2018-07-18, 05:30 PM
To Die is to Leave the Choir
Quote:Sometimes I’d create sigils to the dead, carefully sewing my name into the names of the dead, the letters swirling together, a testament to our time together. Mostly, it was a way of keeping them with me. Keeping them real. The sigils were like phones, on the hook, to the other world. Other times I’d take a magical bath — something I write about in my book, Light Magic for Dark Times — not simply as an act of self-care, but as a way to welcome the freedom and fluidity of grief. In my bath, which would be filled of essential oils and lined with obsidian, I’d be permitted a designated space to cry, to transform, to clean myself of pain that no longer served me and to adorn myself — by way of the water itself or oils or perfumes — that were programmed to give me a sense of resilience, peace, and acceptance...
...I sat on white linen in the grassy corner of a mausoleum alight in a dozen white candles. Flocks of wandering strangers approached and sat before me on the ground. Some held candles, glittering in the blackness, and to them I’d recite a poetic sequence that, stanza by stanza, explored the cycle of grief. In a small ceramic jar, the visitors were invited to leave goodbye messages for their dead, for whatever it was they wanted to part with, to let go of.