The autumn equinox is passed, the point in the year when the nights are longer than the days. Across the higher latitudes of the Northern hemisphere many mammals are fattening up in readiness for hibernation, and whilst there is a part of me that craves doing something similar, there is a part that longs for the biting cold of the short winter days and long, dark winter nights. As the year turns from the equinox towards Samhain or Halloween and then on towards Yule and Christmas my mind turns inwards in contemplation of the year that is ending and the family and friends who have passed on through this life into the great unknown. The period around the end of October has long been associated with a transitional period between the living world and the world of the dead. It was the period in which Persephone began her six months in the underworld with Hades in the Greek legends and the time in which the Roman oracles would communicate with ancestors on behalf of prominent families.
Many belief systems involve a need to consider the feelings of the dead, the tradition of appeasing ancestors in Chinese traditional beliefs, the veneration of ancestors are stores of knowledge in australian Aboriginal life, even the mummification of peruvian, tibetan and egyptian leaders and their retinues and the re-visiting of burial sites and the prayers and magical practices found across the northern European bronze and iron age cultures. The idea that there is something beyond the live that we are aware of is almost ubiquitous, and seems to be largely unaffected by improvements in our scientific understanding of the Universe and our place in it.
It seems odd that so many of us live our lives as though there will be something more once we have finished this life, and that what we do in this life has some bearing on what follows. This seems a strange way of living a life. I suspect it would probably be better to live this life to the full, engaging with it completely and treating it as though it was the only chance we get, and leaving whatever comes next to it's own devices, but it seems for the vast majority of us, that just isn't an option....
Many belief systems involve a need to consider the feelings of the dead, the tradition of appeasing ancestors in Chinese traditional beliefs, the veneration of ancestors are stores of knowledge in australian Aboriginal life, even the mummification of peruvian, tibetan and egyptian leaders and their retinues and the re-visiting of burial sites and the prayers and magical practices found across the northern European bronze and iron age cultures. The idea that there is something beyond the live that we are aware of is almost ubiquitous, and seems to be largely unaffected by improvements in our scientific understanding of the Universe and our place in it.
It seems odd that so many of us live our lives as though there will be something more once we have finished this life, and that what we do in this life has some bearing on what follows. This seems a strange way of living a life. I suspect it would probably be better to live this life to the full, engaging with it completely and treating it as though it was the only chance we get, and leaving whatever comes next to it's own devices, but it seems for the vast majority of us, that just isn't an option....
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