Finding Mentors and Community: "Ancestral Magic" Excerpt

 

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Community allows us to share and be surrounded by those who are on similar journeys as us or on completely different ones as well as receive constructive criticism, feedback, and information about our reconnection that we may not have had access to on our specific journey.

Mentors and mentorship play a very specific role in this, especially for those of us who are working to reconnect with a magical practice or folk medicine. I’m often asked how I find a mentor or what is best to look out for in mentorship – and the answer isn’t one I necessarily know how to answer. I found many of my mentors through the internet – they had similar backgrounds to what I was interested in learning, shared information I found helpful, or created content in line with what I felt was reminiscent or close to my practice. I didn’t approach them and ask them to mentor me – rather, I found what they had available in terms of teaching or classes and took part in it.

When seeking a mentor, (this is important) many teachers are working within the field of magic or witchcraft are doing so as full-time jobs, and while in a perfect society we would not have to pay to receive knowledge, capitalism requires many, including spiritual teachers, to ask for payment in terms of receiving guidance and information from them. Many of the authors I have been interested in also offer accessible content in the form of online content creation, seminars, and posts talking about their experiences as a member of the community or in reconnection.

Certain traditions require a teacher or mentor for initiation, the passing of oral traditions, or even connecting with the spirits of the tradition. We see this in many different religions and practices, including Italian folk magic, Judaism, Santeria, and Vodoun. While some of these initiation rights are well known, such as the transmission of a mal’occhio prayer on Christmas Eve, others are kept secret within the religion and are completely unknown to outsiders. Some traditions can be passed almost entirely from an elder or teacher onto a younger practitioner or person.

While documentation exists to discuss particular beliefs, initiatory rites, or spells within the practice, there is a value to seeking out a physical teacher to assist you in learning about traditions and practices. Within these traditions lies beliefs about the religion or the cultural context surrounding the practice, and this is something that isn’t always included within documented texts or books. To access community is to access those that are contributing to, have been raised in, or affected by particular aspects of culture – whether that is a particular religion, belief, or practice.

Understanding the way in which knowledge is passed from individual to individual within a spiritual practice is also imperative for recognizing when someone may not be the best source of information. When considering someone as a teacher, we don’t always need to look at what kind of information they are giving, but how they are giving the information and how it makes us feel.

How are they approaching sharing information? Are they open about their teachers and sources? Do they take chances to privately discuss learning moments with you or privately correct misinformation? What traditions do they represent and are learned in? Are these traditions initiatory, and if so, by whom were they initiated? When we look at our elders, teachers, and peers, being open about where we received our information from and by whom is more important than one may think. While information tends to spread across the internet quickly, oftentimes losing its original source, the slowing down and asking for such is a powerful move to protect yourself and analyze where you can get your information.

Here are some more rules of thumb for deciding who to learn from and about what:

1. When they share information, do they only share sources that were written by them?

2. When combatting misinformation, do they approach it from the perspective of someone who wants to help you grow and learn? Are they taking time to give sources, information, and criticism that will help you in your practice, or does it feel as though they just don’t like the way you present it?

3. Do they react badly when you ask for sources or extra information, including getting defensive or upset?

4. Do they publicly and privately share not only their teachers, but who initiated them (if any), and can you find an oral or written record of this?

5.  If they are someone who is not of the minority that is present in the practice, are they aware of their privilege and uplifting those who created the practice/religion as well as its cultural origins?

6. When they collect and share information, are they citing their sources, teachers, or giving cultural context?

If asking point blank for their teachers is considered taboo or innapropriate within the tradition, you can try:

7. Which communities are they affiliated with?

8. Which communities claim them?

While this doesn’t nearly encompass all of the personal experiences and public experiences I’ve had and seen in my communities around practitioners and mentors nor is it a definitive list, the main thing to keep in mind is how this person makes you feel. I don’t mean that you disagree with some of the things they say or get a “bad vibe” off the content they make, but rather take some time to ground, look at how they share information and the way in which they teach.

Do you just feel as though you disagree with what they’re saying? Does it confront parts of you that may make you uncomfortable? Does it make you feel embarrassed, humiliated, or uneasy? Recognizing the way in which it makes you feel and then further breaking it down to recognize whether it is because it confronted something you need to address or something you disagree with versus discomfort because of the way it was presented is imperative. Being able to discern which teachers will help us and which want to be put on an authoritative pedestal is, in many ways, us recognizing who we are, what we want in a teacher, and how best to approach it. It’s the ability for us, as reconnectors and forever students, to understand our place as forever students and furthermore how we learn and which ways of teaching benefit us. There are elements of our reconnection that we can always continue to grow into, change, and learn, and then there are elements of our reconnection we cannot control or change. This self-awareness expands past us and becomes reflective of our community and the people we take with us on this journey. It allows us to explore our roots in a way that is painful, yet beneficial to how we learn and who we become as we reconnect.

Mentorship isn’t just reserved for those on spiritual paths – we can learn about culture, language, and beliefs that benefit our reconnection through a variety of teachers, peers, and community members that we may not always identify as mentorship. You can learn valuable things through people around you that don’t necessarily identify as mentors – these could be people in different practices, people in the same practice, people younger or even older than you with different relationships with the folk. Teachers of language and teachers of culture can be mentors to us and assist us in reconnection, allowing us insights into particular words used, ideas, connotations, or even slang that is commonly used within the culture.

