Honoring Your Ancestors: A Guide to Ancestral Veneration

can’t reveal the instances of adoption and cultural exchange that may have shaped your ancestral line. If you think a test like this would be helpful for you, treat it like any other form of divination, like a tarot reading or your monthly horoscope: it’s a source of inspiration, not a commandment carved into stone.

Smell a well-crafted perfume. A good perfume has a plot. Perfumes are made up of three types of notes: top, heart, and base notes. Watch how the scent unfolds over time. Try to record the effect of those changing scents on your emotional state, either as notes or a drawing.

induce an altered state of consciousness comparable to a mild psychedelic. If you are sensitive to its psychoactive effects, you might prefer to make a charm out of dried mugwort and sleep with it under your pillow instead of drinking the tea. Either way, you might wish to say a prayer or state your intention before doing so. For example: “It is my

So the time you spend cooking the meal you share with your ancestors is its own ritual devotion, and will make the offering more meaningful.

Their household religion was the entire world writ small.

You are already the high priest or high priestess of this religion.

other readers may instead feel a twinge of disappointment that so much of what I’ve described looks less like a glamorous witchy photoshoot and more like chores. A good portion of this book is dedicated to cooking, cleaning, and praying, things that rarely make for good posts on Instagram. We can see devotional activities as burdens that keep us fr

others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists.

As any good host knows, you can’t force a party to happen. You can send out the invitations. You can buy the food. You can make a playlist. But it’s still possible that no one will show up. Or if they do show up, they might sit quietly and awkwardly in their own worlds instead of really communing with one another. You can only create the conditions