Welcome to The Evolutionary Revolutionary: Opti-Mystic Ways That Work—my re-christened podcast where ancient wisdom meets radical action and contemplative practice dances with community transformation.
I’m Michael Morrell, and today I’m in conversation with Dr. Daniel Foor, author of Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing and founder of Ancestral Medicine, a global community of practitioners doing ancestral lineage healing work.
We’re living in times when the past feels unbearably present. We’re reckoning with histories of violence and colonization. We’re watching our elders die, sometimes alone. We’re inheriting a planet in crisis and wondering: what kind of ancestors will we be?
What if your ancestors aren’t just memories, but living presences who can still offer—and receive—healing?
If you grew up a Protestant (and further fundie) Christian like me, that question might trigger alarm bells. Isn’t this necromancy? Isn’t this everything our preachers and teachers warned us against? Yet something in us longs for this connection—lighting candles for departed loved ones, sensing a grandmother’s prayers still holding us, feeling the weight of history moving through our bodies.
Daniel’s work suggests we don’t have to navigate these waters alone. There might be wisdom, healing, and even repair available through renewed relationship with those who came before us—and with those who will come after.
Dive right in here!
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In This Conversation, We Explore:
What IS Ancestral Lineage Healing? – Daniel explains the core paradigm: connecting with much older ancestors (often 1,000-2,000 years into our history) who lived before cycles of dislocation and colonization, and asking them to bring healing forward to those still troubled in the lineage. It’s not ancestor worship—it’s ancestor relationship.
The Multi-Faith Question – How does someone hold multiple spiritual commitments? Daniel is a practicing Muslim who also holds initiations in West African Orisha traditions, lives in Granada (that ancient crossroads of Islamic mysticism), and describes himself as an animist. We explore how healing flows across traditions without blurring necessary boundaries.
Animism Within Monotheism – Daniel reframes monotheism as “radical commitment to non-duality” and explains how Islam at its heart is an animist tradition—one that recognizes we’re embedded in a responsive, animate, living universe. He contrasts the mystical Islam of the last 1,400 years with the fringe (but well-funded) Wahhabist movement that’s only become dominant in the last two centuries.
Is This Spiritually Safe? – The billion-dollar question for cautious seekers: Daniel differs from psychologically-oriented colleagues by taking an “old school” approach. He believes relating with the dead can be dangerous if done carelessly, but also that avoiding our departed entirely is dangerous too. He teaches ritual safety and proceeding from a “worst-case scenario” framework.
Settler Colonial Reckoning – For those of us with European settler ancestry, Daniel talks about embracing (not fleeing from) the debts and burdens our lineages have created. He explains why this gives us leverage to participate in cultural repair: “I, on behalf of my people, am sorry for what happened. And I commit to moving in different ways now.”
Becoming Good Ancestors – With 122 million people displaced globally, climate anxiety reaching fever pitch, and reparations movements demanding we face intergenerational trauma—how does ancestral work address the crises of our time? Daniel makes the case that healing our lineages is both personal AND collective work, helping us shift from extreme individualism to interdependent relationship.
Ethics Over Identity – In a powerful turn, Daniel argues that what matters most isn’t which team/tradition you declare, but the fruits we bear: “Don’t be a liar, don’t be a treacherous bad neighbor; look out for people.” The ancestors consistently remind us: constraints on how much we take from the earth, respect for others’ land, sharing rather than hoarding—this is the foundation of becoming a good ancestor.
Just for you:
Daniel’s work has been quite meaningful to me over the past decade; I teamed up with him and his team to bring you as comprehensive an introduction to Ancestral Healing as you’d like. Visit our dedicated landing page with all resources, offers, and free materials named below:
30% Off Ancestral Lineage Healing Course (Through January 13th)
This is THE foundational course—the OG online ancestor course that thousands of people have taken and loved. Ancestral Lineage Healing is what Ancestral Medicine is most known for: a beloved, trusted journey into conscious relationship with your blood lineages.
