Animism, Ancestors, and Ritual
Ancestral Medicine is an organization that encourages the embodiment of animist values and practices in ways that are culturally healing, non-dogmatic, and accessible to people of diverse means, ancestries, and geographies.
We offer online courses, training in ancestral healing practices, and opportunities for international learning and ritual participation. For more on our team and values see: About Us, Dr. Daniel Foor, and Core Values.
Animism and Earth Reverence
Animism is one name for an ancient and ultimately ordinary ethic that emphasizes relationships. Animists recognize that living humans are only one kind of person in a much wider network of kinship. These others include our human ancestors, the big spirits of animals and plants, mountains and metals, fire and water, microorganisms, wind and weather, deities of many regions and temperaments, star people, nature spirits, and so on.
We inhabit a responsive and relational world. This understanding is the inheritance of all human beings, and is learnable when previously forgotten. Our current offering that focuses on animism per se is the Practical Animism online course.
Animism is one name for an ancient and ultimately ordinary ethic that emphasizes relationships. Animists recognize that living humans are only one kind of person in a much wider network of kinship. These others include our human ancestors, the big spirits of animals and plants, mountains and metals, fire and water, microorganisms, wind and weather, deities of many regions and temperaments, star people, nature spirits, and so on. We inhabit a responsive and relational world. This understanding is the inheritance of all human beings, and is learnable when previously forgotten. Our current offering that focuses on animism per se is the Practical Animism online course.
The Ancestors
The ancestors are all those, human and otherwise, who lived before us, the life of the past that nourishes and shapes the present. More specifically, they are the souls or spirits of the human dead and the collective love, wisdom and suffering of our species over the last several hundred thousand years. The ancestors are our roots and mycelia. To relate with them is to deconstruct individualistic and isolating understandings of ourselves and our place in the larger web.
Ancestors of blood tend to be especially impactful and beneficial to engage, and their wisdom, healing, and guidance can be accessed by people of any background or identity. Ancestor reconnection and reverence is a worldwide, timeless form of relationship. For more information, consider Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing.
The ancestors are all those – human and otherwise – who lived before us, the life of the past that nourishes and shapes the present. More specifically, they are the souls or spirits of the human dead and the collective love, wisdom, and suffering of our species over the last several hundred thousand years. The ancestors are our roots and mycelia. To relate with them is to deconstruct individualistic and isolating understandings of ourselves and our place in the larger web. Ancestors of blood tend to be especially impactful and beneficial to engage, and their wisdom, healing, and guidance can be accessed by people of any background or identity. Ancestor reconnection and reverence is a worldwide, timeless form of relationship. For more information, consider Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing.
Ancestral Lineage Healing
Ancestral Lineage Healing is a specific approach to relating with the ancestors articulated by Dr. Daniel Foor through years of guiding personal sessions, in-person intensives, online courses, the Ancestral Healing Practitioner Training, and other public teachings. Accessible to people of any ancestry or background, participants engage directly with their wise and loving lineage ancestors for the purposes of personal, family, and cultural healing.
This is a step-by-step process that emphasizes ritual and psychological safety. For more information on this method, see our Ancestral Healing Practitioner Training or Foundations of Ancestral Healing series in January 2022.
Daniel and the Ancestral Medicine team have also trained over fifty Ancestral Healing Practitioners, and these good people guide personal ancestral healing sessions online and in nine countries and seven languages. For details, including options for low-income sessions and, see the Practitioner Directory.
Ancestral Lineage Healing is a specific approach to relating with the ancestors articulated by Dr. Daniel Foor through years of guiding personal sessions, in-person intensives, online courses, the Ancestral Healing Practitioner Training, and other public teachings. Accessible to people of any ancestry or background, participants engage directly with their wise and loving lineage ancestors for the purposes of personal, family, and cultural healing. This is a step-by-step process that emphasizes ritual and psychological safety. For more information on this method, see our Ancestral Healing Practitioner Training or Foundations of Ancestral Healing series.
Daniel and the Ancestral Medicine team have trained over 150 Ancestral Healing Practitioners, most of whom now offer personal ancestral healing sessions. The work is available in over 15 languages and 20 nations and most also offer distance sessions (video conference or phone). Many practitioners also offer low-income sessions to support accessibility, and we hold an ethic of cultural healing and inclusivity as a Network. For more, see the Practitioner Directory.
Ritual Arts
Ritual is one common thread throughout many traditions of Earth and ancestor reverence. Diverse forms of ritual arts implicitly convey animist worldviews and provide tangible practices to communicate with our many relations, human and otherwise. Daniel and the Ancestral Medicine team regularly integrate pragmatic ritual skill building into various teachings and offer foundational courses such as Initiations: A Life of Ritual for those interested in more focused learning.
Cultural Healing
Cultural healing is implicit throughout the work of Earth and ancestral reconnection. Since the wisdom and practices of our family ancestors and local bioregions have often been disrupted through generations of harmful human behavior, the repair needed is also cultural. Reconnecting with land and lineage includes reckoning with what’s been lost and the role of our specific ancestors in various manifestations of greed, supremacy, and Earth disconnection. This calls for courage, humility, levity, education, stamina, and willingness to grieve.
Ancestral Medicine aspires in all of our offerings to embody and encourage values that are culturally caring– animist, anti-racist, decolonizing, anti-imperialist, feminist, LGBTQ+ celebrating, class-aware, non-dogmatic, trauma-informed, body and sex positive, accessible for the neuro-diverse and those with different abilities, and overall kind, professional, and responsive. For more on the expression of these values with respect to scholarships and accessibility, concerns on cultural appropriation, and charitable giving, see our Frequently Asked Questions.
