Ancestral Protection: Spiritual Lessons from 'Sinners' About Guarding Your Soul

Chapters

• 0:00 The Danger You've Already Let Inside
• 2:15 Invitation to Stay Connected
• 4:05 The Mirror of Sinners
• 9:22 Smokestack's Origin in Blood
• 12:53 The Spiritual Cost of Land Ownership
• 17:10 Vampires and the Rule of Invitation
• 22:14 When Music Summons the Dead
• 29:58 The Final Battle and Spiritual Justice
• 32:44 Ancestral Closing Prayer

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

What if the danger you fear the least is the one you've already let inside? What if, without knowing, you opened a door, not with your hands but with your spirit? What if, right now, something you cannot see, something ancient, something hungry, is waiting at the edge of your threshold, listening for an invitation? The greatest horrors are not always bloody or loud. Sometimes they are silent, sometimes they look familiar, sometimes they wear the songs of your ancestors like a mask, whispering sweetly just to be let in. And here's the truth no one wants to say out loud. In the South, where the dirt remembers and the trees still talk at night, the veil between the living and the dead was never meant to be played with talk at night. The veil between the living and the dead was never meant to be played with. There are rules, ancient, sacred, bone-deep rules about how you move, how you protect your home, how you guard your spirit, because when you fail to honor those rules, you don't just lose your way, you lose your bloodline, you lose your soul. Today, I'm taking you with me deep into the marrow of what sinners truly revealed to those of us who can still hear the old songs the dangers of forgotten ancestors, the seduction of unseen vampires and the sacred, often misunderstood power of protecting your threshold. If you think this is just a movie about monsters, you're already missing the warning. Let's begin Before we step deeper into this conversation, before we cross the spiritual thresholds that sinners so powerfully revealed.

Speaker 1: 1:30

I want to personally invite you to stay connected with me beyond this episode, if you haven't already. Make sure you subscribe to Life Points with Rhonda wherever you listen to podcasts, so you never miss these vital conversations that speak to your soul, your spirit and your destiny. You can also find me on YouTube at Life Points with Rhonda 2-9-6-8, where we continue building our beautiful, growing community, and for daily inspiration, behind-the-scenes insights and powerful life tips. Follow me on Instagram, facebook, tiktok and Patreon, all under Life Points with Rhonda, and if you're ready for deeper healing, protection work or spiritual coaching, visit me at lifepointswithrhondacom to schedule your personal session Now. Take a deep breath, center yourself, because we are about to walk carefully between worlds. Don't be afraid, you're safe here. I'll be your guide. Thank you.

Speaker 1: 2:45

And sacred protection are not just traditions, they are life itself. Today's episode is one that speaks straight to the bone, straight to the spirit, because when I watch Sinners, I didn't just see a film, I saw a mirror, a reflection of the forgotten laws our ancestors fought to teach us the laws about thresholds, about unseen dangers, about the price of forgetting who you are and what you carry. This is not just a review, it's not even a commentary. This is a remembering, a callback to the sacred truths that protected our families for generations and that still, even now, are waiting for us to honor them. No-transcript.

Speaker 1: 3:48

Some stories aren't told just for entertainment. They're told as warnings, as mirrors, as echoes of lives we know by blood. From the very first opening of Sinners, there was a heaviness to the air, the kind you feel when spirit is already in the room with you. The dusty heat of the South wasn't just a backdrop, it was alive, breathing, remembering. The camera lingered on the juke joint, that broken building standing stubborn against time, and I knew immediately this wasn't just a place where people gathered, it was a portal, just like the crossroads that my great-grandmother worked. The Wolf Lady, that's what they called her. Born in 1916, a time when Black women with sight and power were both revered and feared, she was a root worker, a healer and a woman who could hear the spirits at the crossroads, the meeting place of fate, choice and destiny. In hoodoo, the crossroads isn't a myth, it's real. It's where you go to strike bargains, to seek favors, to lay down burdens, but it is also where spirits linger, watching, waiting to test your heart. My grandmother, my mother's, father's mother, was one of the few who could walk those crossroads without fear Because she knew who she was, she knew what, walked with her, and as I watched Sinners I saw pieces of her spirit stitched between every scene.

