Celebrating the Dead

(today, tomorrow, and every day)

Later today I will get dressed up in this year’s costume and head into town to see my friends and neighbors transformed. Like the ancient revelries of our ancestors this is a time to subvert the linear reality of things.* Peasants can become kings, men can become women, humans can become animals, the living can become the dead. We are not just who we think we are. We contain multitudes.

Once the little ones are headed home and the tweens are getting out their shaving cream, I will head to the graveyard to offer spirits to some old friends. I will say their names out loud. I will thank them for their help in the past year and suggest new ways we might collaborate in the days to come. A friend from New Orleans tells me that in that old city people meet in the cemeteries to drink and share stories of departed loved ones. I will hope to begin to seed that tradition in my far-away northern town.

Tomorrow evening I will have some private time with the dead. I will speak their names out loud in my home in the darkness. All of their names. The names of my relatives who have passed, of ancestors I am connected to by blood, the names of neighbors, teachers, friends and pets from throughout my life. Names, the old fairy tales remind us, hold the old magic. To speak a name out loud is to summon a soul. I will speak the names of the saints I love, those on the other side to whom I am inexplicably drawn, the names of vanished species, beloved trees, and the names of the very dead beneath my feet here in the Catskills—not just the peoples but all thew way back to the small shells embedded in the bluestone in my backyard. I stand atop a Column of Saints, of all the dead who have come before me, and I will summon them by name. There will be incense, candles, music, cats purring, mantras, song, and spells.

On November 2nd the Day of the Dead, I will, as I have for years, invite friends to honor together all those on the other side. We will create lanterns with the names of the dead written on them and set the afloat on the pond at our house to burn through the night. We will sing to the old mothers who have birthed us all…Ave Maria, grazia plene dominus techum. Kali-Ma, om shri kalikaya. We will eat fruits dried on the branch and sweet cider. We will ask the dead to answer our prayers. You are invited. Here in Woodstock 6:30 pm est. Message me for details.

BUT everyone can celebrate the dead wherever you are on any day at all. They are always there. They are always waiting to help. There’s a certain concentrated energy because so many people are doing this right now…but you can summon that energy ANY time.

For your own celebrations, just saying the names of the dead out loud can be very powerful. Do it with a family member or a friend.

Invite some friends over and have each person tell the story of someone from the other side—and have each person decide how they want that soul to help them in the coming year.

Use your own imagination. There are traditions from all over the world for summoning and collaborating with the dead. There are also traditions your soul remembers. Do what feels good. But know that the dead are waiting for you, for all of us, to remember that they are real and they are there!

Let’s inspire each other! Share what you are doing in the comments.

*go to book for thinking about the power of revelry is Dancing in the Streets by Barbarah Ehrenreich.

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Note: I was hoping to do a post every single day for the coming year but that might have been, well, overly ambitious given that I am also on a looming deadline for my next book. SO…here is what I am going to do with my “Year of Living with the Dead” posts: I am going to do them as often as I can. Some weeks that might mean every day, but some there will be just one post…but there is so much to write about the dead! So I will keep trying. The posts are all free. I want to be reborn into a world where people remember the dead and know that they are real and that every child is an elder returned. I also offer a paid substack which includes a Monthly Zoom conversation…and excerpts from those books I’m working on.

Perdita Finn is the author of Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World and the forthcoming Mothers of Magic: Recovering the Love at the Heart of the World. She teaches popular workshops on collaborating with the dead. With her husband Clark Strand she is the founder of the feral fellowship The Way of the Rose and the book by the same name.