2023 Closing Divination

This year’s closing divination was really 10s across the board! We reached out to the Ancestor Helping Spirits who have stepped up to tend the line, as we always do, and asked our usual closing questions: how do you think the rite went this year? Is there anything you think we should change or add for next year? Do you have any messages or guidance you’d like us to share with the other participants in the rite?

All four of the spirits agreed that this year’s rite was successful at what we were trying to accomplish, that the timing and format were right, and that they were happy with how it went. The ancestors who were once human – Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and Leslie Feinberg – didn’t share any changes they believed we should make for next year, and the messages they told us to pass along to you, dear reader, are as follows:

Marsha: We are always near. Love.

Sylvia: Keep fighting.

Leslie: Take courage. Love.

In our divination with Agdistis, we got some really interesting guidance that we’re going to have to figure out how to implement. The message they told us to pass along was “I take, I fix, I help heal,” and so we are going to work on figuring out how to incorporate their practices more into the structure of the Rite that doesn’t require everyone to have the same background in working with them that we do. Stay tuned for more on that!

But generally our Helping Spirits are satisfied with the efficacy of this year and we’re feeling positive and grateful to all of you for coming on this journey with us for another year!

-- mod rocket

Hello friends and comrades,

Your mods are working on getting our post-ritual divination done and written up to share with you all. Unsurprisingly we are pretty worn out from several things at once, but feeling positive about the improved accessibility of the new ritual format. We plan to check in with our helping spirits sometime in the next week and report back with how it went for them.

If you do your own divination, we would be excited to see your results! We would also be very interested in hearing any further feedback from participants that we might not have received just yet. Please let us know!

Hoping to have updates for you all soon. Thank you so much for your work.

-- Mod Alder

Last night your mods packed up our altar and brought it to our local anarchist infoshop and café for a beautiful TDOR event. A few dozen of us were squeezed inside the little venue for performances of music, poetry, and dance, and then we took the stage to lead the Rite.

Mods' altar from 2022.

Image description: An altar on a black fabric surface, as seen from above. The left side of the photo holds a vase of flowers including white roses and orange lilies. A white bandana covers the center of the altar. It is arranged with candles, a glass of water, assorted offerings, and a round drum decorated with a knot design. In the foreground is a red book titled "THE FAGGOTS & THEIR FRIENDS BETWEEN REVOLUTIONS."

Mods' altar from 2022.

Image description: An altar on a black fabric surface, as seen from above. The left side of the photo holds a vase of flowers including white roses and orange lilies. A white bandana covers the center of the altar. It is arranged with candles, a glass of water, a book, and a round drum decorated with a knot design.

Mods' altar from 2022.

Image description: An altar on a black fabric surface in front of a stone wall. A stovepipe coming out of the stone is draped with curled rainbow horns. The left side of the altar holds a vase of flowers including white roses and orange lilies. The right side holds a stack of books. In the center is a white bandana with candles, a glass of water, and a round drum arranged across it. A prism out of frame is projecting rainbow rays across the image.

2023 Trans Rite Opening Divination

Dear ones,

We’ve done our opening divination for this year’s Trans Rite and we wanted to update you with what we learned. We also encourage you to do your own divination and ask your own questions of the Ancestral Helping Spirits that we’ve been working with together, or others that you’ve incorporated into your practice, and would love to hear what you learn!

We reached out to the Ancestral Helping Spirits that we honor by name every year: Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Ray Rivera, and Comrade Leslie Feinberg. We confirmed that all three of them do want to be involved this year in helping us welcome the newly dead in our family, and giving them offerings of love, honor, and water for their journey. They also affirmed for us that moving from nine nights to one night is the right step to take this year, and that while there will be power in how many people will be doing it at the same time on November 20th, the Trans Day of Remembrance, it isn’t a problem to do it one or two nights before or after if you have to.

The revised FAQ here lays out the basic steps of the format, and we suggest you incorporate the specific offerings that they have all asked for this year. Marsha P. Johnson has suggested that we incorporate music from the past into the ritual itself, both as an offering to her and as a gift to the newly dead. Sylvia Rivera asked for the same offerings we’ve been making to her – including dulce de ajonjoli, and poppers and lube. Leslie Feinberg told us to include prayers for peace, so we’ll likely be including more Hebrew prayers this year as well.

