Beyond the 'Fetish': Reclaiming the True Scope of the Ancestral

Beyond the Fetish: Reclaiming the True Scope of the Ancestral

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Living Ancestor Podcast.
This is your host, Ramon Castellanos.

Today, we are going to be exploring the ways in which we fetishize the various layers of the ancestral in order to create a touchstone, a focal point of connection.

But how that same touchstone and focal point of connection can, if we mistake it for the entirety of the force that we are engaging with, deeply limit us and reduce the ancestral in scope in a way that is actually not helpful.

We are going to do this in three separate phases in order to keep the transmission coherent, because this is a deep and complex topic that I am going to do my best to simplify so that you can move forward with a broader and more expanded relationship to the ancestral.

Three Phases of Inquiry

First, we are going to talk about what I mean by fetishizing and fetishes in general.

Then, we are going to talk about how that shows up for us as modern people within the context of the ancestral.

And finally, we are going to move into an expansion phase and talk about the ancestral in a broader scope, discussing what it actually is and what it contains.

Because the ancestral is vast and not limited to any of the fetishes that we create about it.

So with that said, let’s dive in.

What Is a Fetish?

The notion of a fetish describes, at a core level, an orientation of consciousness.

This orientation involves devotion to an object, an idea, or a behavior.

The interesting thing is that a fetish is also a narrowing of scope.

It is a focal point.
Some might call it a container.

In this way, the container often represents or holds an aspect of a very multi-layered force or dynamic.

Fetishes as Containers of Power

We can look to indigenous cultures for examples.

In many indigenous traditions, the word fetish, or its equivalent, describes something like a spirit house, a doll, or an object sculpted from wood or assembled from multiple materials and imbued with magical force.

These objects are meant to represent a god, a force, or an ancestor.

If you imagine a shrine with various objects representing spirits or gods, each of those objects can be understood as a fetish.

It is a container.
A focal point.
A touchstone.

The fetish itself is not the totality of the force.

It represents the force, but it is not the whole of it.

It allows human beings to relate to something vast and multidimensional in a palpable way.

Narrowing Immensity

Many of the forces imbued into fetishes are so vast in scope that we cannot fully apprehend them.

So we create touchstones in order to relate.

This is also where sexual fetishes come in.

They involve a narrowing of the immense power of sexuality into a particular orientation.

And what I want to offer here is that a fetish can be understood as any time we objectify and narrow something in order to define it and relate to it.

Icons and fetishes function similarly in this way.

Fetishizing the Ancestral

This is something we do consistently in modern culture in relation to the ancestral.

Often by necessity.

Fetishes are helpful because they allow us to relate to something vast in a manageable way.

So what does this look like in the context of the ancestral?

Modern Ancestral Fetishes

I once wrote a book called The Ancestral Now: The Intersection Between Deep Time, Primal Movement, Nutrition, Magic, and Ancestral Consciousness.

I wrote it because each one of those domains is, in a sense, a fetish of the ancestral.

Ancestral nutrition is a fetishization of one aspect of ancestral lifeways.

The same is true for primal or ancestral movement.

Working with animism, the dead, and ancestral healing is also a narrowing of the ancestral into a particular container.

Each of these allows us to relate to something real, but each also limits scope.

Why We Fetishize

In tribal and indigenous contexts, these things are not called ancestral.

They are simply life.

Food is just food.
Movement is just movement.
Spirituality is just spirituality.

We fetishize these elements now because they are missing from modern life.

But in doing so, we drastically narrow the ancestral.

When Fetishes Become Prisons

There are communities that reduce the ancestral entirely to diet.

Others reduce it to movement.

Others reduce it to the dead and ancestral spirits.

Each of these is a narrowing.

The attempt to create a focal point can become a prison.

Now I want to ask you:

When you think of the ancestral, where does your mind immediately go?

That orientation is likely a fetish.

The Vastness of the Ancestral

So let’s expand.

The ancestral is vast.

Let’s begin with the body.

The Body as Ancestral

Your body is an ancestral phenomenon.

It came out of the ancestors in one continuous, unbroken line.

Every aspect of human design, from reptilian to mammalian to Homo sapiens, is ancestral inheritance.

We are designed to walk.
To crawl.
To squat.
To kneel.
To run.
To climb.
To dance.

These capacities are built in.

So are deeper patterns.

The desire for warmth.
The fear of the dark.
The need for other humans.
The ability to read faces across cultures.

These are ancestral patterns.

Bloodline and Beyond

Then there are the remembered dead.

Then the forgotten dead.

Then the Paleolithic dead.

Then the non-human animals in our lineage.

All the way back to the first life forms emerging from ancient oceans.

And possibly beyond Earth itself.

Landline, Soul Line, Mythic Line

There is the landline.

The lands our ancestors inhabited and that shaped us.

There is the soul line.

Spiritual traditions are ancestral traditions.

Every lineage was maintained by people who lived and died.

Those people are ancestors.

There is the mythic line.

Dragons.
Griffins.
Non-human ancestral beings held by indigenous cultures.

The Cosmic Line

There is the cosmic line.

In some traditions, God is the first ancestor.

Earth as ancestor.
Sun and moon as ancestors.
Stars as ancestors.

We are made of stardust.

From this vantage point, everything that came before you is an ancestor.

We are kin with the whole of reality.

The Ancestral as a Godlike Force

The ancestral is deity-like in scope.

It holds us.

We are expressions of it.

We are nodes within it.

One fire in a long line of fires.

An Altar of Many Fetishes

What I want to encourage is not abandoning fetishes, but building an altar of fetishes.

Nutrition.
Movement.
Ancestral lifeways.
Magic.
Healing.
Primal forces.
The mighty dead.

Each is a doorway into a vast mystery.

None are the totality.

Letting the Ancestral Breathe

Let the ancestral show up in unexpected ways.

In the stars.
In the moon.
In bare feet on the earth.
In food.
In movement.

Let it become mysterious again.

Let it become vast.

The container is a touchstone.

It is not the mystery itself.

If you feel called to deepen this relationship, visit me at:

eatingancientvirtue.substack.com

Where we absorb the virtues of the past in order to nourish the future.

Take care, my friends.