Speaker 1: 5:06

The story of Sinners begins not with light, but with fire, with blood, pain and choices that echo through bloodlines for generations. We are introduced immediately to Smoke and Stack, two twin brothers bound by love, survival and unspeakable trauma. Their world is hard, heavy and haunted. Their father, a brutal, abusive man, rules their lives with violence, until one night when smoke does the unthinkable. He kills their father, not out of hatred, but out of a desperate, burning need to protect his twin Stack. This isn't just murder. In the South, and especially in spiritual traditions like hoodoo, we understand that when blood is spilled inside a family, especially between parent and child, it tears open a wound in the spirit world that can bleed for generations if not healed. Smoke's act of protection became a curse stitched into their souls. And from that night on, everything that touched the twins, every breath, every note, every relationship was colored by that moment of blood and betrayal.

Speaker 1: 6:07

The name smokestack, a spirit sign for those who can hear. When the twins later combined their names into smokestack, it hit me hard, not just because of the poetry of it, but because of what that name carries spiritually. Smokestack is a name heavy with Southern memory. It carries the rhythm of the train whistles that once symbolized both freedom and sorrow for Black folk fleeing the oppression of the South. It hums with the deep, vibrating sorrow of the Delta Blues music, born not just of pain but of survival. It calls up memories of Cadillac records, of Howlin' Wolf, of a time when every note carried a prayer, a curse and a testimony all at once. In hoodoo, names are never random, they are power. When you hear a name like Smokestack, you're hearing a man shaped by fire, ash and motion. You're hearing a spirit trying to outrun something or run back toward something.

Speaker 1: 7:00

The guitar blood on the strings. After the father's death, his beloved guitar becomes the final relic left behind, an instrument soaked now in violence, grief and ancestral pain. In spiritual practice, objects carry energy, especially instruments. They amplify spirit. They hum with the hands that touch them the lives they witnessed, the deaths they survived. That guitar was not just wood and strings anymore. It was a witness to murder, it was a carrier of spiritual debt. And when it is eventually passed down to Sammy the nephew, it's not given as a blessing, it's given as a burden. Sammy doesn't realize it. He sees a beautiful instrument, a connection to music, perhaps even a piece of family history, but what he actually receives is a haunted legacy waiting for him to unknowingly reawaken the dead.

Speaker 1: 7:50

Enter Sammy, a man caught between cross and crossroads. Sammy's arrival into the story brings a whole new layer of ancestral complexity. He is the nephew of the man who was killed. He is the son of a pastor, a man bound to the cross, to the Christian faith, to salvation through scripture, and yet through blood and fate. Sammy is handed a guitar soaked in old magic, old curses, old spirits. This tension between the Christian church and the Hoodoo crossroads is something deeply familiar to many of us raised in Southern Black traditions. Two worlds living side by side, one preaching redemption through Christ, the other whispering survival through roots, prayers and spirit work. Sammy doesn't realize it yet, but he is walking a crossroads himself. He stands between the faith of his father, the pulpit, the church pews, the Sunday sermons, the inheritance of the blood, the music, the spirits. The pulpit, the church pews, the Sunday sermons, the inheritance of the blood, the music, the spirits, the ancestral pain embedded in every note he strums, and the longer he plays, the deeper the spirits reach for him.

Speaker 1: 8:55

Smoke and Stack stood before Hogwood, a white landowner hardened by life under Jim Crow's shadow. There was no outward cruelty in Hogwood's face, no sneering mockery, no overt hostility, just the weight of generations pressing down, the unspoken understanding that the land had seen too much, carried too much, and that maybe Hogwood himself was tired of holding it. The twins, young and determined, purchased the building with pride. This was a new beginning for them, a dream of music, community and prosperity. This was a new beginning for them, a dream of music, community and prosperity. Their eyes were on the future, but the ground they stood on, it was rooted in the past, and the past in the South is never silent. Neither smoke nor stack knew what they were stepping into. The land had memory, the wood had memory, the soil beneath their feet had memory and it was waiting, waiting for the music to start, waiting for the old blood to be stirred, waiting for the thresholds to be opened once again.

