Musings as the wheel of the year turns toward winter, and the veil thins between the living and the dead.
Tomorrow is Halloween, All Hallow’s Eve, Samhain, on the cusp of the season when traditionally the veil between the worlds thins and the presence of the dead can be felt. The earth’s turning toward dark winter sparks a last explosion of leaf color paving our local trails here in the Pacific Northwest. A time to wonder where the path leads.
In the U.S., the holiday has evolved as a fun-scary party with trick-or-treating, costumes, and decorations. Here’s a stained-glass Jack-o-lantern my mom Helen made years ago.
This year with the pandemic surging once more, celebrations are still cautious, but people are not giving up. On a drive through our rural county, Thor and I spotted this lively yard display. A good dragon is always welcome!
On a more serious note, many people observe this turning by asking advice of departed souls. And in Mexico, the spirits are not frightening — witness the celebrations for Dia de los Muertos (actually 3 days) when the spirits of loved ones visit to impart advice or prayers. Families picnic in the cemetery, build shrines with offerings and mementos, and tend the graves of loved ones. Cultures worldwide have similar celebrations.
While in Mexico, Thor and I collected some mementos of La Calavera and her cadaverous dance-partner.
Across the Pond, Thor and I rambled around England a few years ago and were awed by mysterious Stonehenge. Before our trip, I knew that the orientation of the stone circles was important in aligning with turning points of the seasons. I hadn’t realized that its location in Salisbury Plain was an important burial destination of the ancient world. The famous stone circle—incidentally, not built by the Druids, but in stages by earlier people—is surrounded by burial mounds and barrows.
Thor and I hiked over the fields past some of these mounds, making our own pilgrimage to the site that has been sacred since prehistoric times, and only then did I appreciate the setting and its significance. For thousands of years, people made the arduous journey from all over Europe to bring their dead to be buried within sight of the Stonehenge circle.
Scientists now think that the site evolved over about 10,000 years, and probably began as wooden posts, with the present-day stone circles built in a period between 5,000 and 4,000 years ago. The large stones in the outer ring, the Sarsens, probably came from Marlborough Downs, about 20 miles away. But the smaller Bluestones in the interior came from Wales, quite a distance to transport these huge boulders, and no one knows how it was done. These Bluestones were considered by some to have special healing properties. I felt a visceral shiver when a raven — considered a shapeshifting healer in some traditions, and a spooky portent by others — perched on one of the stones to gaze at us.
There is certainly something magical in the place and structure—even my skeptical scientist husband Thor admitted it!
We followed our Stonehenge visit by a ramble around nearby Avebury, another ancient stone circle that has a more homey feel, as it incorporates a small settlement, and people are allowed to wander at will and touch the huge, unshaped boulders that sprawl in a circle along with massive earthworks of ditch and mound.
Touching the massive boulders gave me a sense of peace and connection with the earth.
Tonight, remembering the feelings of awe and reverence inspired by our visit to Stonehenge and Avebury, I’m musing on the impulse of people worldwide to build stone monuments, many of them to honor the dead and keep their memory alive. I wander into my backyard to light a candle on the shrine I’ve built to honor my mother and beloved animal companions who have moved on, and realize that Thor and I have no less than five stone structures in our yard. Some of these incorporate large pieces of columnar andesite from nearby Mt. Baker, where my mother loved to take us girls wild-blueberry picking. Thor and I hike there often, now missing Mom as well as our beloved golden retriever Worf, buried beneath his own shrine of stone columns. Near our black cat Sombra’s grave, we built this fountain:
I hope we can all step outside to breathe and feel the earth’s turning. Tomorrow, as I light my candles and touch the stones that connect me to the cycles of the earth, I will listen for comforting whispers from the dead.
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You will find The Rambling Writer’s blog posts here every Saturday. Sara’s latest novel from Book View Café launches November 2 in print and ebook: PAUSE, a First Place winner of the Chanticleer Somerset Award. “A must-read novel about friendship, love, and killer hot flashes.” (Mindy Klasky, USA Bestselling author). Sign up for her quarterly email newsletter at www.sarastamey.com
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