Category Archives: Death

Our Lady is a Goddess of the Dead

It is October.

The soft melancholy and honeyed light of September has given way to chill mornings and encroaching darkness. Here in Portland, the leaves are just beginning to turn, just beginning to ignite in autumnal flames.

It is Samhain-tide. And people have died.

Just yesterday, a friend of many years died. People I know, people my friends know and love, have died. Soon, at the end of this month, we will gather together in remembrance. We will cry and laugh and sing and eat and drink in their honor. I hope those who love me will do the same when I go.

Our Lady understands these things. For She is—among All The Many Things That She Is—a Lady of Death. One of Her many names is “Mooring Post,” for She is the one Who calls us to our deaths. But only when it is our time. I hope…

With its boat-infused culture, in ancient Egypt, “to come to moor” was a euphemism for “to die.” And the Great Mooring Post is the Goddess of Death Who calls us to our final mooring and to Whom our boats ever return and are always safely docked.

She may go by many names (as is the wont of Egyptian Goddesses), but when we can be certain of Her identity, She is none other than Our Lady Isis. “The Mooring Post summons you as Isis,” say the Pyramid Texts, “the Mourning Woman calls to you as Nephthys.”

Nephthys by Jeszkik Le Vye. Her Patreon is here.

Being called by or spoken to by Menit Weret, the Great Mooring Post, was understood as an important part of the process of death and eventual rebirth. The Coffin Texts tell the deceased that the Great Mooring Post speaks to him and a stairway to Heaven is set up for him, enemies fall before him, and even the stars bow down. Magical words of power ensured that the beings in the realm of the dead would serve the deceased, that his Divine mothers would nurse and kiss him…and that the Great Mooring Post would call to him, call to him.

From Isis’ ancient origins as the death-bringing and resurrecting Bird of Prey Goddess to the “voluntary death and a life obtained by grace” experienced by the initiates of Her Mysteries, Isis—the Great Mooring Post—is at home in the land of the dead. And even though, as the Great Mooring Post, Isis is the one Who calls us to our deaths, She is not a frightening figure. Instead, She initiates our transformation as we become fully spiritual beings. Isis is a comfort and a guide to those who journey into death. She “makes a spirit” of those who die and the dead rejoice when they see Her. She is called the Lady of All in the Secret Place [the land of the dead] and the dead beg Her to “spiritualize” them and guide their souls on the paths of the Otherworld.

Isis by Mia Araujo. See more of her work here.

In the land of the dead, Isis is the one “at whom Osiris rejoiced when he saw her.” She is the guide Who is asked to “clear my vision in the paths of the Netherworld.” She also acts on behalf of the deceased, ensuring that their initiation into death proceeds as it should. In a formula for being accepted into the land of the dead, the deceased greets the West, personified as the Goddess Amentet, for having arrived safely and states, “true is Isis who acted on my behalf.”

Isis the Great Mooring Post is Mistress of the Mysteries of the Otherworld. In both the Coffin Texts and the Book of Coming Forth by Day, there is a formula in the form of a dramatic reading in which the new pharaoh, as Horus, is to go on a journey to His father Osiris, the deceased pharaoh. To do this, He first allies Himself “with the Divine Isis.” Then He sends a messenger to whom He has given His own shape. The messenger is none other than the deceased. He must pass tests and provide the proper tokens along the way until coming to “the House of Isis, to the secret mysteries.” The deceased also says that he has been conducted to the hidden secrets of Isis “for she caused me to see the birth of the Great God.” Once in possession of the hidden secrets and having witnessed the rebirth of the Great God shown to him by Isis, the deceased delivers his message to Osiris: all is well on Earth because Horus, the Son of Isis, rules His father’s kingdom.

Nile ducks by a rusted mooring post along the Great Nile.

As the Great Mooring Post, Isis calls us to our deaths, but She also ensures that, in death, we understand Her hidden secrets and that we witness the birth/rebirth of the Great God. We are all Osiris, re-membered and renewed by Isis in the Otherworld. We are all Horus, reborn into the world as Her child. Death bringer, resurrector, life giver. Isis is the Great Mooring Post, the Caller to the Dark Journey. Thus do we offer unto Isis that which is Hers.

