What does it mean to live in relationship with our dead?

In our episode "Speaking with the Dead," we discussed Michael's recent contact with his deceased best childhood friend. We knew we needed someone with real experience and insight to help us think through the meaning of that encounter, so we called on Perdita Finn. You may remember Perdita from our episode "Portal to the Great Mother," where she and her husband Clark Strand joined us to talk about their rosary practice. But alongside that work, Perdita has spent decades in relationship with the dead. She is the author of Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World and Mothers of Magic: Summoning the Wisdom of Our Ancestors, out May 5.

Together, we reflect on altars, offerings, intuition, death denial, miscarriage and abortion, addiction, depression, and the reality that the dead are not gone, but still capable of guiding, helping, and teaching us.

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Episode Highlights

[00:51] Introduction to Perdita

• Michael welcomes Perdita Finn back to the podcast.

[03:19] Michael's Contact with "James"

• Michael briefly recounts the striking experience of contact with his deceased childhood friend "James," first discussed in Speaking with the Dead, and explains why that experience led us to invite Perdita back for this conversation.

[05:50] Making Space for the Dead

• Perdita describes her daily practice of praying with the dead, offering worries over to specific ancestors and spirits, and creating altars as places where relationship with the dead can deepen and take form.

[13:20] No One's Alone

• Jeff reflects on how different this way of relating to the dead feels from the distant, top-down spirituality of his childhood, and the three explore the dead as a diverse, personal, and responsive community—specific beings with distinct personalities, perspectives, and powers, eager to help if we learn how to be in relationship with them.

[24:35] You're Not Crazy

• The conversation turns to intuition, imagination, and spiritual permission. Michael and Perdita reflect on how many people already have experiences of the dead, but lack the language, validation, and cultural permission to trust what they know.

[29:05] Play, Desire, and Prayer

• From Santa Claus to family stories to ancestor altars, Perdita reflects on prayer as specificity, mockability, and play—something less like following rules and more like learning to trust desire and imagination again.

[33:34] Why We Fear the Dead

• We explore the West's fear of the dead, our estrangement from death itself, and the ways modern culture trains us to avoid the body, grief, and the ongoing reality of those who have died.

[40:25] We Never Know What We're Looking At

• Through stories of miscarriage, abortion, addiction, suffering, and apparent "worthlessness," Perdita argues that we do not know what a life means or what a soul may be doing for others beyond what the surface of a life appears to show.

[46:32] The Whole Earth Is an Ancestor Altar

• Perdita tells that the whole earth is a graveyard, an altar, and a place of relationship with the dead. The conversation closes by reframing depression, grief, and mortality as possible sites of revelation rather than mere negation.

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