Playing with the Ancestors
(from A Year of Living with the Dead)
As a child I could spend hours and hours making houses for my dolls, many of which were actually little animals, mice and hedgehogs mostly. I could make houses out of boxes and old paper towel rolls with kleenex beds and little paintings I’d draw and tape to the cardboard walls. Outdoors I loved old hollowed out trees that I could line with moss. I’d make tables out of bark and dishes out of acorn cups. The arranging and the imagining was so mesmerizing that when my mother called me in to dinner, I would feel frustrated. “No! Not now! I’m just getting started!”
It’s important that an ancestor altar not become another item on our spiritual to-do list. I often tell people that when working with the dead there are no “shoulds” —you should do this, you shouldn’t do that—but only a child-like spirit of adventure. What would it feel like to play with the dead?
For me that means immersing myself in the pleasures of arrangement, the imaginative wonder of conversation, the desire for beauty. I love moving photos around, finding new photos and new frames, putting different ancestors next to each other, creating a special corner for my favorite saints. I love finding flowers and shells and stones to decorate the shelves. I offer wishbones because my grandmother kept a jar of unused wishbones in her basement and now is my patron saint of making wishes come true. I light candles that have special scents and spritz the altar with my mother’s favorite perfume, l’air du temps by Nina Ricci. The magic of my ancestor altar isn’t formulaic, it’s not about following a recipe about how to work with those on the other side but rather following my own delight. “The way to heaven is heaven,” said Catherine of Siena. The way to magic IS magic when we are really surrending to the joys of the other side.
In the days before photographs, and the witch hunts (more on that later), dolls were often used as physical representations of the ancestores. The paleolithic goddess figurines ARE dolls and surely our ancestors were devoted to them the way a child loves a special doll, tucking it in a night, putting it in special outfits, confiding in it. If we want to remember how to work with the dead, let us watch children playing so that we too can remember that kind of play.
Chidlren are still close to the other side. What was I doing long ago with my cardboard and hollow tree dollhouses? I was, unselfconsciously, summon my ancestors and making a space for them in my lives. Play is the most profound spiritual wisdom of all.
We will know when our ancestor altars are alive when we love playing with them like a child.
A Year of Living with the Dead is an Ongoing series for my free subscribers. I also offer a Paid Substack which includes monthly conversations and excerpts from books in progress.
Perdita Finn is the author of Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World and the forthcoming Mothers of Magic: Recovering the Love at the Heart of the World. She teaches popular workshops on collaborating with the dead. With her husband Clark Strand she is the founder of the feral fellowship The Way of the Rose and the book by the same name.
