Our Face Before We Were Born: The Song of Ancestors

Today is Hallows Eve, and most of Contemporary Paganism here is the West, this day, tomorrow, and the following week is saturated with Ancestor Work. I wanted to a take a moment and share with you a quick train of thought about this time that came to me last night right after meditation. My hope is that it will provide you with substance of contemplation in this tide.

Exhale. Focus sharply upon it. Keep extending the breath out until you can't anymore and allow the awareness of that movement to shift to the space just beyond the outbreath. You will find that beyond the outbreath is both neither something and simultaneously a thing.

This is the song of the ancestors. It is your eternal face from before you were born. Think about that. 

What did your face look like before you were born?

Distinct features should not come to mind; it is not a thing. Yet, there is the vague feeling of something there; it is a thing. This same face permeates down through the ages every day from this day forth. This is one of the reasons for celebration during Hallows-tide. In this way, we are the total sum of all of our ancestors. As such, today we celebrate the shared eternal hearth of our ancestors enacted in the manifestation of the present experience of our life.

The praxis associated with this time of year is our ritualization of this experience. Dressing in costumes, Dumb Suppers, rites associated with a particular Tradition, whatever, are all myth and symbolism expressed in the experiential.

Just as you found at the end of your breath, when you exhaled, a thinning of the veil, this is the time of year when the cycle of the year exhales and the veil thins. Take the time to gaze upon the reflection of the ancestors that comes through. Call them and feed them. Redden their bones so that they may dance the night away within the sphere of your life and hearth once more.

Now inhale.

Boidh Se,

-SM

"Lost in a thicket, bare-foot upon a thorn path."