What Is The Ancestral Now?

Mar 11, 2024

The Ancestral Now points towards a campfire that burns in the deep past, the source fire of the human soul. This flame has been passed down through eons, touching each life, and yet for many of us today, it is but an ember: alive but in need of the breath of life to bring it back to a roaring brightness.

At a practical level, it is a framework of ‘practice and perspectives’ anchored into our shared ancestral past as a collective human race evolving through deep time; which then acts as a ‘primary platform’ from which to understand the human experience and act in the modern world. It is a reclamation process of the ‘innate’.

Wolves, Wilderness, and Wayfinding

The story of The Ancestral Now as a distinct concept, begins in the wilderness of New Mexico, at Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary. As fate would have it, my wife and I fell into living out our 20s there, spending a decade around wolves, wolf dogs, and other wild canids.

It was and is a refuge for animals that people try to force into ‘pethood’, but that refuse the leash of the domestic by virtue of their wild spirit.

At the time that lived there, this was true for the canines, as it was for the long-term staff that stayed beyond a year or two ( like us).

Out there in a vortex created by high-altitude wilderness, monsoons, lightning storms that would shake the earth, crustaceans from ancient seabeds, rattlesnakes, and wild canines, the notion of the ‘primal as divine’ became a palpable reality for me.

This is of course not a new idea, but perhaps one of the oldest. Yet, when it first started to emerge for me, I did not know that. I was in my early 20s and was not as learned as I later became (which is of course an ever-evolving process). It was something I could feel, and started to explore in daily practice.

I engaged in crawling, squatting, working with maces & steel clubs (which are ancient tools), ancestral nutrition, construction projects in nature, building fires, literally wrestling with wolves, wrangling rattlesnakes, adjusting to the raw elements of nature, and getting pushed to my limits.

All the while navigating deep spiritual turmoil and illness (reference my page Who Am I? for me context), fed into the source material of The Ancestral Now.

The original iteration of my work took on the form of ‘Healing The Human Animal’, which was focused on reclaiming the lost animal parts of ourselves, parts that modern society cuts off.

This was inspired in part by being surrounded by wolves and wolf-dogs that people tried to own as pets, but could not force to conform. They were wounded, and I noticed that so were most of us.

A deep primal wounding. A loss of something vital and innate.

So, I explored. I practiced and I wrote. In part, lessons were being transmitted to me by my experiences in the wild, and by the wolves themselves. Wolves are extraordinary teachers who share a deep and rich history with humanity. They have a way of activating something ancient in people, which is why they are one of the most polarizing animals in existence.

The poor wolf.

Maligned as both sinner and saint, for it takes on our projections of wilderness and civilization.

Tempting and probing us to feel our tribal past, in contrast to the current reality of modernity which is a great domestication and taming project of the human animal.

Wolves represent our deep past, which was full of hunts, veneration of the dead, and close relationships with the spirits of nature. Wolves have been with humans for eons, and thus they can awaken the Paleolithic urges within us.

Many cannot handle it, and wolves are hunted and tortured for being reminders of what we have lost or hidden away. They threaten the world of the shepherd and the sheep.

My time at the sanctuary was full of difficult lessons, teachers both human and non-human, and an exploration of a general trajectory: The Ancestral.

Ancestral movement, nutrition, veneration, lifeways, shamanic magical practices, wild animals, and intense encounters with the life force itself (see my story for more context). The Ancestral remained an ongoing theme.

Due to personal revelations during the pandemic, I abruptly closed down Healing The Human Animal, and moved to Hawaii (a story for another time). I stepped away from my work, and yet it appears to have entered into a cocoon during that period.

For years later, what was once Healing The Human Animal gave way to The Ancestral No.

When I refer to Ancestry, I speak largely of a collective ancestry, an ocean of Ancestors, of which your line is a small tributary’, a part of the whole, but not the whole itself.

We evolved on planet Earth through a multi-billion-year history, ranging from the first worm-like creatures on this planet to the fully formed homo-sapiens who emerged in the Paleolithic era.

The contemporary human story of modern civilization and the later industrial revolution is 1 marble, in a bag of 100 marbles that represents the longer human story. 99.999% of the human experience has existed outside the context of modernity.

Here is some perspective:

We have been on this planet in our current form as recognizable humans, for hundreds of thousands if not millions of years. A rich, and profound history of tribal cultures, alternative models of civilization, and relationships with otherworldly beings (spirits, gods, or otherwise).

