Working with your ancestors can be an incredibly powerful and rewarding part of your magical practice. The problem is that this aspect of the craft is often seen as a bit unapproachable and difficult to get started with. Because everyone’s ancestral practice is so individual and unique, there’s often not a lot of guidance on how to actually start building your personal practice with your ancestors.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, the absolute best way to begin your practice is to just pick one tangible thing that you can do to begin connecting with your ancestors. My recommendation is to start with building an ancestral altar. This altar can act as a focal point for your practice and help you deepen your practice by giving you a place to go where you can visit your ancestors. If you’re ready to begin building your own ancestor altar and you’re just not sure where to start, then this post is for you.
Why Make An Ancestral Altar?
Before we begin diving into the concrete how-to of building an ancestral altar, we need to understand why we are building this altar. As always in the craft, the reasons why we are doing something inform how we want to go about doing that thing. Your ancestral altar essentially serves as a focal point and sacred space for your work with your ancestors. It also serves as a focal point for your ancestors themselves. It allows them to communicate more readily and easily because they have an anchor within your physical space in your home.
Now, to some of you, this may sound like you’re opening the door to a bunch of unknown spirits, but your ancestors are not just random spiritual beings who can just do whatever they want and have no interest in your well-being. Your ancestors are essentially the members of your family lineage who have chosen to intentionally stay on to assist their descendants, to help you to heal and thrive. Their entire goal is to help you live the absolute best life possible. Not to make you conform to their previous ideologies, not to dictate how your life should go, not to make your choices for you. They are there to assist you in the path that you have chosen for yourself. So it is very safe for you to invite these spirits into your life.
In addition to this, by inviting your ancestors into your life, you are essentially giving yourself an automatic team of spirits who are ready to go to bat for you at the drop of a hat. This is a group of spirits who will protect you from other spirits, who will assist you in your spellwork, who will help to keep you safe in your daily life, and work to help you progress and grow and thrive in your life. Not because you are doing something for them or you are trading something, but because they love you. Your ancestors are essentially some of the most trustworthy spirits you can work with. So by creating your altar, you are inviting these incredible beings into your life to help you in more intentional ways and building relationships with them to help you progress in your magic and your life in whatever ways you choose. If that’s not a good enough reason to build an ancestral altar, then I don’t know what is!
How To Set Up Your Ancestral Altar
So how do you go about building your ancestral altar? To begin, you want to choose the location of your altar. Now this doesn’t have to be some huge table. If you don’t have very much space, then work with what you have. Find a corner of your room, a tiny side table, or even a part of a countertop or a window sill somewhere in your home that you can dedicate to them. You do not want this to be on something like a bookshelf because you will be lighting candles at this altar, and if have an open flame, it can set the shelf above above it on fire. So find yourself a nice area with nothing above it where you can begin your work.
The fundamentals of an ancestral altar can be incredibly simple. I always start with some kind of food offerings. These can be candies, something you’ve cooked, baked goods, bread, or offerings of fruits (any kind of fruit works). I’ll always include a glass of water which I refresh frequently, and I typically like to have at least one white candle on the altar, even small candles like tea lights work but I often use white glass pillar candles.
Beyond this, what you place on your altar is really up to you. If you have photos of your ancestors, mementos given to you by family members, or family heirlooms, these are wonderful to have on your ancestor shrine as a way of remembering and connecting with them and calling your spirits to this place that you have set for them. You don’t even necessarily have to know a lot about the individuals in the photographs. As long as you know that they are a part of your family lineage, their photo can go at this altar and you can learn more about them in the future if you choose to.
It’s also a good idea to add other traditional offerings. Traditional offerings are things like coffee, cigarettes, alcohol or spirits such as whiskey or vodka. This can be a particularly nice way to harken back to your heritage if you know where your ancestors came from by choosing the kinds of alcohol that they would have most likely had access to. You can add fresh flowers to the altar, add pieces of art that you have made, make offerings of incense, or drape your altar in a beautiful altar cloth.
There are so many ways you can go about adding to this altar over time and it can change depending on the time of year and the availability of what you would like to put on this altar. You’ll want to personalize this altar and make offerings that are specific to your ancestors as much as possible. The best offering is always one you know they would have loved in life. If you don’t know very much about them at this point, that is okay. Work with what you have. But, for example, on my ancestral altar, I typically have my grandmother’s favorite hard candies in an offering bowl, along with some pipe tobacco for my grandfather. These are small things, but they help to call to the spirits of your ancestors in a very personal way.
Keep in mind that you do not have to overcomplicate this. If you want to start simple and just make a small offering of some kind of food, a little bit of water, and candles, then start with that. You do not have to get overly complicated. The relationship is what matters, not the stuff that you put on the altar.
What Do You Do At This Altar?
Now, you’ve got your altar set up, what do you even do with it? How do you work with this part of your practice? There are many different ways that you can use your altar space but the first thing to start with is tending your altar. This is something you will want to do on a very regular schedule, daily, weekly, or perhaps even monthly, understanding that the more frequently you have contact with your ancestors, the stronger your relationship with them will become.
Tending your altar consists of refreshing any offerings, refreshing the water, lighting the candle, and just being with your ancestors. This is often called ancestor veneration. It’s showing your respect and love for your ancestors by showing up for them regularly. This is your time to make offerings, communicate with them, and welcome them into your life. Make this a comfortable and enjoyable part of your practice. For example, you might choose to sit down every Sunday morning and drink your coffee, make an offering of coffee to your ancestors, light the candles and incense for them, then simply sit and meditate and be with them, talk to them, show gratitude, whatever feels right for you in the moment.
Beyond the simple practice of tending your altar, there are so many ways that you can work with your ancestors in this space. First and foremost is communicating with them, learning about them, and letting them be part of the conversation of your life. You can do this through any method of contact that allows you to communicate with spirits directly. You can also use practices like scrying, divination through cards such as tarot, or using a pendulum. This is an excellent way to regularly practice your psychic skills, spirit communication, mediumship, or divination.
If you become proficient enough at communicating with your ancestors, they can even teach you magic. My ancestors have taught me a large number of the spells that are included in The Coven. They’ll give me not just the ingredients and methods for the spells, but also the incantations and every part of what I need to make the spell work. It may take time for you to be able to communicate with them in such detail, but with practice, this can absolutely be achievable for you.
Beyond this, you can do spellwork with your ancestors. This kind of spellwork can be as simple as writing up a petition, anointing it with oil, and setting it on your altar under your white candle. Or, you can do full rituals, bringing together herbs and other materials, incantations, petitions, and many other elements. When you do spell work with your ancestors, you are essentially asking for their assistance in creating the outcome of your spell. Meaning your spell becomes much more potent than it would if you were performing it simply by yourself.
You can also make requests for help in enhancing your magical practice. For example, you can request that they help you enhance your psychic abilities, to protect you spiritually from malicious spirits or curses, or to protect you from misfortune and accidents.
Your ancestors are essentially a team of spirits who are ready and willing to help you in any way that you need spiritually. That is one of the main things that they have stayed to do. So let them do it. Ask for their assistance in your life, in your magic, listen for their advice, make petitions, and ask for intercession, to get you that new job, to help you find love, or whatever it is that you want and need in your life at this time. Your ancestors are here to help you grow and thrive, and by prioritizing this relationship and building an altar to serve as a focal point for these incredible beings, your life and your magic will grow exponentially.
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