Reconnecting does not just mean learning and connecting to a spiritual community, but a cultural community. While we may be seeking out reconnection to a particular tradition, religion, or even deity, we cannot understand them without the cultural context they exist in. The journey of reconnection is one that requires us to shed particular beliefs, ideas, and cultural concepts that do not benefit us or fit who we are becoming. This is particularly potent for those shedding ideas of white supremacist ideals adopted by assimilation and those learning to reconnect and rediscover a culture after colonization. When we understand the culture that we are working to reconnect to, we can understand how it influences us, as reconnecters, as well as the diaspora we are a part of.

When talking about community, I want to talk about something that one of my teachers, Lisa Fazio, who runs the Root Circle, discussed in a class I took with her. There’s ancestral reclamation and cultural reclamation, she explained. Our ancestors are a part of us. We have everything we need to connect to our ancestors, because they are inside us. Cultural reclamation requires us to look outside of us – to our community, our mentors, teachers, and elders – as pillars of understanding in the culture.

In Italian-American culture, community and family are some of the most important things. Our apotropaic charms work because they are gifted. Our cures are passed from elder or teacher to younger practitioner as a way of keeping our traditions alive, but also by giving someone we love the tool to protect themselves. To be Italian-American is to, in many ways, be part of a bigger organism than yourself. This way of becoming a village is present in many different places across the world – in many ways, there was no “becoming” – they were already a village and a single organism. People in the same town, in the same religion, or who have experienced similar things group together by means of survival. 

We face difficulties in reconnecting and becoming one with the community in a capitalistic and white supremacist culture – one that tells us that to survive we are on our own. We have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, get into work, and monetize every aspect of ourselves in order to survive. Connecting with community allows us to not only recognize how our culture differs to those of our ancestors, but helps make space for us to navigate in what ways we have changed throughout generations or years.

Community is in many ways about mentorship, but it is also about creating relationships with the people around us that are fellow reconnectors of members of the culture. Opportunities to commune with and see the way other individuals practice, whether this is sitting in ceremony, participating in a workshop, or receiving knowledge from them that was shared with you, is an extraordinary opportunity. Learning from the layman and from the experiences that other people have is in itself a way of reconnection, whether this is through watching someone you know cook a certain way or practice a particular ritual. The value of having individuals within your space that may not position themselves as teachers, but just as practitioners, and the ability to see the way they practice and share space, knowledge, and community with them is a way of learning. In certain traditions, sharing information with peers and members of your community is an act of reconnection. 

Not every culture held beliefs within initiatory traditions, and even within these cultures different practitioners and people may want to share knowledge in different ways. I am uncomfortable positioning myself as a teacher of Italian American folk magic, however I am very open to sharing certain practices contained within my folk magic to both my online community and friends. I perform mal’occhio cures for others at work or in private and will make breve bags and other apotropaic charms when prompted. Several of my friends and peers in and outside of my community have been able to see me in ritual or performing elements of my folk magic throughout my reconnection journey. Although there are always elements of my practice and my culture that I refuse to share, especially the prayers I utilize within my cures and certain methods of transmission within the folk magic.

Most of my learning about my practice, culture, and folk magic was imparted on me by members of my community who I created relationships with—even if they were over the internet. In an age where everything is digitized, community comes in many forms and it requires us to be more discerning, careful, and intentional with where we lay down our roots and who we form connections with. It’s more difficult over the internet and social media to know someone’s true intentions or ideas about you—and in many ways, community allows us to have access to information about individuals we may not know well, but others may. It allows us to receive second opinions about our feelings and intuition around content someone puts out. It provides us with a network of people who can tell us about their experiences with someone we may not know much about—which also requires our discernment. It requires us to formulate our own boundaries—both energetic and physical— and understand what we want in community, teachers, and mentors. It requires us to hold firm to those boundaries and understand that standing in our power, knowing our limits and what is and isn’t okay in a teacher and peer for us, will be the most beneficial to our forming and gathering in community.

Our community expands beyond our physical and living peers and teachers and into our dead and spiritual teachers in the form of ancestors, herbal allies, Mighty Dead, and even spirits that were important to our families such as Saints, deities, plants, and more. Our ancestors, similar to what my teacher, Lisa, said, are part of us. All we have to do to connect with them is recognize them and reach inside of ourselves to learn from them. My mother often says to me, “When something is right, you will know” and I have found it to be true. With the guidance of my ancestors, I’ve been able to trace and receive rituals and develop relationships with plants that, upon discussing them with peers or family members later, are incredibly similar to live folk traditions or were important to my family.

Our capacity for cultural reclamation allows us to connect with our ancestors, living and dead, that guide us and allow us access to information and practices that we may have lost or that may have never been transcribed – just passed by word of mouth. Ancestral reclamation does not, in any way, allow us access into closed practices or practices guarded by initiation. However, it can and will guide us to the right teachers, information, sources or rituals when we begin to truly embody our ancestors through veneration, reconstruction, connection, and healing ancestral trauma.

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