When I hold a warm cup of ceremonial cacao in my hands, I am reminded that ancestry is not an abstract idea. It is something I can feel: in my body, in the earth beneath my feet, in the deep and living memory that rises when I slow down enough to listen.
Our ancestors are the result of millions of years of continuous evolution within their natural environments, whether they were human or non-human. In this article, I want to try to bring some clarity to the many forms they can take.
Ancestors are not only the people in our family line. They are all those who came before us, whether they walked this earth as humans or as other-than-human beings. They are elevated energies operating in the light, on high frequencies, when we are speaking of benevolent, healed and supportive ancestors. They include everyone who contributed to creating the DNA sequence with which we arrived here—right back to the first single-celled life to appear on this planet.
We carry within us all these earthly forms of existence. We are them and they are us. Their wisdom is still alive in the depths of our DNA, accessible if we are willing to turn away from the mind and return to our body’s natural ways of learning, to turn towards our ancestral body and bring this wisdom back to life. Nature is not outside us; we are Nature, born from the same stardust as every other species. – Hazel Marie Volk
This is a journey into the heart of the invisible living world: lineages, family memories and forgotten wisdom. Ancestral work does not seek to resurrect the past, but to reconcile with it—to hear its voice more clearly, so that it may illuminate our own path.
The six types of ancestors who accompany us
Primordial ancestors: the foundations of all life
DNA as the first ancestor
DNA can be understood as the first Ancestor of all life on Earth. We have all been shaped by this same unique “component”—at once chemical, quantum and informational. In many civilisations, the double helix of DNA appears in paintings, sculptures, temples and esoteric texts.
Celestial elements
The celestial influence upon this planet and upon ourselves reaches very far back, even before the formation of Earth. The cosmos is our parent and our ancestor.
Primordial elements
Water, air, fire and earth—the fundamental elements of physical life, the elemental forces—are intrinsically part of us. They have been present everywhere since the beginning of life on this planet.
Prehistoric ancestors: the first earthly kingdoms
Long before life appeared on Earth as we know it, countless single-celled organisms, plants, minerals and small animals began to evolve within an environment that was both chaotic and harmonious, intelligent in its own way. We are connected to these predecessors because we were shaped through their evolution. They are in our bones, and can therefore also be considered our ancestors.
These first kingdoms walked upon, nourished and built the soil of the Earth before us. They have an understanding of harmony, evolution, survival and perseverance to pass on.
The plant kingdom
Have you ever called a great, centuries-old tree an Ancestor? These ancestors offer deep protection and healing. They are guardians of knowledge and, for some of us, connect us to the multidimensional nature of the universe. I am thinking, of course, of master plants such as ayahuasca, and of certain mushrooms, which can be true spiritual teachers.
The mineral kingdom
Dolmens, standing stones and rock formations or mountains are highly evolved consciousnesses. They can be guardians of a place and can transmit great wisdom, particularly concerning cycles, but also strength and stability.
The animal kingdom
Here we might think of power animals, or of evolved consciousnesses such as the great cetaceans. Whales, for example, are sometimes described as guardians of the Akashic records. They, too, came before us.
Ancestors of place and territory
Here we are speaking of all those who lived in the place where you live: your neighbourhood, your town, your region. In the Caribbean, and on the island of Saint Martin where I lived, there were the Indigenous Arawak and Carib peoples, followed by French, English, Spanish and Dutch colonists, privateers, enslaved people brought from Africa and pirates. And long before all of this, when the Earth had another face, there were the Atlanteans.
Aggregated forms of energy and egregores
These are energies fed by inhabitants over generations, energies that permeate a place. Imagine a property with a manor house or a small castle where one family has followed another for several generations. Or think of places heavily charged by events or revelations: Fátima, Lourdes, medieval castles, catacombs. The people and events connected to such places can leave behind a collective energetic form.
Tutelary spirits and energies of a place
These are the guardians and protectors of a place. In geobiology, one might include here draconic energies, elementals and nature spirits—presences assigned to a particular location and involved in maintaining the harmony of that space.
Ancestors of tradition: saints, deities and ascended masters
These differ according to our beliefs and origins.
Canonised saints
Most saints canonised by the Church are believed to have existed in flesh and blood. Within this monotheistic tradition, it is common to draw close to them in relation to earthly concerns. For Christians, this may include Jesus, Mary, Mary Magdalene, Saint Anthony or Saint Christopher.
Ascended masters
This category may include Saint Germain, Merlin, Buddha, Padre Pio, White Buffalo Woman or No Eyes.
Patron saints of a place
Tutelary saints charged with protecting a city, a village or even a small locality form an interesting category, because the worship of a place and the devotion to a saint meet there.
In Marseille, for example, Notre-Dame de la Garde is one of the forms of the Virgin Mary and is considered the protector of the people of Marseille, particularly sailors. The cathedral was apparently built on the site of an ancient Greek temple dedicated to Artemis, who was herself a protective patron of Massilia.
