Sunday, November 5, 2023
Samhain Celebration
Wednesday, November 2, 2022
"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
And the List continues................
Friday, July 30, 2021
Shrine for the Sixth Extinction Proposal
"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)
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
Monday, November 5, 2018
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.
Friday, October 31, 2014
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.
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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Wednesday, October 30, 2013
The Feast of Samhain, 2013
Feast of Samhain, 2012 |
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 |
Mariachi Wedding from All Soul's Procession, Tucson© dominic arizona bonuccelli | AZFOTO |
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) |
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.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead)
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 DÃa de Los Muertos resulting in the present day event. Although the skeleton is a strong symbol for both contemporary Halloween and los DÃas de Los Muertos, the meaning is very different. For DÃas de Los Muertos the skeleton is not a scary or macabre symbol at all, but rather represents the dead playfully mimicking the living.
The particulars of the celebration vary widely. On November 1, DÃa 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, DÃa 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.