Honouring the Ancestors: Samhain and Beyond

 October 26, 2010 by Galina Krasskova

Samhain by Helene Grasset

There’s a great deal of focus around Samhain on honouring one’s ancestors, and honouring the dead in general. Whether we celebrate Samhain or Winter nights, that’s what this holiday is all about, right? Well, yes….but ideally the celebrations that mark the end of October, should be the culmination of a year spent regularly and consistently interacting with the dead, honouring them, and recognizing their role in the continuing evolution of our spirituality. Honouring and interacting with the ancestors isn’t just a Samhain “thing,” rather it’s an every day “thing,” and one of the fundamental underpinnings of a strong, nourishing, resilient spiritual practice.


Many traditions pay special homage to their ancestors, to those who have come before us, to those who, by their struggles and failures, victories and joys have contributed to the common threads of being we all share. Honouring one’s lineage is the first and one of the most important steps in developing a strong spiritual foundation. It is a place of beginning. We all have ancestors. We can all tap into that connection. Ancestors may include those connected to you by blood, but also those who, while a blood relationship might be lacking, were nevertheless close enough to be kin. These are our teachers, mentors, and friends—our spiritual kin. No one lineage is better than another. Paying homage to one’s ancestors is not, in any way, shape or form an excuse for racism, rather it is a means of honouring the process of one’s spiritual journey, honouring those whose actions and lives helped create our own, shape our own. It means honouring those who shed blood for us, so that we might remember and also learn to craft lives of honour. It is an acknowledgement that we are all connected through the Holy Powers, through the cycle that Hela governs. We honour the continuity of Divine presence throughout the course of our lives. We honour their strength, courage, wisdom, struggles even as we seek to learn from them.

In the Northern Tradition, we have several different types of ancestors. The word “Dis” (plural: disir) refers specifically to the female ancestors of one’s line. These ancestors are very important because they are guardians of one’s luck and one’s wyrd. Luck particularly relies heavily on the female line in passing from one generation to the next. Sometimes the word ‘alf’ (plural: alfar) is used for the male antecedents, but in contemporary Heathenry this is not all that common as it leads to confusion with the denizens of Alfheim, one of the nine holy worlds. So most of us just refer to them as our “male ancestors”…unglamorous but effective! One might also encounter the word “wight,” an anglicized form of the Old Norse ‘vaet’ (plural: vaettir). This is a rather ‘catch-all’ term for nature spirits, elementals, and land spirits. Some use it to imply ancestors, but that is not its most common usage. The Northern Tradition is an animistic one and these beings, somewhat analogous to what Shinto would call ‘kami’ are no less important than one’s ancestors. So we honor not just our dead, but the spirits of the places in which we live, of our home, of the land itself as well.

One does not evolve spiritually in a vacuum. The strength of one’s spiritual House depends on the integrity of one’s lineage. By this, I mean being in right relationship with our ancestors. This is attained by honoring them regularly, rightly, and well. One’s ancestors and the vaettir of our world can assist us in our journey and in our spiritual Work. We can learn much from them but only if we empower them to act with us. A house cannot be built without bricks. Bricks cannot be secured without mortar. Paying homage to one’s ancestors and the spirits of the land is the mortar and clay from which those bricks are formed. We begin in the physical because we are physical beings. Our own physicality, the sense of touch, of sight, sound, smell, and hearing are the primary filters through which we experience our world. The first step in growing strong and whole and heal in this tradition, is honouring those who have struggled to do exactly that before us. This process is helped by the fact that many spirits choose to stay as guides/watchers and protectors.


There are endless ways of making proper offerings. The first step one should take, is the construction of an ancestral altar. This should be a separate altar from anything given to the Gods – a simple shelf will do, dedicated entirely to the ancestors. In my main kindred, we have a communal ancestral altar with offerings from each person. It’s quite a gathering of energies, because we all come from different backgrounds: Celtic, English, Swiss, German, Lithuanian, Cherokee, African, Italian, Polish. We honor our spiritual lineage too. This means that in addition to those actually related to us by blood or adoption, we also consciously honor those people who may have had a tremendous influence on us, who were teachers, mentors, and guides. For example, my mother kept a picture of Wilfred Owen on her ancestral altar, because his war poetry helped her through a very traumatic time in her life. In addition to the shared kindred altar, most of us also have our individual ancestor altars.

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