Dragon 🐉 Letter #99: The hype promises 34 senses and shocking signs. What it leaves out is protection.
Hola! I’m Ixchel Lunar (they/them), an Indigenous time ecologist, ancestral medicine guide, and rhythm witch for creative rebels, decolonial dreamers, and neuroqueer visionaries. This Substack is dedicated to weaving business, body, and belonging into something no empire can replicate. Still punk as fuck. Still cozy in the chaos.
Beautiful Wildlings,
The Diary of a CEO has millions hooked this week (already 2.5 million views over 6 days). Dr. Tara Swart is back, speaking about how she communicates with the dead, about the 34 senses that can be trained, and about her new book, The Signs. The marketing is sensational, almost breathless, as if each sentence must promise shock. The numbers prove it works. Her last appearance on Steven Bartlett’s podcast drew more than 20 million views.
I understand why so many listen. Who would not be curious about communicating with the dead. Who would not be drawn to the idea of hidden senses waiting to be awakened. I mean, my Mayan nawal is Imox, the sign of the 20 senses that I spoke about in my Rewilding Time talk this summer.
And yes, looking for signs matters. It is tender, human, and holy to notice the ways our beloved dead reach back toward us. I still catch a whiff of my abuelita’s Channel No. 5 when I feel her near, long after she passed. When I thumb my grandfather’s old Zippo lighter, the weight of it in my hand and the scent of the lighter fluid brings him close. These moments remind us that the bond is not broken, that love leaves traces. They are real, and they deserve our attention.
Curiosity is natural. Longing is natural. The ache of separation from our ancestors, our dead, and the more than human world is something many of us feel without knowing how to name it.
Yet I also see the danger, and this is why I’m not promoting Dr. Swart’s method without a ritual protection practice. When ancestral connection is treated as spectacle, it teaches people to consume the dead as content. It flattens mystery into entertainment. And it leaves seekers unprotected. If you open yourself without preparation, you invite not only your well ancestors, but every loose fragment of grief, conflict, and unresolved story that circulates in the unseen. You invite it into your body, into your dreamtime, and into your nervous system.
I know this because I have lived it. For years my sleep was filled with the debris of others. Dreams crowded by strangers. Faces and scenes that did not belong to me. When I began to tend ritual protection, my dreamtime began to clear. I was no longer overwhelmed by static. My ancestors could finally arrive. My own work could begin again.
This is why protection is not optional. It is the ground of ancestral practice. It is how you hold your sovereignty in relation to the dead, to the more than human, to the unseen. It is what keeps the work from becoming overwhelming, extractive, or unsafe. Without protection, people risk opening too quickly. They confuse spectacle for belonging. They take in burdens that were never theirs to carry.
Protection is what I train people in through Ancestral Wayfinding. It is why Wild Presence now includes optional ancestral tending (and it’s where I’ve always taught how to draw upon all the senses). It is the heart of Inheritance and Ancestor Circles. Protection is the threshold where you learn to meet what lives beyond the human without losing yourself.
The hype around 34 senses will fade. The need for belonging will not. And, I can assure you, always hearing and sensing your heartbeat and constantly regulating your body temperature isn’t all that.
The ache you carry to reconnect with your ancestors, your land, your more than human kin, deserves something more than clickbait. It deserves ritual, reverence, and responsibility.
If you want to listen to Dr. Tara Swart’s interview on the Diary of a CEO podcast, you can. If you want to move beyond spectacle into practice, I invite you to join me for a free workshop, The Ache Is Ancestral: Open the Door Safely to work with your Well Ancestors. This is the threshold where you prepare to meet the unseen with care.
And if you already know you are ready to deepen, the Ancestral Wayfinding Practice Circle includes this workshop. Over four weeks in September we bring the Ritual Kit to life through guided practice and shared space. It is a living protection practice circle, not a set of lessons. Sliding scale $150 to $300, I’m opening the door to those who feel curious. Reply or DM me for access when it opens.
When you step through with protection, ancestral work becomes less about shock and more about kinship. Less about signs and more about presence. The dead are waiting. How you will meet them?
If you are curious (or concerned) about the unseen, start with this free workshop: The Ache Is Ancestral: Open the Door Safely to Work with Your Well Ancestors, A live workshop for tending the ground before you reach for the beyond.
This path safely leads you toward protection, presence, and belonging with your ancestors.
Stay wild, love fiercely. Your presence is golden.
Maltiox! xo Ixchel
P.S. Don’t open the door unprotected. Join me to learn how to step safely into ancestral connection: Register here 👉🏼
P.P.S. Maltiox pronounced mall-tee-osh means with gratitude in K’iche Mayan.
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I was raised and bore children on the traditional, unceded, and stolen lands of the Coast and Central Valley Miwok (colonized as Petaluma, CA) and Nisenan (colonized as Sacramento and Fair Oaks, CA), past, present, and future. I also write, work, and live in the highland forest of the traditional, unceded and stolen lands of the Totonac, Nahua, and Mexicah, past, present, and future, in what is known as Coatepec, Veracruz, Mexico.
P.P.S. I do not live or consent to the colonial impositions regarding the construct of Time. I also practice honoring rhythms of work, play, and rest so that I can serve you with embodied presence and with loving care. This means I may take several days to respond to your requests and questions. (h/t Eva Glamaris)
P.P.S. A mention is not necessarily an endorsement of someone. It’s an acknowledgment, a citation, of the origin of information in my process of understanding. (h/t Kelly Diels)
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Copyright © 2026, Cheyenne, WY, and Veracruz, Mexico, All rights reserved. Sharing your lineage of knowledge is decolonial. When iterating, please cite me. Not citing is epistemicide.
