My familiar died last year.
But this article is not about him: the death of pets, even the best-loved, is in my opinion a matter for private, not public, mourning.
But the death of a household member occasioned some serious thought on the matter of the rituals with which we meet such an event in the home. As a community, we've been strong on public ritual and weak on household observance, and in this we differ greatly from the ancestors, who held both to be of equal necessity. The last death in my household had occurred almost 10 years previously, and at the time I pretty much winged it. But since then my thinking has matured (or so I like to tell myself), and so when Gremlin died I followed Ceisiwr Serith's advice: when confronted with a new situation, consult ancestral precedent.
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very nice, my friend. -
With all the conversation lately about whether or not there are common threads which bind the many Paganisms together, this post i
