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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in funeral

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 How a handful of soil holds more than 50 billion life forms | Financial  Times

 Last Rites

 

The graveside service over, people are beginning to turn back to the cars. But there's one more rite to be observed here today.

This is, after all, my mother, and I her firstborn child.

I scoop up a handful of earth from a new grave nearby, and place it on the lid of the coffin. Against the polished wood, the little mound of sandy soil manages to look both shocking, and inevitable.

This is rite as articulate action: symbolism that no one needs to have explained.

Standing at the coffin's foot, I pronounce the traditional words.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 The witches' dance · Alkistis Dimech

Remarks from a Pagan Funeral

 

In his quite remarkable book European Paganism: The Realities of Cult, from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, Ken Dowden makes the observation that all over ancient Europe, it was customary to end funerals with a dance: specifically, with a round dance, preferably performed around the grave itself.

A funeral ends with a round dance. This is profound and articulate action. Ancient Europe was a large place, much larger than it is today: a place of many peoples, many languages, and many cultures; and yet everywhere, across ethnic, linguistic, and cultural boundaries, funerals ended with a round dance.

A funeral ends with a round dance. Now why, do you think, would the ancestors have done this? Anyone?

[Field responses from people.]

The pagan religions are preeminently religions of praxis: they're about what you do. For pagans, to dance is to pray. (Reporter: Do witches pray? Witch [thinks a moment, then smiles.] We dance.) Among the Kalasha of what is now NW Pakistan, the only Indo-European-speaking people who have practiced their ancient religion continuously since antiquity, the same word—the same word—means both to dance and to pray. Consider the implications of this.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

 

Let us lift up our hands.

 

Dread Lord seated upon the Dark Throne,

the span of whose antlers reaches from horizon to horizon;

Great Lady who descended into Night

because she would know all things, even the mystery of Death;

O you whose love first engendered our people,

along with everything that is:

we your children stand before you this day

and we call to you.

We thank you for the life and deeds

of your daughter, our sister Hilary;

we commend her, body and spirit, to your care.

We ask that the way be open before her,

so that in due course, rested and renewed,

she may return and be reborn once again among our people.

In the name of the Horns and the Wandering Moon

we ask it,

and let us all say:

 

So mote it be.

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Scattering Violets: A New Blog About Death Care and Funerary Traditions

For the past several months, I've found myself struggling with fresh ideas for Hob & Broom, my previous blog here on PaganSquare about hearth and home traditions. While my hearth cult is still a deeply important spiritual foundation for me, I felt that I'd exhausted all my resources for it and there was nothing left to write about. But I think it's closer to the truth to say that my interest has shifted, and has been shifting for quite some time.

 

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs

Kveldulf Gundarsson aka Dr. Stephen Grundy aka Sigmundr Hawkonson has gone to stay with the ancestors. As reported on social media and on various news sites, he died suddenly a week ago.

In a public post, Kveldulf's wife Melodi has announced a worldwide public event, Lift Your Glass, for the evening of October 8th, 2021.  It's not an online meeting, there is nothing to join or post, one just raises a toast.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Erin Lale
    Erin Lale says #
    I think so, yes.
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    I know that one of Odin's titles was Lord of the Spear, and that he hung himself on Yggdrasil for 9 days. By any chance was Kveld

 

 

Opening Remarks

 

My sisters and brothers, we gather here today to commemorate and celebrate the life of Jane Hawkner.

Our rite will consist of three parts: The Rite of the Gates, the Fire Sacrifice, and the Arval Feast.

Our gathering today is not, however, one of commemoration only, but also of transition, which—symbolically, at least—will ease Jane's way from this life to that which comes next. For this, we will need the active engagement and participation of each one of you.

Much of what we do here today will, by tradition, be enacted while standing in respect. Let me add, though, that if you need to sit, please do so. Just be sure to sit respectfully.

Let us begin by acknowledging the Great Circle of Life and Death of which we are all a part, and by joining ourselves to it.

And so we begin.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs

I was asked a favor that necessitated my asking the landwight who lives in my garden and protects all within its territory if it was OK. I rarely speak in words with the landwight. My relationship with the land spirit predates my developing a godphone, so when I do speak with the landvaette of this place, I'm used to making statements and not receiving a reply in words. This time I got a reply, though.

A friend messaged me on fb that her daughter's pet snake had died. They were planning to move to a house but had not done so yet, and they asked me if they could bury the snake in my yard temporarily and then move it later. Before I could reply I had to ask the landwight. Up until then, everything buried here had lived here. The animals buried in this land had already been part of this land and the landwight's territory. I asked the landwight with nearly the same wording that I had been asked, which emphasized that this was to be temporary. The landwight agreed.

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