My daddy died when I was 26. 

At the time, I thought I was so grown up, but now that I am in my mid-60s (how the hell did that happen) I realize how very young I was when he passed. Not like some of my friends who lost parents in their teens, not like the kids I babysat for whose dad died of cancer when they were barely out of nappies, but I was still young. My daddy never knew me as an adult.

     I'm holding back the tears.  A warm humid air wets my face as we near the end of the session.  At that moment, I see two cats, one black, the other white, in front of me. They are curled on the floor in the shape of a heart.

     "These are your parents letting you know that they are healed," Luz, the facilitator, said.  I finally let my tears flow.

      "I have a surprise for you," my paternal Abuela Petra said with a broad smile.  She pulled a set of cards out of her purse and placed it in my hands.

On a recent trip to South Dakota, I met my ancestors. I walked among their gravestones, walked in the places they lived, looked at pictures of them and heard stories about them that brought them to life for me. And although I didn't speak with them directly, I still felt like I had a dialogue. Since that trip I've continued to meditate on the presence of my ancestors.

In the title of this article I claim they liberated me and really they did, because what I learned about them put my own life and experiences into a different context. Instead of just focusing on the singular I experience of my life, I stepped back and looked at the generations that came before me and asked the question, "What were their experiences and how did those experiences convey themselves to my life?"

I have a notion for a ritual, y’all. Right now I’m reading a biography of Hatshepsut, and it got me thinking about all the ways in which women and women’s power has been erased from history.

I’ll start with Freyja, because not long ago, She told me to know Her as Syr, and damned if I could find anything about Syr other than its name meaning, which is sow. I found another Freyjaswoman who does work with this aspect, and said that as she understands Syr, that She is a goddess of sovereignty.

“Thou know'st 'tis common;
all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.”

We come to this New Moon in Scorpio still within the tide of Samhain, All Hallows, Day of the Dead. There’s a reason all those holidays happen around the middle degrees of Scorpio — there is truly a thinning of the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead at this time of year (and don’t let anyone tell you the veil isn’t there at all — if it wasn’t, we’d all be dead).

Do you honor your ancestors as part of your spiritual practice? If not, this would be a good time to start. The New Moon in Scorpio always brings us to a time of introspection, a time to face our deepest needs and fears, commune with our beloved dead, and welcome deeply transformative experiences. I’ll tell you an experience I had with an African ancestral ritual a little later in this post, and why I think working with our ancestors is important. Meanwhile, back to the astrology…

In the Northern Hemisphere, and particularly in New England where I live, the leaves are starting to turn, the temperature is cooling off... soon enough the leaves will be falling off the trees, frost will cover the ground, and it will continue to get colder.  But right now, where I live, it's still warm for this time of year and there's some green on the trees still.  The dark half of the year is here, but it's more like "twilight" than full-on darkness.  Still... time to start lighting candles, asking the Powers to guide the way into the dark night.

When Samhain/Halloween approaches, many Pagans remember the dead, and the Pagan blogosphere will often get into the topic of ancestor veneration.  A couple of years ago, I was not in the habit of this practise because I have abusive family members, and the abuse was generational, and I felt highly uncomfortable reaching out to these people's spirits; I also believed there was no point in reaching out to people who have probably since reincarnated.  But my views on this have changed considerably over the last two years, and today, I not only honor the dead - and my ancestral dead among them - but I also believe that honoring the dead is an important part of my practise.