by Glitzqueen (aka The Other Katherine Harris)
Featured writer
Dandelion Salad
Glitzqueen’s blog
Nov. 1, 2007
All Hallows Day – November 1, 2007
Only those who wronged the dead need fear at All Hallowtide, according to atavisms ranging from Celtic to Aztec. We’re meant to rejoice with and honor them on this festal date, variously called Samhain, All Hallows, All Saints and the first of of two Dias de los Muertos. Like the other major festivals, it starts with an eve (poetically contracted to e’en from evening and then to Halloween), thus evoking the primeval knowledge that darkness always comes first. As recently as the 800s, when All Hallows entered the church calendar, liturgical days still began officially at sunset.
In some traditions, this is a time outside time: a 24-hour rift between the year’s light half, which ended two sunsets ago, and its dark half, which commences tonight. It’s a brief span of turning that belongs to no season, anymore than a shoreline belongs to sea or earth, so past and future intermingle now and some glimpse their destinies. As veils between worlds thin to a shimmer, strangers are welcomed at our doors and spirits come home like butterflies to Michoacán.
” ‘We must remember them’, say the elders about the Dead. ‘They want us, they love us,’ ” writes Vera Cala in a luscious overview of the celebrations in Mexico.
And why wouldn’t we welcome our cherished departed: the sainted grannies, fabulous aunts, generous mentors, precious friends and even the older lovers from whom we learned to love, no matter how badly things may have ended? If this room is thick with their spirits, I couldn’t be more pleased.
But what of the dead whom we’ve wronged? It isn’t difficult to picture a Titian skyful of ghosts over the White House and Capitol Dome: skeletons in Iraqi garb and U.S. Army uniforms, plus countless others killed more casually: those slain in conflicts we ignore, seeing no profit in meddling; those fatally infected due to the prissy lies of theocrats; those poisoned by freely toxic trade; those buried alive in mines no longer held to safety standards; those drowned or crushed in infrastructure collapses; and those who starved, froze, succumbed to curable diseases or were despairing suicides, because we exalt the greed that denies them survival.
I seem to hear the prophecies they’re reciting. To Shrub and His Thugs: “You’re untouchable. Grab still more power and grind their faces in it. Bomb the shit out of Iran and Cuba, too, if the mood strikes. Fuck the whining peasants. Soon your gang will own the world, anyway.” To the Dems in Washington: “Don’t make waves, stay in the center and you can’t lose next year. The neocons are hanging themselves.” To the rest of us: “There’s nothing much to worry about. The Fed will fix this financial mess and Democrats will start turning things around after the next election. There’ll be jobs again, fairer taxes, even healthcare finally. So watch some TV or maybe go shopping; you deserve it.”
As Heccate, the expert on bringing hubristic mortals down, told her sous-chef witches:
He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear
His hopes ‘bove wisdom, grace, and fear:
And you all know, security
Is mortal’s chiefest enemy.
Meanwhile their cauldron boils and bubbles a hell-broth worthy of MacBeth. For eye of newt, toe of frog, wool of bat, scale of dragon, gall of goat, finger of birth-strangl’d babe and baboon’s blood, read RUIN spelled in fresh headlines like these:
(Ed. Note: I added links to various posts and/or categories to the following.)
Mideast wars may last 50 years
To Implement Policy, Bush to Turn to Administrative Orders
Bush Defends Mukasey over Waterboarding
CIA Chief Defends Extraordinary Rendition
Rumsfeld Urged Staff To “Keep Elevating The Threat”
Strengthening of Consumer Agency Opposed by Its Boss
Bush Balks at Revised Child Health Bill
Drug firms try to bribe doctors with cars
Chrysler to cut up to 12,000 jobs
Foreclosure filings soar in 3Q
Katrina’s Aftermath: The Continuing Crisis
More Veterans Are Uninsured
Crude Oil Rises to Record Above $96
Survey Ties Biofuels to High Food Costs and Hunger
Indeed darkness is falling all around us. How much darker will it have to get before we change enough to merit better?
Dandelion Salad 