So the key to your ancestral altar — where you choose to put the altar — should be in a place that you... in your house. I'm not talking about all altars. This is ancestral altars. That altar could serve as many purposes for you, but for this purpose, I'm only speaking about the ancestral altar. So it should be put in a place where you are living, not in a room that you don't go into, but a room that you use frequently, that they are present in your everyday life, in what you do — so not a space that you may only go into once a week or a few times in a week. It should be there that they are a part of your life, your daily life.

And so, on that altar, also choose which ancestors. Now in your files, the first ancestral category you will see as you go through your thoughts are Black ancestors. Now, Black ancestors are our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents, and those that are closer in relation to us — our great-great-grandparents. Those are what we call Black ancestors. Now, those would be the ancestors that you put on your altar. So you would not put...

Whoa.

You... you won’t put in distant ancestors. These are people that shared your life or this lifetime with you. And you wouldn’t also add people to that — or ancestors to that altar — that you don’t have a good relationship with yet. Okay? So maybe there is a... in your relationship, you need to heal it, stall, or make peace with it, or there were problems in your lifetime with them — you wouldn’t put them on your altar. Okay?

And so, choose those ancestors that inspire you, that inspired your life, that you know loved you and cared for you. So we have many different family members or ancestors or loved ones that have passed on, but our relationships were not necessarily strong to them. So choose who you put on. And that doesn’t mean you don’t love the others, but there’s a specific purpose for your altar — that’s there to empower you, that’s there to guide you. They're there to help you when you need help, to make you feel good when you don’t feel good.

And those family members in your lifetime that were not so supportive of you, or you know they weren’t supportive of your parents — maybe you would not put them on your altar. Okay? So choose wisely who goes on your altar. And so with the photos that you have, if you are happy with them on your altar, just place them on your altar.

Now, the elements of the altar — as you can see in the ritual, which is the last page of your file — you have the candle. Candle. We have a vase for water, flower, flower. But also, you put in something sweet on the altar when you add the ceremony. Okay? Or it could be a fruit or something delicious.

Now, when you remove these from your altar — might be in a few days or even weeks — when they are expired... and you don’t eat them, okay? You know, you also don’t throw them in the rubbish. You either bury them or put them in the river or give them back to the nature. Of course, you take the wrappers off.

The other thing is, you need a stone. Okay? So you find a stone on your next... you may already have that stone, but that stone is only dedicated to your altar, in your ancestral rituals or your meditation that you have at your altar. So that's not used for anything else.

And so it's in those moments where you feel alone, you feel like you need some support, you feel you need someone to listen to, you feel you need help — and you just want to sit in the energy knowing that this altar is dedicated for these specific reasons — and you would hold that stone that has been taking on the energy and sitting there with your ancestors. You would just hold that stone and meditate with it, communicate with your ancestors.

What the purpose is of the stone is to ground you, so that you don’t go away in your thoughts, that you don’t start thinking negative, you don’t start feeling sorry for yourself. Okay? You just hold it and meditate over whatever it is you need meditating over — whatever answers you are seeking, whatever problems you are going through — just go through that holding the stone. The stone is there to ground you, to keep you grounded, while giving you the energy of your altar.

So don’t forget the stone that you choose should be dedicated only to your ancestral altar. So choose your ancestors wisely again — those who are supportive of you. You may not have met those ancestors, but you may know that they were... your grandparents might not have been good to your parents. You might not have had a really good relationship to your brother or your sister and so on. So make sure that the ancestor you choose is supportive of you and your life’s journey.

The stone is for grounding. The candle — as you can see here, and it’s also in the descriptions in your files — is there for the light in the darkness, to illuminate the path, your journey. And also, if you need to cleanse your altar, you don’t just use any smudging things. We need to get away from the idea that one palo santo or copal or anything — sage — that’s a one-shoe-fits-all type of thing. It’s not. They’re dedicated to specific things.

So you wouldn’t use palo santo for ancestral cleansing. But copal. Okay? Copal is used. That’s an ancestral reason. Copal also — and the sticks that we have — that’s what I would recommend that’s easier for you to use is copal. And that’s what indigenous tribes use in ancestral work, or especially ceremonies like the Day of the Dead ceremonies, Samhain ceremonies. And of course, Celtic countries have their own type of resin — but it’s resin. It’s copal. Okay?

So you don’t use sage, you don’t use palo santo to cleanse your altar. Copal. And it might not be that your altar needs cleaning all the time. You don’t need to cleanse your altar every time you make a ceremony at your altar. But after you do cleanse your ceremony, you do need to reinstate the energy of it by calling back in. You would only need to — because you’re putting it all back on — so you would go through this again after cleansing your altar.

Now you don’t even need to say this every day. But put it... so I know it with my heart in te reo Māori. So you can frame it, put it — not this, write a more beautiful... your German version — and put it on the altar or hang it up near the altar as well. That when you... it’s being... it’s present, yeah, that ritual.

And when you, like I said, after you’ve cleaned your altar — and a good moment when you do cleanse it is when you change the food that you put or the sweet things that you put on the altar. Okay? So you wouldn’t give your uma, Upa, or mother old chocolate. So you wouldn’t let the chocolates live forever on the altar. You would always change it.

And in many Asian traditions — and you may see that when you go into Asian shops — they have a bowl of fruit. They have the cat waving or a Buddha there with the incense stick, and beside it is a bowl of fruit. Their ritual in their homes, and even in their shops, they change their bowl of fruit every day. That’s their dedication to their ancestors.

