Samhain Celebration

And here it is again,  the Approach of Samhain, also celebrated here in Tucson as Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead.  As always, I make up the Beloved Dead Altar .  I make up invites to the Feast of Samhain and make a great big lemon cake, which gets frozen, along with enough vegetarian chili to feed an army. I try to figure out where to get a turkey to bake.   I ask people to bring different things and hope that we don't end up with 20 casseroles.  I play "The Parting Glass" (the theme song) to get myself in the mood.  I buy a lot of candles.

Mostly, though, I remember those on the list, the list that gets longer every year.  So many now that I am in my 70's, so many memories, so many ghosts.  People, animals,  places.  How strange, to be old enough that places as well can be gone........... and I think beyond that as well, thinking about the Shrine for the Lost:  The Sixth Extinction I made last year,  how painful that was to see those long, long lists of recently extinct and vanishing species.  

There is such a poignant, numinous, bitter/sweet quality to October, to the Going Into the Dark time of Samhain.  Everyone feels it I like to think, for all that the sanctity of this time has been so sadly commercialized and trivialized with Halloween and "trick or treat".  

I always include pomogranates along with the pumpkins on my altar, to remember that this is also Persephone's Feast Day,  when that liminal Goddess returns to the Underworld, no longer the Queen of Spring but rather now the Queen of the Dead, the place of endings that become again beginnings.  The important underground realm that comes with the sacred night of Hallowed Eve, the realm where life goes into the Womb of the Earth to rest, to regenerate, to heal and sleep, to await new life in the spring.

"A Shrine for the Sixth Extinction"

 

“By burning through coal and oil deposits, humans are putting carbon back into the air that has been sequestered for tens—in most cases hundreds—of millions of years. In the process, we are running geologic history not only in reverse but at warp speed.”  Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

In 2000 I participated in a Samhain "Litany for the Lost".  5 people, standing in a circle, recited names of extinct and vanishing Species.  It was important that we remember the names of some of our  fellow Beings that were lost to the future in ever increasing numbers.  I have thought about that for years, and received a grant from the Puffin Foundation  for which I am very grateful,  to create a  "Shrine for the Lost:  The Sixth Extinction".  

“Homo sapiens might not only be the agent of the sixth extinction, but also             risks being one of its victims.” Richard Leakey 

We are not the only life forms striving to evolve on our beautiful Planet Earth, and as species are lost, the Balance of ecosystems breaks down, like a tapestry unravelling.  It is the greatest of human arrogance to think that humanity is not a part of that tapestry, and that our lives do not also unravel with it.  

My Dia de los Muertos "Shrine for the Lost":  the Sixth Extinction   consists of 4 wall hung panels, exhibited with a book, a candle, and a short video.  Each panel has 2 vertical lists with interspersed visuals and is 7 feet long.  I wanted to grasp the magnitude of our loss by actually seeing these long lists......which I could have made much longer. 

The Installation includes my accompanying book A Shrine for the Lost:  The Sixth Extinction and a video  "Litany for the Lost", which artist Kathy Keler  collaborated with me on.  I am very pleased that this Project is completed, and it is my hope that it will serve to educate - and to remember - the profound tragedy of our continuing loss.

https://youtu.be/5GE5kxwhxFw

 

I have made application to create the Shrine at the 2023 Parliament of World Religions, and hope this exhibit will have a chance to travel in the future.  Below are details from the  Panels.  It's my hope as well that I can show it in collaboration with those who can talk about what we can do individually to help to slow this loss of habitat and environmental degredation - such as learning to compost, to eat less meat, and to use clean energy.

Lauren Raine MFA

November 2022

And the List continues................

