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Occult & Psychical Sciences on DK: Night Fall (poetry, personal & a wink at some afterlives)

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Halloween--properly All Hallows Eve--is,

like Christmas Eve, really just prologue. The daylight weakens, here in the northern hemisphere, for seven more long weeks. More hours of night, more time for haunting!

The constellation of Orion the Hunter, at right, and his two Hunting Dogs and their brightest stars: Procyon in Canis Minor at left and Sirius in Canis Major at bottom  The winter Milky Way runs from top to bottom through Monoceros and Canis Major  The red arc is BarnardÕs Loop, an interstellar bubble blown by hot stellar winds from young stars in the Orion complex The red patch at upper centre is the Rosette Nebula in Monoceros The Orion Nebula is overexposed right of centre   This is a stack of 3 x 2-minute exposures with the 35mm lens at f/25 and filter-modified Canon 5D MkII at ISO 1600, on the Star Adventurer Mini tracker   A 4th exposure through the Kenko Softon A filter adds the star glows for accentuating colour and the visibility of the brightest stars  Shot from Quailway Cottage in southeast Arizona, December 15, 2017. (Photo by: VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Orion, the Hunter, strides across the autumn sky.

So, a miscellany for the year's decline. But first:

"Occult and Psychical Sciences on DK" is a spooky, fun, and speculative group established by Angmar and named for the vintage Complete Illustrated Book of Occult and Psychical Sciences by Walter B. Gibson (1966). The group welcomes tales and histories of the spooky and scary, related art, personal anecdotes, and general paranormal, philosophical, metaphysical, arcane, esoteric, and existential topics, as well as free-floating conversation about the unexplained. (No claims to actual scientific method--for the most part--are made or implied.) Interested in joining? Contact Angmar.

This poem composed itself some months ago, but wanted saving for the season. 

                                     .

             Night Fall

                                     .

No autumn's easy. While heat draws and drains

Out of the twilight, we make children paint

In fiery reds and luscious oranges

The fragile pageantry of a senescence

3381138-usa-wisconsin-wood-autumn-trees-leaf-fall-brightly-expensive.jpg
(DK library, uploaded by DownHeah Mississippi)

Assuring them this chill is nothing serious.

Redemption's on the road already, nearly here.

"Next month," we promise heartily.  "Next year."

We trick our doors with mockeries of fear

house with halloween decorations including giant skeleton.
(DK library, uploaded by jck)

And fortify ourselves with feastings.  Over all

Arches the Hunter.  Small lives slip underground

With their supplies.  The deer disguise

Their slender shins as saplings, antlers as branches.

California Mule Deer buck
(DK library, uploaded by funningforest)

     And in the dark, amid the wind-whippped trees,

     The last leaf frees itself, and tries the breeze.

                                              .

sun shining through a leaf that has started changing color
(DK library, uploaded by lostintheozarks)

(Poem copyright Clio2, 2022)

A_specimen_of_cast_ornaments__by_Wm_Caslon__letter-founder_to_the_King._Fleuron_N021712-49.png

At the time this poem coalesced, last

spring, my mother, though I did not consciously know this at the time, was already declining towards her death.

DK member novapsyche conducted a monthlong poetry writing workshop. For some reason in this workshop, over and over, my responses to the exercises kept focusing back on Mom, in one way or another. 

This August, she took a little fall in her apartment. It did not seem very serious at first, but the general decline became sharp and steep. She died in the early hours of Sept. 18, just three days short of her 95th birthday.

RELATED: So this totally freakish thing just happened (not long before my mother's death).

The aftermath has been...difficult. Complex.

ALL the emotions.

Sorting through personal and family things alone in her apartment. Silences, secrets, sorrows sift from the sheets of photo albums. I gpt home for a rest, was in bed immobile, shivering hot and cold, nerves juddering for 24 hours. (Like a 24-hour bug , it got better.)

What is death? Her unsouled apartment queried. 

What is...just everything? 

And then...what, nothing? (Which, I believe, is what she believed. Maybe.)

An eagle owl is seen at the Schwarze Berge wildlife park in Hamburg, northern Germany, on February 28, 2013. All animals of the park were counted, measured and weighed during an annual inventory.       AFP PHOTO / SVEN HOPPE    GERMANY OUT        (Photo credit should read SVEN HOPPE/AFP/Getty Images)

We know how autumn and winter,

according to ancient Greek myth, followed when Hades, ruler of the dead, carried off Persephone to a forced marriage in his underground kingdom. Hades possessed a conventional palace, similar to the above-ground palaces of human kings--except that all the inhabitants of the kingdom were deceased...and the impressive structure was lit only by flames. To reach it, the dead must go a long journey, by land and water, menaced by monsters and needing money to pay the ferryman.