To Isis, a Mooring Post
En Iset, Menit

This is a gift the priest/ess brings before the Lady of All in the Secret Place, the Death Goddess: an invocation offering of a mooring post.

I make offering to You as Death, Isis.

While I am yet human, You are inevitable. You show me Your implacable face. Yet I cannot fear You, except with the excited fear of a traveler on her first journey. Will there be pain? Will there be suffering? Or will we dance until I slip quietly into your deepest embrace? How lyrical poets have been about You! Yet I can find no words. Only that I do not fear You. Only that the wise remember You every day. Only that I do not want to go—yet.

Isis, I offer you this mooring post that when you speak to me, it will be with Your kindly voice. May You drive in this mooring post for me that I may come to moor in the heart of my Mother. On that day, I shall speak Your name and silence my soul in Your darkness. But until then, accept this mooring post and remember me.

Listen, O Isis, to the words of the Mooring Post: “I am offered unto Isis as the vision in the darkness. I am the desired thing. The dead speak in joy: “See! There She is,” they say. I am the comforting voice, the heartbeat of the Mother, the enfolding wing. I am eternal and omnipresent. I am the soother of souls. I am the Mooring Post.”

Unto You, Isis, I offer this mooring post and all things beautiful and pure. M’den Iset. Accept it, Isis.

From Offering to Isis: Mooring Post

Our Lady is a Goddess of the Dead

It is October. The soft melancholy and honeyed light of September has given way to chill mornings and encroaching dark. Here in Portland, the leaves are aflame with color…though they haven’t quite reached their peak. The prognosticators say we shall have rain this weekend. Perhaps the leaves will fall.

It is Samhain-tide. And people have died.

So many people I know and love have died. So many people my friends know and love have died. And so, we gather together in remembrance. We shall cry and laugh and sing and drink in their honor. I hope people will do the same when I am gone.

Our Lady understands these things. For She is—among All The Many Things That She Is—a Lady of Death. One of Her many names is “Mooring Post,” for She is the one Who calls us to our deaths. But only when it is our time. I hope…

With its boat-infused culture, in ancient Egypt, “to come to moor” was a euphemism for “to die.” And the Great Mooring Post is the Goddess of Death Who calls us to our final mooring and to Whom our boats ever return and are always safely docked.

Nephthys by Jeszkik Le Vye. Her Patreon is here.

She may go by many names (as is the wont of Egyptian Goddesses), but when we can be certain of Her identity, She is none other than Our Lady Isis. “The Mooring Post summons you as Isis,” say the Pyramid Texts, “the Mourning Woman calls to you as Nephthys.”

Being called by or spoken to by Menit Weret, the Great Mooring Post, was understood as an important part of the process of death and eventual rebirth. The Coffin Texts tell the deceased that the Great Mooring Post speaks to him and a stairway to Heaven is set up for him, enemies fall before him, and even the stars bow down. Magical words of power ensured that the beings in the realm of the dead would serve the deceased, that his Divine mothers would nurse and kiss him…and that the Great Mooring Post would call to him, call to him.

From Isis’ ancient origins as the death-bringing and resurrecting Bird of Prey Goddess to the “voluntary death and a life obtained by grace” experienced by the initiates of Her Mysteries, Isis—the Great Mooring Post—is at home in the land of the dead. And even though, as the Great Mooring Post, Isis is the one Who calls us to our deaths, She is not a frightening figure. Instead, She initiates our transformation as we become fully spiritual beings. Isis is a comfort and a guide to those who journey into death. She “makes a spirit” of those who die and the dead rejoice when they see Her. She is called the Lady of All in the Secret Place [the land of the dead] and the dead beg Her to “spiritualize” them and guide their souls on the paths of the Otherworld.

Isis by Mia Araujo. See more of her work here.

In the land of the dead, Isis is the one “at whom Osiris rejoiced when he saw her.” She is the guide Who is asked to “clear my vision in the paths of the Netherworld.” She also acts on behalf of the deceased, ensuring that their initiation into death proceeds as it should. In a formula for being accepted into the land of the dead, the deceased greets the West, personified as the Goddess Amentet, for having arrived safely and states, “true is Isis who acted on my behalf.”

