From Elder to Ancestor

A practical guide to becoming a good Ancestor

2025 Nautilus Silver Award

Explains the importance of creating a direct personal connection with Nature and how it is key to becoming an elder who will go on to become a wise Ancestor.

Presents exercises and rituals to awaken and deepen your animistic connection to the world and help you intentionally craft yourself as a fit elder.

Explores deep spiritual work with the Sacred Self, including shadow work and trauma honoring, as well as practices to help you heal your family line.

For millennia, people connected with the Ancestors as part of their regular spiritual practice, seeking wisdom and inspired vitality from those who came before. Each member of a community grew up guided by sage elders, naturally walking the path into fit elderhood themselves and, upon their good deaths, becoming wise, capable Ancestors to whom their descendants could turn.

Revealing how to restore the path from fit elder to wise Ancestor, S. Kelley Harrell explores the spiritual, cultural, and ancestral aspects of aging well. She explains the importance of creating a direct personal connection with Nature and of respecting the spirits who surround us, including asking their permission before engaging them in ritual or healing work. Exploring the concept of animism and how it is key to moving from elder to Ancestor, the author shares exercises for awakening and deepening your animistic connection to the world around you, as well as rituals for embodiment and grounding.

The author also examines the most powerful obstacles to dying well, exploring deep spiritual work with Sacred Self, including shadow work, the initiatory rite of heartbreak, and how to honour past traumas and dysfunctional patterns. She looks at forging a supportive connection with our Sacred Parents—the first Ancestors—as well as specific practices to help you heal your family line. She shows how recognising that you are Nature—a part of the sacred order—allows you to begin rewilding and honour your own sacredness. Showing that initiation into elderhood is the work of our lives, this book explains how, through personal introspection and engagement with the living world around us, we can cultivate our unique way to elder well.