How to join the Transgender Ancestor Rite: an FAQ on our updated format
What is it?
an annual, non-denominational ritual honoring transgender individuals who have passed on
an act of solidarity with the lineage of transgender ancestors who have come before us and paved the way, as well as with the descendants who will come after us when we are gone
a chance to share tenderness and kindness with the restless spirits of transgender people who lost their lives to violence
an opportunity for living transgender folks, including those who have lost trans loved ones, to grieve, mourn, and pray
a labor of love from a multiracial group of trans spirit workers, each at various stages of study in ancestor veneration practices, who have been putting on this ritual since 2014
When is it?
the ritual should take place on or around the Trans Day of Remembrance on November 20th, preferably within a week
most of us do it at night but any time of day is fine
if you need to do it a little before or after the 20th, don't sweat it
Where is it?
wherever you are!
groups are welcome to host local events and inform us about them, but the ritual itself takes place in a location of your own choosing, usually at home
if you have access to a local TDOR event that could incorporate some or all of this ritual, you are welcome to bring it there
most of the organizers have historically been located in the northeastern US but you don’t have to be
Who is it for?
it honors everyone from this year’s Trans Day of Remembrance official list, as well as any other deaths of trans individuals from the year that participants wish to include
illness losses, violent deaths, suicides, and natural deaths are all eligible for inclusion
it includes, cumulatively, all transgender deaths from previous years as well, named on the TDOR lists and unnamed, throughout history
it honors and praises the 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’ rituals, who are bright and well and who can tend the line from the other side
participants can be trans or cisgender, of any or no denomination or faith
Does it cost money?
nope! this is an anticapitalist affair
you can buy incense and offerings if you like, but you don’t need to spend money to participate
Why are y’all doing this?
honestly this could take pages and pages about the importance of this work and of soothing the troubled dead and tending our ancestral line et cetera et cetera ad infinitum but the short version is
we gotta
our ancestors require it and we’re making sure they get it
Okay, how does it work?
during the ritual, you sit or stand at an altar, light a candle, put out a glass of fresh water, and read a prayer
you may also make any other offerings you feel called to do
if so moved, you read the names of the dead from this year's TDOR list and call on our bright and well ancestors to tend to these newly passed souls
all the people participating in all the different places in the world help create a rising raft of energy that is greater than the sum of its parts, delivering the restless dead among our line into the care of our bright and well ancestors, who, in turn, also care for us, the living
Prayers? I thought you said this was non-denominational.
prayers can involve divinity, or they can be kind and soothing words to say to the dead
you can look through our prayers tag to get ideas and inspiration, but feel free to find poems on your own and/or write something yourself as well
you are welcome to include deity or not, as you prefer
the organizers of this ritual incorporate gods and spirits in our practices but you by no means need to
on the flip side, if you want your gods involved, feel free to do so in whatever respectful manner works for you
What do I need on my altar?
the basics are an altar cloth (white is traditional; a bandana works), a cup to be filled with water, and a new or dedicated candle (white is traditional here also but follow your instincts)
other great offerings include cut flowers, portions of your food and drink (though alcohol is not advised with restless spirits), tobacco, honey, pictures and/or names of the deceased, art, music, dancing, and any gender paraphernalia you think the ancestors might like
do not put pictures of living people on the altar
it can be as simple or ornate as you choose: the important parts are the candle, the cup, and the cloth
Isn’t it sketchy to be working with dead people?
a little bit
it is much less sketchy since our format change in 2022, at which point this ritual shifted from working directly with restless spirits (dicey) to interfacing with them only through our cadre of elevated bright and well ancestors who have already benefited from previous years' rituals
we advise that you cleanse or purify in whatever way you prefer, ideally before and after the working
if you’re in a Western (especially American Christian) culture that views death as The End and discussion of death as taboo, consider reading up on cultures where ancestor veneration is a normal part of everyday life (hint: it’s most of them)
Other questions? Send them in and we’ll answer them, and maybe add them to the list! If you post about the ritual, tag #troe2023 and we will check it out!
