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 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.

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.