Honour the Dead

Today is remembrance today. We honour those who fought for our freedom, human rights, dignity and life. They are part of our heritage, our ancestry.

In November, much of my mystical work and other-worldly conversations revolve around ancestors. For many, Samhain is the big ancestor night or honouring of the dead (and sometimes new life), but for me, one night is not enough. Nor does it feel like it should be. There is a liminality leading into Samhain as the veils become become gossamer. They don't part and then close immediately in a single night. Like the moon that appears to be full over a few days, the thinness remains for a period of time before thickening again.

For me, I start to feel the shift in the last week of October. The sense of closeness to my ancestors and the river that separates the living from the dead remains well into November. I take this period of weeks to remember and be open to my Mighty Dead, the ancestors I have known and those who passed long before I was born, and personal heroes whose wisdom or experience I admire. Sometimes they visit; different ones each year. I light candles and remember fallen heroes. I ponder the mysteries of death and life, darkness and light, the Divine Twins. And I spend time with the gods of the dark, those who help us make difficult choices and often tell us (sometimes brutally) what we don't want to hear.

This isn't work, or visits, that I can 'do' in a single night. It's a period. A wave. Remembrance day falls firmly into this time. I feel the veterans gather as we call them forth. Some at the river, and some by our side. It's powerful. It's painful. It's hope. It's part of Samhain. I honour it. I honour them.