Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth

In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.

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Death Never Sleeps

La Muerte no duerme.

If the tales be true, some stormy night Old Hornie will ride up to the Old Warlocks' Home on a black horse (who knows, these days he may drive up in a black Porsche), sling me over his shoulder, and carry me off screaming into the night.

And they'll say: Well, that's the end of him.

Well, maybe. Otherwise, barring the unforeseen or the mob with torches and pitchforks (these things do happen), I'll have my heart attack and be dead before I hit the ground. That's generally how men in my family die. My lifelong vegetarianism may buy me a few extra years and better health at the end, but the final prognosis is nohow in doubt.

With luck, I'm looking at another 30 years ahead; with lots of luck, maybe another 40. I've always admired the title of Margaret Murray's autobiography: My First Hundred Years. She died at 101.

In every language that I've ever studied, death is a noun, but, of course, death is not a noun, a thing. What we call death is a cessation, a stoppage: when the parts stop working together. That it's so intangible somehow makes it that much more undefinable.

Yesterday I walked down to Mercado Centrál to see the altares for Día de los Muertos. The flowers were looking a little wilted by now, the banderas tattered, and the pan de muertos dried-out; but that's only in the nature of things. By contrast with Jaloguín of the North, I'm always impressed by the bright colors and flowers of the Southron Day of the Dead. Death and flowers. These are the happy dead. The feast of sugar skulls: sweet death, too sweet to eat.

 

In these Days of the Dead, we the future dead look to our own, and echo with a grin the banner at the florista's:

¡Vívan los Muertos!

Long live the dead!

 

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Poet, scholar and storyteller Steven Posch was raised in the hardwood forests of western Pennsylvania by white-tailed deer. (That's the story, anyway.) He emigrated to Paganistan in 1979 and by sheer dint of personality has become one of Lake Country's foremost men-in-black. He is current keeper of the Minnesota Ooser.

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