Isis the Great Mooring Post is Mistress of the Mysteries of the Otherworld. In both the Coffin Texts and the Book of Coming Forth by Day, there is a formula in the form of a dramatic reading in which the new pharaoh, as Horus, is to go on a journey to His father Osiris, the deceased pharaoh. To do this, He first allies Himself “with the Divine Isis.” Then He sends a messenger to whom He has given His own shape. The messenger is none other than the deceased. He must pass tests and provide the proper tokens along the way until coming to “the House of Isis, to the secret mysteries.” The deceased also says that he has been conducted to the hidden secrets of Isis “for she caused me to see the birth of the Great God.” Once in possession of the hidden secrets and having witnessed the rebirth of the Great God shown to him by Isis, the deceased delivers his message to Osiris: all is well on Earth because Horus, the Son of Isis, rules His father’s kingdom.

Nile ducks by a rusted mooring post along the Great Nile.

As the Great Mooring Post, Isis calls us to our deaths, but She also ensures that, in death, we understand Her hidden secrets and that we witness the birth/rebirth of the Great God. We are all Osiris, re-membered and renewed by Isis in the Otherworld. We are all Horus, reborn into the world as Her child. Death bringer, resurrector, life giver. Isis is the Great Mooring Post, the Caller to the Dark Journey. Thus do we offer unto Isis that which is Hers.

To Isis, a Mooring Post
En Iset, Menit

This is a gift the priest/ess brings before the Lady of All in the Secret Place, the Death Goddess: an invocation offering of a mooring post.

I make offering to You as Death, Isis.

While I am yet human, You are inevitable. You show me Your implacable face. Yet I cannot fear You, except with the excited fear of a traveler on her first journey. Will there be pain? Will there be suffering? Or will we dance until I slip quietly into your deepest embrace? How lyrical poets have been about You! Yet I can find no words. Only that I do not fear You. Only that the wise remember You every day. Only that I do not want to go—yet.

Isis, I offer you this mooring post that when you speak to me, it will be with Your kindly voice. May You drive in this mooring post for me that I may come to moor in the heart of my Mother. On that day, I shall speak Your name and silence my soul in Your darkness. But until then, accept this mooring post and remember me.

Listen, O Isis, to the words of the Mooring Post: “I am offered unto Isis as the vision in the darkness. I am the desired thing. The dead speak in joy: “See! There She is,” they say. I am the comforting voice, the heartbeat of the Mother, the enfolding wing. I am eternal and omnipresent. I am the soother of souls. I am the Mooring Post.”

Unto You, Isis, I offer this mooring post and all things beautiful and pure. M’den Iset. Accept it, Isis.

Tuesday Poetry Blogging


Since There Is No Escape
~Sara Teasdale

Since there is no escape, since at the end
My body will be utterly destroyed,
This hand I love as I have loved a friend,
This body I tended, wept with and enjoyed;
Since there is no escape even for me
Who love life with a love too sharp to bear:
The scent of orchards in the rain, the sea
And hours alone too still and sure for prayer—
Since darkness waits for me, then all the more
Let me go down as waves sweep to the shore
In pride, and let me sing with my last breath;
In these few hours of light I lift my head;
Life is my lover—I shall leave the dead
If there is any way to baffle death.

Picture found here.

Sixth Annual Brigid Poetry Festival


There are the poems that you love, and then there are the poems that you write into your will. Here's one that I made the nice young lawyer from the white-shoe law firm write into mine:

When Death Comes

~Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measles-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.


Picture found here.

Blessed Samhein to You and Yours.


The longer we are together
the larger death grows around us.
How many we know by now who are dead! We, who were young,
now count the cost of having been.
And yet as we know the dead
we grow familiar with the world.
We, who were young and loved each other
ignorantly now come to know
each other in love, married
by what we have done, as much
as by what we intend. Our hair
turns white with our ripening
as though to fly away in some
coming wind, bearing the seed
of what we know. It was bitter to learn
that we come to death as we come to love,
bitter to face
the just and solving welcome
that death prepares. But that is bitter
only to the ignorant, who pray it will not happen. Having come
the bitter way to better prayer, we have
the sweetness of ripening. How sweet
to know you by the signs of the world!

~Wendell Berry

Picture found here.

