Tonight, the summer ends and the dark half of the year begins. It is a time to reap the final harvest, a time to cull the herd. A time to stock our larders and cellars against the snowy moons ahead.
Long ago we would all light our hearths from the bonfire that blazed on the village green to strengthen our ties to one another. From that point forward, we were all one in warmth and light for the remainder of the year. We would all see each other through the lean months of winter, sharing what we had to offer in ritual feasts meant to hold back the night. Today we hide these rituals behind closed doors and tightly shuttered windows. Tonight, hidden from the prying eyes of judgment, we purify ourselves in fire and prepare to receive our dead.
We feast our dead to honor them, to celebrate them, to comfort them. We want them to know that we remember them and that we still care. We want them to be happy when they visit, not restless or annoyed, not bound to a life they have transitioned beyond. Though we rarely admit it, we still talk to them in quiet or desperate moments. We look to them for guidance as we hope others might look to us even after we fade from the light of this world into the light of another. Our dead are our anchors to the past, stabilizing us in this life.
Centuries ago, invaders from the far side of the dyke christened our spirits into saints with angled names and converted our dead into demons beneath their saxsam knives. They coveted our holy days, coveted our three-faced gods, cleaving them from us, cleaving them to their own. Substituting their beliefs for ours by dominion and sleight of hand as though such a trade was an equitable exchange in the agora of ideas.
Today, even the hallowed substitute they provided has become a parody, a harlequin comedy, a farce played out by a wandering troop of motley fools and children. The communal bonfire has dwindled to a votive tended by crones in black just as maternal aunts tend the markers of our family. In the fading light, the dead become no more feared than children playing dress-up, no more respected than their parents playing make-believe. But do we always know the face behind the mask we bribe with sweets? Perhaps a few of our dead, reduced to beggary and thieving, return tonight to reclaim their portion for the year.
We abandoned the old ways face down in the bog, garroted like criminals before a feast day. The skulls of tradition are piled upon the roots of ancient oaks which have grown heavy and thick from blood yet remain hungry. But the lords of the forest are also patient. Silently lifting their limbs to their arboreal gods, they pray we might return before they too are hewn to feed the furnaces that warm our homes and distance our lives from theirs. Or feed the pyres that reduce our dead to the ashes we sow like seeds on the wind rather than tend among the spirits of their kindred.
Today, too many of us fear belief more than the restless spirits of our ancestors. Unanchored, we allow the living to pull us headlong in whatever direction they desire, thinking that is our future, while our path wanders aimlessly because our dead are dead to us.
© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III
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