“Oh, you’re gay and still work so faithfully with your ancestors. Do you really believe they love you?”
My ancestors are not a celestial moral committee sitting around a kitchen table and discussing whether my life meets their standards. They already manifested themselves in me, in my flesh, bones, instincts and utter soul
My whole existence was constructed from billions of lives before mine. After a lot of psychotherapy, I can finally accept the feelings, fears and strange inherited currents I was immersed in long before I had words for them
Regular ancestral practice does not excuse old misunderstandings. It does not make every dead relative holy, correct or pleasant. Death is not a personality upgrade. But this practice inspires me to make my own life a living manifesto of Dionysian pride. I speak to the dead, but deep inside myself I feel an under-the-skin will to live, something close to what druidry describes as the flow of Awen
At the moment, I am renewing this practice. At its core, I am simply reminding myself that one of the main things empowering me is the memory of people who lived before me. I do not need to burn a whole box of candles with devotional hysteria. The most prominent fire is already shining inside
Ancestral practice is mainly the remembrance of life lessons, inherited wisdom and all those strange family survival skills that make life a little less dark. I make art with the support of my father. He is a man of freedom, an old hippie from the middle of the soviet era. I fast and pray like my grandmother did, not in a Christian way, but in the way of my own spirit. Lessons of freedom and faith is important to me especially in current times in Ukraine
I celebrate life through stories, days and nights, playing the gusli, speaking poems and making small pieces of beauty from whatever chaos is available
All of this is also part of the work
For many people, the ancestors are some kind of necrophone with a one-way connection. You speak, they remain dramatically silent, and everyone pretends this is profound. But when the practice continues for years, answers begin to arrive through lucid dreams, sudden insights, familiar gestures and inherited patterns of thought that clearly did not begin with you
For me, the ancestors are a real power that does not need to pass an examination. They are already present in our bodies, habits, memories and modes of operation. They help us navigate the daily swamp with tools made long before we arrived
Respecting them has never meant performing the role of a good and obedient boy. It means carrying the family current honestly, even when it changes direction in me
Being gay, for me, means being the last leaf on one branch of the family tree. So let this last leaf be bright. Let it carry pride, happiness and the feeling that this long road did not end in shame, but in colour
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