Eat, Pray, Love — But, Then, I Repeat Myself


Aquila ka Hecate explains, much better than I could, what I was trying to say in the post below about how our eating relates to our religion:
I'm not even stretching the truth to make a point when I say that the weed by the roadside, the crumb of granite rolling on the pavement, the motes of illuminated air dancing in the evening streetlights, the very quarks themselves - all partake of this consciousness which builds and destroys, eats and is eaten. I'm part of the process. My body is, and will be, food. It is food right now for milliard mites and bacteria. Any woman who has born a child (and most who have not) are in no doubt that they are food, too.

When I die, I expect to be food for insects and worms and single-celled organisms. I eat animals as well as plants because I do not distinguish between their levels of consciousness - indeed, I feel that distinguishing in such a way may be only what we humans tend to do.

I'll propose two very basic ways to change your own relationship with eating: (1) Stop criticizing others for how they eat/don't eat, what they eat/don't eat, how much they eat/don't eat, etc. When you find yourself about to give voice to judgment (even internally) on this point, take a breath, ground, center, see if you can just be present for a moment with that unnoticed part of yourself that makes you care what someone else puts in their mouth. (2) Begin to practice mindfullness concerning your own food. Simply stopping for a few seconds and sending gratitude to the plant or animal that you are about to consume -- and to the people who harvested, slaughtered, prepared it -- can become a very powerful spiritual practice.

And, of course, there are poems:
Oh my brothers of the wilderness,
My little brothers,
For my necessities
I am about to kill you!
May the Master of Life who made you
In the form of the quarry
That the children may be fed,
Speedily provide you
Another house,
So there may be peace
Between me and thy spirit.

~Mary Austin, in Earth Prayers from Around the World: 365 Prayers, Poems & Invocations for Honoring the Earth, edited by Elizabeth Roberts & Elias Amidon

Picture found here.

John Barleycorn Must Die


I've been thinking about the interview linked below in which Lierre Keith discusses her growing awareness that plants have a form of sentience, volition, and ability to communicate. She recounts how, as a vegan, she didn't want to accept this awareness because it meant that, in order to survive, she had to kill something sentient.*

We have (and Earth knows, I'm not the first to discuss this) such a shadow relationship with Death in Western culture. To a greater extent than at any other time or place in human history, our way of life is built upon and requires massive amounts of death. We spend billions of dollars on redundant weapons, even when we say that we don't have money for schools, or roads, or the green energy programs that might save the planet. We are, pace Mr. Orwell, always at war with someone. We cause the extinction of species after species. We kill forest after river after ocean and shrug it off as just a cost of doing business. We kill off native peoples whenever and wherever they "get in our way" (by which, we mean, "have been living forever in a place that we now want"). Our movies are full of death (preferably accomplished by huge explosions or major car crashes -- nope, no sexual symbolism there) and our children amuse themselves for hours with video games in which the object is to kill other people.

And, yet, Death is the great unmentionable. We have moved the harvesting of the plants we eat and the slaughter of the animals whose flesh we consume out of sight. We send our old people away to die in hospitals or nursing homes. We won't even use the word "death" -- we say that someone "passed on," or "went to their final rest." And we want, rather desperately, as Keith did, to pretend that somehow we can have the life that we have without ever causing any Death.

What happens, though, when we face up to the fact, as Keith did, that everything is alive, that everything is aware, that we must, truly, cause some death in order to live? The Randian response is to shrug, announce that only the strong survive, and to become even more willing to wreak death and destruction. After all, if even picking an apple off a tree involves taking from a sentient being, then why not take the land away from the forest, why not dump chemicals into the Danube? Why not make money selling games to children that teach them that it's fun to blow up other people? Head to McDonalds and have a triple bacon burger!

Another response, though, is to recognize the gift of the slaughtered animal, the harvested corn. That response might require, as Derrick Jensen suggests, that, when we kill a salmon, we become responsible to Salmon. It suggests that animals be raised and slaughtered humanely (to coin a phrase) and with gratitude for their sacrifice. It suggests that we not grow crops in huge monoculture factory farms and that we not drench them in pesticide and petroleum-based fertilizer. It suggests that we spend time in meditation and religious ritual, coming into right relationship with Death, with our planet, our landbase, our food. And if that interferes with the cost of doing business (aka imposing externalities), then it is business that must adjust and sacrifice.

