Samhain 2003 above San Francisco
by victoria slind-flor, California USA
journalist, Aged 59
The ritual was on top of a high flat-topped mountain overlooking the Golden Gate and the city of San Francisco.
We each hiked up in the darkness in silence, alone, carrying no light but a from a jack o'lantern.
We set the pumpkins in a circle, carved faces turned outward, and took hands to dance a slow circle around them. And as we sang, the priestess read a list of the beloved dead, all who had passed over into Summerland in the preceeding year.
And then we--perhaps 30 of us--danced the great spiral, that represents the eternal cycle of birth, life and death.
My arthritic knee was troubling me, so the priestess had me sit on the earth in the center of the circle, and the dancers spiraled inward and outward around me, singing all the while.
The night sky was filled with the reflections from the lights of San Francisco. So the dancers were all black silhouettes against the light sky.
Soon they lost their individuality and setting in the present time and space for me. They became all who came before, all who live now, and all who are yet to come, moving endlessly, following the patterns of death and rebirth.
I was facing the east and soon the constellation of Orion rose, with the stars that make up his belt a straight line pointing to the highest point in the sky above. And beyond Orion's belt I could see the Pleiades, marker stars used by navigators from many cultures.
I knew the ancestors were present, moving invisibly in the dancing spiral with all whose feet were still set in the terrestrial plain. My mother, husband, son, aunts and uncles, grandparents and beyond joined in that solemn--but merry--dance.
And I acknowledged that some day my name would be read among the beloved dead, and I would invisibly dance in the great spiral. And I was not afraid.
Blessed Be!
Copyright © Australian Museum, 2010