Twilight Path Studies
Rituals
"Death teaches us to live; it gives us a boundary to map our living within. Death's hammer breaks through the mirror separating us from light."
--David Meltzer
Throughout my book, Walking the Twilight Path, readers engage in a number of guided meditations and rituals to help them explore their relation with the energies of death and change. On this site, you will encounter additional meditations and guided journeys that will help to supplement your exploration of this powerful, transformative path.
Meditation on Letting Go
For this exercises, you will go to a cemetery and seek out a grave that really stand out to you. Pick an overcast afternoon when the day is not too hot or too sunny. I always love doing this sort of work in the fall and early winter, when the ground is covered with drifts of dead leaves.
Lay down atop the grave and fold your arms atop your chest, in the aspect of one dead. The close your eyes and reach down, down, six feet down, until you can sense the dead slumbering beneath. Imagine that you are that dead person, long since buried in the ground. Think about what it has been like for the abandoned flesh to spend so many years within the earth. Is the spirit here now? Does it bear any resemblance whatsoever to those damp and naked bones? How much of ourselves is really in these bodies that we wear? How much is revealed about who and what we really are, once the flesh we've grown so used to seeing is stripped away?
Reach down and down into the ground beneath you, down to where those naked bones lie and ask the memory of this person to help you learn the art of letting go.
In the end, all things tied to this flesh must be surrendered. This includes even your perception of yourself, that face you have grown to know through a lifetime of mirrors. That face is not you. The memory lingering in the bones beneath you will remind you of that. You are fluid. You are subtle and constantly changing. That thread of spirit, that soul that truly makes you who you are is eternal only because it changes before it can decay. Worms cannot touch it, mirrors cannot capture it, and yet, somewhere lingering upon the brittle bones you will leave behind there will be a knowledge of it. A memory, fleeting, like a ghost. Reach for this in the bones beneath you and the spirit around you. Seek the understanding he had to die to learn.
Words of the Dead Child: A Ritual for Miscarriage
Gather solemnly together and light a candle for the lost life. Prepare a letter or short poem ahead of time from the perspective of the child. This should thank the parents for making a place, but it should also apologize because the child was not ready to come yet. Have someone speak as the child, as a speaker for the dead in the ceremony. Have the parents, grandparents, etc., respond to this speech by the departed life. End the ceremony with promises of love and acceptance should the child wish to come into their lives again.
Word of the Dead Child
I'm sorry that I had to go.
I started to come into your lives,
But then I knew that the time was not right.
I know that you would love me,
And I know that you would do anything to give me life.
But I cannot come, not now.
I thought I was ready, but I really must wait.
I am still here, waiting, on the otherside.
I am near to you, and I love you already.
When the time is right, I want to come back.
Save a space for me, in your hearts and in your lives.
But for now, I must say goodbye.