 

Shrine for the Sixth Extinction Proposal

 

I just completed a proposal for an installation of a Shrine for a show about Dia de los Muertes, the "Day of the Dead".  Such Shrines traditionally remember and celebrate the Beloved Dead - among Mexican Catholics, whole families will gather in a graveyard to honor those that are gone.  But for us, Humanity that is, our whole world is a kind of "graveyard".  Each Walmart parking lot represents the destruction of a habitat, of countless interwoven lives of animals, insects, and vegetation destroyed and possibly lost forever in order to create that parking lot.  I don't know if I'll get to construct my Shrine, but I got excited envisioning it, and felt like sharing on this Blog some of the images that, hopefully, will come together to create it.  

Most importantly, I want the "roll call" or list of extinct or critically endangered species to be on each side of the Shrine:  and that list will continue down to the floor, the last pages empty, showing that the "roll call" of those to be remembered is by no means complete, or over.

Below is the Proposal.  Wish me luck!  As Mr. Walters said:  how sad to know that so many of our fellow Beings, our friends who create such diversity - are soon to be gone.  Let us at least remember.  Maybe, just maybe, that will help in re-membering our lost Family of life.

A SHRINE FOR THE SIXTH EXTINCTION 

"Psychologists have not begun to ponder the emotional toll of the loss of fellow life.  Nor have theologians reckoned the spiritual impoverishment that extinction brings.  To forget what we have had is to forget what we have lost.  And to forget what we have lost means never knowing what we had to begin with."

Mark Jerome Walters, The Nature Conservancy (1998)

As we go about our daily lives, a mass extinction of fellow lives and other species evolutions is happening - the sixth in the history of planet Earth.  We are the cause of what is now called the Sixth mass extinction, or the Anthropocene extinction. Scientists at the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity have concluded that every day as many as 150 species are lost.  They suggest that as many as 30 to 50 percent of all species may be going extinct by 2050.

Dia de Los Muertos is about remembering the Beloved Dead, those that are gone.  I propose creating a memorial shrine on this special day to remember the many Beings gone and leaving us, to our great loss and impoverishment. Proposal is for a Shrine no larger than 45" x 30" composed of paper panels listing the names of extinct and vanishing Species, with Centerpiece, Narrative, Visuals of species included in tableau.

Lauren Raine, July 30, 2021

 

The Feast of Samhain..........Celebrated again!

Thanks again to all who came to our Feast of Samhain this weekend - the food and drink was wonderful, the Altar we made was lovely, and the stories and poems everyone brought inspiring and full of sweet remembrance.

The Feast of Samhain 2014

I'm getting ready for my annual "Feast of Samhain", and having fun decorating the altar with Marigolds, a precious bottle of honey Mead, a remembrance of all the good things we are so generously given in life, and most of all, a remembrance of all those who came before us to bring us here, and give us the Gift of Life.  

 Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of  thousands.
 
-Linda Hogan*

As always, being in full glorious irritable  Cronehood now, as the stores abound with ghouls, vampires, and witch silhouettes on brooms, I grouse at the loss of this important holiday for most people, the sanctity of "Hallowed Eve" replaced with scary ghosts - although, costume balls and trick or treating is something truly worth doing, and I'm sure the visiting Beloved Dead enjoy it all as well!
 

Witches on brooms!  Hah!  The meaning of the broom was an ancient folk tradition of "sweeping away the Bad", sweeping out of the house the bad energies, illness, and spirits that weren't "welcome to the Feast".

And the ghosts...........well, that's what the Feast, like Dia de los Muertos, is all about:  inviting the Beloved Dead to the party, setting the place of honor at the head of the table for them, drinking their favorite wine and preparing their favorite dishes, and lovingly telling their stories, jokes, and singing their songs. 

 Among those who we've lost this year, my brother Glenn, and my friend Jeff Rosenbaum, a prime creator of the Starwood Festival and A.C.E.  Jeff, I am somehow certain you're visiting a whole lot of Feasts, and all of them raising a glass to you.   And Margo Adler, author of Drawing Down The Moon, and my friend Sandy Wentz........



And there are those who have left, and are leaving, this World who also, most urgently, must not be forgotten.  

