Basic Trans Ancestor Elevation Ritual Prayer (Revised 2022)
[Please use this, along with any specific prayers to specific entities or individuals you may be working with, as part of your nightly ritual beginning tonight. This is a basic format and you can alter it as needed to accommodate your needs or practice. Please note that we’re using “transition” here to mean becoming an ancestor, not to put boundaries around who is and isn’t trans for the purposes of this work. –Rocket]
We call upon the ancestors of our line, the progenitors of our queer spirits,
those who came before and laid the path behind them, the mighty transgender dead.
We call upon the mighty line of our family stretching back to times none of us can imagine, sisters and brothers and siblings in every age of the earth,
who would not understand the words we use or the lives we lead but who would know us as their children,
who braided flowers into their hair as we braid flowers into our hair,
who touched flame to wick as we touch flame to wick,
who danced and howled under the stars as we dance and howl under the stars,
who lived in joy and died without fear as we seek to live and die.
Bright and well trans ancestors, known and unknown, named and unnamed,
you who transitioned in ancient times and you who transitioned within our lifetimes,
Honored helping spirits who have stepped up to tend the line of the transgender dead, and bright and well ancestors who know the practices, who bubble over with love and blessing to pour into the cupped hands of their troubled children,
You who led in life and lead in death, you who have offered the gifts of guidance and protection to the members of your family who have yet to find peace, to the troubled dead thirsting for care and to the weary living still battling each day, and you who have those gifts to offer, we call to you.
Marsha P. Johnson, we call to you. Hail and welcome. We offer you honor and remembrance. We offer you love and devotion. We offer you praise and proclamation among the living to bring your legacy to your descendants. We offer you cool water for your journey.
[Any other ancestral helping spirit, deity, or representatives that you are personally honoring or working with in your ritual], we call to you. Hail and welcome. We offer you honor and remembrance. We offer you love and devotion. We offer you praise and proclamation among the living to bring your legacy to your descendants. We offer you cool water for your journey. [Repeat as needed.]
Bright and well ancestors, hear us! Reach your hands out to meet us and be with us in this work!
We ask you to bless us with your memory, with your guidance, with your strength. We ask you to bless us as the living faces of your mighty line, to be with us and let us know you.
We ask you to pour healing and protection down our line to bathe our troubled dead, to bathe us, in cool sacred water. We ask that you hold the trauma of our troubled dead with love and understanding, that it may be washed away, that it may trouble them and us no more.
We ask you to lay a blessing around our ancestral line, that you encompass every generation that stands between your lives and ours in it, that you pour it outwards into future generations, that every member of our family that has ever drawn breath and every member of our family that will ever draw breath may breathe in your blessing like air and be filled and surrounded by it.
We ask that you guide our brothers and sisters and siblings who have come to join you in the last year, that you receive them with celebration, that you give them the peace and welcome that the living world would not.
We ask that you give them honor and remembrance; that you give them love and devotion; that you give them a light to guide them to peace and music to dance them through the gates; that you give them cool water for their journey.
May you rest in power. May your memories be a blessing. May you never thirst.


















