WANNA WORK WITH SPIRITS? START WITH YOUR ANCESTORS!
I have written about this periodically here and there, but I thought this post would address what I believe to be an important part, if not the important part, of spirit work. Many people approach me and ask me how to work with spirits. Sometimes, this comes up in a reading. Other times, people seek advice and counsel about developing that part of their spiritual practice.
My answer is almost always the same: start with your ancestors. Another word people will hear me use a lot is eggun. This word in the Lucumi ATR world I am in signifies two sets of spirits. One is your blood ancestors. You typically know these people a few generations back, and some you only know through family stories. Our ancestors are a mixed bag of noble and sometimes scandalous people. But what is significant is if they show up for you in your ancestral spiritual development, they are likely in a good spiritual place where they wish to help their posterity from the other side.
The second set of eggun are called “ara onu,” which translates roughly in the Nigerian dialect as ancestral spirit guides. All ancestral spirits are eggun, but not all are ara onu. Some are both, but that tends to be rare. These are spirits that are usually not part of your bloodline. They can be from any place, time, or culture and almost always have a specific mission with you during this lifetime that they have come to you to assist you with. These spirits are also often where many of your spiritual abilities originate, and in many cases, they enhance things such as psychic vision, divination, working with herbs, and so on.
There’s one reason I lift these spirits up above any other for the average person. With most other spirits, you have to work hard to connect, then give offerings, devotion, and whatever else to make a pact with said spirit and eventually achieve what you desire. This can be time-consuming, and there is always a chance such a spirit—even a god- may not follow through. Eggun are different. You don’t have to spend inordinate amounts of time to connect because they are already connected to you. They are already inside of you, in your bones and DNA. They are a literal part of you. The trick with them is not so much connecting but building a solid relationship and foundation.
In all my ATR traditions, eggun lead everything. Most ATR ceremonies cannot even happen without eggun being propitiated first, especially in Lucumi. When you connect, especially with a practice like espiritismo, you also begin to discover that while most spirits walking with you are meant for devotional work, some with you are working spirits. Some do not need your devotion but rather are workhorses that address, attack, or resolve the challenges in your life. Each of them tends to have a specialty and makes that known as you connect and sit with them.
The things people run to demons, angels, djinn, and gods for can easily and more quickly be done by your working ancestral spirits. Sometimes, even the other eggun will assist one of the others, and you quickly discover you have a whole army at your back. There’s nothing wrong with those other spirits, but the fact that it takes pacting with them in some way to get what you want means success depends on their whim. Your ancestors, on the other hand, have a vested interest in the line's success. If you fail, they fail. If you go broke, nobody gets anything. I would bet my bottom dollar on that any day above any other spirit. I encourage you to do the same, especially if you are wondering how best to foundate your practice. I don’t know of any better than Eggun.
