At this time of dressing up, role playing, costuming, ghoulish trick-and-treating, I am compelled to at least give brief mention of my current inspirations…
This is from John King’s “The Celtic druids’ year”
“Perhaps the festival of Samhain celebrated, through legends of shapeshifting into swans, not just the return of the dead, in whatever form they chose to appear, but the very crux of the religious question: the transformation of life from one state to another, the passage-making between time and timelessness, the interrelation of life and death, the necessary magic by which souls escaped the ties of earthly life, and… flew to the joys of eternity. In other words, the doctrine of metempsychosis, or karma, closely related to the idea of a universal order which requires ritual pair-bonding of the god with the goddess, ritual restoration of the sacred palace through courage and pain, may have been at the heart of Samhain, as well as the celebrations of the actual dead.”
So I’m honoring Cynthia Ann Parker, Quanah Parker, grandmother Paton, Bob Jackson, and so many more…