Soulcraft Musings

Friday, October 31, 2025

Geneen Marie Haugen

Shadow Ancestors (for Dia de los Muertos)

The veil between worlds is said to be thin now, when red and golden leaves are falling in the northern hemisphere, when creatures migrate or mate, or fatten up before going underground for a dark spell among decay, worms, and mycelia. Some of our beloved dead might hover near the veil, available for conversation with those of us who are yet enfleshed on the blue planet, at this season of Halloween (Samhain) and Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos), which is the “cross-quarter day” or midpoint between autumn Equinox and winter Solstice. It’s a potent season, and not just because of pumpkin spice lattes.

It is said that my own matrilineal ancestors – the indigenous Sami of the European Arctic – communed with their dead by drumming. Those drums – eloquent enough to talk with the departed – were confiscated by Christian colonizers; only a few of the old drums remain in museums. I never knew those ancestors; they were gone long before I was born in the Pacific Northwest of the North American continent.

I am most interested in the matrilineal ancestors, the long-ago grandmothers whose mitochondrial DNA is replicated in me. It is comfortable to reflect on them at this time when the veil between worlds is thin – to try imagining/feeling how close they lived to animals, how close to the elementals. It is more chilling to reflect on the men who came from “the south” to settle and colonize the Sami – some of whom mated with female ancestors who may or may not have been willing. But those men are my blood, too.

And then of course there are other ancestors who are enough in the shadow that I don’t often think of them. My Norwegian paternal grandfather’s first petition for naturalization in the US was denied due to “moral character” and “liquor offense.” I was an adult before I was told he had been a bootlegger, but never knew what other transgressions he’d committed. He died when I was five. I remember being frightened by him, by his pale eyes so like my own.

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At Dia de los Muertos, traditional celebrations in Mexico and greater Latin America honor those who have passed through the veil, and affirm the essential connection between life and death. This celebration is rooted with indigenous Mesoamericans who built altars and ceremonially offered ancestors favorite foods and flowers. Versions of this ancient tradition have been seeded all over North America, hinting of a longing, even among (death-denying) moderns, for rituals that honor decay and darkness, rituals that tend ancestral bones and the sinews that binds us.

For this year’s Day of the Dead, my colleague Emma Duke beautifully suggests that we “not only turn toward those ancestors that are ‘easy to love’, but also remember and feed the hungry ghosts of our past who caused harm, often the ones we don’t want to remember but who may actually need feeding the most – our shadow ancestors.” It’s an invitation as gnarly as a twisted family tree.

Some people may already be aware of less-desirable ancestors; others may have an intuition (or perhaps a fear of knowing) who’s hidden in their lineages. But – just as it’s possible that bringing shadow elements of our own psyches to consciousness can help feed psychospiritual “wholeness” – perhaps peeling away ancestral shrouds can also reveal treasure: for us personally, for our communities, for the divisive world. At the very least, could we more readily embrace Rumi’s sense that “everyone’s scandalous flaw is mine” and be slower with harsh judgements about those we regard as unlike ourselves, those we regard as “other”?

I feel the vitality of Emma’s suggestion to feed ancestors who caused harm – but I also cringe at the image of feeding the hungry ghosts of colonizers and industrialists, rapists, thieves or slavers. Also, the ones who passively “went along.”

But the murky image of feeding them (whoever they are) has stirred up deep curiosity, the kind of curiosity that beckons to be followed.

Once on a Dio de los Muertos long ago, I prepared a feast and invited all of my griefs and losses to join me at the table. I had fewer decades then, so the satchel holding grief and loss was lighter than now. But the ceremony, spontaneously generated in the absence of teachers or mentors, had unexpected impact on my life, as true ceremony might. I believe true ceremony can open something like a parallel or alternate “reality” for a spell, and such an opening has deeply transformative potential for day-to-day living.

So, for this Dio de los Muertos, at twilight, I will invite my beloved to drum awhile, to rhythmically let those beyond the veil to know we are remembering them; I’ll invite my beloved to prepare, with me, a delectable feast for the ancestors, especially for those in the shadows. We will invite the hungry ghosts to join us, to speak or sing or howl, though they may be too shy at this point; why wouldn’t they be? We have ignored them for so long, and don’t yet know how best to engage them.

On Day of the Dead, beloved and I will also honor dear ones who have passed – more every year – including psychospiritual ancestors (also more every year). This year, my dear niece Amber unexpectedly died, and also a friend of many decades. So many great teachers have passed, just recently Jane Goodall, and in July, Joanna Macy. Our colleague Emma Duke suggests that Dio de los Muertos is also an excellent time to honor those psychospiritual elders whose “legacies live on, maybe even live through us, and might be wildly necessary in these times.”

I will attend the veil between worlds in my awareness through November 6th, which is the astronomical midpoint between September Equinox and December Solstice, the true “cross-quarter” day. Maybe hungry ghosts or beloved dead will show up in our night dreams, or daydreams, before the veil closes. Or maybe they are already present: Last night, as I hovered near dreams under the blanket of darkness, I heard or felt something change, and I opened my eyes. From the hallway came a strange warm glow, and the plants outside the windows stirred, shifting between light and shadow. When I crept into the living room, I was more than baffled to see that an amber-colored mica lamp had inexplicably turned on.

I am not trying to solve this odd occurrence; I’m only reporting what happened last night as I mused on those beyond the veil.

To read previous musings click here.