So you may have seen in many places those Chinese cats that are always waving. It’s also an ancestral symbol for them. And so in all Chinese or Asian shops, you would either see them with one of those cats or a Buddha and a bowl of fruit next to them. So they change this every day. So when you change your sweets or the food that’s on your altar, that’s a good time to cleanse it. But if you do it every day, then you don’t need to cleanse it every day.

Also, the altar is not a complaint box — where you don’t put your... or your complaints into — because like humans, your ancestors also will get sick of it because you’re complaining, but there’s no... you’re only complaining to complain. There’s no solution in it. You might be just known as a complainer. And that’s not what your altar is for.

And the interesting thing is, you see your ancestors different. And so the photo — you’ve never changed it — but depending on why you’re at your altar, or what’s going on, what you’re doing, and you look at your ancestor, and the expressions look different. And I remember, even with my dad — we took him... so there are different ceremonies after they die, and it’s also to help them accept their death. When you go to other families and other tribes, and they grieve with you, and you bring all your ancestors together, or photos — especially of the recently dead — and you put them all together, and sometimes you would leave your ancestral photo there for a night or a week or something...

And so we went to one family with my dad, and this person, this family — their son, I think, yeah — he died maybe a week after my dad, or a few days. Soon. It was soon. And so we took my dad and his photo to their ceremony, and my auntie said we should leave it there, and she will bring the photo back after the ceremony is done in three days. And we thought, yeah, okay, no problem.

And we were... put the photo with all the other photos. And sitting there, my sister hit me. She said, "Look at that. He looks angry, like he doesn’t want to stay here." It was still this exact photograph. And I looked in, "Yes, you’re right." And so we had to go and take him away.

And so you will see in different situations, in different ceremonies, or in different meditations that you’re in, or even if you’re not at your altar, and you look over to your altar — if your ancestors are approving or disapproving, happy or sad, or "Hey, I’m here" — you’ve ignored them for a few days. And so you’ll notice once you commit to having an altar and commit to always keeping it fresh and clean and changing the candle when it’s burnt out — it doesn’t need to be changed all the time. The main thing that needs to be changed is the food on it.

And so, those are the key elements to a simple altar in your house: flower, always a glass of water. So the flower, a bowl of water — again, the bowl that you choose should only be dedicated to ancestral work, not a cup that you use. So something that... or it might be, you might find a bowl that you have and decide, "No, this is only..." After you use it in a ceremony, don’t use it again.

Here, it’s okay with what you have because you’re only practicing. You haven’t installed your altar at home. And so when you install the altar, the vase that you use doesn’t have to be a big bowl — just enough, whatever can fit on your altar that’s dedicated only to your altar. And that’s also what the water goes in.

And as I mentioned today, the color of the candle is not so important. Colors are only for... it’s a mental thing, because we associate colors with different energies, colors with different chakras. Colors have different purposes. But a candle — it’s the fire. It’s important here. So you have the fire element, you have the water element, you have the earthing element here — the... you use. You have the... and the wind element there — the invocations and your breath is also the wind. So that’s all represented on your altar.

Those are the main components. You can put other things on there as well that are important to you in your ancestral journey. And where I often put my taonga on my altar — for cleansing or just to put it on the altar for that energy — I often put my taonga. I hang them over my ancestors because the taonga that I put on there, they are not my everyday taonga. They are also used only for specific reasons. And so I also put my taonga on the altar.

Now, when you get into the practice of installing your altar, having your altar there, and you commit to that, you will also notice when it’s not there, or if you’ve ignored it or something’s missing — even if you’re not consciously looking — you might even just walk past and go back, "Huh, something’s different." Or like my children, your family, your partners, or your children might notice that something’s different on the altar.

Like yesterday, the boy said, "When are you bringing Koro home?" Because they could see on my altar he wasn’t there. So they... it becomes... they become a part of your everyday life. And when you get into the habit of it — like I know that some of you start work early and there’s no time in the morning to sit with your ancestors, even though it could only be for a few minutes or however long or however short — and you may come back to them in the afternoon. But they are there in a space that’s part of your living day. They’re not in a corner somewhere.

And so, if you don’t have that time, it might be like every morning when we walk down the stairs, the first thing we all say is, "Hi Koro," but we’re still going on with our business, and we’re saying hi to my dad on the altar. And we might not have the time to wrap the stone or light the candle.

So if I’m not at home, my candle is normally burning throughout the night because I work throughout the night. And normally when it’s out — which I do give you permission — so when the candle is... you can’t burn it anymore, there’s just the bottom of it, you can bring it to a fire ceremony, and we burn it out in the fire ceremony. Okay? So long as it doesn’t have the metal underneath it.

So I go through candles like a baby goes through milk. I am always lighting them, especially when I’m at work. And also because we do ceremonies every night, or almost every night — they go straight into the ceremony, and new ones come out.

So bring your candles. Maybe there are other ceremonies you go to that they may allow you to put the candle into the ceremony. Perfect, perfect. So it could be a simple thing. Like I said, we do — every morning we are greeting my dad. He’s the only one at the moment that’s in our living space.

Like I said, in our culture, the length or the time that it needs for a spirit to go into their ancestral realms or on their ancestral journey... and he still has — what’s this? — Monday, June, July, August — he still has four months, four full moons left. And so because of that, we don’t bring other ancestors or dead people into the space until he has become an ancestor or 12 full moons have crossed.

And so that’s our morning ritual — call it a ritual, if you want. But every morning we are greeting. Or even just sometimes, if I’m cooking or sitting there and I look over and can see — of course they’re looking at you no matter where you stand — and you look at the fact that they’re looking at you or... "You didn’t. You didn’t help me today."
But speaking with them — do.