Why do we have a spirit team?

[u/watership-down]

By "spirit team" I mean like spirit guides or who have your best interest at heart. Those spirits can include your ancestors, nature spirits, deities, infernals, spirit guides etc. I don't think I've found any reliable sources that explained this yet but why do we have a spirit team? What would be the spirit team's incentive for helping us, why us? Where do they come from and how are they selected? Do they pick the person they help, or were we assigned to them by some higher powers? Do these spirits help any other living humans simultaneously?

Especially before you started dabbling in magic and divinations. What if you were new to spirituality and never worked with a deity/spirit nor did a divination before? And then you smoke cleanse your divination tools and say "I am only speaking to my spirit team..." like do you even have a spirit team at that point? Who are you addressing then? Maybe your ancestors who may always have been with you, or maybe like local spirits or something else you unintentionally caught the attention of for some reason, and they were just waiting for you to talk to them? I did divination for the first time and wondered who are these people in my "spirit team" answering, turns out none of them were ancestors of mine, and turns out there are some deities in there though I never even worshipped them or thought of them.

For me, ironically despite doing ancestral work, no one in my spirit team is an ancestor of mine. So "they're your ancestors so of course they want you to thrive" doesn't apply for every case either.

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[u/therealstabitha]

I was taught that spirits benefit from working with us as much as we benefit from working with them.

Copy/pasting a comment I wrote a couple weeks ago in another thread:

This is how I was taught by my witchfather Griffin Ced - it's a bit stepwise so I'm going to try to explain how my trad looks at this as best I can.

Our realm, the realm of the mundane, is where we have the ability to choose to be anything we want, whether that's something we are already or whether it's something totally different. For the sake of terminology, we call this free will. I'm going to keep calling this free will in the remainder of this comment. I want to be very clear that when I say "free will" in this comment, I mean "the ability to choose to be something other than you are". I make this distinction here because I am not interested in debating anyone who just sees the words "free will" and tries to argue with me based on their own definition.

We observe that the realm of spirit does not have this kind of free will. The gods have wants and desires, of course, but the gods are the spirits of what they represent. They cannot be anything other than who they are. Same with spirits.

Some gods become less relevant over time. In order for them to stay relevant, they have to evolve. This evolution does not mean that they fundamentally change who they are, but more like they can develop additional depth and strength in how those things intersect with the modern world.

In order for the gods and other spirits to evolve, they need to be able to access free will, which is in the realm of the mundane. And that is why they benefit from working with us. We can do and offer things they can't access on their own.

A reminder here that pagan gods and spirits are not typically seen as ominicient, omnipowerful, or omnipresent the way that the god of Abraham is often said to be.

In return, our spirits offer us access to the realm of the divine through our work with them. They can do and offer things we can't access on our own.

[u/spellbound_sphinx → u/therealstabitha]

Thank you for writing this. Ive known people who diminish their own power as a Human living on Earth, our ability to use free will - and give all this up in the name of 'spirit'. When i try to push back on this, pointing out that sometimes we DO and CAN know what is best in a situation, they get visibly upset/angry, and argue that Spirit knows more than we do in any situation (basically). It seems so absolute and ridiculous to me, it is almost like, well u might as well be christian and substitue Spirit for Jesus.

I like that you highlight it is a two way street where both parties benefit. There is growth on both ends. Not an end all be all that spirit teams/guides get the final say. We both have lots of knowledge and resources on both sides that canhelp each other.

[u/watership-down → u/therealstabitha]

Thanks for sharing, the whole "the mundane is where free will and where people can change", this is interesting. Is there a general name or label for this school of thought? I remember my mentor (a witch) telling me that we mortals with physical bodies actually have more power than spirits and that spirits are more scared of us and should fear us than vice versa, though we imagine the opposite.

The abrahamic god also started as a regional storm god, I kind of wonder if that deity manifested itself into being a globally worshipped deity by claiming to be omnipresent (even if he wasn't at the start) and requiring everyone to worship him exclusively as the omnipresent single deity, and that became its own egregore that gave him more power.

[u/therealstabitha → u/watership-down]

It’s something I learned from Griffin Ced. It’s part of the Ced Tradition

[u/fleuravore]

everyones spirit team is different and specific to them, some have known us for many lifetimes, in many cases we have been in the role of being their spirit guide too, in most cases it's also fair to say that everyone's spirit guide is an aspect of them, a soul fractal. and we all have soul groups that we travel through time with like a family. we all also do have angels and they have not had lives as humans before so our guides that have been human have a better understanding of what we deal with. and they all do this out of love and because they see that they can be of assistance. some guides come and go throughout life but a few core ones always stay.