As we head into Samhein, this area of our relationship with Death is one I'd like to see more Pagan groups incorporate into their observations. Our religion, more than any other Western religion, is at least willing to worship the relationship between life and death, as well as to focus upon the interconnectedness of all beings. We could, I think, begin to help our culture to come into a better relationship with reality, which could, in turn, help us to come into a better relationship with our planet and the other beings who share it with us.

How squeamish does Death make you? Do you still believe that you can live on this planet without causing Death? How does the traditional "Rule of Three" both recognize and obscure the truth about the relationship between our lives and death? What, realistically, can you change in order to live in better relationship with Life, Death, Earth, Food? What rituals would help you to do this?


*I am not making any judgments here about what people eat or don't eat. It's interesting to me how our culture considers eating to be such a moral issue; people feel free to judge other people for what they eat, how they eat, how much they eat or don't eat, etc. It's almost impossible to read a newspaper or magazine without finding articles about how one "should" eat and it's almost impossible to mention, say, veganism without starting a war about how people "should" eat. And yet, the deep moral questions behind our food production system go unmentioned. Good sign that there are some shadow issues involved.

Picture found here.

Days Before Mabon, Waxing Moon


No doubt about it today; Summer's coming to a graceful end and Autumn is peaking through the veils, ready to usher in glorious death.

What do we know?

I wonder. To wonder takes time. I walk in the hills behind our home. The leaves have fallen, leaf litter, perfect for the shuffling of towhees. The supple grasses of summer have become knee-high rattles. Ridge winds shake the tiny seedheads like gourds. I hear my grandfather's voice.

All sound requires patience; not just the ability to hear, but the capacity to listen, the awareness of mind to discern a story. A magpie flies toward me and disappears in the oak thicket. He is relentless in his cries. What does he know that I do not? What story is he telling? I love these birds, their long iridescent tail feathers, their undulations in flight. Two more magpies join him. I sit on a flat boulder to rest, pick up two stones and begin striking edges.

What I know in my bones is that I forget to take time to remember what I know. The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves. We are animals, living, breathing organisms engaged not only in our own evolution but the evolution of a species that has been gifted with nascence. Nascence--to come into existence; to be born; to bring forth; the process of emerging.

Even in death we are being born. And it takes time.

I think about my grandfather, his desire for voices, to be held as he dies in the comfort of conversation. Even if he rarely contributes to what is being said, his mind finds its own calm. To him this is a form of music that allows him to remember he is not alone in the world. Our evolution is the story of listening.

In the evening by firelight in their caves and rock shelters, the Neanderthals sometimes relaxed to the sound of music after a hard day at the hunt. They took material at hand, a cave bear's thigh bone, and created a flute. With such a simple instrument, these stocky, heavy browed Neanderthals, extinct close relatives of humans, may have given expression to the fears, longings, and joys of their prehistoric lives. (John Noble Wilford, "Playing of Flute May Have Graced Neanderthal Fire," The New York Times)

A bone flutelike object was found at Divje Babe in northwestern Slovenia recently, dated somewhere between forty-three thousand to eighty-two thousand years old. Dr. Ivan Turk, a paleontologist at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences in Ljubjana, believes this is the first musical instrument ever to be associated with Neanderthals. It is a piece of bear femur with four holes in a straight alignment. Researchers say the bone flute may be the oldest known musical instrument.

I wonder about that cave, the fire that flickered and faded on damp walls as someone in the clan played a flute. Were they a family? Neighbors? What were their dreams and inventions? Did they know the long line of human beings that would follow their impulses to survive, even flourish in moments of reverie?

Returning to my grandparents' home, I notice the fifty-foot antenna that rises over the roof. I recall Jack telling us as children how important it was for the antenna to be grounded in the earth, that as long as it was securely placed it could radiate signals into the air all over the world. Transmit and receive. I walk into his dim room and place my hand on my grandfather's leg. Bone. Nothing lost. Overcome by something else. Ways of knowing. My fingers wrap around bone and I feel his life blowing through him.

John H. Tempest, Jr., passed away on December 15, 1996, peacefully at home in the company of family.


~from Listening Days by Terry Tempest Williams

What music is Autumn going to play upon your bones? Are you grounded enough for signals to radiate all over the world?

Picture found here.