Perdita, thank you for summarizing our Monthly Magic magic! Afterwards, I went out to my garden where I'm having trouble with clay soil. I'd asked my friend, Laura, who'd gone over about five years ago to give me a hand. She was an Environmental Educator and I knew she was the one to ask. I took her photo out there with me, as if she couldn't see for herself!
What I got back as an answer was perfectly aligned with what Laura might have said in person, even if it was unexpected. "The problem is not the soil, but your attitude toward the soil that is right here waiting to work with you." This did a couple of things for me. One, it was a reminder that I had resources (past experience, human friends, Mother Earth) I could call upon in addition to her to know what to do; and secondly, that I had forgotten how the soil WAS Mother Earth and that in Her role as soil, I could give her love. I could say, "Welcome to my garden, Dearest Clay One!" My friend Laura knew this need in me better than I did. While many of our needs are situational, such as finding the right dentist ;-), there is also wisdom and reminders of how sacred, how resourceful, how truly spectacular we are. For me, in this request, it was exactly what I needed. To remember myself.
Thank you for your willingness to share yourself and all that you believe in.
This is so incredibly beautiful. And bravo to your intuition and your listening and your receiving of these answers. These are the miracles the world really needs right now.
A little update: this makes me smile- yesterday I received a shipment of live sphagnum moss for my garden. I purchased it on Etsy from a man in the upper peninsula of Michigan (I’m in upstate NY). After putting the moss in a temporary holding container I noticed a little frog stuck to the glass. Spring Peeper! It didn’t come from my yard. I feel pretty confident that my friend Laura had sent it! She’s (the frog, not Laura) been identified as native so she’ll have a new home in New York. This is so exciting because it happened so quickly and so specific to Laura. She loved all of nature. What a beautiful and funny message!
So true about working with the dead. In all my years of ancestral work I’ve found a group of ‘advisors’ with diverse knowledge who want to help. For example I take any health issues to my aunt, who was a physician. The ancestors’ fund of knowledge is such a powerhouse upon which to draw.
You know, there's something about the words 'the dead' that just feels kind of wrong. Precisely because of the way you're describing -in this article and in all your writings -how people who have died continue to be such living, active presences. It's entirely consistent with what I've found both in my personal life and in my work as a family constellations facilitator. One interesting thing I have found though, is that there's something about the energy of 'deadness' which is possible to be in, whether you're physically alive or physically dead. Likewise, there's an energy of 'aliveness', which is possible to be in, whether you're physically alive or physically dead. I've facilitated constellations where the only representative in the room who seemed to have any vitality and wellness was the one standing in as a person who had recently died. Everyone else was literally lying on the floor, as if they were the ones who were dead instead.
What's really incredible is how we've somehow managed to culturally evolve away from a way of thinking that properly incorporates the 'dead' into our lives, and our way of thinking about how the world works. So many cultures that are still closer to their indigenous beginnings, take it as a given!
Hi Norina, I use the term the "dead" because I want to embrace the totatlity of the darkness and the dirt, other words we have come to fear in the light and purity obsessed monomania of patriarchy. I am always being asked to change it to "ancestors" which I do from time to time, but I think of them as the dead, as the very dirt beneath my feet, as the dark matter of the cosmos itself. The Dark Mother, The Black Madonna is the body of the dirt, the dark and the dead. And, yes, the living are so often zombies because we have lost our relationship with them--and to the bodies that are what it means to be alive. We are all the dead and when we know that we are alive again.
Hmm. It's not the darkness and the dirt, but the connotations of 'gone', 'vanished', 'ended', that I think are the problem -a problem which is probably a quite modern one. (I wouldn't assign that so simply to patriarchy, which I fear has become an excessively overused catch-all complaint for modern issues; and is causing quite a bit of misandry as well as intellectual laziness). I find "Ancestor" sometimes has the problem of assigning the dead too much to the realm of the mythic and inaccessible; when really our relationships with them can be much more simple and immediate. Just as you often describe.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say we are all the dead. We contain the dead, but we are not the dead -yet. We are the living.