The moderators also work with an entity called Agdistis in the Rite, whom we checked with and who is down to participate this year, so if venerating Agdistis as an ancestor or in other ways is part of your practice, we have their enthusiastic consent. Agdistis also reiterated what they always say, which is, “Give me the pain. I will take it and fix it.”               

The final piece of guidance that came through for us this year was that it’s a good idea to localize your ancestors of spirit just as you would you ancestors of blood. What trans saints and history makers lived where you live? Who are your local trans heroes, who may have left our kind of life behind them but who can take on that role of welcoming more people across the line? Finding the local Ancestor Helping Spirits in the place that you live, calling them in and honoring them by name  -- this will be a stronger practice than everyone honoring the same few people regardless of where you’re operating out of.

Ping us with any questions. As Leslie always tells us: Courage.

-- Mod Rocket

How to join the Transgender Ancestor Rite: an FAQ on our updated format

What is it?

2023 Trans Ancestor Rite

Hi everyone. It's about that time...

Our divination confirms that we are not doing an elevation-style ritual this year. (You may recall that nine-day format with the altar on the floor.) The ancestor ritual will be one day only. We recommend November 20th, as it is already the Trans Day of Remembrance. (Our own ritual may need to be November 21st, due to bio family obligations, but we are still sussing that out.)

We also recommend setting the altar up early even if you don't work it night after night as in previous years. The Rite is still in a transitional, somewhat experimental stage this year - so we will try performing the ritual only once, and then verify what's working through divination after the fact.

We plan to check in over the weekend with the individual ancestors who customarily participate in the ritual, and will post results once we have them. We also plan to post a concise ritual outline with instructions and prayer texts in the next few days.

In the meantime, you could consider where, when, and with whom you might wish to perform the ritual. Is there a local TDOR ceremony you could add a ritual element to? Do you have comrades who might join you in lighting the candle and reading the names? A single ritual is more approachable for many than nine days of consecutive prayers, which opens up possibilities for new contexts and participants.

Please send an ask to let us know your plans and questions! You can also use the submission function to send us photos of your altars, or prayers, as in years past. We will be tracking the tag #troe2023 (even though the E for Elevation in the acronym is no longer quite right).

You may wish to turn on notifications for this blog if you are participating this year, as we post pretty infrequently and will otherwise likely get lost on your dash.

Thank you for joining us in honoring our siblings and cousins and elders who have passed on.

--- Mod Alder

[Image description: Foreground is a stack of books on a black cloth with a white bandana in the lower left corner; background is a stone wall and a dark green curtain.]

Photo from Night 3 of this year's ritual. We offered a lot of poetry this go-round. Selected titles:

-- Mod Alder

Our local LGBTQ center isn't hosting a Trans Day of Remembrance event this year, so we'll be reading the names over livestream on Facebook. We'll start about an hour from now, at 5 pm Eastern time 11/20/2022. Send us a DM if you'd like the link.

– Mod Alder

#TROE2022

Hey folks! In years past we have reblogged participants' posts from the year's #troe tag, but for whatever reason nothing is showing up this year. We aren't sure whether this means no one is posting, or that Tumblr is just being fucky. If you are participating in the ritual and posting about it, please let us know, and we will come check your blog for posts!

– Mod Alder

Mods' altar (Alder & Rocket), night 1.

[Image description: a photo in a dark room of an altar laid out on a white bandana. Contents include a round frame drum in back with a Celtic pattern painted on it, a blue goblet of water surrounded by silk flowers, assorted candles, an image of a person's face in a frame, and a smoke bundle and small offerings in the foreground.]

A little understated, due to family staying over, but very lovely to test out the new format.

We got encouraging divination responses that we'll share in more depth soon, but the upshot is that Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P Johnson, and Leslie Feinberg will all help tend the ancestral line this year and can be invoked by name as ancestral spirits. (Agdistis, a mythological figure that both of us work with in a related capacity, may also be involved if they fit into your practice - not to worry if not.)

Thank you for joining us, we will be checking the #troe2022 tag for anyone else who's participating this year. 🤍🌱🕯️💐🍶

– Mod Alder

Hey folks, I'm seeing that some of our permalinks on desktop mode need to be updated - we will try and get to that soon! Divination to follow tonight (hopefully??) as well. In the meantime, the pinned post should give you enough to go off of - just verify that any ancestors you're invoking by name are interested in being involved. Thank you! 🤍

— Mod Alder

Trans Ancestor Rite 2022

This year’s Ancestor Rite is coming up quick and we’ve finally gotten some solid information about what needs to change this year.

