Thinning Worlds

At Samhain I honor my Ancestral Dead and formally welcome them into my home and hearth. It’s a common practice for witches, pagans, and ancestor worship practitioners. It’s also something I do every day, not just in autumn. The other side of the Halloween coin is May Day, otherwise known as Beltane, and it’s another time when the lines between the living and the dead blur.

The living, the dead, and the energy beings that bleed into this world from another. There are too many stories of fairy folk from differing mythologies for me to not be open to the possibility that they exist on another plane. I mean, once you believe in ghosts the door to what is possible stands wide open.

And I believe in ghosts.

            They visit me in my dreams. But when the worlds are thin I see them in the waking world as well. I see movements out of the corner of my eye, things tucking behind chairs and bookshelves that aren’t there when I look for them straight-on. I feel people entering the room behind me but no matter how certain my body is that I am not alone I cannot see anyone with my naked eye. And my scalp prickles as if a hand has gently touched me. It warms beneath another palm. I no longer reach up to check because I know it is not a physical presence.

This is how I live. The blurs are what I refer to as wayward spirits, harmless travelers drawn towards memories of being alive. The thinner the worlds get the brighter my inner lighthouse gets. I have a room lurker who is also an old fixture I call the German Guy. I know he belongs to my maternal Grandma Art’s side and as she passed last spring I am not surprised he has come to sit with me. The hand I feel on my scalp is my Great-Grandma Elsie. She is my spirit traffic cop, never far. When the worlds bleed across each other her presence is more vigilant.

I leave out cups of tea and horribly salted chicken wings as a thank you to her. Or strawberry shortcake in season. She lived with us in the summers and was alive until I was seventeen. There is a space in my heart that was shaped by her, a part of me that remembers how she molded me. She saw what others in my family did not see and now, from a grown-up perspective, her experiences with a difficult son dictated the advice she gave me:

You have to love, anyway. You can’t let the bullies stop you from living your life.

That goes for spirit bullies, too. If you are sensitive to them, they can crowd the room and demand attention. So when I clean my Ancestor Altar and refresh it I call in peaceful spirits that do not wish us harm. I take a shot of some pungent liquor and make an offering at the edge of our property for those spirits seeking offerings with no regard for the living.

There is room for them all to be honored…just out there. Not in my home.

In this thinner world I ask the Ancestors to safeguard those who may not yet be at peace and to watch over their families.

I still grieve for Recent Dead. It wells up as the thinning comes and I can feel spirits more viscerally. I am both reminded of their loss and equally hurt that their ghost has not come to visit. I wish them peace even as I grieve the loss of them, the loss of their physical presence, of their wisdom, of all the time we’ll never have to repair or strengthen wounds and hearts. And I am left to figure out how to move on from unfinished work.

But not alone. Those Who Have Gone Before aid me in my grief. The Ancestral Dead, the centuries of others who have felt such loss, have been deceased long enough that they can hold space for my sorrow. Their physical connection to the World They Knew is long gone and they are drawn to that familiar emotion of loss. Whether intentional or not, they sit with me. I know this. When I am open to it, in my darkest moment, I do not feel alone.

For some people the thought of ghosts is isolating and frightening. It can drive them from a space. We often feel such a way about things we cannot explain. I’ve always trusted what I am experiencing more than just my eyes. We do not see everything and we do not see everything the same way as everyone else. It makes our personal experiences valuable.

Ghosts are real.

Those blurs I see out of the corner of my eye are not all ghosts. After years of working with spirits you can sense/see the difference. Some are land wights waking after a wintry slumber. Finding a way to embrace the life-waking in the same breath as life-transitioning-through-death is a way to honor those who are no more.

Look up the histories of your ancestors and leave offerings appropriate to the lands of your people. I leave out bread and seed and fruit and tea to feed those just waking and I do it in the name of those I miss. In my grief I choose to feed life.

Open your heart to the thinning of the walls between this world and the next. Do not try to quantify or qualify. I will tell you that yes, your loved one is gone. And they are alive. And they are reincarnated. And they are with you. All of that is true, all at once, right now.

Now they are gone. Now they are everywhere.

How will your heart honor them?

Reading Poetry to the Dead

In the pagan world, Beltane, also known as May Day, is the balance point to October’s Samhain evening, when the veil between the worlds is thin and spirits may come and go. The veil between the worlds, between the living plane and the ones coexisting around and overtop of us, is also thin at Beltane. It’s not so much a time for ancestral spirits to wander the earth, but for me it’s the time when the land spirits reawaken and, those that wander through winter, return.

Spirit is very strong at this time of year and we can see it in the blossoming flowers and unfurling leaves. The snakes waken and return to the surface to warm in the lengthening sun. Humans emerge from their homes and tend their gardens. Children play outdoors. Life emerges. In the spirit of springtime, I am moved to share that life with my ancestors, to share that energy with those no longer among us.

It was just after the first of spring when we buried my Grandfather years ago, and the life in bloom around me, the soft birdsong in the cemetery, was enough to ease my grief. I return that gratitude by reading aloud to the ancestors and the other spirits that share this earth. I read to the trees and the flowers and the birds in the air. Words are a language the dead can no longer use and as I release my voice into the air, I make an offering of my favorite poems and stories to Those Who Have Gone Before.

When you share poetry with your Ancestors, it should be something that moves you emotionally. It should be something you feel an innate connection with, so that the emotion might cross planes of existence to reach them. I offer one more today, this May Day, to my Ancestors, to the earthen spirits, and to you.

Messenger

by Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—

equal seekers of sweetness.

Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me

keep my mind on what matters,

which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be

astonished.

The phoebe, the delphinium.

The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.

Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart

and these body-clothes,

a mouth with which to give shouts of joy

to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,

telling them all, over and over, how it is

that we live forever.