Perdita, thank you for summarizing our Monthly Magic magic! Afterwards, I went out to my garden where I'm having trouble with clay soil. I'd asked my friend, Laura, who'd gone over about five years ago to give me a hand. She was an Environmental Educator and I knew she was the one to ask. I took her photo out there with me, as if she couldn't see for herself!
What I got back as an answer was perfectly aligned with what Laura might have said in person, even if it was unexpected. "The problem is not the soil, but your attitude toward the soil that is right here waiting to work with you." This did a couple of things for me. One, it was a reminder that I had resources (past experience, human friends, Mother Earth) I could call upon in addition to her to know what to do; and secondly, that I had forgotten how the soil WAS Mother Earth and that in Her role as soil, I could give her love. I could say, "Welcome to my garden, Dearest Clay One!" My friend Laura knew this need in me better than I did. While many of our needs are situational, such as finding the right dentist ;-), there is also wisdom and reminders of how sacred, how resourceful, how truly spectacular we are. For me, in this request, it was exactly what I needed. To remember myself.
Thank you for your willingness to share yourself and all that you believe in.
This is so incredibly beautiful. And bravo to your intuition and your listening and your receiving of these answers. These are the miracles the world really needs right now.
A little update: this makes me smile- yesterday I received a shipment of live sphagnum moss for my garden. I purchased it on Etsy from a man in the upper peninsula of Michigan (I’m in upstate NY). After putting the moss in a temporary holding container I noticed a little frog stuck to the glass. Spring Peeper! It didn’t come from my yard. I feel pretty confident that my friend Laura had sent it! She’s (the frog, not Laura) been identified as native so she’ll have a new home in New York. This is so exciting because it happened so quickly and so specific to Laura. She loved all of nature. What a beautiful and funny message!
again I am so struck by how carefully you listen and how easy it is for the dead to be in conversation with you!
So true about working with the dead. In all my years of ancestral work I’ve found a group of ‘advisors’ with diverse knowledge who want to help. For example I take any health issues to my aunt, who was a physician. The ancestors’ fund of knowledge is such a powerhouse upon which to draw.
Thank you Perdita!
You know, there's something about the words 'the dead' that just feels kind of wrong. Precisely because of the way you're describing -in this article and in all your writings -how people who have died continue to be such living, active presences. It's entirely consistent with what I've found both in my personal life and in my work as a family constellations facilitator. One interesting thing I have found though, is that there's something about the energy of 'deadness' which is possible to be in, whether you're physically alive or physically dead. Likewise, there's an energy of 'aliveness', which is possible to be in, whether you're physically alive or physically dead. I've facilitated constellations where the only representative in the room who seemed to have any vitality and wellness was the one standing in as a person who had recently died. Everyone else was literally lying on the floor, as if they were the ones who were dead instead.
What's really incredible is how we've somehow managed to culturally evolve away from a way of thinking that properly incorporates the 'dead' into our lives, and our way of thinking about how the world works. So many cultures that are still closer to their indigenous beginnings, take it as a given!
Hi Norina, I use the term the "dead" because I want to embrace the totatlity of the darkness and the dirt, other words we have come to fear in the light and purity obsessed monomania of patriarchy. I am always being asked to change it to "ancestors" which I do from time to time, but I think of them as the dead, as the very dirt beneath my feet, as the dark matter of the cosmos itself. The Dark Mother, The Black Madonna is the body of the dirt, the dark and the dead. And, yes, the living are so often zombies because we have lost our relationship with them--and to the bodies that are what it means to be alive. We are all the dead and when we know that we are alive again.
Hmm. It's not the darkness and the dirt, but the connotations of 'gone', 'vanished', 'ended', that I think are the problem -a problem which is probably a quite modern one. (I wouldn't assign that so simply to patriarchy, which I fear has become an excessively overused catch-all complaint for modern issues; and is causing quite a bit of misandry as well as intellectual laziness). I find "Ancestor" sometimes has the problem of assigning the dead too much to the realm of the mythic and inaccessible; when really our relationships with them can be much more simple and immediate. Just as you often describe.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say we are all the dead. We contain the dead, but we are not the dead -yet. We are the living.
https://open.substack.com/pub/perditafinn/p/who-are-the-living-who-are-the-dead?r=1844d8&utm_medium=ios
Thanks x
😊👍💙