Learn more and enroll: Visit the course page
15% Off Any First-Time Purchase (Through March)
Explore their full calendar of offerings—they add new courses almost monthly! Whether you’re drawn to ancestral work, ritual practice, or earth-honoring spirituality, there’s something for everyone.
Use these codes at checkout:
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optimystic15 (for single payments)
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optimystic15-pmts (for payment plans)
Free Chapters from Ancestral Medicine
Download free chapters from Daniel’s book to get a taste of the core teachings and decide if this work resonates with you. Available on the collaboration landing page.
New to This Work? Start Here:
Foundations of Ritual is a lovely entry point for newcomers, especially apt for folks looking for an off-ramp/on-ramp between old religion and new spirituality. It provides grounding in ritual safety and practice that can support whatever spiritual path you’re walking. Explore Foundations of Ritual here.
Evolutionary Revolutionary Wisdom from Daniel in this Episode:
“We’re not individuals. We can choose to experience our relationship with ancestors consciously or unconsciously, but we can’t opt out of it. It’s structural.”
“When I’m relating with the ancestors, I’m not worshiping them—just like when I give my wife a hug or feed our cats, I’m not worshiping them. We’re just in relationship.”
“All of us have the full spectrum of humanity in our lineages—victim and victimizer dynamics. If we want to claim our ancestral blessings, we need to sign up for all of it. In the fine print are all the unpaid debts and burdens.”
“Embrace the debts of our people. Acknowledge the ways your people have caused harm to others, because that gives you leverage to participate in useful cultural repair in the present. Cultural repair is a form of love.”
“We’re going to be dead soon. All of us. Hopefully not today, but one day. And it is good to hold that long-term vision by knowing we’re moving in a way that isn’t just about our lifetime.”
“Having constraints on how much we take from the earth, having respect for others’ land, having proactive affirmation of ancestral diversity and beauty and difference—that’s the foundation of the path, period.”
About Dr. Daniel Foor:
Daniel Foor, PhD, is the author of Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing and founder of Ancestral Medicine, an organization training practitioners in ancestral lineage healing work now available in over 30 languages across nearly 300 practitioners globally. His ancestors of blood are early German and English settler colonists in North America (Ohio/Pennsylvania region), and his work specializes in helping people—particularly those with settler colonial ancestry—engage in healing practices with their blood lineages.
Daniel is a practicing Muslim who affirms the liberatory, animist, and life-affirming sensibilities at the heart of Islam and Islamic mysticism. He also holds initiations in West African Orisha traditions, has lived in North Africa, and now makes his home in Granada, Spain—that ancient crossroads where Islamic mysticism once flourished. With a PhD in psychology and decades of study across shamanic practice, paganism, Buddhism, Native North American ceremony, and Orisha traditions, Daniel’s approach integrates ritual spirituality with psychological insight, always emphasizing safety and respect for the reality of the unseen.
Other Resources Mentioned:
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Healing Haunted Histories by Ched Myers and Elaine Enns
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Works by Joanna Macy on “the work that reconnects”
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Jason Miller’s work on magical studies and embodied practice
Key Concepts Explored:
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Animism – Recognizing that living humans are just one kind of person in a wider web of kinship that includes stones, spirits, animals, elements, ancestors, and more
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Lineage Repair Work – Connecting with much older ancestors to bring healing forward to those still troubled in the lineage
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Tanzih and Tashbih – Islamic mystical teaching on transcendence and imminence; not making an idol out of God by denying how the One expresses through the many
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Shirk – In Islam, the concern about “associating” things with Allah; Daniel argues this has been misunderstood as anti-relational
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The New Animism – Reclaiming animism from colonialist anthropology as an ethic of relationality with all kinds of persons
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Detox from Modernity – Moving away from extreme individualism, reductive materialism, and supremacist worldviews
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Cultural Repair – Stitching the world together through acknowledgment, apology, and tangible repair for ancestral harms
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Becoming Good Ancestors – The UN’s 2024 “Declaration on Future Generations” and thinking seven generations ahead
Questions This Episode Addresses:
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How do we relate to ancestors without “worshiping” them?
