Pondering the Day of my Death
Monday - Stories from the studio & Shop update!
The Mari Lwyd - Digital art by Jude Lally
We’re approaching Summer Solstice. I’m usually just back from the gather the Keeners retreat - and I use this date to reweave. I am wildly aware that this is such a luxury, a privilege when so many in the world don’t get this opportunity.
While some might use the marker of a new year - Samhain or Winter Solstice to review things - I use this time of the year as a point to see where I am - was there a path, did I stick to it or perhaps I’m gloriously lost and happy wandering through new lands.
It’s a bit like birthdays. While we celebrate the day of our birth each year, each year we also cycle through the day which we will die.
I’ve often taken time to ponder the day of my death - some reflections from a birthday a few years ago:
Today is my celebration of being born into this world and in this life there is only one thing we can be truly certain of, and that is death.
I watch the first fingers of light streak across the sky and begin an old ritual of mine at my birthday to gather my younger selves. The 5 year old sits beside the fierce 13 year old, and the 19 year old with her hunger for depth and meaning. The rest of them arrive until we form a circle of ourselves. It’s an odd ritual, a council of sorts. We look across at each other, for the each other is the same. Sometimes, just sometimes the old crone shuffles in. The younger ones are fascinated by the spider who appears to live in her hair and the arrangement of twigs that makes her hair look somewhat like a nest.
The teenagers recognise that wild look in her eyes, somewhat like a hares. When she shuffles around the circle, if you squint at her at just the right angle you can see her antlers.
Things changed as I turned 50, giving me a different perspective – like reaching the top of a mountain broadens your perspective out towards the horizon.
As the sun rises in the east it sets in the west, west being the direction of the soul after death on its final journey home.
As we cycle through the solar year we mark and celebrate birthdays and all manner of anniversaries, yet unknowingly we also pass our death day. I often ponder to what date this day might fall on - picturing a ball spinning around a roulette wheel.
We live in such a death phobic culture there doesn’t seem room to celebrate death, to mark that final journey home and take time to consider our own death which in turn helps us focus on our life. Yet a death day is another day to celebrate our ‘self’, to celebrate all those in our individual lineages who have made that great journey and now exist as ancestors – to look at our lives with fresh eyes and perhaps plan a detour here and a reflection of our place in the thick of things.
How do I select my death date? Perhaps I count the number of crows in the tree, or the tines of the stags antler. Whatever the date it is another invitation to sit with my past and future selves.
Perhaps it’s in this years reweaving that I’ll pick a death date. I’ll sort through what threads and perceptions need to be cut out, the things that aren’t doing anyone any good? This is often not an easy task as we grow so attached to things we might just be carrying along for the ride out of some sense of comfort, or identity.
This task starts by physically clearing the studio.
In my mind this is the studio - it’s set apart from the house, there’s a fireplace, a big comfy armchair. In reality it’s a small spare room. It’s fine but it doesn’t take much for the entire place to look like an explosion of wool, paintbrushes and fabric.
There’s some perceptions that definately need mending. SOme things that need to get burned. Some that need a good scrubbing down and see what they look like after a good clean.
Then perhaps - I’ll pick that death date!
Shop Update!
I’m the middle of all this pondering and sorting - some new things are in the shop. Click on the photos for full details
Mari Lwyd - Doll & prayer beads - Click on photo to view in shop
New Goddess Brighid & Sheela na Gig prayer beads - click on image to view in the shop
New twig poppet dolls - click on photo to view in the shop
The Keening Doll
WOWWW! This is so great. I needed this message today! Thank you.
Thank you for talking about privilege. I am disabled and could not ever get to Scotland because of that money and living in the terrifying US. Yet, I keen for the world. It is something I discovered when I was very little, yet had no word for it. Now I keen alone, great sobbing sessions about gun violence, racial inequity, money inequity,Gaza, other wars, being called crazy..........yet, in your words I find solace and know that I have DNA that shows up in Scotland. Maybe I have an ancestor that was a keener because that was normal, not called crazy. There is so much to say and so much of it is too personal. I love Mari Llwyd and the Antlered Goddess you teach about. Thank Goddess you are here to teach this and reach someone like me who is so isolated. Thank you, thank you.