Speaker 1: 9:57

The transfer of cursed land, a transaction beyond paper. Smoke and Stack didn't buy the juke joint the way most people buy land, with lawyers, contracts and formal deeds Number. This was a raw, direct transaction Cash handed over, an unspoken history exchanged and a warning delivered. The twins gave Hogwood the money, they took the keys and they spoke the words that mattered most, words that meant more than any legal document ever could. They warned Hogwood never step foot on this land again. It wasn't just a threat, it wasn't just anger, it was a spiritual severing. It was an ancestral line being drawn in the sand, because Smoke and Stack, whether they fully understood it or not, were trying to reclaim something, to build something sacred in a world that had been built to break them. But here's the tragedy woven into this moment. They reclaimed the surface, they reclaimed the structure, they reclaimed the structure. They did not yet know they were also inheriting the restless spirits still buried deep beneath the ground.

Speaker 1: 10:54

Spiritual reflection you can buy the land, but you must win the spirit. In spiritual traditions like hoodoo, ownership isn't about paperwork, it isn't about keys or cash. It's about right relationship with the land. It's about acknowledging the memory of what happened there the blood, the betrayal, the dreams shattered in the dust. You cannot truly own what you have not honored. You cannot inherit peace without first confronting the pain. Smoke and Stack believed that by buying the building they were buying freedom. But in truth they were stepping into an old war already raging beneath their feet, a war they didn't start but would be forced to finish.

Speaker 1: 11:36

My family's lessons on spiritual ownership, my great-grandmother, the wolf lady, used to say money can buy a house, but only prayer can buy a home. To her it was never enough to pay for a place. You had to earn the blessing of the Spirit still living there, you had to ask permission, you had to make offerings, you had to lay down your pride and acknowledge the unseen hands that shaped the land long before you arrived. Watching sinners and seeing smoke and stacks warning to Hogwood, I felt both pride and sadness. Pride because they stood their ground, sadness because they didn't yet know the rules they were stepping into. And once the spirits are awake, no amount of money, no angry warning, no bravado can put them back to sleep Once smoke and stack purchase the juke jointvado can put them back to sleep.

Speaker 1: 12:27

Once Smoke and Stack purchase the juke joint, they know it's time to rebuild not just the building but their lives. They take Sammy with them, seeing in him a bridge to the next generation of music, a new start for their dreams. But soon the brothers separate, each one stepping into his own world, each one carrying his own scars and secret hopes, and into their separate worlds. Two women step forward, bringing love, healing, tension and spirit with them Smoke and Annie. Love, grief and hoodoo protection.

Speaker 1: 12:58

Smoke reconnects with Annie Dash, a powerful, rooted woman played by Wunmi Mosaku. A hoodoo woman, a healer, a spiritualist, a keeper of the old ways. Annie isn't just Smoke's wife, she's his spiritual anchor, the bridge between the seen and the unseen. Their love is heavy with grief, the deep, painful kind of grief that only comes after the loss of a child. The death of their daughter fractured them. It pulled them into different corners of mourning. Smoke turned inward, bitter, closed off. Annie turned upward, to the ancestors, to the spirits, to her rituals for comfort and protection. And here's the sacred truth Annie's hoodoo was not superstition, it was survival. She understood what smoke refused to see that the world they lived in was not governed solely by flesh and law. It was survival. She understood what Smoke refused to see that the world they lived in was not governed solely by flesh and law. It was governed by spirits, by ancestors, by the unseen forces that walked the land, just as real as any sheriff or preacher. When Annie prayed, when she laid down roots and conjure bags, when she whispered psalms over the doorways, she was doing battle for her family's souls. But Smoke, lost in his own hurt, couldn't always see that and the distance between them grew.

