We have long accepted that every time we tune-in, represent or map a constellation, we are accessing the consciousness that continue when the body dies. We know this because, when we meet someone in a consult, before we talk about our services, the first thing we do is listen and tune-in. Tuning-in, we follow Bert Hellinger’s guidance to pause and go inward to the stillness that sees the vast complexity of human life. Once there, we receive vivid images and vignettes, ancestors arrive to heal, hidden truths and buried secrets are revealed, and words are transmitted through embodied perception. Time after time, clients receive these tune-ins with astonishment and describe our images as, “Spot on!”

A group of strangers sit in a Constellations circle. The one taking their turn as the focus client, asks two others to represent their maternal grandparents who died decades earlier. The representative for Grandfather stands still for a minute, until they feel one leg collapsing. “I have this sharp pain in my hip. I can barely stand.” The client gasps, “My grandfather was injured in the war by shrapnel that shattered his hip. He always limped from the pain.”

In this Constellation, the client’s intention was to leave the group psychotherapy agency where she worked for the past six years and launch her private practice. Several times already, she had lined up everything needed for the move, then pulled back at the last moment. She hated the agency environment and deeply wanted to introduce Constellations, and sound and energy flow into her psychotherapy. She told us,

“I feel stuck, even though I am desperate, and nothing is stopping me.”

In an Alchemical Constellation, we are looking for the entangled ancestor, asking, who is the ancestor who is stuck and what resources live behind this ancestor that our client is seeking to remember and include? Where does the stuck ancestor belong in the family system and what unresolved story is being honored through our client’s lived experience?

Our understanding is when a person dies, their consciousness continues. Dying doesn’t necessarily bring peace. For some, a disturbed person becomes a disturbed ancestor. A remnant of their lived suffering remains active and through genetic memory pathways, resonates in the body of a descendant. In traditional cultures, this phenomenon is well-known, and indigenous communities use ancestor rituals to ease the consciousness of the dead and free the living.

In the English-speaking world, these rituals are nearly completely eradicated. But like everything that dies, they are being absorbed and reborn. The validity of ancestral consciousness, largely denied and ignored by science for centuries, is being reestablished. Constellations are one tool that are part of a greater global movement to rekindle the secrets of alchemy, re-member universal laws, and evolve the heart of humanity to relieve our over-stimulated brains.