The Living Ancestor

Hosted by with Ramon Castellanos

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Jun 2026

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This Podcast is an exploration of what it means to become a ‘Living Ancestor’: A fully embodied, 21st century human being connected to our deep time hunter-gatherer inheritance. Themes include: aligning with fate and destiny, shamanism, ancestral healing, embodiment, divination, creative expression, and dying complete. eatingancientvirtue.substack.com

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25 recent

June 11, 202620 min

Ancestor Work and Blessing Retrieval

In this episode of the The Living Ancestor podcast, we explore a dimension of ancestor work that often receives far less attention than healing, clearing, repair or the resolution of inherited burdens: the retrieval of blessings.Drawing from both traditional understandings of the ancestral and my own experiences in practice, I explore the idea that the ancestors are not only a source of unfinished stories, and/or inherited wounds as is often portrayed on social media. But also a source of blessings that may be waiting to enter our lives, if we just opened the channels and allowed them to flow in. We discuss…* Why modern people tend to focus on ancestral problems more readily than ancestral gifts* How the ancestral field has become obscured through centuries of disconnection* Why many of us encounter the harder dimensions of ancestor work before learning how to receive its fruits* The ways in which the ancestors may ask us to resolve the past, but also, how they can help us enrich the futureI also share a simple but powerful approach to consciously inviting ancestral blessings into our lives by simply creating space for what is already seeking to arrive. In some ways…it’s easy. Funny enough, that is why it often trips people up. Along the way, we touch on ancestral veneration, offerings, lineage repair, synchronicity, and the surprising ways blessing can emerge when we stop trying to control its form.At its heart, this conversation is an invitation to remember that the ancestors are not just asking us to carry ancestral burdens, but they may also be trying to give us something.🌩️ Join Eating Ancient Virtue @ My Substack: eatingancientvirtue.substack.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eatingancientvirtue.substack.com/subscribe

May 26, 202616 min

Your Reflexes & Instincts Are Blessings From the Deep Ancestors

In this episode of The Living Ancestor podcast, we explore the quiet but powerful ways the Deep Ancestors continue to shape our lives beneath the threshold of conscious thought. Through personal stories of instinct, reflex, movement, and animal behavior, this conversation traces the living continuity between the ancient world and the modern human nervous system.What if the ancestors are not only spiritual presences encountered in ritual, but active intelligences woven into the structure of our bodies themselves? What if reflexes, orienting patterns, instinctive reactions, and even the way we seek warmth, safety, and connection are blessings carried forward through deep time?Drawing from personal experiences on the Big Island of Hawai‘i, I reflect on narrowly avoiding a car accident through split-second reflexes, observing ancestral survival patterns in tide pool fish along volcanic coastlines, and understanding crawling, locomotion, and primal movement as expressions of ancient intelligence embedded directly into the human organism.This episode explores the ancestral beyond something distant or abstract, but as an ongoing field of relationality that continuously informs perception, survival, behavior, and meaning-making. The Deep Ancestors are not gone. They are alive in the nervous system, alive in instinct, alive in the body’s capacity to respond before the rational mind can think.Topics include:* Deep Ancestors and deep time consciousness* Reflexes as ancestral blessings* Instinct, and embodied intelligence* Primal movement and ancestral patterning* Animism and living relationality* The ancestral nervous system* Tide pools, animal behavior, and evolutionary memory* Ancestor work beyond ritual practice* The continuity between ancient and modern humansIf you enjoyed this episode and would like to stay connected, you can join me at eatingancientvirtue.substack.com for more podcasts, writings, courses, and offerings exploring the ancestral, the mythic imagination, and the restoration of older ways of being. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eatingancientvirtue.substack.com/subscribe

May 18, 202620 min

Omens, Synchronicity and The Modern Reality of 'Ads'

The Living Ancestor PodcastIn this episode of The Living Ancestor Podcast, we explore the increasingly strange intersection between synchronicity, omens, divination, and the algorithmic architecture of the modern world. As AI-driven advertising grows more sophisticated, the ancient human instinct to read signs and meaning from the world around us is colliding with systems specifically designed to capture our attention, shape our behavior, and ultimately, direct our choices so they align with the agenda of commodifying forces.This podcast examines the deep ancestral roots of omen reading and synchronicity through the lens of animism, tracking, hunter-gatherer awareness, and traditional forms of divination. We discuss how human beings have always interpreted patterns in the environment as meaningful, and how this capacity is woven into the structure of consciousness itself.But in a world saturated by algorithms & targeted ads, an important question emerges: how do we distinguish a genuine sign from a ‘manufactured’ enchantment?Together, we explore the difference between authentic synchronicity and what I call ‘adware synchronicity,’ the subtle ways institutions and technologies attempt to redirect attention and shape destiny through modern forms of magic. We also discuss dreams, symbols, collective patterns, media, spiritual ecology, animism, ancestral consciousness, and the importance of discernment in an age increasingly populated by artificial signals.This episode is ultimately an invitation to reclaim a deeper relationship with meaning itself, and to sharpen our ability to recognize when the ‘world soul’ is truly speaking.🌩️ Join Eating Ancient Virtue @ My Substack: eatingancientvirtue.substack.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eatingancientvirtue.substack.com/subscribe

