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!
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 aspooky, 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
(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
(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.
(DK library, uploaded by funningforest)
And in the dark, amid the wind-whippped trees,
The last leaf frees itself, and tries the breeze.
.
(DK library, uploaded by lostintheozarks)
(Poem copyright Clio2, 2022)
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.
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.)
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.
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.")
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/...
RELATED: In case you missed it, check out Dr Lori's rundown on Halloween, including the ancient pagan traditions of Samhain.
Later, in Christianized Europe, of course,
you got your choice...
Or...
Oops, took the wrong exit--get me out of here!
All Saints' Day, also known as All Hallows' Day,the Feast of All Saints...and Hallowmass,is a Christian solemnity celebrated in honour of all the saintsof 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?)
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 celebratedon Nov. 2 with a multitudinous array of rites and customs around the world, by no means all of them lacking beauty, and humor.
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?)
(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 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 Revelsperformances 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.)
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. :-)