The Ancestral Now recognizes this inheritance as offering us innate qualities, and traits that are primarily stifled in the modern world, and seeks to ‘reverse engineer’ and unlock certain aspects of our nature that have been suppressed, repressed, or violently removed by modernity.

Eons of Tribal Culture & The Spiritual Primate

This long history of human life occurred in large part inside the context of tribal cultures. Tribes are extended family units, uniting around a singular cosmology of the universe, immersed in flow & trance-state-inducing qualities of nature.

Far from some materialistic dream of hard-edged humans, fighting each other for dominance, tribal cultures are altruistically focused, collectives steeped in spiritual mythologies, ecological spiritualization, and ancestral veneration. This is why ‘shamanism’ is the root of human spirituality, and found in all indigenous cultures.

An excerpt from my book ‘The Ancestral Now’

Hunter-gatherers lived in close-knit communities. Tribes were, and still are, in many ways like large extended families. It appears that the hunter-gatherer tribes we evolved within could range anywhere from a few dozen to about 150 humans.
In a world like this, your people and the lands you roam together with are your universe. The cosmology of your people is your cosmology. The health and state of the group are of paramount importance. These tribes lived and breathed community.’
Hunter-gatherers often appear to possess rich, spiritual lives based on animism (or what we in the West problematically call shamanism), a deep abiding connection to nature, and a devotional relationship to the flourishing of their tribe.
Tribal cultures recognize that they belong to a multitude of ecosystems that include the natural world of the elements; the realms of ghosts, ghouls, and gods; the ancestral cycle of their people, and the domain of other species of animals.
To hunter-gatherer tribes, the whole world is alive and vibrating with the breath of an ineffable spirit. They tend to develop a large array of rituals and prayers tied to life events, places of power, natural occurrences, and even practical magic where the goal is altering the flow of change.

This has created a being designed by evolutionary forces for a particular way of life, and the mismatch between this kind of life, and the current one we have, is at the root of what we feel is ‘wrong with the world’.

Rebellion & Responsibility

The Ancestral Now is by its very nature a counter-cultural stance.

It is a rebellion…A rebellion in response (not reaction), to a totalitarian, soulless monoculture, that breeds illness, isolation, and de-animism. All while wrapped around the myths of materialism, transhumanism, ecological extraction, Earth transcendence, enlightened superiority, and relentless progress.

The purpose of The Ancestral Now is:

Ancestrally Empowered, Vital, and Purposeful Humans Capable of Calling in a More Auspicious 21st Century

Thus, it is not a rebellion anchored exclusively in ‘individual freedom’, but in a deeper responsibility to the collective.

It is our responsibility to rebel against this insanity.

More than ever the world is calling for powerful, capable humans who are aligned with ecological, ancestral, and spiritual forces.

We have a responsibility to do what we can and act for the integrity of the whole. Orientate collectively but act locally. In this way, we each become a transmitter and receiver for the soul.

Most of the challenges emerging in your life, carry with them mythological, ancestral, archetypal, and cultural aspects, they do not just originate with you. As each person shifts, we can create ripples, to shift the whole.

Not for Nostalgia

The Ancestral Now is not nostalgic for its own sake, nor do I overly romanticize the life of the Ancestors, considering them saints. There have always been problems, challenges, abuses, limitations, suffering, injustices, and periods of hardship.

The point is not to herald the Ancestral world as a utopia, but more so to point out that…like a tiger in a zoo, we are out of sync with our innate design.

The Ancestral Now is ‘one possible iteration’ of cohering more deeply with this innate and inherent set of traits, practices, and perspectives given to us by The Ancestors of all humanity.

This is a work of becoming more whole, individually and collectively.

There are many others out there doing versions of this work, and different people have differing focuses, vantage points, and priorities based on their own experience. My experience colors this approach.

There are varying opinions on what constitutes the ‘correct way’ to reconnect with the Ancestral and why to do so. I have little interest in those kinds of arguments and present my perspective here. This is what I do and teach. If it touches you, I hope you will join me. If not, well, feel free to move on and forget this page.

The ‘core themes’ of The Ancestral Now

Practice:

In the context of modern life, only conscious practice, and an ongoing effort to adopt a different way of life than the one mass-marketed, and mono-culture produced, will allow you to align with your inherent humanity.

Depending on how deep you want to go, this could range from a few profound practices to an all-in approach. But practices are critical.