Blood ancestors and the family lineage
Most of the time, when we speak of ancestors, we are referring to our family line: those to whom we are connected through blood and genetic inheritance, on our father’s and our mother’s sides. This is especially the definition of Ancestors that brings many of us to ancestral work, and it is primarily with them that we will seek contact—not exclusively, however, which is why the other types matter too. From these family ancestors we have received memories held within our cells.
The lineage of incarnations: our past lives
There is a second ancestral lineage that it is important not to forget: the lineage of our incarnations, whose existence we so often overlook.
Our incarnation lineage is us, many times over. In our DNA, we carry the information of all the incarnations we have already lived.
To make this easier for the mind to understand, we can call them our past lives, even though time is only linear here on Earth and everything is happening simultaneously within the quantum field. This succession of lives and bodies is also a lineage that precedes us, and from which we have inherited memories.
All of this has remained in our quantum DNA. We can therefore say that we have two lineages: our blood lineage and our incarnation lineage. They are not separate rooms, but two currents flowing through the same inner landscape.
Our ancestors from the great civilisations
Your bloodline contains thousands upon thousands of forebears, reaching across aeons. If we follow this principle, your lineage ancestors also include beings who lived in the time of Egypt, Atlantis or Lemuria.
These great civilisations are in our blood too. They hold many kinds of knowledge we have lost, but which we may bring back to the surface by searching within ourselves.
And if we go even further back, before Lemuria, then our ancestors may also have come from the stars. They, too, belong to our genetic lineage and to our incarnation lineage, because perhaps not all of us have had earthly incarnations.
Ancestors who form your spiritual team: guides
These ancestors do not necessarily have a specific link to you, but they share affinities with you. They carry a high vibration and have chosen to accompany us during this incarnation, because this also allows them to evolve on other planes. This team may change over time, and its members may come from any of the groups described above.
Healed ancestors and unhealed ancestors: a crucial distinction
Healed, or blessed, ancestors
These ancestors—whom we might also call well, elevated or wise—have reached notable levels of spiritual awareness during their incarnations. They have accomplished beneficial things, and have been beings of compassion and love, filled with wisdom.
They may be blood ancestors, directly connected to your family line and sharing your DNA; the tools for approaching them include genealogy and family history. They may be ancestors of the territory, connected to the place where you live and sharing a spiritual bond with the land, expressed through local culture, traditions and the energies of the place. Or they may be spiritual ancestors, connected to you through past incarnations or affinity, as guides whose influence arrives through inspiration, guidance, support and messages.
Unhealed ancestors
These ancestors have not lived a luminous life, or have suffered too greatly to be able to support us. They may have experienced cruel or unexpected deaths and remain “bound to the earthly plane”, without having completed the natural process that follows death.
In safe ancestral work, we connect only with healed ancestors. Those who are suffering require a different approach and the support of experienced practitioners. Through our actions and the resolutions we bring into matter, supported by luminous guides and ancestors and by a high-vibration energetic field, we can heal ourselves—and, through ourselves, help to heal the chain and the wounded ancestors within it.
The wounded ancestors: archetypes of unhealed pain
The following is not an exhaustive inventory, and no archetype should ever be used to flatten a real person into a label. Each situation is unique. The exiled ancestor, for example, may carry the wound of betrayal through banishment, but also rejection, humiliation or injustice. A person who died by suicide may belong to any of these families; what matters is the reason and the pain that led them there, not simply the fact that they took their own life.
Authority, violence and the misuse of power
Some lineages carry the imprint of the violent father, the perverse one, the murderer, the enslaver or the deviant who used power without conscience. These figures may represent fear, domination, sexual violation, cruelty or the normalisation of violence. Alongside them, the saboteur can embody a quieter form of aggression: the part of the family system that undermines what is growing because freedom, success or change feels dangerous.
Abandonment, displacement and the wound of not belonging
The orphan, the long-lost brother or sister and the exiled ancestor each carry a story of separation. The displaced or deported elder may hold the terror of being uprooted from home, while the cursed one may have been cast outside the circle through shame, rejection or an accusation that followed them across generations. In these stories, the wound may be betrayal, injustice, humiliation or the feeling that there is nowhere safe to return to.
Hunger, deprivation and the impossible burden of survival
The ancestor who died of hunger speaks of a body deprived of what it needed to live. This family of wounds also includes the old woman filled with resentment, whose bitterness may have grown from years of scarcity, and the man-child, who was never allowed—or never able—to mature into his own responsibility. Their memories can leave behind a nervous system that expects lack, hoards resources or struggles to trust that there will be enough.
Addiction, compulsion and escape
The drug addict is the clearest figure in this family, but addiction is not only about a substance. It can be any compulsive refuge used to flee unbearable pain. The wounded ancestor may have sought oblivion because no other form of relief was available, leaving descendants with patterns of excess, avoidance or a confusing relationship with pleasure and self-soothing.
Silence, grief and the unacknowledged dead
The ungrieved father and the ungrieved mother are ancestors whose deaths were not fully mourned, perhaps because grief was forbidden, because the family had to keep moving, or because no one knew how to speak their name. Their absence can remain strangely present. The family may carry an unnamed sorrow, a fear of attachment, or a sense that to love someone is to risk losing them without ceremony or farewell.
