The chinking sound is snail shells in my pocket. Foraged on a walk, their residents long gone. Spirals remind of the cycles of which we are all part. This past week was a mourning. For people and places. Absences yearning to be filled.
I began the week with offerings for a lost friend, gone too young. Rosemary for remembrance and instant coffee – a wry nod to her favorite drink: Africafe instant coffee – fed to the canal, a temporary Styx. I walked the tow path, blackberries ripening, hazelnuts still green, their little fringed outfits making me think of Peter Pan. Food for anyone walking the canal.
This dark moon brought me to the greenhouse, the new ritual space gifted to me by my dad. I shrouded my altar and tried to channel compassion to balance the rage I feel at the world. Dark moons for me are times of introspection and divination, when liminality opens up. I performed a small grief ritual with a guided visualization online for three hundred strangers. Loss is a great unifier.
Ancestor veneration and remembering the dead are the prime aim for Samhain but I think we should be doing this more often than once a year. A regular ritual of mourning can be healing and restorative and helps us develop a healthier relationship with death. So each dark moon, I will continue to shroud my altar and spend time thinking of what is lost and what remains.
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