The Honored Dead

The Dead

More of a personal post today. Today is All Souls Day in the Christian calendar, the final part of Hallowtide, the Dark Triduum that began last night with Halloween. In other traditions we can call it Samhain or Calan Tachwedd. The intention is the same. This is the Time of the Dead.

Notice that the Dead come in three forms during the tree days. The spirits of Halloween are frightful beings. Here we see the images of skeletons crawling from their graves, vampires prowling in the night, and so on. The spirits of All Saints Day, by contrast, are exalted beings. We may call these the Mighty Dead; like all cultures with any wisdom (and unlike certain Protestant sects in the United States) we revere them, and ask for their guidance. The third day is the day to honor our own Dead-- our friends and family members who have died, and our own ancestors.

Sixteen Ghosts

Sixteen is not commonly found on the list of sacred numbers, and its use is uncommon. It is, however, the number of the figures of Geomancy, and so we can believe that it has a certain power and a certain symbolism. Significantly, it is the number of each of our twice-great grandparents.

The question sometimes comes up, how one may both venerate one's ancestors and believe in reincarnation. And the answer is veyr simple. Except for the Druze tribe of Lebanon, who apparently reincarnate almost immediately after dying, most people spend a fair bit of time in the Spirit World between incarnations. How much time? Well, it seems to vary. Some sources suggest that a given person lives 3 human lives in a thousand years. Plato in the Phaedrus suggests that we only live once during that time. Recent research into reincarnation shows that children

My own view is that we probably, under ordinary circumstances, are born around 3 or 4 times in a given millennium. Notice that this means that we spend more time in the Spirit World than out of it. Three long human lifespans might total 250 years, or a quarter of a millennium. Given that, it's worth considering-- if you lived in, say, New England, but had a vacation home in Florida where you spent 3 months out of the year, would you be more of a New Englander, or more of a Floridian? In the same way, I think it's only the extraordinary strangeness of the time we live in that leads us to see ourselves as primarily bodily or incarnate beings.

In any case, given this, under ordinary circumstances one's great-great grandparents might reasonably be expected to still be hanging around in the Spirit World, and also to have had more than enough time to process the events of their last incarnation. It follows that, of all our ancestral dead, they will be in the best position to take an active role in guiding and shaping our own lives.

To that end, I've spent a fair bit of time researching my own Sixteen Ghosts. Who were they? What were their lives like? How did their actions in life shape who I have become, and how do they guide me from the World Beyond? Five of them were immigrants-- two from Italy, one from Scotland, one from Prussia, a fifth was Irish. Some of the rest were children of immigrants from Ireland or Germany. Others, meanwhile, were from families who had lived in Pennsylvania for many generations, since the 1700s or earlier.

Like many American mongrels, I'm nuts for ethnic history, and I can give you my pedigree to within a percentage or two; I'm tempted to go on at length about the ethnic character of my forebears. Since I can already hear my readers yawning, I won't do that. More interesting than blood-quanta, is the question of how these people lived, the forces that shaped their lives, the virtues and the character they brought to those lives. Even in 1900, it took an extraordinary amount of courage to cross the Atlantic Ocean and start a new life in a foreign country. How can I live up to that legacy? How can I manifest the same courage, and how can I honor their lives with my life? 

And for the readers here, who were your Sixteen Ghosts? How did they shape your life, and how can you honor them? 

The Month of the Holy Souls

In the Roman Church, the entire month of November takes its character from the holidays which open it, and is dedicated to the Holy Souls in Purgatory. My view of the Afterlife is more complicated than that of Rome, of course. I view "Purgatory" as a catch-all term for all those spirits who have no ascended beyond human incarnation. The Holy Souls, then, include those spirits whose deeds in life have led them to either the darker parts of the Spirit World or to wander the Earth as a ghost, but also those who abide in the pleasant parts of the Afterlife. (Actually, I also include our life incarnate in the body as a part of Purgatory, but let's leave that aside for now. The point is that this is a fine time of year to honor the Dead, and I propose to do that. Periodically either over this month, or during the entirety of this cross-quarter period, I'll post something in honor of my own ancestors (the Holy Souls) or other dead people whom I admire, but who may not formally fit the definition of a "saint" according to Rome. Happy Hallowtide!