An Interview with Ben Stimpson

1. What inspired you to write your new book, Ancestral Whispers?
When I first conceptualized Ancestral Whispers, it was first as a course for my counselling clients. I had embarked a few years earlier on deep ancestor work myself through a spiritual tradition I belonged to, and I wanted to facilitate an experience that was accessible for clients. I did not see very much material that wasn't tradition-specific, and given my background as a therapist I saw a need for an approach that was non-prescriptive and encouraged clients to develop their own practice in an organic and authentic way.

Such a large part of my spiritual journey the past twenty years has been trying to find a sense of home. I emigrated as a child to Canada from North Wales in the United Kingdom, and when that happened, I experienced culture shock and a disconnection from my own roots. Living a liminal life between cultures has provided me with a vibrant experience, but that came at the expense of trauma. In Welsh there is the word "hiraeth," which means a deeply nostalgic longing for home that is inexplicably painful. My ancestor work helped to heal some deep wounds I had from that culture shock, and I felt the call to come home. I found myself at the start of the pandemic with a lot of time on my hands, and ancestor work seemed to be very relevant, so I sat down and wrote.

2. Why is ancestor veneration important? And so powerful?
I think it is so powerful because it is both intimate and expansive in different ways than deity or spirit. We are directly connected to ancestors in relationships that form massive webs going back into the depths of time. I feel like the neopagan relationship to ancestor work can be strained at times, because it is an uncomfortable elephant in the room. Traditions of ancestor work are often tied up with religions of origin, and for those rejecting or finding their own way spiritually there can be a disconnect. How does one connect with recent ancestral spirits who were Christians if you yourself reject Christianity as a personal faith? This discomfort with the ancestors in combination with the perception that there are no traditions to follow can cause a lot of people to wonder, "what do I do with the ancestors?" This becomes the tricky part, but also becomes the point of empowerment.

I think ancestor work is so important because we live with what our ancestors have handed down to us. The world we live in now was shaped by previous generations, just as our generation is shaping the world our descendants will live in. In a biological sense, we are all living with our ancestors' genes in our bodies, which creates a different form of connection. I also think the reason ancestor work is so important is it ultimately reflects to us the things we don't want to see. I think ultimately, ancestor work helps to position us in a grander scheme alongside deity and spirit work. One of my spiritual traditions I belonged to has a saying: "Ancestors beneath us, spirits around us, God above us." This means that the ancestors become the foundations we walk upon as we walk the roads with our spirits and as we look up to the Divine above us; we walk in our lives until it becomes time for us to support our descendants as we become their foundations. Ancestor work then, is ultimately, about preparing ourselves to be good ancestors.

We all have biological ancestors; that is a clear-cut fact of existence that is irrefutable. Ironically, I think this also makes ancestor work more difficult to pin down because the relationships we form with them are not like relating to singular or small groups of spirits or deities; we are plugged into an immense web of personalities only some of whom we know anything about. Deities can be very familiar whereas only some ancestors are familiar, and the rest become mysterious the further back in time we go. I think another key issue is that westerners, in my opinion, approach ancestor work like we might with specific forms of religion. As a lived practice, I encourage readers to not compartmentalize forms of spirituality without an intuitive reason and sometimes ancestor work does blend in with other forms of practice and sometimes it doesn't. This makes it powerful, in that aspects of ancestor work become liminal spaces.

3. Many (if not most) cultures around the world practice some sort of ancestor veneration. Are there similarities that you have found across different practices?
Like many forms of spirituality, ancestor work emerges out of worldview and our basic psychological makeup. It is a very Human thing to miss those we love, and so it makes a lot of sense we would honour them when they're gone. Indeed, the norm in the world is to honour one's ancestors through some sort of parallel ritual practice to official religions. The West has such a bizarre relationship with death and the dead in general that our cultural worldview goes against the experience found in most human cultures. In my own view, the major role of ritual practice when directed at spiritual beings is as vehicles or containers for communication, and so often the differences from culture to culture of ritual form can often be understood as specific and nuanced forms of communication between specific spirits and specific communities. What was fascinating while writing Ancestral Whispers was to pay attention to what similarities of worldview emerged as I looked cross-culturally.

The first widespread belief is that the dead have power and agency to impact the world of the living somehow. They are not, as western culture would believe, in some remote and inaccessible afterlife, their world and ours can intersect and impact each other. This is one of the reasons ancestor veneration is different from mourning practices, because in veneration the ancestors are responded to as being present now. Veneration becomes not just a need to remember, but to propitiate for blessings and sometimes appease to avoid misfortune.

