branches up, roots down

Today is Samhain, or Halloween, as it’s called by everyone else but us witches. The veil is thin, and it is time to deal with the dead. That means honoring them, working on healing any old relational wounds we still have with them, and asking them for help. As my beloved said to me this week, “Being a witch is a lot of work”. I’m particularly feeling that today. For the past few weeks I’ve been creating sugar skulls and for the past few days I’ve been creating tall votive candles with pictures of ancestors of spirit on them, all those who are our/my allies on the other side. There are a lot of them, and the binder keeps expanding in which I keep copies of all the photos and pictures I have collected. Google images is an incredible resource! As I’ve made both skulls and candles, I’ve felt the spirits come closer, and not an hour goes by when a new name or face doesn’t emerge from the memory bank. We witches say, “What is remembered lives”, and this week, I am remembering bac...

As a child and teenager, death was part of a collective dream. It wasn’t up close and personal, but played on the screen of the black and white television and came in over the radio. I remember my second grade teacher tearfully telling us the president was dead and then watching Oswald being shot live/dead on the screen in my family’s living room. Many more of these kinds of deaths would follow, and nightly the news brought us images of the carnage of a distant war. Church bombings, casualties of war and assassinations of heroes were the backdrop of a childhood devoid of family funerals. Up until my twenties, I don’t think there was one funeral I attended. My twenties seemed consumed by them. In my twenties, death came like an icepick. It hit hard and fast and it hurt. Bad. When I went off to college one of my new friends was raped and murdered. Before I was twenty three I would lose my father, my cousin who was also my best friend, and my grandmother. Death came quick b...