Tag Archives: death

Paganism, Spiritual Development, Witchcraft

Samhain Musings

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Dark StaircaseToday is the day that Wiccans and many other Pagans in the Northern Hemisphere observe Samhain.  So happy Samhain!1

Among other things, Samhain represents the mythological and metaphorical descent into the underworld, the realm of Death.  It’s the traditional start of a season where life slows down (or used to, before our technology allowed us to keep a fast-paced frenzy going year-round) and offers much time for introspection and reflection.  It’s also a great time for deconstruction of oneself, one’s ego, and how one looks at the world.  In Gardner’s Myth of the Goddess, this is represented by the guardians to Death’s Domain when they challenge the Goddess and tell her she must remove all her jewelry and even her garments.  She had to bare her true self to descend.

I find it somewhat amusing that the modern adaptation of this holiday — Halloween — involves donning costumes and pretending to be someone or something else, when Samhain traditionally is also about divesting oneself of such pretense and facing the Darkness without one’s armor and accepting that such armor cannot truly protect.

Of course, that’s a frightening realization to embrace.  We tend to like our sense of control, especially over ourselves.  We like to think that we can present to the world who we want to be and have this accepted.  And there is some witchery there.  Letting go of that and becoming bare, vulnerable to any who may see the real us rather than the perfected image we prefer to present is a terrifying process.  It’s terrifying to let ourselves be confronted with the real us, for that matter.

But it’s also necessary.  To know who we truly are — stripped of all the pretense and illusions we create for ourselves and others — also enables us to improve ourselves and even reconstruct us.  Often, we can do that in ways so that we are more substantively like the person we imagine and project ourselves to be.  But making that improvement requires we first take a close look at admit we are not that person yet.

So to all my readers, especially any who follow a path where Samhain has meaning to you, I wish you a blessed Samhain.  May you find the serenity and courage to face the Darkness alone, naked (only figuratively, if you prefer), and vulnerable.  May you find comfort in the journey and hold tight to the hope of seeing the First Light of Yule.

1Happy Beltane to any Wiccans and other Pagans Down Under who are celebrating that instead.

Paganism, Religion, Witchcraft

Gerald Gardner’s Myth of the Goddess

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The first edition cover of Witchcraft Today, w...

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While I do not consider myself Wiccan and I’m certainly not an Initiate of Gardnerian Wicca or any of it’s close relatives, my own understanding of witchcraft has been strongly influenced by the thoughts and writings of various such Initiates, including the public writers of Gerald Gardner himself.

Gardner presented a piece of writing in his books which he referred to as “The Myth of the Goddess.”[1]  He indicated that it was one of the — if not THE — central myths of the form of witchcraft he taught.  It also happens to be one of my favorite myths.  As it features the god of the witches as Death himself, I thought it appropriate to post it the day before Samhain.

Now, G. (the Witch Goddess) had never loved, but she would solve all the Mysteries, even the Mystery of Death; and so she journeyed to the Nether Lands.

The Guardians of the Portals challenged her, “Strip off thy garments, lay aside thy jewels; for naught may ye bring with ye into this our land.”

So she laid down her garments and her jewels, and was bound , as are all who enter the Realms of Death the Mighty One.

Such was her beauty that Death himself knelt and kissed her feet, saying, “Blessed be thy feet that have brought the in these ways.  Abide with me, let me but place my cold hand on thy heart.”

She replied, “I love thee not.  Why dost thou cause all things that I love and take delight in to fade and die?”

“Lady,” replied Death, “’tis Age and Fate, against which I am helpless.  Age causes all things to wither; but when men die at the end of time I give them rest and peace, and strength so that they may return.  But thou, thou art lovely.  Return not; abide with me.”

But she answered, “I love thee not.”

Then Death said, “An thou received not my hand on thy heart, thou must receive Death’s scourge.”

“It is Fate; better so,” she said, and she knelt; and Death scourged her, and she cried, “I feel the pangs of love.”

And Death said, “Blessed be,” and gave her the Fivefold Kiss, saying, “Thus only may ye attain to joy and knowledge.”

And he taught her all the Mysteries.  And they loved and were one, and he taught her all the Magics.

For there are three great events in the life of man; Love, Death, and Resurrection in a new body; and Magic controls them all.  For to fulfil love you must return again at the same time and place as the loved one, and you must remember and love them again.  But to be reborn you must die, and be ready for a new body; and to die you must be born; and without love you may not be born.  And these be all the Magics.

Notes:
[1] At least that’s the name he used for it in Witchcraft Today.  In The Meaning of Witchcraft, he renamed it to “The Magical Legend of the Witches.”

Friends, Grief

Someone I care deeply about is grieving.

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Massachusetts, USA

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Someone I care deeply about has lost someone he cares deeply about today.  Please keep him in your thoughts as he grieves.  If you’re the praying type, please pray for him.  I don’t usually tell people how they should pray, but if you would indulge me, I’d like to offer these suggestions:

Pray that he has the courage to grieve and grieve fully.

Pray that he feels safe enough to grieve.

Pray that if he needs to cry, he finds a time and place where he can allow himself to cry.

Pray that if he needs to shout, he finds a time and place where he can allow himself to shout.

Pray that if he needs to ask the hard questions, he finds a time, a place, and the sense that he can safely ask the hard questions.

Pray not that his grieving will be cut short or sped up, but that he may go through the process fully and properly.

And pray that in it all, he remembers that we grieve because we have first loved.  And let the memory of that love inject some sweetness in the often painful grieving process.

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