From Elder to Ancestor: Nature Kinship for All Seasons of Life

by S. Kelley Harrell

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 honor 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 recognizing that you are Nature—a part of the sacred order—allows you to begin rewilding and to honor 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.

192 pages, Paperback

Published June 4, 2024

About the author

Kelley (she/they) is an animist, author, deathwalker, and death doula. For the last 25 years, through Soul Intent Arts she's helped others ethically build thriving spiritual paths. Her work is Nature-based, and centers soul tending through the Elder Futhark runes, animism, ancestral tending, and deathwork. Her books are From Elder to Ancestor, Runic Book of Days, Teen Spirit Guide to Modern Shamanism, Real Wyrd, Life Betwixt, and Gift of the Dreamtime, and she hosts the podcast, What in the Wyrd. She also writes The Weekly Rune as a celebration of the Elder Futhark in season.

Reviews

[Lea Harrington · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book facilitates a deepening of one’s ability to situate oneself in a good way within community and land-based relationships. It does this by thought provoking explorations of these themes as well as questions that lead one to contemplate where they currently situate oneself, and also next steps per moving into elder hood in a good way. I appreciated the animism focus of this book as well as its comprehensive nature, and will definitely be referring back to these exploration suggestions as I work to move into deeper relationship within community and land! Highly recommend.

[Beth Winegarner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is full of important wisdom that all of us need to reconnect with the other-than-human world, particularly as we become elders. I found myself learning so much, and so inspired to think and write more deeply on my connections with the land, trees, stones, critters and so much more.