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Can ancestor work coexist with monotheistic faith traditions?
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How do we face the violence and colonization in our lineages?
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What does it mean to embrace (not flee from) our ancestral debts?
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How does personal spiritual work connect to systemic change?
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What’s our specific role in the “holy catastrophe” of our times?
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How do we prepare to be good ancestors ourselves?
Practical Takeaways:
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Start with ethics – Good character and fundamental care for others is the foundation
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You’re already in relationship – The question isn’t whether to engage ancestors, but whether to do so consciously
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Both/and approach – Spiritual practice doesn’t replace systemic change work; both matter
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Seasonal focus – Ancestral work doesn’t have to be constant; intense focus for a season can bring lasting benefits
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Find your medicine – Ask: What are my specific gifts? What’s my dharma? What are my sacred instructions?
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Cultural humility – For settler colonist lineages especially: embrace the debts, participate in repair
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Seven generations thinking – Orient yourself as becoming an ancestor, not just honoring ancestors
For the Religiously Cautious:
Daniel specifically notes that practitioners within the Ancestral Medicine network include Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, and other Christian traditions, as well as Jewish, Muslim, and other monotheistic lineages. If you’re drawn to this work but have theological concerns, you can find practitioners who share your faith background and can help you navigate the work within your tradition’s framework.
Connect with The Evolutionary Revolutionary:
You asked for audio-only dialogues, I listened! In addition to hosting a YouTube channel, I’ve joined forces with my friends at Homebrewed Christianity to bring you ground-breaking interviews wherever you listen to podcasts! This renewed-focus show—which I’m dubbing The Evolutionary Revolutionary—explores contemplative practice, relational transformation, and community organizing at the intersection of esoteric depth, mesoteric healing, and exoteric action. We’re building a community of mystics and misfits, preachers and prophets, artists and activists—all seeking opti-mystic ways that actually work.
To make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe on YouTube, wherever you listen to podcasts, and join our newsletter community for weekly explorations of ancient wisdom meeting radical action.
“We each are down lineage from sources of wisdom and love and specific good medicine. This is not something to undertake alone. And it’s not something we can avoid—we’re already in it. The only question is whether we’ll do it consciously.”
— Dr. Daniel Foor
Related posts:
From Fundamentalism to Magical Purpose: Rebekah Berndt on Healing the Christian Lineage
The Cosmic Lens: Dr. Birgit Viertlböck on Healing Trauma & Evolving Consciousness
Troubling the Waters: Navigating Apocalyptic Currents with Jim Perkinson
Changing the World with Faith, Hope & Love: Ecology, Identity, Class & Solidarity in the Way of Jesus with Joerg Rieger!
It IS all about conscious realization of divine presence, and starts there with a simple daily practice principle: Oneness with Presence results in an awareness of our onefold unity with all things, all spiritual ideas, and access to a timeless repository all persons past, present, and future.
To the awakened, it knows no spiritual tradition or name, is to be one’s primary focus, daily practice, and foundation for one’s entire experience.
And it resides in the liminal space between the visible and invisible worlds, in the “sweet spot” where thought (consciousness) becomes matter, and is permeable to the plenum. Such is as much about physics and energy as it is about spirituality.
Spirituality is the physics we’re just beginning to understand, operating on lawful ontological principles at all scales —“as above so below, as within so without” — spiritual, mental, physical depending on vibrational frequency, spiritual being the highest and cascading source of the other two.
Those ontological laws are common property like sunshine, rain, or the air we breathe, so no religion, ideology, or ideologue, can (or should) claim or market it and its ideas and principles.
The “great cloud of witnesses” (ancestral) are a part of that timeless repository, free of all names and bare of all forms. Known by many names, its It’s the Cosmic Christ ((Logos) drawing us toward and into future versions of ourselves, the world, and accompanying ideas in that unfolding presence on Earth.
Joe Masterleo