Death's Day

October 31 is the festival of Samhain (pronounced Sow-en). It is the end of the yearly cycle, when the earth and her inhabitants enter the cold, dark winter and await the coming of spring. It is the beginning of the Celtic New Year, and one of the most sacred days on the pagan calendar. It is a day for communing with the spirits of our ancestors, asking for aid or advice or simply wishing them well in their journey through the afterlife.

The mundane world knows this day as Halloween, or Hallowe’en, a contraction of All Hallow’s Eve. The holiday begins at sundown and continues through November 2, celebrated in Mexico as the Day of the Dead.

Many of the customs associated with Halloween originate in pagan practices. Lanterns were carved out of gourds or squash and put in windows to light the way for the spirits. This evolved into the Jack O’ Lantern. People dressed in costumes to disguise themselves in hopes of fooling harmful spirits into passing them over when out to make mischief among the living. Children would go door-to-door asking for treats in return for not playing tricks on their neighbors. Sound familiar?

Another custom is to prepare food to be consumed as sustenance for the spirits as they pass by. Some people go so far as to set an extra place at the dinner table for their dearly departed ancestors and friends. Popular foods are apples, cider or ale and bread. In Mexico and other Latin countries, families have picnics at the gravesites of their loved ones, often eating the favorite foods of the dead and leaving offerings of the food behind to be “eaten”.

Traditions holds that on this day the veil between the spirit world and the mundane world is at its thinnest, allowing the spirits free passage between the two. It also allows us to communicate with those who have passed, ask their counsel and hope they will pass on some of the wisdom they accumulated in their own long lives. It is a good night for divination rituals of all kinds. If you have any questions about how the coming year will go for you, now is the time to ask.

I celebrate this day the way most people do: I carve pumpkins, decorate my house with bats, skulls, ghosts and ghouls, and hand out candy to the neighborhood children when they come to the door. On November 1, I make an altar dedicated to the spirits of those I have known who have passed. I often include a remembrance of all those who suffer and die needlessly for their untraditional beliefs, such as all the victims of the Salem Witch Trials.

My altar usually looks like this:

Anubis is represented, because he is the lord of the underworld and this is an important day for him.  The Nile River Goddess is also there, opposite him.  She represents the ongoing cycle of life, death and rebirth.  I decorate the altar with sprigs of rosemary, the herb of remembrance, and marigolds, flowers often associated with the dead. The skulls represent the voices of the dead, and the knowledge they have to bequeath to us.

I prepare a meal, which consists of bread, apple juice (I am teetotaler so the spirits don’t get ale from me.) and an apple. Apples stand for new beginnings and rebirth. For this reason, they are also traditionally eaten on May Day, or Beltane, the holiday directly opposite Samhain on the pagan calendar. I make a spirit candle to let the spirits know there is a friendly stop for them on their journey.

Samhain is one of the oldest holidays we humans celebrate. It allows us to get in touch with our mortality, broadens our minds and inspires us with courage to face a continuing life in an alternate plane of existence. When you think of how many other “lives” we may have, some of the things we think are so important don’t really seem like a such a big deal, after all. As our modern society gets farther and farther away from its roots, the origins of this day, and all the old celebrations, fade into obscurity. I’m doing my part. As long as someone continues to celebrate these old holidays, the old traditions will stay with us. They will never die.

Happy Hallowe’en.

Smartsville Cemetery, Smartsville, California

Continuing my gold rush theme, I visited Smartsville Cemetery in Yuba County, California. This town was once called Smartville, but it is now Smartsville. It was named after Jim Smart, a local hotelier. The U.S. Post Office eliminated the “s” in 1909. The town regained its “s” in August 2008 and it’s been Smartsville ever since. My town is just too boring.


Smartsville loaned its name to the “Smartville Complex” (note the lack of “s”), which is a geologic feature of the Sierra Nevada area. Its eastern boundary marks the easternmost end of the Mother Lode, the gold-bearing rocks without which California might not be a state. (We all know the only reason California was allowed to join the union was because of the gold in them thar hills.) It is also known as the “Smartville Block” or the “Smartville Intrusive Complex”. This means that the chunk of rock constituting the Smartville Complex got in the way of the collision between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates. As a result of being subjected to enormous amounts of heat and pressure, hot mineral-bearing water was driven through fissures in the rock. When the water cooled, the minerals therein precipitated out and were deposited in veins running through the granite bedrock which became the Sierra Nevada Mountains. One of these minerals was gold. And the rest, as they say, is history. Geology lesson in a nutshell. (I can never, ever, just walk past a rock without checking it out and big holes in the ground are endlessly fascinating.)

In addition to its peek-a-boo “s”, Smartsville possesses a very cool historic cemetery.

Spread out under the oaks, the cemetery attracts all sorts of visitors. Even Omar likes tombstones.  Omar likes a lot of things.

There are familiar symbols here:  the draped urn

 
The broken column
 

 
Here's a nice example of joined hands.
 

This usually indicated matrimony.  If you look closely at the cuffs on the sleeves, you can see that one appears masculine and the other feminine.  The letters "FLT" stand for Friendship, Love and Truth.  It is the motto of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows . They are also known as the "Three-Link Fraternity" because of thier symbol of three links of chain.   Perhaps they were considred odd because of their love of cemeteries?  When a new Odd Fellows lodge was established, the first order of business was often to buy cemetery plots or even create a new cemetery where their members could be buried.  Odd, indeed.

This tombstone features a willow tree.  Weeping willows were often associated with mourning and in several cultures are also considered the tree of immortality.

Here's the grave of a military man. 

That is most likely his infantry division.

This man belonged to the Loyal Order of the Moose, whimsical fraternal organization founded in 1888 well, just because.  Later, a man by the name of James L. Davis got himself elected Supreme Organizer.  He thought of the idea of giving "protection" to the family of every man who joined.  This simply meant that if the gentleman became ill or disabled or died, his family would be provided for in perpetuity.  His sales pitch worked, for by 1928 there were over 650,000 active members. Compare that to the mere 247 when Davis himself joined.  Today, there are over 1.8 million. 

Here's an impressive one and the first I have seen.  The letters stand for "Hiram The Widow's Son Sent To King Solomon".  They are enclosed within a keystone.  This man is buried under the Masonic Mark of an Ancient Grand Master.

In contrast with this, some tombstones are very simple.

This is a painted cast iron tassell. I've never seen one before and I think it is the coolest thing in this very cool cemetery.