The Daily: 23 September 2025

In nearly every culture — except the one I live within — there is some form of ancestor veneration. Honoring your forebears seems to be human instinct. Though we could never verify this with those whose interiority is hidden from our perception, there is reason to believe that ancestor worship is part of every being’s genetic code… because what is that code but the being of our ancestry woven into our own bodies…

In the traditions I have chosen to follow — not those of my inhabited culture — autumn, the end of the growing season, the onset of the season of repose, of death, is the time to look to the ancestors for wisdom. Some say that the veil between the living and dead is thinnest at this time of year. I am not sure that a veil is ever particularly thick… but my longed-for dead and my deep ancestors do feel closer to me when the days grow short and dead leaves are riding a chill wind.

When I was younger, this presented a conundrum. I do not entirely believe that there are discarnate beings with personhood carried over after a body dies. I don’t not believe… There is enough strangeness in the multiverse that who am I to say that there isn’t a land of the dead… I just don’t have much direct contact with that land. However, I do hear my grandmother’s voice.

It was not until I started to learn about the basic connectivity of all life that I understood. What need have I of a spirit world, when all that lead to me is written in my bones, my cells, my memories. I do not need a belief in ghosts to know that the dead speak, to hear them speaking to me. And it is at this quieting time of the year that their voices may best be heard.

I do not know that I am speaking with my grandmother, but when I speak to her and then quiet my mind, I can feel her answer. I know that answer is in my head… but so is she. And in my blood. And in my bones. And in every cell of my body. I know her as I know myself. Maybe better. Because I could listen to her. I could watch and learn. I could dispassionately accept who she was and how she lived. That’s a bit harder to do with the self… Truthfully, the closer you look to your self, the more it will simply evanesce… and you are left with the voices of your ancestors, the oneness of all that is, the serene void of interbeing.

I do not only hear my grandmother. I hear all beings speaking through my being. I hear the trees, the wind, the waters, the stones. Especially the stones… I am a geologist for good reason, after all… I can feel their stories. Their narratives are embedded in my body.

This is what being a witch means to me. The witch is the body that listens, that hears the voices occluded by the clamor of daily life. The witch goes out and goes in to find the stories of the past so that we may understand the present and so that, sometimes, we may see into the future.

The witch also understands that all these times are one. This body may walk a terminal line, but it is only part of the great spiral dance of all interconnected existence. I-am will not be some day. But I will continue to speak eternally in the bones of my descendants. The witch’s job is to hear that song, to harmonize with it, to sing it to those who would learn its key.

This season of darkness stills the chattering mind and the dead draw near, filling up the heart. And when that happens I know, bone-deep, that if there is a soul, it is composed of all the love that went into my making. This is the time to feel that love, to know its voice, to heed its wisdom.

There is grief in this. I can hear my grandmother’s voice. I can almost feel her hands. But I can’t wrap my arms around her. I can’t shed the memories of her dying days when her skin was paper thin and brittle, her voice was rasping, her eyes were dull. I can’t take away her pain nor relieve my own.

But I also know she is telling me to move beyond those memories. She does not want to be re-membered as such. No body would. So she gives me the peace of better days as well as the assurance that she is not that frail body, that she is well within me, here and now.

It is not just my grandmother speaking. So many great ancestors to this body, all of them with a voice. And yet, the purest form of communion with the dead is when no body is speaking at all, when all is stillness, when we are all the silent night. Meditation brings that to me, and meditation works best in darkness, which is growing stronger each day.

Maybe that veil is actually the clamor. Not a bit of fabric, but of sound and fury. And maybe the thinning is really a hush. The end of the season of loud business. Whatever it might be, this time of year allows the dead to speak. Try it. Find an hour in the dark evening. Turn off the lights. Calm your breathing. Quiet your mind. And listen.

You will hear who you are… who made you… who loves you and wants to share that love with you. And while you may be surprised at the diversity of beings who make up your lineage, you will undoubtedly understand them all. As long as you listen. Because they are you.

Be a witch. Listen to the world. Go inward and outward and find the harmony.

And honor it…

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©Elizabeth Anker 2025