The Veil of Memory

 

 

carved turnips

 

There’s a big holiday at the end of the month–ghosts and candy, pumpkins and witches. We’ve come to call this now-secular holiday of Irish immigrants Hallowe’en.There is another celebration at the end of October –of the Celtic New Year, the final of three harvest festivals and the beginning of winter.

Most modern Pagans believe (and the ancient Irish believed) that there were two times of year when the barriers between the physical world and the world of spirits were thin. It is often referred to as the veil between the worlds, and those two hinge times occur at the changing of the seasons. The Irish only acknowledged two seasons–summer and winter. Summer begins at the start of May, called Beltane. Winter begins at the start of November, at Samhain. Both festivals were and are celebrated with bonfires and a notion that we can commune more easily with those who have gone on during these two liminal times.

Interestingly, October in western North Carolina is also the time of family reunions and church homecomings. A distant cousin and I had a chat about this at a family reunion earlier this month. We figured October is the one time of year when farmers can take a break and the weather is still nice enough for these all-day-eating-and-singings. We gather with our far and near kin, and eat and talk about family. We mourn those who have passed and coo over the babies.

Americans have some funny notions about ancestors, but ancestor veneration is a fairly standard worship system amongst tribal folks all over the world. There is an elegant logic to it all: you honor the earth and its spirits because that’s how you survive as a people. As tribal people, we might also have a sense of appreciation and love for those family members that have passed beyond the veil of memory. We see it happen today, at modern American funerals. There is a sense that we honor the dead by speaking well of them, by showing their pictures and telling their stories. We learn early on that one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead–almost as though it is a display of bad manners, and shows a lack of courtesy and respect.

We are a country that obsesses about genealogy but won’t go so far as to say we “worship” our ancestors. But the language we use around these actions of love and commemoration is less important that the acts themselves.

With Samhain we come to the final harvest in the agricultural year–when the herds were brought in from the high rich summer pastures. Some were kept over for another year; others were butchered and preserved for the winter. Once these ancient people got to winter, they had gathered in all the supplies to see them through, with the addition of fresh game from hunting.

It was a joyous time of plenty and sharing, as the people came in for the winter, drew in to the hearth with stories of home and family, of myth and magic. The final harvest was in. No tricks, no treats but a careful preparation for lean times. Mountain people here in the Smokies have been doing the same thing for a long time.

My family has been in these old mountains for many generations, in this and adjoining counties. My people have been farmers and city folks, have taken in sewing and put up leatherbritches. My people are buried in this land and I celebrate who they were, especially this time of year. I eat potato salad at the family reunion and respect my elders, though I am fast becoming one myself. And I honor the memory of my people at Samhain.

In spite of what you may have heard or read, as one Congressional candidate has declared, I’m you.

I’m you.