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Letter from Cressida Pryor
November 15, 2018
Samhain 2018
Dear Friends,
Maybe I haven’t noticed the Halloween frenzy so much other years...a couple of weeks ago, on October 30th, I found I was shopping for a few ‘bits’ just after school finish time and the noise and excitement was palpable. Teens scrutinised plastic skeleton paraphernalia chatting loudly to their mates; checking out what was the right bit to get...primary aged children grabbed bags of sugared jellied goodies off the shelves, then filling their mum’s baskets with even more sweets and cupcakes. Assistants wore Goth outfits and a band of Harry Potter fans waved lethal looking black twisted wands as they ran around the aisles...
And then the kids and exhausted mums left, the teens sloped off and the shop echoed with the quiet footfall of the remaining shoppers intent on the best marked down bargains and supper.
Perhaps what is experienced as the supernatural and spooky allows the playing out of some of our unexpressed fears of death and the unknown...to mock and also ‘out them’ into their more manageable place...it seems something bubbles up at Halloween that cannot be restrained with logic or formal religious ceremony... is it all just sending it all up as some ghoulish and commercial anarchic pantomime? OR does it allow a connection to that that is ‘beyond’...something difficult to articulate and express? This fascination with death and what might be beyond it is a challenge to older religious institutions that seem to fall short of what is needed to give it meaning. I believe our position which is not allied to any one religious tradition gives us a unique place to meet such a challenge.
This time of the year is, after all, that time when we are especially aware of death and those who have gone before us...of course five years ago on November 14th we lost Olivia; many of you will have other, more recent losses of friends and family you mourn and grieve for too.
The name of Olivia’s memorial ritual ‘Dulce Domum’ or sweet homecoming is a beautiful reminder of the ancient’s understanding of death as the soul’s return home to sacred unity with the Divine...in whatever form you understand this mysterious process, whether it be across the river Styx, returning to the Cosmic Christ, the Omega point, the Land of your Heart’s Desire...the Fellowship holds a knowing that this life is not all there is and leads to an inner assurance that our life comes from the sacred, is sustained by Her and our ultimate destiny is in Her.
Blessed Isis, we are all your children
May this knowing allow our soul the freedom to
Dance, sing, mourn, celebrate and heal, and
Bless the world with our service to it.
May we all trust the protection of your holy wings
As we move towards the sacred union of our eternal homecoming in you.
And so it is for each and every one of us.
Blessed Be,
Cressida, FOI Steward
FOI Letters & Correspondence
(Our thanks to Cressida for sending her seasonal letters.)
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