Calendar of the Sun
Ancestor Day
Color: Black and grey
Element: Earth
Altar: Spread a black cloth, and lay it with photographs, paintings, and other depictions of our
ancestors. Add also symbols of their old tools, and statues of ancestral deities, a bowl of seeds for
the future garden, pots of soil, a pitcher of water, and many candles of black and white and grey.
Offerings: Things they would have liked to eat, drink, smoke, or smell. Tend a cemetery and
clean up the graves.
Daily Meal: Food from an earlier era, using authentic recipes.
Invocation to the Ancestors
Our ancestors got up at dawn,
Slaved in the dirt,
Sweated in the sun,
Chilled in the cold,
Numbed in the snow,
Scattering each seed with a prayer:
Pray that there be enough,
That no one starve this winter.
Pray that no bird nor beast
Steal the food I have struggled for.
And most of all,
Pray that each seed I save
Of this harvest
Shall next year
Bring forth a hundred more.
We live today
Because they worked
Because they sowed
Because they harvested
Because they prayed.
Chant:
Those who came before
We are your children
Those who came before
We honor your names
(Each person takes seeds from the bowl and plants them in the pots of soil, speaking the name of
one of their ancestors as they do so, as in: "In honor of _______." The pots are watered, and the
candles put out one by one.)
[Pagan Book of Hours]