"The Sixth Extinction"

My wise friend Joyce sent me a lovely blurb today from an astrologer in NYC which I take the liberty of reprinting here.  I especially like her use of the Rumi poem, and her mention of Persephone, the Goddess of both Spring and Death, eternally moving in a Circle.  

I always leave Pomegranates for Persephone on my Alter.  For some reason, words are not with me these days, and the well of poetry left me years ago.......but every year this time I remember a poem I wrote for Persephone that I still love, and enjoy sharing that here once again as well.
        

"Persephone"

PERSEPHONE'S  FEAST  DAY

When all the names are gone
when there is nothing left
for memory to feed upon
November hides
an unborn  promise.

All the wastes of love and time
Become, at last, alchemy.
To ferment their healing, here
in these nigrado depths,
becoming  albedo,
the medicine.

    I offer now bread, red fruit, red wine.
    To life.

To the harvest that was,
the  kisses of summer past
fragrant  as  petals on the wind,
 to the poet and the bard, the mother  and husband,
laughter of children, the confidence
of  bountiful fortune.

And to those outcast as well -
the inarticulate, the lost,  the hungry  and fallen.
To every transparent lover
wandering these bardos in their solitude.

To age and youth, light and dark,
Tenderly entwined in their embrace:

Come to the table, all.

Here is a rich conversation
harvested from the last living garden.
A dappled pear, an apple, a ripe pomegranate
A butterfly in its chrysalis, sleeping.

The slow rebirth of color
    deep in the depths of this dream.

The sundial will circle once more,
The wheat has new life in it yet.

    The blessing will be given.

BLESSED SAMHAIN TO ALL!

Fall Astrology Café   
by Virginia Bell

 Halloween October 31  "The Season of the Crone"

Called Samhain (summer's end) Halloween is the Celtic New Year and one of the
four cross-quarter holidays (the others are Imbolc, Beltane and Lammas). It is
said to be a time when the veil of the astral world is lifted, the psyche is
unfettered, and anything is possible. The pagan idea used to be that the crucial
joints between the seasons opened cracks in the fabric of space-time, allowing
contact between the ghost world and the mortal world.

This is the time of the Crone, the witch, and the weaver; the time of year to
honor our ancestors and to connect with them for guidance on the year ahead.
Decorate your altar with photographs of friends, family who have passed over as
well as your heroes and heroines. The last day of October is the beginning of
the year's dark season. Traditionally, it is the time Persephone returns to the
underworld to take her place with Pluto her husband and her consort. Like
Persephone we now begin to turn inward, to go deep and connect with what is
real. At this time we can access the unknown and the unseen. What is it you
desire to bring to consciousness? Remember, what is freed at Halloween is
conquered and integrated. Open to the deep rivers of your wisdom and intuition.
Surrender to the space between the worlds.

It is your turn now.
You waited, you were patient.
The time has come,
for us to polish you.
We will transform your inner peal
into a house of fire.
You're a gold mine.
Did you know that,
hidden in the dirt of the earth?
It is your turn now,
To be placed in fire.
Let us cremate your impurities. 

Rumi

*Thanks to Virginia Bell Astrology

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The Feast of Samhain, 2013

Feast of Samhain, 2012

I'll be celebrating the "The Feast of  Samhain" again (November 1st), with a place set at the table for the Guest of Honor, the Ancestors and the Beloved Dead.  As last year, it will be a candlelit night of sharing stories of those who have passed away but remain in our hearts, our memory, and our bloodlines. What is remembered lives. 

Decor will include, of course, pumpkins, to commemorate also the Last Celtic Harvest Festival (there are 3), All Hallows Night, before going into the darkness of Winter.  And November 1st is also the Witches New Year, as well as Dia de Los Muertos, something widely celebrated here in the Southwest, and in Tucson, with a famous parade (and just in case you don't believe the Spirits come to join the Celebration, check out Ginny's "Orb" photo below from last years parade.