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My Trans Day of Remembrance set up. After the rite was complete I found 2 pieces of glitter on my bare chest that I have no idea where they came from, especially because I completely changed shirts before starting.
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.
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.
[A photo of an altar set up on a round mirrored table. The altar cloth is a white and burgundy bandanna with images of sunflowers. On the altar are four small glass votive candle holders, each with an image of one of the Ancestor Helping Spirits, and one white pillar candle with a rainbow across the middle of it. There is also a clear glass vase containing white roses and baby’s breath, a blue goblet full of water, a small jar containing a mixture of glitter and ash, a few white and yellow silk daisies, a bottle of poppers, a shooter of lube, and a labradorite amulet. In the background, slightly blurred, are many potted plants.]
Alder started by explaining the origins of the Rite, and how it’s evolved over the years. (We agreed that they would do this part because it needed to be concise and that is one thing that I, Rocket, am not.) Then we spoke the prayer we developed last year for the new format of the rite.
[A close-up of a small glass votive candle holder with an image taken from the Devil card from the Lubanko Tarot, which we use to represent Agdistis. Next to the candle holder is a very small stone dick.]
After we shared the prayer, the group read the names of the family members we’ve lost in the last year. There were 391 names, read by ten community members, and after each reader finished, the crowd shouted “¡Presente!”
Over the course of the night, the entire group collaborated to write each name on a long scroll of paper.
[A scroll of paper stretching the length of a room, unrolled on the floor, with the names handwritten on it. At the end of the paper closest to the camera is a large blue triangle stamp bearing the words “Trans people belong here!” and the date. Many pairs of feet are visible on either side of the paper.]
After the reading of the names was complete, we returned to the microphone. Earlier in the day, the two of us had been talking about how we couldn’t know the names of the trans people killed in Gaza over the last month – over the last decades, really – and wanted to honor them as much as we could, so before we continued with our planned prayers I took the mic and called out, “AND ONE MORE TIME FOR ALL OUR FAMILY MEMBERS WHO WERE SUBJECTED TO A FINAL ACT OF VIOLENCE BY BEING ERASED IN DEATH AND BURIED UNDER THE WRONG IDENTITY AND DENIED THEIR RIGHT TO HAVE THEIR NAMES SPOKEN WITH LOVE INTO COMMUNITY, WE DON’T KNOW YOU BUT WE LOVE YOU, ¡PRESENTE!
AND ONE MORE TIME FOR THE UNCOUNTABLE FAMILY MEMBERS TAKEN FROM US BY THE MASS VIOLENCE, WAR, GENOCIDE, ETHNIC CLEANSING, AND CLIMATE CATASTROPHE BEING PERPETRATED ON ALL THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD BY A SYSTEM WHICH WE MUST HONOR THEM BY DESTROYING, WE DON’T KNOW YOU BUT WE LOVE YOU, ¡¡PRESENTE!!”
Then we continued with our planned prayers, the Mourner’s Kaddish, the Manifesto of the Order of Charonaea, and closed out with Assata’s Prayer, which we invited the crowd to call-and-response with us. I was heartened when speaking the Mourner’s Kaddish to hear that several people in the room were saying it along with me.
The evening closed out with a Theater of the Oppressed style embodied grieving and hoping exercise, and finally an open invitation to collaboratively bang on the biggest drum any of us had ever seen.
I think the Rite was received well, and we got a lot of really loving and grateful feedback that made us both feel like the Rite has come to a place where it’s both effective and accessible to people at any level of experience, which is what we were hoping. We’re grateful to the organizers for squeezing us in at the last minute and trusting us to bring some weird stuff, grateful to all of you for journeying with us this year, for sending us your asks and your altar photos to let us know that we’re together, and as always, grateful to the Ancestor Helping Spirits for being present with us in the work, speaking to us before, during, and after, having their hands on our shoulders, and welcoming the dead with celebration and love.
May they rest in power. May their memory be a blessing. May they never thirst.
[A photo of an altar set up in a dim room. The altar contains lit candles, art, and offerings, including a piece of slate bearing the Manifesto of the Order of Charonaea in decoupaged magazine cut out letters.]
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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.
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!
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.