Speaker 1: 14:13

Stack and Mary Love across a divided world. Stack's heart, meanwhile, was tangled with Mary, a biracial woman passing as white, in a world that hated anything it could not control. Mary and Stack loved each other, once deeply, dangerously, in a way that defied the brutal, segregated lines drawn by 1930s Mississippi. But Stack left. He went to Chicago chasing dreams of music and escape, and in leaving he abandoned Mary to a world that had no place for her. A woman too black to be fully accepted by whites, too light to be fully embraced by her own people. When Mary returns, she's not the same woman. She's harder, colder and soon transformed into something monstrous by the vampire Remick. She becomes a literal predator, a vessel for all the hatred, pain and betrayal she carried inside their love, a vessel for all the hatred, pain and betrayal she carried inside their love. Once a rebellion against the world becomes a tragedy, a reminder that sometimes what we fail to heal will come back not to love us but to destroy us.

Speaker 1: 15:20

Spiritual Reflection, the power of choosing roots or losing them, in the parallel stories of Smoke and Stack Sinners, reveals a brutal spiritual truth when you choose to honor your roots, your people, your traditions, your spirits, you build protection. When you abandon them, you leave yourself wide open for spiritual attack. Smoke, tied to Annie, tied to the hoodoo ways, still had a chance at protection, even through his grief. Stack, entangled with Mary, who had crossed into a world of spiritual corruption, was left vulnerable to forces he could not fight with charm or fists. This mirrors a lesson I was taught young Child you better know which altar you're bowing to, because not every offering laid at your feet is meant to bless you. Watching these dynamics unfold in sinners wasn't just watching drama. It was watching real-life spiritual warfare coded into love stories, tragedies and bloodlines.

Speaker 1: 16:18

Spiritual law, deep dive, the rule of invitation, why vampires must be invited in in sinners and in all true spiritual traditions, where vampires are more than myth. There is one sacred law that evil cannot break. A vampire cannot enter a home unless they are invited in. It doesn't matter how powerful the vampire is, it doesn't matter how old, how strong, how cunning. If the threshold is spiritually protected and if no verbal or energetic invitation is given, they cannot cross. Because the threshold of a home or of a soul is sovereign. It belongs to the spirit who guards it. The door represents consent, authority, spiritual jurisdiction. Without that consent, without that tiny surrender, evil has no right to enter In centers. The spiritual breach at the door.

Speaker 1: 17:12

When Remick, already a vampire, already spiritually corrupted, showed up at the house, the man and the woman inside instinctively knew something was wrong. Their spirits resisted, their bodies hesitated. Their ancestors whispered do not open that door. But Remek, with the cunning of ancient evil, offered them gold coins, shiny promises of a better life, a way out of struggle, security for generations. And they chose. They opened the door, they invited him in and in that moment not when he bit them, not when he killed, the land itself shifted. The curse took root. Because they gave consent, they surrendered their protection, they traded spirit for gold. A single invitation is all. Evil needs Spiritual Reflection. Threshold Protection is everything.

Speaker 1: 18:06

In Hoodoo, in indigenous teachings, in true earth magic, we are taught from birth you are the master of your gate. Nothing enters unless you call it by name. That's why we sweep the front door outward, we anoint the threshold with protection oils, we lay brick dust, salt and protective prayers across the doorway. We never say come in lightly, not to strangers and not even to friends, unless the spirit feels clean. Because once you open the door, physically or spiritually, you invite not just the body but everything attached to it. You invite their traumas, you invite their curses. You invite their curses, you invite their attachments. The man and woman in sinners made a choice and it cost not just their lives but the sanctity of the land for generations to come.

Speaker 1: 18:53

Personal reflection my family's teachings on invitations. My grandmother, the wolf lady, taught me, baby, the wrong yes can cost you your soul. In my family, if someone knocked on the door and your spirit didn't feel right, you didn't answer, you didn't even move. You let them knock until they left, because movement is invitation, attention is invitation. Opening the door, even a crack, is permission. And if you had to open it, you stood at the threshold your hand firm on the frame and you let the spirit in you decide who crossed over. No welcome mat, no casual hospitality, because not every visitor wears a mask.