HandPinUnderworld.jpg
Hades and Persephone at home. The lady holds a torch. TBH, she looks a little pissed off, to me, like she might even be about to swack him one. 

In northern Europe, by contrast, there is

some evidence to suggest that the dead may have been thought to inhabit a parallel world that was a mirror image of ours, positioned upside down and not all that far from the surface of the earth (or water). (Free to view, courtesy of Cambridge University Press, 2021 article, "The inverted dead in Bronze Age barrows.")

20221101_181058.jpg
Ancient people in what is now Britain, Holland, France and Germany over thousands of years ritually buried or deposited in fresh water, at specific locations, quantities of human and animal bones, weapons, ornaments and ritual objects, perhaps as offerings to the underworld. Older than Stonehenge, this Mesolithic ritual headpiece made from a deer skull and horns is one of 21 excavated at Star Carr in Yorkshire. (Photo: British Museum) More about Star Carr: en.wikipedia.org/...

Sidebar: Compare the shaman of Trois Freres (paleolithic France)? The Gundestrup Cauldron (200 B.C.E.-300 C.E., est.)? Siberian deer headdresses, Siberian deer headdresses, 18th to 20th centuries?

RELATED: In case you missed it, check out Dr Lori's rundown on Halloween, including the ancient pagan traditions of Samhain.

A_specimen_of_cast_ornaments__by_Wm_Caslon__letter-founder_to_the_King._Fleuron_N021712-49.png

Later, in Christianized Europe, of course,

you got your choice...

welcometoheavenyrwoozlehasbeenwaiting.jfif

Or...

_HellmouthRescue.jpg
Oops, took the wrong exit--get me out of here!

All Saints' Dayalso known as All Hallows' Day, the Feast of All Saints...and Hallowmass, is a Christian solemnity celebrated in honour of all the saints of the church, whether they are known or unknown.

 (There are unknown saints ! Who knew? But of course there are. Probably most of them. And how many circulate, inconspicuously, among us, right now?)

Lafayette_Cemetery_2_New_Orleans_Coping_Tombs.jpg
In New Orleans, All Saint's Day is traditionally for cleaning up and refurbishing tomb sites. Candles are lit and graves may be decorated with mementos. (Lafayette Cemetery on a wet day.)

[All Saints' Day] is thus the day before All Souls' Day, which commemorates the faithful departed. 

All Souls' Day is celebrated on Nov. 2 with a multitudinous array of rites and customs around the world, by no means all of them lacking beauty, and humor. 

TOPSHOT - Skulls and candles on an altar display in downtown Los Angeles, California on November 1, 2018 at Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) celebration. (Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP) (Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)
Mexico: Dia de Los Muertos

RELATED: Speaking of humor, novapsyche's NaPoWriMo,* Day 15: The bizarro world next door challenged participants to pick a tabloid headline and turn it into a poem. I happened compose this piece, which--though we students were directed to make the exercise serious--insisted on flouting any po-faced attitude toward...yes, maternal death. (Channeling Eudora Welty? But was that choice of subject a bit weird, or what?)

eacf455a-a530-44c0-acba-06991d9acfcb.jpeg

(BTW I hasten to say what I wrote isn't directly about our family, and nothing that terrible has happened with Mom's ashes, which she earlier requested we scatter in some beautiful place.)

*National Poetry Writing Month

A_specimen_of_cast_ornaments__by_Wm_Caslon__letter-founder_to_the_King._Fleuron_N021712-49.png

A coda.  

These is a little town in England called Abbot's Bromley, where a ritual outdoor dance has been solemnly performed each year, it is believed, since at least 1226. For more than 20 years now it has also been enacted in Revels performances around the U.S., celebrating the Winter Solstice.

The enigmatic troupe (once all men, now not always) traditionally includes, besides those wearing or carrying antlers, a boy archer, a "man-woman" or "Maid Marian," a hobby horse, and a fool. No one knows why. But there is something about it.

So...a group in Massachusetts did this. (Authentic spooky traditional tune btw.)

3:39 (worth it)

Stay warm out there, and keep alert because you never know what strange, and sometimes wonderful, things are out there to encounter, in this darkening season. :-)

Open thread...


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