After seven years of conducting the Rite in its current form, this year’s divination with the relevant helping spirits has provided us with some new guidelines around ritual format that we have been hoping for for some time. Here’s how we’re thinking about it:

Assuming our past years’ work has been effective, there are now a good deal of trans ancestors, people who were alive both recently and longer ago, who feel themselves in connection with us, who have received the care and honor we offered through previous years’ elevations, who are bright and well and who can tend the line from the other side.

Most ancestral practices discourage interfacing directly with the troubled dead; instead, the ongoing practice of the living is to honor and connect with our bright and well ancestors. Practitioners then ask these bright ancestors to care for the troubled dead, to bring them into healing, and to place blessings around the familial line. So this year we are shifting to that model instead of trying, as living practitioners, to offer peace that we do not ourselves know to the recently passed. Therefore, here are some new ritual guidelines to try.

 1. We’re still preparing an altar and spending the nine nights leading up to the Trans Day of Remembrance with it. The altar should now celebrate and honor the bright and well trans ancestors and helping spirits that you honor in your work year round or that you wish to invite into your practice.

2. Instead of placing the altar on the ground, you should now put this altar in a place that you can sit with it every night. We won’t be physically elevating the altars this year. It can be a part of your existing altar setup if you have one, or it can be on a dresser, table, shelf, or wherever works for you.

3. Work the altar every night for nine nights, beginning on November 12th and ending on November 20th. We have some ideas for what working the altar will mean for us, but your ideas are also welcome and encouraged! We recommend that you still light a dedicated candle and offer a fresh glass of water. You can also offer them incense or other smoke, cut flowers, a drink or a meal, prayers, poems, music, dancing, whatever you feel called to offer. These offerings should be directed towards the bright and well trans ancestors that we have been working with for the last seven years, and any others that you are connected to – not to the recently passed.

4. We have a new base prayer that you can build around, with which we’ll be asking those bright and well ancestors to care for our troubled dead and to lay a blessing around the line, and we’ll be honoring and celebrating them for stepping up to do that work with us.

5. It’s fine to still read the list of names if that’s part of your annual practice, but instead of speaking directly to those family members who have passed in the last year, we are now identifying them by name to the bright and well ancestors and helping spirits and asking them to look after them.

6. Note: It’s still important not to put any images of living people on your ancestor altar!

 We’re glad to be stepping into this new phase of the Trans Ancestor Rite for a couple of reasons. We hope that this format will be less grueling on practitioners – we’ve definitely felt the weight of trying to allow the trauma of hundreds of troubled dead to process through our living bodies for nine days in a row, and we don’t want to be guiding our community through ritual practices that feel like torture! We’ve also felt less than awesome about using the elevation format – it’s not from a closed practice, but we are using it out of context and that’s not a great way to operate. (Also the individual that we directly learned this from has gone vocally fascist over the last few years and we are glad to no longer feel like we have to be using her work!)

We welcome any questions or feedback! Have you been getting other information from your divination? Do you have practices that you have been finding effective for connecting with the bright and well trans ancestors? What are you thinking about for this year?

Let us know if you’re participating this year! Please share photos of your altars, or what offerings you’re making! If you tag posts #TROE2022, we’ll feature them on the blog!

In solidarity,

En la lucha,

Mir veln zey iberlebn,

Mod Rocket

Update!

Hey everybody!

Rocket and I did our pre-ritual divination this afternoon and got positive responses from Marsha and Sylvia to participate again this year on the ancestral side. (Agdistis, an ancestral spirit of sorts with whom we both work, is also in.)

However, we got what seemed like a no from Leslie. Usually Comrade Leslie Feinberg is among the ancestral helping spirits we call on and honor during the elevation, but we didn't get a yes from hir this year.

We are asking a third party to verify our div but as of now it seems like Ms Marsha P Johnson and Ms Sylvia Ray Rivera are the ancestral helping spirits for this year's elevation. Hopefully Rocket can update on that divination in more depth tomorrow before we get started.

Thanks everybody. 🤍

- Mod Alder