Speaker 1: 19:36

You can see Sammy and the cursed guitar waking. What should have slept? Into this space walked Sammy carrying the cursed guitar, the instrument once owned by the twins' abusive father, an instrument soaked in blood, betrayal and unhealed rage. When Sammy strummed those strings, he wasn't just playing music, he was summoning memory, he was ripping open wounds, he was calling the haints, the restless dead, back into the world of the living. Every note reverberated through the broken threshold. Every melody sang to the spirit sleeping beneath the floorboards. Every song stirred the land's ancient pain. The juke joint became a living altar, vibrating with grief, anger, hunger. And the spirits answered the Descent when Spirit Overtakes Flesh. At first no one noticed. The drinks kept flowing, the music stayed hot, the dancers laughed and swayed under the heavy Mississippi air. But then shadows grew longer than they should have, breaths grew shorter, arguments flared over nothing, eyes that once sparkled with love now glinted with rage, because the dead had come to dance too. And they were not dancing for joy, they were dancing for vengeance. The cursed land, the cursed music and the broken threshold collided and the juke joint became a portal. The living and the dead mingled freely, and evil, real, ancient, hungry evil, finally had a home Spiritual Reflection.

Speaker 1: 21:15

Music is summoning, not salvation. Music is sacred. It can heal, it can protect, it can summon ancestors. But it can also summon the wrong things if played without consciousness, without protection, on land that has never been properly honored. In hoodoo we know that certain songs, certain rhythms open doors, and once the wrong door opens, you cannot control who or what comes through. Sammy didn't know, smoke and Stack didn't know. They thought they were creating freedom. Instead they resurrected grief, personal reflection, the sound of Spirits Stirring. When I watched this part of Sinners, I could almost hear my great-grandmother whispering warnings into my ear. When the wrong spirits dance to your music, baby, the living pay the price. It's not just about superstition, it's about spiritual alignment, it's about knowing the difference between celebration and desecration. The juke joint became a haunted house, not because of evil intent, but because the music, the soil and the blood were never purified.

Speaker 1: 22:15

Annie's final moments, the prayer of a mother across worlds, annie knew. Long before the walls shook, long before the fire crackled in the rafters, long before the vampires bared their teeth, annie had already seen her fate in the bones and she had accepted it, not with fear but with grace, because Annie knew something the others did not Her daughter was waiting for her. The daughter they had lost, the tiny spirit she had cradled, mourned, prayed for across every candlelit night. Since she had cradled, mourned, prayed for across every candlelit night, since Her daughter was on the other side, bright and whole, calling to her through the veil and Annie, wise, rooted, annie understood what death really meant Not an ending, not a defeat, but a crossing, a return to the arms that had never stopped reaching for her, the sacred request, arms that had never stopped reaching for her, the sacred request freedom, not fear.

Speaker 1: 23:11

So when the battle grew too thick, when the air inside the juke joint cracked with screams and smoke, when she felt the cold hand of death brushing against her skin, annie turned to smoke, her love, her anchor, her warrior, and she said with a voice steady as prayer if it bites me, please free me. Because she refused to cross the veil, corrupted, she refused to let the stain of this world cling to her spirit as she stepped into the next, she wanted to meet her daughter, clean, whole, unbroken, and she trusted smoke to honor that final act of love, spiritual reflection. Honor that final act of love, spiritual reflection. The crossing is sacred In Hoodoo. In all sacred Black Southern traditions we are taught that how you cross matters. You don't want to cross with anger, you don't want to cross with fear. You want to cross clean so the ancestors can recognize your spirit and guide you home. Annie understood this better than anyone. She fought not just to live but to die well, to die free, to die with her spirit unchained. And because of that, because of her wisdom, even in her last moments, she won, because she remembered the body dies, but the spirit, the spirit, returns home.

Speaker 1: 24:25

The true battle over the land. No deed, only spirit. Smoke and Stack never signed a deed. There were no lawyers, no courthouses, no formal contracts. There was only cash and a warning. They handed Hogwood the money. They told him to never set foot on that land again. It was a spiritual agreement, an energetic severing In their hearts, in their spirits. They believed they had bought their future fair and square, but in the eyes of the world they lived in a world that had never honored Black ownership, black dreams, black sovereignty. The exchange meant nothing To Hogwood. The land was never truly theirs, not because of law, but because of the sickness of entitlement. And so he returned, not with a deed, not with words, but with guns, and with the arrogance of a man who had been taught that black blood was never enough to claim anything.

