CAYA Coven’s Festival of Death and Wisdom

Saturday, November 1, 7:00PM

The Home of Truth, 1300 Grand Street, Alameda

$10-$20 donation requested

http://cayacoven.org

http://thehomeoftruth.org

https://plus.google.com/u/0/109692114219113606060/posts/UgDH87TgC7Z

 

“CAYA Coven invites you to the Festival of Death and Wisdom

 

This year, our Death and Wisdom altar will be focused around a large black mirror that is being charged as a portal for the Ancestors in a 24-hour continuous chanting working that leads up to our main ceremony.

 

All are invited to bring an Ancestor photo or item for our altar, to join us in a ritual and spiral dance honoring our beloved dead, and in hearing the wisdom of the underworld gods and goddesses that will be joining us. There will be singing, dancing, and meditative spaces in the ritual itself, with socializing afterward.

 

Here is an Ode to the Ancestors that will be part of our celebration, co-authored by three CAYA Priest/esses: Doyenne Rowan Nightshade, Athena Nikai, and Melissa ra Karit:

 

Bones of the living, bones of the dead

Make of the Earth thy gentle bed

 

Hail to thee, oh wise bones!

Come from graves shallow and deep,

Smooth as curved white stone,

Into Death’s dance you leap,

Teach us your steps ‘ere we go to our last sleep.

 

Whirling around in the final dance,

We quick-step, holding your eyeless eyes

Spare not the abyss  a single glance,

In this moment, we call you to rise,

Releasing all these mortal sighs.

 

Wandering bones who are lost in the night,

Restless, aching, and done,

Come home to us on the path with no light,

To the Land that has no sun,

Lay down your burdens, give up your fight

 

If the Land of the Living is no more for thee,

Fear not the Other Side,

For thou has been there before and thou’ll be there again,

‘Tis a place of peace for thou to bide,

Let us carry thee on this tide.

 

Hail to thee, Ancestral Spirits!

Present thou ever art,

And from this realm, or near it,

Pourest thy full heart

In whispering mists and spectral visits.

 

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest

Like a cloud of fire;

The resonant wisdom thou bringest,

The singing dusts of ages, each tiny mote ever singest.

 

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

How else thy breath flow in such beneficent stream?

 

You look before and after,

We pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

 

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear;

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,

I know not how thy truth we ever should come near.

 

Teach me half the understanding

That thy souls must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow

The world should listen then, as I am listening now.”