Listen: Feralia

 

​

​

Readings: 

 

 

“Three fingers tuck three incense lumps under a door,
Where a tiny mouse built a hidden path.
The hag then fastens enchanted cords with dark lead,
And rolls seven beans inside her mouth;
And she roast on the fire the sewn head of the sprat
Smeared in pitch and spitted with a bronze rod.
She also drops in wine. What remains of the wine
She or her friends drink (although she drinks more)
‘We have tied hostile tongues and our enemies mouths’
The hag shouts.”
- Ovid, Fasti

​

​

“The life of the dead is set in the memory of the living.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero, Philippics

​

​

“Many African societies divide humans into three categories: those still alive on the earth, the sasha, and the zamani. The recently departed whose time on earth overlapped with people still here are the sasha, the living-dead. They are not wholly dead, for they still live in the memories of the living, who can call them to mind, create their likeness in art, and bring them to life in anecdote. When the last person to know an ancestor dies, that ancestor leaves the sasha for the zamani, the dead. As generalised ancestors, the zamani are not forgotten but revered. Many … can be recalled by name. But they are not the living-dead. There is a difference.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me

​

​

​

Meditation: 

 

 

Lie down as dead.

Enraged in wrath, stay so.

Or stare without moving an eyelash.

Or suck something and become the sucking.

​

 

​

Contemplations: