Each month, Daniel shares a personal letter with our whole newsletter list. Occasionally, we choose to share those here with our public audience. We hope you enjoy this personal reflection from September 2025. To receive these letters in your inbox, join our newsletter.
Greetings all.
Thanks for your interest in our work and for engaging with these monthly reflections. As there are newer folks here, I’d like to say hello in a fresh way…
I’m Daniel Foor, the founder and director at Ancestral Medicine. I went by Danny for the first ten years, then Dan for a while, but if you call me either of those things, I’ll look at you sideways.
I’m now entering my fourth year of living near Granada, Spain with my wife and our girls (ages 4 and 7). I’m fairly private about my personal life because being a public figure is weird, but fun facts are that our kids share a birthday (Scorpio magic on the move), love circus class, and talk trash in Andalusian Spanish like I could never have imagined.
For folks who have less ambivalence about astrology than myself, I was born in Elyria, Ohio, USA at 10:00pm on Sept 28, 1977 and share a birthday with Confucius. I’m a fire snake in Chinese astrology, fire person in the Dagara system, pitta dosha, and probably a one on the Enneagram. I’ve a wandering moon in Vedic astrology which apparently renders me terminally restless and at home when out of place.
I also feel ambivalent about focusing on past lives which, along with the astrology vibe, makes me a double outlier in many spiritual circles.
I teach online a lot which allows for international inclusivity and spending quality time with family and the land here. And I love teaching in person as there’s nothing like being days deep into connective group ritual. Plus, I’m a glutton for culture, history, and travel.
Despite being an amateur, I have an obsession with languages. I speak advanced (C1) but not fluent Spanish and much more basic Arabic and Yoruba. I try to content myself with having bilingual kids and giving them what I didn’t get growing up in suburban USA.
Although I’m a ritualist-teacher-priest by vocation, I’m also drawn to politics, international relations, and systemic change work. These domains feel inseparable to me, and it’s weird when others try to disentangle them. I’ve lost a few close friends and other Zionist and/or Islamophobic contacts on our mailing list being outspoken in solidarity with Palestine.
I’m headstrong, opinionated, and ambitious in my way, but view myself as being motivated by love, devotion, and an ethic of service. I worry the heart doesn’t always come through, but it’s behind all of what we’re doing with Ancestral Medicine. Fortunately, as I get older, I’m less inclined to try to make everyone happy.
All that said, if you’ve found some benefit from Ancestral Medicine in some way, here’s my birthday wish. OK, two wishes really:
First, give a fresh glance at what we’re offering. All the currently open ones are below. I fully back and believe in the content and the teachers we feature. Also, personal ancestral healing sessions are available at accessible rates in 35 languages.
The other ask is to find some tangible action you can take to end the genocide being carried out by the U.S.A., Germany, the U.K., Israel, and other colonialist allies in Palestine. Your tangible actions, no matter how small, truly matter. If you’re on Instagram, I have a fundraiser going for Heal Palestine. The BDS movement (see below) is one good way to engage that truly matters. Various forms of mutual aid (e.g., Project Hope for Palestine, Gaza Mutual Aid) or direct donations to trusted sources in Gaza are also great. And direct political action is fantastic, best of all in many ways.
Here in Spain at all the kids’ birthday parties they often give little gifts to those who attend. In this spirit, rather than candy and glow-in-the-dark bracelets, I wish for you a deep, sustained connection to the essence of who you are. And to the ways that you’re inseparable from the rest of life and from compassion and fundamental goodness. May you know that in your bones.
Daniel