Perfection, sacrifice and the loss of the true self
The perfect child may have been loved for obedience, achievement or the ability to carry the hopes of an entire family. The martyr may have made suffering into a duty, believing that love must be earned through self-denial. The uninitiated one may have been denied the rituals, teachings or passageways that would have helped them become who they were. Together, these figures speak of lives shaped around expectation rather than inner truth.
Otherness, exclusion and the child outside the norm
The “possessed child”—which may include the changeling or a child with a disability—can represent a person treated as strange, frightening or less than fully human because they did not fit the expectations of their time. The wild child carries another aspect of this wound: a child raised outside the structures of society, or a part of the lineage that refused to be domesticated. These ancestors invite us to look carefully at the places where difference was punished, hidden or misunderstood.
Religious violence and violated resting places
Victims of religious sacrifice or martyrdom carry memories of devotion turned into violence. The ancestors whose burial sites were desecrated bear another form of violation: even death did not bring them safety or dignity. These wounds may touch the relationship between body and spirit, faith and fear, the right to rest, and the right to remain connected to one’s land and name.
In all ancestral work, the intention is not to open ourselves indiscriminately to suffering. We create a healthy energetic boundary and invite only our healed ancestors to come close. The wounded are held with compassion, but they are not asked to guide us before the conditions for safety and appropriate support are present.
Understanding the causes of ancestral blocks
To recognise unhealed ancestors within your lineage, it can help to understand the main causes that create transgenerational blocks.
Conflicts between family lines
You are the result of two “clans” that welcomed you—or did not. Your parents came from different backgrounds, loved one another and conceived you. They may have come from different cultures, social classes, countries or languages. Their religions or financial circumstances may also have differed.
Was their union truly welcomed on both sides of the family? If your ancestors are still, in some sense, “at war” in the afterlife, then they are not in harmony with one another—and you may not feel fully at peace within yourself either.
Limiting beliefs from another time
Your ancestors lived in eras when certain limiting thoughts seemed simply to belong to the order of things. Strong beliefs can become embedded from one generation to the next: “That’s just how it is.” “We have to work hard for everything.” “We will never be able to reach this or that.” “We must suffer.” “We will never have enough.”
Collective trauma and persecution
Your ancestors may have lived through genocides or other large-scale catastrophes. An impression of insecurity, of fear in the face of life and death, can then reverberate into the present without any obvious explanation. They may also have experienced persecution, leaving the feeling that one is never truly safe.
The oppression of the ancestral feminine
This is still recent in our history, but the role imposed upon women is a major source of ancestral blockage. Women of earlier generations lived with oppression and a lack of freedom; they were expected to remain silent and obedient. These restrictions continue to influence our relationship with the masculine and the feminine today.
Conflict between family mission and personal purpose
Sometimes what you choose to live today contradicts the mission one of your lineages had taken on. These may have been values and missions held with such intensity that they remained anchored from one generation to the next.
Perhaps your family carried a particular coat of arms representing certain values, and today you have decided not to follow them. By separating yourself from this “energetic seal”, you may create an inner conflict that becomes a blockage in daily life. This does not mean you must obey the past. It means that becoming free may require you to recognise what you are leaving behind.
A few questions for self-reflection
What was the story of your ancestors, and how might it be affecting your life today? What was the relationship between men and women in your lineages? Do you feel conflicts between your own values and those of your family?
A practical exercise: write to your future descendants
Write a letter to your future descendants, or to the future descendants of this Earth. Explain why you are committing yourself to this journey of ancestral healing and connection. Here, we are speaking to those who come after us. Let the letter become a small offering forward through time.
A practical exercise: identify your unhealed ancestors
Take a close look at the ancestors within approximately four generations of you and consider which wounds may correspond to whom. Notice the patterns and dynamics that emerge. If you work with a pendulum, you may use it to ask clear, closed questions to which it can answer yes or no. This may help you sense what needs attention and what your unhealed ancestors may require.
If you have begun building your family tree or genogram, you can place an additional transparent layer over it and add these observations. Do so gently, without forcing a story to appear where the facts are not known.
Continue your ancestral journey
This classification offers a broad view of the different ancestral lineages that accompany you. Each type of ancestor brings its own wisdom and teachings. What matters is not to hold these categories too tightly, but to let them open your perception of the living world around and within you.
When I return to cacao, to the warmth of the cup and the quiet of the land, I feel this web of relationship becoming tangible again. Ancestral connection is not a performance or a race towards extraordinary experiences. It can begin with listening, with respect, and with the simple decision to remember that we did not arrive here alone.
If you would like to follow the projects taking root on the land, you can find me on Instagram. At Quinta Kakaw, the bell tent welcomes cacao ceremonies & wellness events, while the cabin is currently being built so that, one day, you can come and stay here and experience the place more fully.
For guided audio journeys and meditations, you can join me on Insight Timer.
May the ancestors who are healed, wise and benevolent walk beside you—and may your own healing become a gentle gift to those who come after you.