In Relationship with Egun
An Ifá-Informed Study of Ancestors, Cosmology & Sacred Relationship
What does it actually mean to live in relationship with Egun, our wise, elevated Ancestors? Ancestral relationship is more than just ritual, offerings, and asking for things. Being in relationship with our Egun asks us to understand life, death, lineage, Self, and Spirit differently.
A 12-week course of study · Six live 90-minute seminars
October - December 2026 · Limited to 20 students
Our Course of Study
In Relationship with Egun is a 12-week guided course for those who want to move beyond the idea of ancestral connection as a collection of rituals and begin understanding what it means to live in relationship with the Ancestors.
Rooted in an Ifá-informed cosmological worldview, this course approaches Egun through study, personal inquiry, embodied practice, and spiritual exploration. Together, we will engage selected scholarship alongside practices that invite us to examine how our understanding of life, death, lineage, self, and the unseen shapes the way we relate to those who came before us.
This is part seminar, part spiritual study, and part personal exploration.
Across six live sessions, students will be invited into both intellectual and embodied learning. We will read. We will question. We will reflect. We will practice. And we will explore our relationship with Egun as something that develops through worldview, discernment, reciprocity, remembrance, and time.
It is an invitation into something slower and deeper: to study the worldview from which relationship with Egun becomes possible. To question what Western ideas about death and individuality may have taught us to forget. And to begin cultivating a relationship with the Ancestors grounded in reverence, knowledge, discernment, and practice.
SEMINAR I - October 14th 8PM Eastern
Entering the Ancestral World
Cosmology, worldview & the nature of existence.
Before exploring practices of ancestral relationship, we begin with the world beneath the work. We’ll examine the philosophical and cosmological foundations that shape how we understand life, death, personhood, time, community, and the ancestral realm.
SEMINAR II - October 28th 8PM Eastern
Lineage, Memory & Inheritance
Understanding the ancestral realm and those who inhabit it.
We move deeper into the ancestral world by examining what we mean when we speak of the dead, Egun, and inheritence. We’ll deepen our understanding of Egun while exploring lineage, memory, inheritance, rupture, and our own ancestral histories.
SEMINAR III - November 11th 7PM Eastern
The Self in Relationship
Ori, destiny, selfhood, and the relational self.
No person exists in isolation. We are here to learn how to individuate while being a part of a collective. So, who are we when the Self is understood as relational, embodied spirit situated within a lineage? We’ll explore Ori, selfhood, agency, and why tending the self matters in ancestral relationship.
SEMINAR IV - November 25th 7PM Eastern
Clearing the Inner Ground
Stories, wounds, embodiment & self-examination.
We turn toward the deep parts of the Self, because healthy relationships require us to become aware of what we carry. We’ll examine the encoded stories, wounds, conditioning, and inherited patterns that can shape how we perceive ourselves, our lineages, and the relationships with Egun.
SEMINAR V - December 9th 7PM Eastern
Discernment & Boundaries
Spiritual responsibility and developing maturity in ancestral relationship.
Cultivating relationship with Egun requires spritiual maturity. We’ll explore discernment, projection, boundaries, uncertainty, and responsibility, and what it means to remain open to spiritual relationship without surrendering discernment
SEMINAR VI - December 16th 7PM Eastern
Living in
Relationship
Integration, reciprocity & continuity
We began our journey by asking: how do I understand the ancestral world? We culminate our study with a different question: how will I live differently because I now understand myself in relationship to Egun? We’ll integrate what we’ve studied and consider how reciprocity, remembrance, and responsibility carry ancestral relationship beyond this course and into our lives.
Meet Your Instructor
Dr. Minerva Arias, Ìyá Ọyaladé
Dr. Minerva Arias, Ìyá Ọyaladé, is an Ọya Priestess, scholar-practitioner, author, and founder of Sagrada. Her work explores grief, death, endings, and ancestral relationship through the intersection of African diasporic spiritual traditions, scholarship, and embodied practice.
Her relationship with Ègún is both personal and scholarly. As an initiated Priestess within the Ifá/Ọ̀rìṣà tradition, ancestral relationship is part of her lived spiritual practice and lineage. Her doctoral research, Modupe Egun: Honoring Our Ancestors in the Bereavement Process, examined how the cyclical worldview of Ifá and Lucumí practitioners, and their continued relationships with Ancestors, shape experiences of grief and bereavement.
Her teaching brings these worlds into conversation without collapsing one into the other. She draws from spiritual lineage, academic research, lived experience, and training in psychology, trauma studies, somatics, yoga, breathwork, and end-of-life care to create spaces where intellectual study and embodied knowing can exist together.
In Relationship with Egun grows from years of study, practice, research, and relationship. Minerva brings deep knowledge and lived experience to this course while understanding ancestral relationship as an ongoing practice, one that continues to deepen through knowledge, discernment, reciprocity, responsibility, and time.
Tuition and Enrollment
Questions About the Course
-
No. You do not need to be initiated or practice Ifá to participate. The course is grounded in an Ifá-informed cosmological worldview, but it is designed for students who come from different spiritual backgrounds and levels of experience. What I ask is that you enter the space with curiosity, reverence, and respect for the traditions and knowledge we will be studying.
-
No. You may arrive with an established ancestral practice, with questions about a relationship you are beginning to cultivate, or with very little experience at all. We are not starting with the assumption that everyone already knows how to engage their Ègún. Part of our work is examining the worldview, discernment, self-knowledge, and responsibility that make relationship possible.
-
The course includes six live 75-minute seminars held every other week, selected readings and reflection materials, embodied and spiritual practices between seminars, access to our private student community, and recordings of each seminar in the course portal. The two weeks between our meetings are intentionally part of the course, giving you time to study, practice, observe, question, and integrate what is emerging.
-
Each live seminar will be recorded and added to the course portal, so you can return to a session you miss. Because this is a live course of study rather than a self-paced program, I encourage you to attend as many seminars in real time as you can so you can participate in the conversation, questions, and collective learning.
-
You’ll have access to the course portal, including seminar recordings, throughout our 12 weeks together and for 60 days following the final seminar. Selected student materials, such as reflection questions, practice guides, and the course bibliography, will be yours to keep. The private student community will remain open for 30 days after our final seminar.
-
This course goes deeper than teaching a set of techniques for contacting the dead. We will explore the cosmology, lineage, Self, discernment, responsibility, and practices that shape ancestral relationship. Practices will be part of our study, but the purpose is not simply to produce spiritual experiences. It is to begin developing the understanding and capacity necessary to cultivate relationship with Ègún with greater depth, discernment, and reciprocity.