Ancestral Context:

Ancestral context is placing our lives today into a deep time context. When we do this it carries implications for how we eat, move, embody, relate, have sex, pray, and sense. In many ways, the whole of what I do is related to ancestral context.

Ancestral Veneration and Lineage Repair:

Ancestral veneration is likely one of the first spiritual practices to emerge on planet Earth, with current records going back 80,000 years, and is likely way older. The loss of ancestral veneration creates a wide variety of ongoing problems that compound over time collectively and individually, as the influence of the dead falls into the shadows.

Ancestral veneration brings the influence of the dead into the light.

Ancestral lineage repair is a step deeper, that allows us to re-align with ancestral forces in more auspicious ways, and invite more blossoming and flourishing into our lives.

Ancestral lineage repair is a contemporary process that does not exist in most indigenous cultures required today because of the current 2000-year chasm of a loss of ancestral veneration.

Animism:

Animism is likely the default mode of human perception. It holds that all of reality is animate, conscious, and alive: from the stones, plants, trees, clouds, planets and stars, and beyond. In this sense, there are no inanimate objects. This is a core theme in indigenous spiritual, magical, and shamanic practice and extends to all known traditional cultures on earth.

Modern society has ‘de-animated the world. We seek to re-animate it.

For those interested in this topic, this podcast by Joshua Schrei called Animism is Normative Consciousness is helpful.

Vitality:

By and large, our ancestors were way healthier, stronger, and more robust than we are today. Disembodiment, disease-promoting stories, divorce from nature, ancestral wounds, and unhealthy lifestyle patterns are rampant today.

But one of the root issues is the mismatch between the type of life we were designed for through millions of years of evolution, shaped for tribal life in nature, and our current way of ‘civilized life’. They two are starkly different.

Yet, the Ancestors had different relationships to bodies than we do today, and by default could place their bodies under way more stress in the forms of intense rituals, exhaustive dance, long demanding hunts, and practices that would feel like ‘tearing the body apart’ as in the case of traditional sun dances.

Yet our bodies are not those bodies.

We are under more stress, we are less embodied, not connected to the earth, not born and raised on potent local and organic foods for generations, we are less connected to the vitalizing force of ancestral spirits, and we have more mutative genetic variants than they did.

My stance on this is that most modern people benefit the most from focusing on increasing health and reverse engineering ancestral baseline vitality.

Connection to Natural Forces:

Humans of the past were much more connected to ecological information flow and could commune directly with subtle forces moving through nature. Their perception and Sensorium were more open than our is today. Tribal people could move through an environment with such attunement that it appeared they had ESP.

The great wisdom traditions of the world, the raw energetics of shamanic practice and internal alchemy, and the ability to engage with multiple dimensions of reality are hallmarks of all ancient cultures. Energy work, magical practices, trance states, engaging with spirits, and divination all settle into this category. I teach and promote all these practices.

Wildness:

Wildness is the baseline state of the universe.

The sun and moon are wild forces.

The storms on Mars are wild.

Tribal humans are wild humans. We existed as wild creatures for the overwhelming majority of human existence. Domesticity is a ‘small sliver’ of reality as we know it. Increasingly, more of of us feel the call of ‘The Wild Spirit’. I am currently writing a book called ‘In Praise of The Wild Spirit’, which will go much more deeply into this topic. Modern civilization is akin to a ‘zoo’ that humanity has been placed within, and a part of this work is a breach of the fences, and move back into our own Wild Spirit.

Fate & Destiny:

In a tribal context, the notion of fate and destiny was attended to since youth, in some context or another. While the overall concept of fate and destiny does change from culture to culture, the idea that you were a soul who came to Earth, to live out a story is woven into many traditional and indigenous cultures.

In many older cultures, that purpose was sought out, divined for, fostered, and heralded, for it was considered a ‘gift to the people’. Your destiny is simultaneously about your soul’s evolution, and your contribution to the whole, just like a cell in the body of the world. The state many of us find ourselves in of feeling purposeless in a random universe is a modern construct.

Destiny is birthright.

A More Abbreviated Timeline Orientation (Below)

There are many courses on the horizon intent on addressing each of these topics in depth. If they do not exist yet, it is only a matter of time.

Entry points into the path:

For Ancestral Context:

If you wish to begin a physical cultivation practice resonant with The Ancestral:

If you are struggling with health challenges or internally disruptive states of any kind:

To connect more deeply with the Ancestors, address difficult ancestral patterns, engage in animism and/or magical practices :

Connecting To Natural Forces

Fate and Destiny