February 13, 202625 min

Ancestry and Destiny Are Inextricably Linked

In this episode of The Living Ancestor Podcast, I explore the inextricable link between ancestry and destiny, grounding an ancient metaphysical idea in a very practical, embodied way.I begin by situating destiny within older cosmologies that understood reality as multidimensional, inhabited by forces with agency, and animated by a soul that incarnates with an orientation and a potential. From there, I trace how many traditional cultures understood destiny not as a fixed outcome, but as an unfolding process shaped by the ongoing relationship between soul, body, circumstance, and choice.From this foundation, I turn toward the ancestral layer. Drawing from Yoruba Ifa and Orisha traditions, as well as Daoist understandings of Jing, I explore how ancestral inheritance and destiny were understood as inseparable. The body itself becomes the meeting point between ancestral forces and the soul’s unfolding path.I speak to the soul as a being that incarnates with an orientation, a pull toward experience, expression, and becoming, while simultaneously entering into a web of ancestral inheritance that establishes real constraints, patterns, and potentials. These inherited conditions are not obstacles to destiny, but the very soil through which it must grow.To bring this into the everyday, I offer a deliberately mundane example: the human squat. As an ancestral movement pattern built into the structure of the human body, the squat reveals how fate, choice, inheritance, and outcome interact at even the most basic level of embodiment. The body we inherit sets real parameters. How we engage those parameters becomes a site of conscious participation. What we inherit shapes what is possible. How we engage it shapes what unfolds.Through this example, I invite you to extrapolate outward, toward family inheritance, cultural stories, bodily predispositions, and the broader ancestral field that shapes what is possible for us. Destiny, in this view, is not about escaping fate, but about making conscious, participatory choices within the circumstances we inherit. It is the art of bringing awareness, care, and choice to what we did not choose.This episode is an invitation to see ancestry and destiny not as abstract concepts, but as lived, embodied processes unfolding through everyday decisions, movements, and orientations.From here, the conversation expands outward to family lineage, cultural inheritance, bodily predispositions, and the broader ancestral field that precedes us. Destiny emerges not as escape from these forces, but as conscious participation within them. 🌩️ Join Eating Ancient Virtue @ My Substack: eatingancientvirtue.substack.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eatingancientvirtue.substack.com/subscribe

January 29, 202620 min

Destiny as Process: The Ship in Sail & the Tree That Bears Fruit

Destiny is not a destination.It is a lived process.In this episode of The Living Ancestor Podcast, I explore destiny through two complementary metaphors that help orient us toward it in a more embodied and functional way.The first is the ship in sail: destiny as conscious participation in a journey, requiring navigation, stewardship of resources, and active engagement with fate as terrain rather than obstacle.The second is the tree and its fruit: destiny as an organic unfolding of what is already seeded within us, where growth, nourishment, resistance, and time allow something inherent to mature and bear fruit.These metaphors are medicine for different temperamentsFor those who over-surrender to fate, the ship calls forth responsibility and direction.For those who over-force outcomes, the tree restores patience, trust, and organic timing.Together, they point to destiny not as something we “arrive at,” but something that unfolds through how we orient, participate, and resource our lives.This episode is an invitation to re-encounter destiny as process, practice, and participation rather than outcome or achievement.🌩️ Join Eating Ancient Virtue @ eatingancientvirtue.substack.com/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eatingancientvirtue.substack.com/subscribe

November 21, 202526 min

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

In this episode, I explore the ways in which we fetishize the ancestral in order to create a focal point of connection, and how that same touchstone can become limiting when it is mistaken for the whole of what the ancestral truly is.I begin by unpacking what a fetish actually means at its core: an orientation of consciousness, a container, a narrowing of vast forces into something we can relate to and work with. A fetish is a narrowing of devotion: the compression of something into an object, identity, behavior, or idea that can be grasped and engaged. While this process has ancient, indigenous roots and can be inherently valuable, it also has the potential to confine our perception when we mistake the container for the mystery itself.From there, I move into how modern cultures often reduce the ancestral into segmented forms: nutrition, movement, spirit work, or the dead, and how these narrowed interpretations flatten the true scope of ancestry. Diet trends, “primal” exercise, spiritualized nostalgia, and commodified versions of ancestral living are all explored as examples of this limitation.In the final phase, the ancestral is expanded beyond any single category. The body itself is revealed as an ancestral phenomenon. Bloodlines, landlines, soul lines, mythic lineages, and cosmic ancestry all emerge: extending back to Earth, Sun, Moon, stars, and Source. In this way, we begin to sense the ancestral not as an external force we approach, but as a vast field of being that holds us; one fire in a long, continuous lineage of fires.This episode invites you to move beyond a single fetishized layer of ancestry and instead build a broader altar of relationship: one that includes body, land, spirit, cosmos, memory, and mystery. Not to define the ancestral, but to begin listening to how it lives through you🌩️ Join Eating Ancient Virtue @ My Substack: eatingancientvirtue.substack.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eatingancientvirtue.substack.com/subscribe