Photo by Ginny Moss

I don't feel that I can say anything more eloquent about this High Holy Day than I have in previous years, so I copy below musing from a previous year..........and also a post I did on Dia de Los Muertos can be found HERE.  I  Wish all a very wonderful Samhain!

Mariachi Wedding from All Soul's Procession, Tucson

© dominic arizona bonuccelli | AZFOTO

 I remember  the Spiral Dance, which I participated in a number of times in San Francisco (I created the Masks of the Goddess for the 20th Annual Spiral Dance).  I also brought this beautiful ritual to Tucson in 2000 with the help of Priestess  Macha NightMare.   When one has danced the Spiral Dance and come face to face with each participant in the course of the dance, you leave changed.  

November 1st has been called the "Witches New Year", and what comes to mind. of course, is the universal image of the  "Witch and her broom". The Broom is associated with many folk traditions of "sweeping away the old bad energies" - purification rituals for the home and Hearth (Heart). Traditionally this was the time to celebrate the last of three Celtic Harvest Festivals before going into the dark of Winter.   It is the closing of the old year,  a time to honor the ancestors, the harvest, and the gifts of the year past.  When I lay out the Feast, I always imagine many generations laying out the last fresh apples, the treasured honey mead reserved only for special occasions, and toasts raised  to the invisible ones,  their plates heaped high as well. Inherent in this celebration was a profound respect for the Spiral wheel of the year,  cycling the natural cycles of death and re-birth.

Here is my gratitude to the year that is soon to pass away, and to all of those who have passed away from my life as well, people who have gifted me and created with me and loved me, and I them.  Blessed Be!

Sometimes we don't realize, because things manifest through time, the ways that our wishes have often been granted.  Thinking of the Spiral Dance, and Reclaiming, I remember another one of those stories of Grace and Magic, and want to tell it, although, as all true stories are, it's part of a much larger story that is woven into the fabric of my life, and lots of other lives.  I think when we tell  these stories we get a glimpse of how seamless "reality" really is.  And Magic is always afoot, although I don't believe it has anything to do with wands.  I think it's much more about Weaving and being Woven.

"Gaia" (1986)

When I was in graduate school, I began reading "The Spiral Dance" by Starhawk.  It was such a revelation, the way she spoke about the Goddess, and a theology of Immanence.  It became the central inspiration for one of my shows while in Grad school.  When I graduated I went to live in New York, and married, and then in 1997 got divorced.  My ex and I were very involved with the Pagan community on the East Coast, and when we divorced I felt like I lost my community.   In those days I was doing Renaissance Faires, so I packed up my van and became a nomad.

I had a booth in the fall of that year at the Maryland Renaissance Faire, and I happened to hear of a holistic health practitioner who also did shamanic work and "soul retrievals" in the area.  I figured it couldn't hurt, so I made an appointment.  We lay down on the floor, he "journeyed" for me, and "blew my soul pieces" back into my chest.  I didn't know what to think, but as he described his impressions, among them he told me that there were two things that would show me that my old life, were over.  One was a magenta flower, a Cosmos.  The other was a little terra cotta angel.

In November I packed up and went to Arizona to spend the winter in my trailer.  By March I was  wondering where to go next.  I had recently discovered the Internet, so I looked up just about everything I was interested in - Goddess, ritual, mask theatre, transpersonal psychology, etc.  Every single time it came up Berkeley, Marin Country, or San Francisco!   The clincher was when I was looking for the email for something called the Center for Symbolic Studies near New Paltz, New York.  I knew Stephen and Robin Larsen, and wanted to get a recommendation from them. Up came the Center for Symbolic Studies in Berkeley, California!  And the Center was the creation of a Jungian psychologist named Robert H. Hopcke  who had just written a book called There Are No Accidents: Synchronicity and the Stories of Our Lives!

