The "Virtual" Spiral Dance Ritual 2020

  https://www.reclaimingspiraldance.org/reclaiming-spiral-dance-2020

Video created by Evelie Delfino Sales Posch

The Spiral Dance

Web Weaving at Tucson Spiral Dance (2000)

Weaver, Weaver, weave our thread
whole & strong into your web
Healer, Healer, heal our pain
in love may we return again

We are dark and we are light
we are born of earth and light
of joy and pain our lives are spun
male and female, old and young

No one knows why we are born
A web is made, a web is torn
But love is the home that we come from
and at the core we all are one

Of life's  Spring may we drink deep
and awake to dream and die to sleep
and dreaming weave another form
a shining thread of life reborn

Weaver, Weaver, weave our thread
whole and strong into your Web
Healer, Healer, heal our pain
in love may we return again

~~~Starhawk, (from "The Spiral Dance")

Blessings at Samhain to all as we celebrate the year passed, and remember our Beloved Dead.

My first "Spider Woman" performance (1999) Rites of Passage Gallery

The Wheel of the Year has turned again to a new Spiral Dance.  Samhain, Dia de Los Muertos, the Witches New Year, the last Harvest Festival, and Halloween (once known as "Hallowed Eve") is almost here, and I remember the Spiral Dance , which was so very transformative for me.  I brought this great Earth Religions High Mass to Tucson  when I returned here in 2000.   I've posted about this beautiful ritual before ...and I wanted to do so again.   Believe me, when you have danced the Spiral Dance and in the process of the dance come face to face with 2,000 people - you have experienced something profound.

I looked up "The Spiral Dance" on UTube, and was surprised by two things. First, up came a picture of my former roomate, and inspirational mentor, Judy Foster.  Judy was much loved in the Bay Area, as one of the founders of  Reclaiming, and also one of the founders of Food Not Bombs in Northern California.  She passed away in 2000, and when I brought the Spiral Dance to Tucson that year, with the help of Macha Nightmare (also one of the founders of Reclaiming)  who came to facilitate the ritual, we had a place of honor for Judy on our North Altar, the altar of the Beloved Dead.

Judy Foster  (1997)

Hecate Mask made from Judy Foster's face (2001)

There is no footage of the years I participated in the Ritual, unfortunately.  I assisted in the "Invocation to the Goddess" with my  first collection of the MASKS OF THE GODDESS .  I also put together a "Fire Dance Troupe" for the 20th Annual Spiral Dance in 1999 as we called the South, the Element of Fire.  I shall never forget that!  They didn't allow photographs of the Ritual until 2008, but in the video I did find I see friends and valued colleagues - Macha Nightmare, Evelie Posche, Starhawk, Kala, Drissana Devananda and  others. I wish I could attend this year, and I thank in spirit the many people I knew there.  May we meet again soon.

The Spiral Dance Ritual (2009 video) 

The Spiral Dance Ritual (2008 video)

Tucson SD

Arjuna

Samhain/Dia de Los Muertos

https://youtu.be/5k8EU4TeBXM?si=FGefrjft-SlZOxLw

It's that time of the Year Circle again............when the spiral spins into the darkness of winter, and the veils between the worlds are thin, and we remember the Beloved Dead. I want to share some images and the beautiful music of the Spiral Dance, which was just danced in San Francisco by Reclaiming; this beautiful ritual I myself participated in a number of times, and created many sacred masks for. "The Circle Has No End". If the video link above doesn't work, follow:   http://reclaimingspiraldance.org/

From the Dia de los Muertos Shrine I, my students, and the Faculty
 at Wesley created last year as Wesley Theological Seminary in D.C.

GHOSTS

Where do the dead go?

The dead that are not corpses,

cosmetically renewed and boxed,

their faces familiar and serene.

Or pale ashes

in elegant canisters.

 

I ask for the other dead,

those ghosts that wander

unshriven among our sleep,

haunting the borderlands of our lives.

The dead dreams,

The failed loves.

The quests,

undertaken with full courage

and paid for in blood

that never found a dragon,

a Grail, a noble ordeal

and the Hero's sacred journey home.

Instead, the wrong fork

was somehow taken, or the road

wandered aimlessly,

finally narrowing to a tangled gully

and the Hero was lost,

in the gray and prosaic rain,

hungry, weary, to finally stop

glad of bread, a fire,

a little companionship.

Where is their graveyard?

Were they mourned?

Did we hold a wake,

bear flowers,

eulogize their bright efforts

their brave hopes

and commemorate their loss with honor?

A poem? A stone to mark their passing?

Did we give them back to the Earth

to nourish saplings yet to flower,

the unborn ones?

Or were they left to wander

in some unseen bardo,

unreleased, ungrieved.

Did we turn our backs

on them unknowing,  

their voices calling, 

whispering impotently behind us 

shadowing our steps?

                     (1997)