A second widespread belief is that the living and the dead exist within natural cosmological rules governing the universe. Being alive and being dead are states of being that have specific roles, responsibilities, and boundaries. If we look at many cultures' conceptions of ghosts of the dead who violate those cosmological rules becoming transformed into dangers to the community. Ancestor work in this way provides a safe place of connection between living and dead that affirms the roles that govern our states of existence.

A third widespread belief is that the ancestors and the practices developed around them often become a non-official container for folkways and oral culture. Ancestral veneration becomes a home-based or smaller scale community practice tailored to the needs of the extended family and used as a traditional way of passing down family history. So ancestor veneration becomes a social tool for the proliferation of wisdom and collective identity.

I explore this question a lot more in Ancestral Whispers, the myriad functions and beliefs associated with ancestor work.

4. Do our ancestors need to be connected to us through a familial lineage? Or can we choose to work with others on the other side of the veil that have preceded us?
This is one of the most common questions people ask, and the answer really comes down to your worldview. It is not my job to tell anyone who they can work with, but I do think in the west our definition of what constitutes family is very limited. We tend to think of ancestry through blood relations only, when many cultures around the world have a broader view of who family is. In my book I stress the word "relationship," and to me an ancestor is anyone or anything that has contributed to who I am now. I devote two whole chapters to exploring the different forms of ancestor, whether they be blood relatives, affinity ancestors, or conceptual ancestors. In some cultures, deities and precursor figures are ancestral in a way and so the definition between "ancestor" and other forms of spirits are predicated on different conceptions than the west. In my own retinue of ancestors, I have blood relatives, affinity ancestors connected to my profession or forms of identity, and conceptual ancestors who directly or indirectly contributed to the person I've become. In the queer community particularly, this question of chosen family is very important, and many other writers speak about honouring queer community ancestors.

I think this question essentially comes down to how you conceptualize ancestor and what roles and responsibilities you have to one another. If you see deities as distinct from ancestors, then how does that categorization impact how you work with each? In some traditions there are beliefs that certain types of spirits cannot be connected to us in certain ways, call it a spiritual code of ethics, and so by being classed as a type of spirit they are not ancestors. There is a strain of belief that spirit guides must have a certain professional distance from us to fulfill their role most effectively in our lives without agenda and so are generally not ancestral to us. Whereas in some other traditions, the entire world is seen as one large family and so "ancestor" work means specifically only our blood relatives with other forms of practices connected to other forms of spirits. I explore this question and more in Chapter Five of Ancestral Whispers.

5. What, if any, previous knowledge is required to use the practices you share in Ancestral Whispers?
My book is written with the belief that every reader is an expert in their own ancestral journey. The only requirements I would suggest is to have an open mind, reflective inner gaze, and willingness to go into uncomfortable places. I wrote this book to be non-prescriptive and to explore various points of consideration. I ask the questions; it's your job to apply the answers you come up with your work. I offer journal prompts, discussion on relevant issues, some exercises, and guidance on some points. The examples I give are grounded in ancestral traditions around the world, but I don't suggest anyone copy or emulate traditions spoken about. Part one of the book is all about exploring the readers' worldview, and part two is then taking that worldview and building a lived practice. In essence, my whole book is one long therapy session between you and your ancestors, with the encouragement to listen to one another. The only requirement is DO THE WORK.

6. What do you hope readers will take away from Ancestral Whispers?
I hope readers come away seeing ancestral work as something more than just a source to work spells, or as an awkward aspect of practice where the ancestors are paid lip service to. I think many NeoPagans have a difficult time reconciling their pagan faith with the idea that their ancestors of the past thousand years or so were Christian. So many ancestral practices are connected to dominant religious traditions that might have been rejected by readers, so there may be a feeling of directionlessness. I think also many people approach alternative spirituality with lingering feelings of needing to believe and practice correctly. With so many pagan approaches to working the dead missing or connected to dominant religions, there is often a want but a not knowing how. I designed my book not to give readers traditions to follow, but to explore their beliefs and worldview and develop meaningful practices that will serve to build strong relationships.

I hope my book empowers readers to explore ancestor work as potentially a deep and full-fledged spiritual practice in its own right that can sit in parallel with their other spiritual work. I hope that the book encourages readers to develop and deepen their practices in relationship with their ancestors, because the ancestors are both apart of and stand outside the cultures of our upbringings. I ultimately hope that the questions and exercises in the book encourage readers to take ownership of their practices, so they don't feel the pressure to ask for permission to build relationships with their own ancestors.