Well, that was enough for me, so I packed up the van when the show ended,  and headed west to California, back to the Berkeley I remembered so well but hadn't seen in over 20 years.  I decided I would sleep in my van if I had to, until I could find a place to stay (and fortunately for me, I had no idea of how hard it can be to find a place to stay in Berkeley now.....)

Arriving finally, I looked around for a familiar landmark, and found the Cafe Mediterranean.  I didn't know anyone anymore in Berkeley, but for old times sake I parked the van nearby and went in for my first Cappachino since the 70's.  As I stood in line, someone tapped me on the shoulder and said "Are you Lauren Raine?"  It was my old friend Joji!  I couldn't believe it.  He bought me a cup of coffee, asked me where I was staying, I told him I had just arrived and planned on moving back to Berkeley, and he invited to stay at his house where he had an extra room.  I didn't have to sleep in my car for even one night!

Judy Foster

And when I went to his house that evening, in his living room was a big, framed close-up photograph of a magenta Cosmos.

When, two months later, I found a room to rent with Judy Foster, the first thing I encountered when I walked into her house was an altar with a terra cotta angel.  And as it turned out, Judy was one of the founders of Reclaiming and the Spiral Dance, and a close friend of Starhawk.   The universe put me exactly where I needed to go, a Spiral Dance.

Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead)

It's that time again!  Día de los Muertos  approaches with celebrations beginning on November 1, (Día de Muertos Chiquitos--The Day of the Little Dead) ( also All Saints Day) and continuing on November 2, (All Souls Day). It is a joyous occasion when the memory of ancestors and the continuity of life is celebrated, and a beloved holiday in Mexico and South America.  It's celebrated in Tucson with a famous parade and festivities that go on late into the night.

Like the Celtic traditions of Samhain, which were also associated with the end of the year and the last harvest festival, it was believed that at this time of the year the souls of the departed can return to visit the living (the "veils are thin"). It is not a time of mourning since, as the Latin saying goes, "the path back to the living world must not be made slippery by tears".


Celebrations for the dead originated in indigenous Mexico before the Spanish conquest. Following the Spanish conquest of Mexico during the 16th century there was a blending of indigenous customs with the new Catholic religion. All Saints' Day and All Hallows Eve (Halloween) roughly coincided with the preexisting Día de Los Muertos resulting in the present day event. Although the skeleton is a strong symbol for both contemporary Halloween and los Días de Los Muertos, the meaning is very different. For Días de Los Muertos the skeleton is not a scary or macabre symbol at all, but rather represents the dead playfully mimicking the living.

Very often, a large community altar may include many small personal shrines, such as the one below that includes Frieda Kahlo.

Or here are some personal shrines made by artists:

Preparation begins weeks in advance when statues, candies, breads and other items to please the departed are sold in markets. A sweet bread, pan de muerto, with decorations representing bones is very popular, as are sugar skulls made from casts. All sorts of art objects and toys are created. This gives the economy a boost in much the same way as our Christmas season does. Alters ofrecetas (offerings) are set up in the home with offerings of sweets and fruits, corn and vegetables, as well as the favorite foods and beverages of the deceased. It's not unusual to see a good cigar and whiskey bottle beside a photograph of a loved one. These offerings may later be given away or consumed by the living after their "essence", and the loving remembrance, has been enjoyed by the dead. Marigolds are the traditional decorative flower.

The particulars of the celebration vary widely. On November 1, Día de Muertos Chiquitos, the departed children are remembered. The evening is sometimes called la Noche de Duelo, The Night of Mourning, marked by a candlelight procession to the cemetery. On November 2, Día de los Muertos, the spirits of the dead return. Entire families visit the graves of their ancestors, bringing favorite foods and alcoholic beverages as offerings to the deceased as well as a picnic lunch for themselves. Traditionally there is a feast in the early morning hours of November 2nd although many now celebrate with an evening meal.

There are sugar skulls and toys for the children, emphasizing early on that death is a part of the life cycle, and the importance of remembering those who have passed on to another kind of life.