Collaborating with those on the other side is, in some respects, no more difficult than making bread. Take flour, add water, mix them up and put them in the oven. Take your needs and desires, add in the dead, and begin cooking up some magic.
But as any amater baker has discovered, getting that first sourdough started is tricky. How much flour, how much water? Where do I put the jar? How hot should the oven be? Why is my my crust so soft and my bread so tough? We can pull out the recipe books and tune into youtube videos—but, of course, having some friends doing it with us and an experienced guide can make all the difference. My friend Mary Parr is just such a guide and I cannot recommend her Sourland bread-baking courses enough! Find out more about them here.
If you are trying to get the dead to rise, however, to show up for you and solve your intractable problems, untie the worst knots in your life, and cook up some real miracles for you, I would like to tell you about the many different courses I offer in 204—each of which is designed to empower you to become an accomplished creator of ancestral magic. The first workshop I am offering, Ancestral Collaborations is in January. I am also offering a special low price if you sign up for all five of my 2024 workshops (work with the ancestors, the saints, the old mother goddesses, your own incarnations) at the same time. Whew!
Ancestral Collaborations: Heart-Known and Soul Seen by the Dead is being offered in January on Wednesdays (beginning 1/10) on Zoom from 7-8:30 pm est. Each session is recorded and sent to all participatnts. Together we will explore both traditional and creative ways to summon the dead, honor their presence, receive their messages and guidance, and nurture beneficial relationships of healing and empowerment.
We’ll explore summoning spells and sacred offerings, miracle cultivation, the healing that comes from working with ancestral cycles, the guidance of animal allies, and the power of connecting with the subterranean rivers of renewal and rebirth within. What does it mean to collaborate with our ancestors beyond patriarchy, beyond anthropocentrism, beyond time itself?
Before religious and institutional intermediaries suppressed our conversations with the unseen world, the living routinely sought the guidance of their ancestors. Their collaborations with the dead kept these peoples in intimate relationship with the earth, connected them to the long story of their souls, and wove them into community with each other.
Each session will include activities, engaged storytelling, and ample opportunity for questions and conversation among participants. You can learn more about each session here.
I promise you your dead will rise to greet you, your dead will rise to join your in growing the life you have always wanted. And they might even help you get your sourdough started, too.
Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions.
Perdita Finn is the co-founder, with her husband Clark Strand, of the feral fellowship The Way of the Rose, which inspired their book The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary. They are currently at work on their next book together Circles Not Lines: Spiritual Community Beyond Patriarchy. To find out more about her devotion to “ecology not theology” visit wayoftherose.org
In addition to extensive study with Zen masters, priests, spirit workers, and healers, she apprenticed with the psychic Susan Saxman, with whom she wrote The Reluctant Psychic. Perdita Finn now teaches popular workshops on Getting to Know the Dead. Participants are empowered to activate the miracles in their own lives with the help of their ancestors and recover their own intuitive magic. Her book Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World is an intimate journey through her recovery of these lost ways. She speaks widely on how to collaborate with those on the other side, on the urgent necessity of a new romantic animism, and on the sobriety that emerges when we claim the long story of our souls. Her next book is The Body of My Mother: Beyond the Witch Wound.
She lives with her family in the moss-filled shadows of the Catskill Mountains
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