October 24, 202523 min

Why Some People Live in a Simulation and Some Don't

What if the idea that we live in a simulation is less a ‘material reality’ and more a symptom of modern disconnection? It’s likely that those who feel the world is simulated have simply forgotten what it feels like to be ‘real.’ This episode examines the consequences of a loss of lived contact with reality: the fading of soul, body, and world into abstraction.Some live in the world as conscious, active participants inside animated bodies, while others drift as spectators of a simulation, like players in a video game. Many modern humans find themselves in a kind of limbo, yet the possibility of inhabiting the real world is still within reach. Tune into The Living Ancestor Podcast to discover how sensory awareness, presence, and breath can reconnect us back to reality.To paid members: It appears there was ‘glitch"‘ with this post’ and it only went out to paid subscribers. Apologies that you are receiving it twice as I correct the glitch, and get it to everyone. In fact, I had republish the whole thing from scratch because of technical issues. Seems I might be upsetting the techno gods. 🌩️ Join Eating Ancient Virtue @ My Substack: https://eatingancientvirtue.substack.com/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eatingancientvirtue.substack.com/subscribe

September 26, 202519 min

Soul Making: The Painting, or the Blank Canvas Beneath It?

“By soul I mean, first of all, a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint toward things rather than a thing itself. This perspective is reflective; it mediates events and makes differences between ourselves and everything that happens. Between us and events, between the doer and the deed, there is a reflective moment — and soul-making means differentiating this middle ground.” - James Hillman One of the places where clear perception of spiritual work breaks down, is the assumption that everyone is ‘doing the same thing in different ways’, meaning that every path is equivalent. This is functionally inaccurate. The mechanics, formulas and processes people engage with, along with the core intent they have, all shape the potential outcome of a path. Two of the most common themes we encounter among the core practices of the world are those of:The Path of Subtraction: emptiness/non-dualism/dissolving/release/peace The Path of Addition: desire/expression/manifest form/passion/sufferingThere are more of course, but these two present the most common distinct ways of working with ‘the soul’.If there is a principle that can allow the two to co-exist, it is silence. However, that’s not the point of this talk. Here, I offer a metaphor of a person engaging with a painting they have suddenly awoken to from deep sleep, as a way to understand the distinction between the paths of addition and subtraction. One seeks to return the canvas to a blank state, and the other is ‘an artist of the soul’. Both are challenging, but each in their own way. Knowing what path your on, is key. 🌩️ To stay connected and begin ‘Eating Ancient Virtue: Absorbing The Past to Nourish The Future + Join me at my Substack: eatingancientvirtue.substack.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eatingancientvirtue.substack.com/subscribe

September 12, 202513 min

The 'Animal Powers' of Your Soul Medicine Shape Perception, Character and Destiny

Your soul has innate and inherent ‘animal powers’ that belong to it, and they shape your response to life’s ongoing demand for choice. The constellation of our choices is character. Character is destiny.In this Living Ancestor episode, I return to the terrain of soul medicine, that living current of power held by, worked with, and transmitted by the soul. Up until now I’ve spoken of soul medicine in its more ‘projective’ quality and how we can work with it in our craft/s. But the medicine also listens, and through this, it opens up a branching tree of responsive possibilities that shape our character.Animal powers are those inherent and innate perceptive and responsive abilities all creatures possess. Just as each animal embodies a unique power—the eagle’s far-seeing eye, the dolphin’s social song—our soul carries a particular style of perception that apprehends reality in its own way.Through its stylistic apprehension of life’s unfolding, it creates meaning and purpose moment to moment, but especially in those times that pull us towards the soul in order to make sense of what’s happening…the ruptures and challenges that demand the soul’s depth.Destiny then emerges through the soul’s ‘stylistic response,’ that is the result of its animal power to perceive and respond. This episode works within the mysterious paradoxes of destiny, free will, predeterminism, and fate, and seeks to offer a pragmatic clarity that ties some of their pieces together.🌩️ Join Eating Ancient Virtue @ My Substack: eatingancientvirtue.substack.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eatingancientvirtue.substack.com/subscribe

October 3, 202415 min

How to Close The Loop of Family Karma and Move Towards 'Completion'

In this episode, we explore one of the fundamental themes of becoming a ‘Living Ancestor’: orienting our lives toward ‘completion’. This expresses itself in small daily moments, all the way to the larger arc of completing the ritual of one's entire life. We touch on how resolving ‘open loops’ and familial karmic ties helps us prepare for death with a lighter heart. Unfinished business keeps us tethered to the past in unhealthy ways, and many of us carry a large amount of ‘drag’, that is anchored to family and ancestral karma. Embracing closure allows us to step into a spiritual legacy more ripe with the potential of flourishing, and it can happen in small movements of recognition and action. Through some personal stories and practical insights we’ll explore an engaged way of approaching this principle of completion. 🌩️ Join me @ My Substack: eatingancientvirtue.substack.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eatingancientvirtue.substack.com/subscribe

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