There is a whole world longing to reclaim us.
Photo: Alicia holding Corn Mother's basket.
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I am Alicia Enciso Litschi (she/her/ella). Since I was a child, I have felt a strong connection to the ancestors, and it took decades to gather language, form, and even practical expressions for the path I now offer in helping people reanimate their own connections to ancestral support.
There are innumerable ways to reanimate our connection to the ancestral field. Through my own journeys and thanks to the blessings of my elders, mentors, and ancestors, I support people in a process that is rooted in a kinship worldview: a decolonizing vision of love and belonging in which humans are brought down to size, reminding us that we, as a species, are part of a sacred circle of dynamic interdependence. We have our place alongside the rest of creation: plants, animals, fungi, the land in all forms, the elements, ancestors, descendants, everything seen and unseen, the cosmos. From this dynamic lifeworld, humans are not alone, nor burdened with needing to have answers for everything. The exact opposite is true: We are in a field of sacred, intelligent helpers, and this web of unimaginable belonging is seeking us.
We are not alone! |
Blessings can flow from the journey of stepping into this path of ancestral tending.
- Hope and connection in global times of despair
- A field of unimaginable support
- Alignment with path and purpose
- Release of patterns of stuckness
- Liberation from colonized spirituality
- Connection and supported repair with the ancestral field
- Connection and supported repair with land and place
Together, we listen.
Who are the wise ancestors who present themselves to you?
Who are the lands, the plants, the animals?
Who are the divine beings and helpers
reweaving you into more belonging and re-membering.
Who are the wise ancestors who present themselves to you?
Who are the lands, the plants, the animals?
Who are the divine beings and helpers
reweaving you into more belonging and re-membering.
Corn from my visit to Upaya Zen Center in 2024. Photo by Alicia.
I Walk with Corn Mother
When I host people in the journeys of ancestral tending, I welcome them into the process through the guidance of Corn Mother. You do not have to be a devotee of Corn Mother to join me in this work. But with a delighted glimmer in my eye, be forewarned that I will have a lot of stories about my Corn Mother journeys and what she has to offer to us in these times. I can hear Corn Mother chuckling as I write this: Tell them who I am! (I write a lot about Corn Mother here.)
Offerings to Corn Mother. Photo by Alicia.
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Madre Maíz, Corn Mother, is a connection to a wise and ancient ancestral field that has accompanied humanity for millennia. Corn Mother has innumerable names and origin stories across the far-flung cosmos. In more recent times--say the last 10,000 years--she has made her way to us via ancestral wild grasses that offered the people of ancient México the gift of seed kernels known as Teocintli (or teosinte), the divine kernel. The people were in relationship with the sacred kernels, which were originally hard and not easily edible. But this was a relationship of mutual care and listening between plants and humans and land; the seeds were not commodities. Over hundreds of generations of relating, the plants' seeds took shape into the abundantly diverse, nourishing, and spectacularly colored cobs of maize we see today.
Corn Mother is a gift to the people, and she is a gift to be shared. She is a diasporic being: her pollen flies to the wind and her seeds are carried all over the world. Corn Mother seeds herself for everyone.
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A wild gathering in Corn Mother's basket. Photo by Alicia.
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From One Seed, ManyMost of us come to ancestral tending with legacies of rupture and wounding in our intergenerational histories. It is important that we approach the ancestral field with guides who can help us navigate these pathways with some gentleness and titrating.
Corn Mother has shown herself to be a radically inclusive bridge connecting humanity to all manner of wise ancestors, lands, divine supportive beings. She helps reanimate the language of offerings within us, the flows of giving and receiving,
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