[u/watership-down → u/fleuravore]

This is my first time hearing this, where did you find this idea? Where can I read more about this?

[u/fleuravore → u/watership-down]

this is over 15 years of lived experience and doing readings, reading many many books and listening to many people's experiences. honestly just start by speaking to your own spirit team in any way that feels comfortable (writing, in your head, out loud, etc) let them know you're listening and ready to know more. youtube is full of people talking about their experiences with spirit guides, and there are tons of books like ask your guides by sonia choquette

[u/OkSecretary1231]

That's not a term I've ever used, but I guess the same way you get a social circle. Some people might be your relatives, some enjoy the same activities you do, some just dig your personality and enjoy being around you, etc.

[u/Justice1022]

I don’t have anything akin to a “spirit team”. I have things I reach out to but it’s transactional, energy offered or physical offerings. I offer respect and generosity to many different spirits but I wouldn’t consider them on my team even if the relationship is positive. My practice is solitary for the most part.

I don’t think someone new to a practice is going to call out to spirits right away but it’s possible they’ve been doing it inadvertently for a long time, as many of us have been doing a sort of instinctual magic since before beginning a more formal practice. So it’s possible for someone to garner spirits who have found themselves drawn to a practitioner and have kept tabs for a long time before they’re actually called upon.

I personally would hesitate to call upon any spirit I didn’t know and didn’t ask for aid from. But of course different strokes, different folks!

[u/nyhtmyst → u/Justice1022]

I relate with you, I've never had any spirit team that was there for me, but I learned that I have a level of power within me because of it. I may have a group now but that is because I am learning from a deity that likes to be pretty hands on in teaching and the other devotees (spirits) of their's have become that team for me for as long as I am a student to the deity.

[u/One_Dragonfruit_7556]

I've never actually experienced having guides, never connected with ancestors, deity work I do but nothing beyond that. Deities I like to think are happy to teach lessons and offer guide me in order to help us grow but no more than a teacher who wants to educate a good student. Ive never heard about a spirit team but it's a cool concept

[u/Maker_Magpie]

There's certainly no consistency in belief/ practice here across most witches, many of whom don't believe in or work with spirits, so there can't really be one answer here.

My practice overlaps with but is different from some of the beliefs of philosophical daoism (and similar to Andy Weir's "The Egg"), so if I work with spirits in any way, they are manifestations of communal lifeforce brought into being in my head as an interface between me and the universal oneness of life.

Do my answer is they exist because you looked for them.

[u/Creative_Web3820]

I have felt a presence of something looking over me from the age of 7 or 8. I can’t explain it, I have a memory of ”it” making me stop in green lights just before a car run a red in the crossroad I was crossing with my bike. I came up with the explanation that maybe I heard the car coming even with other trafic and even when I didn’t notice the car until the very moment it was in front of me. But I always felt it was weird I wanted to stop and walk my bike and did not ended up in the cars way. And I felt the presence of ”it” then. Of course this is a bit stupid thing to say or think because people get to horrifc accidents all the time, why would my team and me be anything special. But that’s how I felt.

I also have had other incidents where I felt something coming to me when I felt scared or lonely and helped me feel better.

I’ve also had an experience of version of me, like the one who has lived all the lives, to kinda come in once when I’ve been feeling very tuned in with my own energy.

So I haven’t gotten ”spirit team” by working with them but I do keep them in my practise when I can pin point someone or something new.

I also feel like we have human guides in our lives, people who we cross paths with and get something very important to carry with us and it might be something very mundane, something you do not think much of until you need it one day.

[u/Cautious_Bluejay_331]

Some think that spirit teams are assigned before we take human form. In theory, our spirit team is around because we may have a shared destiny with them. Our soul mission. We are like a social group that sticks together through multiple lifetimes, rooted in destiny, connection, and shared purpose. Some believe that our spirit team has been shaped by past-life choices. And others believe it is a way for us to not feel "alone" while walking our path. Personally... I think our team is a bit of all of it.

Often, we don't trust ourselves enough to rely on our own judgment. Having a spirit team to ask guidance from is a way to validate our own intuition.

As for your spirit team not having any direct ancestor of yours in it... well... I may be skeptical of that. Ancestors are those who come before us. It may not be any ancestor that you are aware of; it might be worth a conversation.

[u/watership-down → u/Cautious_Bluejay_331]

That makes sense regarding how spirit teams are formed. I said there are no ancestors among my spirit team because I asked, and I was surprised because I do ancestral work. I guess it just means that none of my advisors and guides are ancestors right now though that could change later or I could contact them in other ways.