contact Ancestral Guides • Ways to Deepen Relationships with Ancestral Guides

Exercise Five: Seeking an Ancestral Guide

Seven Lineage Ancestors and the Collective Dead Ancestral Lineage • Assessing the Lineage • Making Repairs with Older Lineage Ancestors

Exercise Six: Getting to Know the Lineage

Exercise Seven: Ritual to Assist Lineage Ancestors

Eight Assisting the Remembered Dead Emotional Healing, Forgiveness, and Unfinished Business • Psychopomp, Elevation of the Dead, and Ancestralization • Work with the Very Troubled Dead and Related Spirits

Exercise Eight: Ancestral Forgiveness Practice

Exercise Nine: Soul Guidance for the Remembered Dead

Nine Integration and Work with Living Family Prayer for Self, Family, and Descendants • Embodiment, Channeling, and Mediumship • Completing the Lineage Repair Cycle • Ancestor Work beyond the Lineage Repair Cycle

Exercise Ten: Embody the Lineage and Offer Prayer for the Living

Exercise Eleven: Harmonizing Your Four Primary Lineages

Exercise Twelve: Ritual to Feast Your Family Ancestors

Part Three
Honoring Other Types of Ancestors

Ten Ancestors and Place Home Is Where the Bones Are • Public Memorials and Monuments • Ancestors and the Natural World • Nine Suggestions for Honoring Ancestors of Place

Exercise Thirteen: Cemetery Practice with Family Ancestors

Exercise Fourteen: Ritual to Greet the Ancestors of a Place

Eleven Affinity Ancestors, Multiple Souls, and Reincarnation Ancestors of Affinity • Multiple Souls • Reincarnation and Past Lives • Integration Work with Family, Place, and Affinity Ancestors

Exercise Fifteen: Celebrating Ancestors of Vocation

Exercise Sixteen: Harmonizing Ancestors of Family, Place, and Affinity

Twelve Joining the Ancestors Preparing for Death • Funeral Rites and the Body after Death • Ritual Tending in the First Year after Death

Exercise Seventeen: Conscious Participation in a Burial

Exercise Eighteen: Ritual for the First Anniversary of a Death

Appendix
Distinguishing Talking with Spirits from Psychosis

Notes

Bibliography

Index

List of Figures

Figure 5.1. Family pedigree chart

Figure 5.2. Family pedigree mandala

Figure 7.1. Layers of lineage through time

Figure 9.1. Ancestral mandala