Performing a ritual to acknowledge the end of a relationship is an important part of the healing process. Whether it is a breakup of a love affair or the dissolution of the legal bonds of marriage, approaching this change with ritual will help and heal. I have also known those who performed this same rite with the ending of a friendship. This ceremony is intended to resolve issues, tie up loose ends, and help you to move on. It is very important psychologically, psychically, and emotionally to recognize that a divorce is a very big deal. This ritual is best done privately, although you may want the support of a carefully chosen friend. I have outlined some carefully considered questions for you to ask yourself when trying to figure out if a divorce ritual is what you want to do. As with all rituals, I strongly suggest that this one be given a lot of thought. With this divorce ritual, I recommend going to an even deeper level of introspection, as you will be bidding farewell to an important part of your life that doubtless brought you as much joy as it did sorrow. Many emotions are going to rise up, and you can, gently and with love, put these feelings to rest and assign them a place in your life: the past.
A question that can come up when students first learn that heathens in historical times had divorce and that the wife was the key holder in most times in heathen history (with some notable exceptions) is: what happened after that? If the woman was the property owner did the man lose his status after divorce?
That's a good question, and the answer is sometimes, but not usually. Social status in the ancient world depended on a lot more besides being landed or not. A man would only lose status when he left his wife's property if the man's status was tied to the estate, which was not always the case. That had to do with how much property was involved in the marriage, which was more an issue with the upper classes, and whether there were any noble titles involved, also only an issue for the upper classes, and only in some time periods.
An example would be if the property on which they lived were exclusively her inheritance and getting divorced meant he had to stop being a land holding lord and go join some other lord's house carls. But that would have been a really small percentage of people. It would not affect most people.
Erin Lale
Fellow faculty at Harvard Divinity School posted an open letter to Wolpe in response to his article. It's available on this page, below the call for p...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. The Wild Hunt has a roundup of numerous responses on its site, but it carried this one as a separate article. It is an accoun...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. This one is by a scholar of paganism. It's unfortunately a Facebook post so this link goes to Facebook. She posted the text o...
Erin Lale
Here's another link to a pagan response to the Atlantic article. I would have included this one in my story too if I had seen it before I published it...
Janet Boyer
I love the idea of green burials! I first heard of Recompose right before it launched. I wish there were more here on the East Coast; that's how I'd l...