Speaker 1: 25:19

Smoke's final stand Defending land bought by spirit, not by law. Smoke understood the truth. They had paid for that land with cash, yes, but more than that, they had paid with dreams, with hope, stitched into every nail, driven into those old walls, with prayers whispered over every stage, built for music. They had claimed it in the only way that mattered with soul. And so Smoke fought, not just to protect Sammy, not just to survive, but to defend the sacred act of claiming space in a world built to deny it. When Hogwood came with his men expecting fear, expecting surrender, smoke gave him none, because the spirit had already accepted Smoke's claim, even if the law never would. And spirit is stronger than any army.

Speaker 1: 26:07

The killing of Hogwood, spiritual justice, not revenge. Smoke didn't kill Hogwood out of rage. He killed him out of duty, because when you plant yourself on sacred ground, when you claim it with the prayers of the dead and the dreams of the living, you must be willing to defend it. And when a man comes to take what spirit has already consecrated. You are not just fighting for yourself, you are fighting for every ancestor who walked before you. Smoke struck Hogwood down because the land demanded it, because the blood demanded it, because justice demanded it and because some debts must be paid in full before the sun rises again.

Speaker 1: 26:47

Final battle Sammy's wounds, remick's end and the cost of survival. Sammy fought Remick, not with innocence anymore, not with naivety, but with every ounce of spirit his ancestors had poured into him. He fought for smoke, he fought for Annie, he fought for the land. He fought for the bloodlines that refused to be erased. The marking did three slashes across his face. But victory never comes without cost. During the brutal fight, remick slashed Sammy's face with three slashes, deep, deep wounds that carved into him not just physically but spiritually. Each slash a mark one for the ancestors betrayed, one for the blood spilled, one for the dreams lost and reclaimed through pain. Those scars would never heal fully, because some wounds are meant to be carried, reminders that survival has a price.

Speaker 1: 27:42

Sammy's triumph, ending Remick's curse. Despite the pain, despite the blood, despite the weight of every spirit screaming across the juke joints burning bones, sammy defeated Remick. He didn't just kill a monster. He ended a cycle, he closed a wound ripped open generations before he was born. He fought not just with strength but with memory, and that made all the difference. Time moves forward.

Speaker 1: 28:16

Years later, the blues lives on. Years passed, the juke joint was gone, the fields were quieter, the wounds had scarred over, but the stories, the music, lived on. In a small, smoky club, a much older Sammy, now worn, wise, scarred but still standing, played the blues, played by none other than Buddy Guy, himself a living legend, carrying the echoes of every sorrow and every triumph. Sammy had lived, his guitar wept and laughed under his fingers, because blues is not just sadness, it's survival, it's breathing. When the world tried to choke you out, the Return, the endless battle between memory and hunger, and into that small club, as Sammy played the songs that had kept him alive, walked two familiar faces Stack. And the songs that had kept him alive walked two familiar faces Stack and the woman who had betrayed him. But they weren't fully human anymore, Not after the night the juke joint burned. They had survived in a different way not by remembering but by feeding, by becoming what once hunted them. Their eyes gleamed with the cold hunger of the turned. They hadn't come for the music. They had come for Sammy, because some debts never die, some battles are never truly over and the struggle between light and darkness, memory and forgetting would continue for as long as Blood remembered how to sing.

Speaker 1: 29:40

Spiritual Reflection the song must never end. Sammy survived. He carried his scars, he carried his memories, he carried the weight of his ancestors in every chord he played. But survival is not just about breathing. It's about playing the song anyway. It's about standing up even when the world, and sometimes even your own blood, wants you to fall. And so Sammy played old, scarred, glorious, because to play is to remember and to remember is to live.

