When working with spirits, I don’t
call upon those who are recently deceased. It feels cruel to call upon a soul that
may be struggling to let go of it’s human skin. Or maybe it’s cruel to the
human grieving. Maybe the more that time passes, the less human their spirits
seem to us, and the easier we can open to them. Whichever side of the living or
dead needs the time to heal, I don’t call upon or attempt to work with a spirit
who has been dead for less than a year. In fact, with spirits who died unwell,
I may wait many years before trying.
I keep that in mind in my daily
practice, and again at Samhain and Halloween, when the everyday spirits who
walk among us are more easily perceived. I make myself still my grief’s desire
to call to those who have not been dead long. In my work, I refer to the
spirits who die, from Samhain to Samhain, as the Recent Dead. This is the time
when I call on my ancestors and ask them to help welcome and shepherd over the
Recent Dead, specifically those spirits who might not yet have realized it is
time to cross over.
I light my ancestor altar and call
my ancestors, the lines of Eaton, Riddle, Ruston, and Art. I call out the names
of some of the ancestors I have found on my family tree, calling in the ageless
time that is the ancestral pool: Sibilia
de Lea, Sir Henry Norreys, Captain Roger Clapp, Waitstill Wyatt, Heman Sears, Hattie
Eva Dutcher; Gwethlin Wensliana, Robert Moulton, Rev. William Gylette, Freeborn
Wolfe, Isaac-Etienne Paquet de Lavallee, Annatje Goedemoet, Thomas Ridel,
Rosella LaRoche; Barnardus Jacobus Turner, Dafydd Riggs, Hester Mathieu,
Albrecht Zabriskie, Emma Angeline Whitcher, Hiram King Wicker; Mary Dowd, John
F. Pils, Katherine Maria Schmeelk, Margaret Loretta Burke.
I am because you were.
I call the names of my Beloved
Dead, of those known in this lifetime, known and loved by me. They are the
names of those I think of often and fondly, and though I miss them, I celebrate
their memory in the act of reciting their names: Ruth Ruston Eaton, Harold Riddle, Mark Dutcher Eaton, Melinda Tanner, Elizabeth
Fricke, Jeff Patterson, Willie Lingenfelter, Elsie Durant Riddle, Gabe Reynolds,
Joel Pelletier, Victoria Eaton, Edward J. Jerge, II, Trent Illig, Donna Riddle,
Jurgen Banse-Fey, Charles “Sienna Fox” Duvall, Jack Singer, Tommy Amyotte, Paul
Seeloff, Richard James Riddle, Brett Elsess, Andrew Begley, Susan
Alvarez-Hughes, Coswald Mauri, Norm Herbert, Jad Alexander, Dr. August Staub, Princess
Leather Falcor, Martha Dayton, Melvin Chausse, John Croom, Karl Weber, Luna
Jackalope, Thomas E. Malinowski, Albert Gritzmacher III, Luna the wolfe, Joshua
Verity, Freya Moon Greenleaf.
I am the better
for having known you.
I pour water into a glass, offering
a libation to my honored guests. I ask them to watch over and welcome our
friends and loved ones who have died in this last year, and then I speak the
names of the Recent Dead, known to me and my loved ones, lighting a candle for
each person:
John M. Rosenburg,
Jr.
Gary French
Patches
Joshua Fingerhut
Barbara Jean
Schiffert
Bella, our beloved
bear-cat
Russell Whitmire
Ken Koch
Soja Arumpanayil
Meow
Meow
After the candles are lit, I sing,
because it makes me happy. I sing and I think about all of the warm, joyful memories
I have with each of those I lit a candle for. I think about how much they meant
to me, and my journey, and I let my heart fill. My heart becomes the focal
point for the energy I radiate into the universe. Even in my grief, what I send
out is love.
Afterwards, I thank the Ancestors
with a Dumb Supper, a Feast for the Dead. We dine in mirror to what the spirits
remember, from dessert to appetizer, offering them the first and best of each
dish, our honored guests. What is left from the feast is offered to the animals
of the natural world, as an offering to the living from the dead.
I owe my breath to all those who
came before me. Good or bad, they are branches of living energy that feed down
into me. I am because they were. My nieces and nephew are because they were. I
honor and I remember.
What is remembered lives. What is
remembered never truly dies.
Miss you and love you, Bella Bella. |
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