Come Tuesday, a day after Remembrance Day, a multitude of trans and gender-diverse practitioners and pagans will set out on what could possibly be a difficult rite. At nine days long all the work comes together to end on the 20th of November, the Transgender Day of Remembrance, where those both within and outside the magic community often hold candle-lit vigils as they read out all the names of people killed for various transphobic hate related crimes. The Transgender Rite of Ancestor Elevation is a moment to honor our transgender dead, helping both them and ourselves with the grief and hurt our community so often is faced with.
I came across the Elevation Rite while wondering what could be done in ways of honoring the dead of my community, hit by the idea of a list of names that continues each and every year and the gravity of it’s sheer existence. I learned of the rite mid 2017, keeping it within my memory enough that I went into Samhain honoring my ancestors of both the trans and queer community. Come November however, as Retail Hell came into full swing, so much happened within a short period of time that I was blindsided by the Trans Day of Remembrance seemingly out of nowhere. A similar pattern happened within 2018, realizing the rite was already in full swing and having absolutely no time to give it the full attention it deserved.
In short detail the rite involves lighting a candle each night and giving an offering of water. Starting on the ground, after the ritual a book is placed under the candle and the water offering. Following the next night it is repeated and yet another book is placed under the altar. By the ninth night the altar has continued skyward off the ground, nine books high, literally elevating the altar from where it began. Some individuals read out a portion of the list of names each night, giving a small grouping a more focused attention, or end the ninth night by reading out the entire list as most vigils do that day as well. When I read through it I got the Moving Shutter* and realized that it was a rite I wanted to add to my practice. This year I had intended to write each name of a person we lost as I came across it, taking the rite a step further and wanting to give a page of honor and remembrance of the person who unfortunately was taken from us. When over four people came one after another however, I found myself too drained to even manage it.
“Death has brought me back to witchcraft, I’m outraged.”
Each year the TDoR website houses the list of names, along with their date of death and often the way in which they were killed. Knowing myself to be bad at things I elected to start planning my rite this year at the beginning of November so I would actually be able to give proper attention to the individuals we lost. I was faced, however, with only the list from 2018. At the time of writing this (November 8th), the website still only has the list from 2018, a list that is over 100 names long. I prefer this list as it takes both from documented deaths in the news as well as by family and friends of the deceased who ask for their loved one’s name to be added to be remembered. Without this list I realized I would have to find the names myself. The above quote is from my journal, written out of frustration and grief after writing out over 40 names by hand and reading sometimes in graphic detail the way in which these people (most of which were trans women of colour) were horrifically murdered. To add insult to injury was the large blank space after the last name on my list; because from my between me finishing that list to the ending night of this rite there is room and time for more of my community to unfortunately be added. That knowledge haunts me and sickens me, and I pray so heavily that we don’t lose even more people between now and then. On top of that I know for a fact that there are more out there, people who didn’t make the news, the ones who weren’t found, people who were hidden either because they were misgendered in death or never got the chance to speak their true selves into the world beyond a few select people.
The Elevation Rite itself is so bare bones because the idea is that participants can do whatever they feel comfortable or are able to do. At it’s base all that has to happen within the rite is to have an altar with some sort of offering and candle that can be elevated throughout the days. The founders of this tradition, as it can rightfully be called, have their own ways that work semi cohesively between each other. They always do some amount of divination each year to contact the ancestors that have stepped up to help to make sure they still want to be involved and what they want differently, any amount of contact that you end up doing with guiding ancestors to make sure everyone is happy and things are moving in the right direction. Each night a prayer is also spoken, which I’ll write out at the end of this entry (as well as the link to more information on this rite).
Taking from these bare bones I have come up more or less with my ideas of how it shall go for me. As I have cats who are incredibly keen on any vessel on the floor as Being Theirs, I can’t have my altar on the floor. Instead this ancestor altar will sit on my actual altar, up off the ground but most likely will end up higher than even my raised mini altar. While white altar clothes is what is suggested due to it being associated with this sort of ritual I don’t actually own any of that colour. And while I could in theory use the sheer black fabric often used in my Underworld and Samhain rituals I feel that my association with it, while somber, is too constricting for what I want to achieve but does sit on my main altar. Instead the blue splatter one that makes me think both of the ocean but also the swirling stars feels more than appropriate. This rite is about elevation and honor, and with connecting heavily with many a Greek myth that puts honored dead in stars, it makes the most sense to me. The rite has been made so it can easily be secular, but I feel amiss to leave Dionysus out of this sort of rite in the sort of way that I worship him. It would be quite unlike me, having gone on in length, to leave out a deity that I see to having close trans experiences. Whether any of the others, Hermes, Aphrodite, Hades or Persephone, will attend we’ll have to see when we get there.
I call upon the ancestors of my line, the progenitors of my queer spirit,
those who came before and laid the path behind them, the mighty transgender dead.
I call to your restlessness and your strife, the thread of pain that twists through your lives and your deaths, the thread that binds me to you.
I call upon the helping spirits who have stepped up to tend the line of the honored transgender dead, those who led in life and lead in death, those who offer the gift of their guidance and protection to the members of their family who have yet to find peace, to the troubled dead thirsting for care and to the weary living still battling each day.
Marsha P. Johnson, I call to you. Hail and welcome. I offer you honor and remembrance. I offer you love and devotion. I offer you praise and proclamation among the living to bring your legacy to your descendants. I offer you cool water for your journey.
[Any other ancestral helping spirit, deity, or representatives that you are personally honoring or working with in your ritual], I call to you. Hail and welcome. I offer you honor and remembrance. I offer you love and devotion. I offer you praise and proclamation among the living to bring your legacy to your descendants. I offer you cool water for your journey.
I seek your guidance in elevating our troubled family. I seek the strength of your fury in my journey. I seek your hands on my shoulder as I hold our family’s pain in my body and in my heart.
To the troubled transgender dead, I call to you. Hail and welcome. I offer you honor and remembrance. I offer you love and devotion. I offer you praise and proclamation among the living to bring your legacy to your descendants.
I offer you my will to fight in this world. I offer you my fists and my tools to build a world that would have been kind to you. I offer you a light to guide you to peace and music to dance you out of this cruel place. I offer you cool water for your journey. May you never thirst.
Witchus Canadia 