Speaker 1: 30:14

Sacred Closing Reflections the song of blood, land and spirit. As the smoke rose from the ashes of the juke joint, as the ancestors returned to the other side, as Sammy's music lingered in the heavy night air, the real lesson of sinners revealed itself. This was never just a story about vampires. It was a story about memory, about blood, about land, about what happens when we forget to protect the sacred things given to us. Bloodlines are sacred. Our bloodlines are not just DNA, they are living prayers. Every ancestor who survived, every ancestor who dreamed, every ancestor who sang into the darkness. They live in our bones and when we honor them, when we protect their memory, we walk with power no weapon can destroy. But when we forget them, when we sell their memory for gold, when we leave our thresholds unguarded, we invite destruction, we invite remick, we invite loss, we invite the devouring of all we were meant to protect. Land is spirit made visible. The juke joints stood on blood-soaked soil. A slaughterhouse first, a place of joy second. But it was never healed, never cleansed, never honored, and because of that it could not hold the dream smoke and stack poured into it. Land remembers. It remembers every footstep, every prayer, every betrayal, and if we do not honor that memory, the land will answer back with fire, with sorrow, with loss. To truly own land spiritually, not just legally, we must ask permission, we must make offerings, we must treat the earth as living, breathing, elder, Because it is.

Speaker 1: 32:01

Music is a key. Choose carefully which doors you open. Choose carefully which doors you open. Sammy's music opened a door. It called the ancestors, it called the dead, it called the forgotten, but it also called the hungry. Music is not entertainment. Music is a prayer, a spell, a binding, and when played without understanding, without covering, without ancestral permission, it can open gates better left sealed.

Speaker 1: 32:29

We are responsible for the songs we sing, for the spirits we summon, for the energy we spread across the world. Every note matters. Every beat is a breath in the spirit world. Play wisely, the true victory. Remembering In the end Sinners, teaches us. Victory is not in killing monsters. Victory is not in surviving bloodshed. Victory is in remembering, remembering who you are, remembering whose blood runs through your veins, remembering the land you walk on has eyes, ears and memory. Remembering the thresholds you crossed are sacred Smoke remembered, annie remembered, sammy remembered. And because they remembered, even in death, even in loss, even in scarred survival, they won. They kept the song alive, they kept the story breathing, they refused to be erased. And that that is a victory. No vampire, no injustice, no fire can ever destroy.

Speaker 1: 33:30

Ancestral closing prayer A dedication to the guardians of my bloodline, spirits of my blood, spirits of my bones, spirits who walked before me, whose names I know and whose names have been lost to the winds of time. I call to you now. I honor you, I thank you, I thank you. I feel your hands at my back steadying me when the path grows dark. I offer this story, this song, this remembrance to you. To my mother, who wove the threads of spirit into my life before I even knew the language of magic. To my grandmother, whose whispered prayers still curl around my shoulders like smoke. To the generations behind them, the root workers, the dreamers, the warriors, the healers who carved a path through a world that tried to forget them. You were not forgotten, not by me. Your stories are the drumbeat in my chest. Your wisdom is the fire in my words. Your protection is the shield that guards my steps.

Speaker 1: 34:30

I dedicate this journey to you, to the ancestors who fought battles seen and unseen, who faced teeth and fire, chains and silence and still rose. I walk because you stood, I sing because you wept, I build because you bled, and I will remember. I will remember when the night falls. I will remember when the fire burns low. I will remember when the wind calls the names. Only the spirit can hear. May my life be a prayer returned to you. May my journey be an offering placed at your feet.

Speaker 1: 35:02

Thank you, thank you. Thank you, ashe, ashe, ashe. A thank you, an invitation to remember. Thank you, dear listeners, for walking this sacred journey with me today. Thank you for sitting in the music, standing in the fire and holding space for the voices, living and ancestral, that still echo through our stories. May you remember you are never walking alone. Your blood remembers, even when your mind forgets. Your bones carry songs. Your lips have never learned to sing and your spirit, if you listen, will always lead you back home. Honor the ones who came before you, sing their names into the wind, pour libation to their memory, light a candle for the dreams. They could not finish, so you can. And when you stand at the threshold of your own battles, may you stand tall, knowing you are the living prayer of a thousand hopes. Until next time, keep your no-transcript.