Lee Morgan

‘Long the day, and long the night, and long the wait for Arawn.’ -Welsh Traditional

Part of the relationship people had with the dead in the past involved semi-regularly sitting with the dying. It is a remarkable change in our own era how few people end up doing this until perhaps much later in their lives than they once would have. To truly come into the folk mind when it comes to death and dying we need to re-learn a lot about this process.

The way people in the past understood death was deliciously physical, actual, immediate and intimate. Animistic thinking underlies it, sometimes encoded through Christian ideas of purgatory. The idea there was a journey or ordeal of some sort the dead had to endure on the entry to their final home, fitted well older ideas. To talk more deeply about this I am going to draw on folklore fleshed out with some perspectives from the forms of Traditional Witchcraft I’ve been trained in, or exposed to, over the years. 

I don’t say this so we become aware of what we can’t have right now, but to sharpen our purpose towards what we intend to fight for and build going forward - the humanisation of the death - and the community of souls that hold each other’s hands throughout the process. To do this I will discuss three examples, one from Wales in the nineteenth century, one from Scotland and a combined one from Brittany and my own Dorset family. There are of course rich and wonderful traditions around death from all over the world, including the indigenous peoples of Australia. But I have chosen to focus on these examples simply because these practices are adjacent to, or wrapped up with my own tradition and ancestors, and I feel more experienced with them.

Wales, nineteenth century:

When the relatives and friends of the deceased person had assembled, the coffin containing the body was lifted on four men’s shoulders. These men then proceeded to tramp up and down with slow and measured steps. Meanwhile the immediate relatives would hide their faces and moan. Groans and sighs sounded dismally and occasionally a muffled scream or shriek. Hot-spiced beer, hot elderberry wine was handed around and it was unlucky not to partake. The coffin was frequently changed from one set of men to another and proceeding was carried out all night. The purpose of this strange custom was to scare away evil spirits, goblins and hobgoblins that were supposed to be lurking in dark corners of the house to be carried away the soul. These spirits, according to old folklore, would not quit the premises until the body was born away. In the words of an aged Welshman the custom was: “To bestow upon the corpse the fosterage of friends, who undertook to punish evil spirits who tried to prevent the soul from passing through the portals of death into the fair and blessed life which it panted for, and would reach in spite of any dark covering that might be placed in its way.”

When the coffin had been borne out of the house the nearest kin in the female line gave over the body a quantity of small white loaves, and sometimes placed pieces of cheese with money stuck therein, to certain aged people. The loaves were placed in a pewter dish kept only for this purpose. Then a cup of wine, mead or beer was handed around and every recipient of a loaf was expected to take a sip. Another pewter dish containing salt was sometimes placed near the coffin, and people were expected to take a pinch of it before the funeral procession left the house. The distribution of bread and salt kept the people free from the thrall of sorcery, and the body of the deceased safe from the power of evil spirits and witches. 

-Marie Trevellyn, Folklore and Folk-Stories of Wales

" Well, as for that, I am thinking I saw lights moving betwixt here and the green place over there."   "The corpse-lights?"   "Well, it is calling them that they are."   "I thought they would be out. And I have been hearing the noise of the planks — the  cracking of the boards, you know, that will  be used for the coffin to-morrow."   A long silence followed. The old women had seated themselves by the corpse, their cloaks over their heads. The room was fire-less, and was lit only by a tall wax death-candle, kept against the hour of the going.   At last Sheen began swaying slowly to and fro, crooning low the while. "I would not  be for doing that. Sheen Macarthur," said the deid-watcher, in a low voice, Init meaningly; adding, after a moment's pause, "the mice  have all left the house."   Sheen sat upright, a look half of terror, half of awe in her eyes.   "God save the sinful soul that is hiding," she whispered.   Well she knew what Maisie meant. If the soul of the dead be a lost soul it knows its doom. The house of death is the house of sanctuary. But before the dawn that follows the death-night the soul must go forth, whoso-  ever or whatsoever wait for it in the homeless,  shelterless plains of air around and beyond.  If it be well with the soul, it need have no fear; if it be not ill with the soul, it may fare  forth with surety ; but if it be ill with the soul,  ill will the going be. Thus is it that the spirit of an evil man cannot stay and yet dare not   go; and so it strives to hide itself in secret places anywhere, in dark channels and blind walls. And the wise creatures that live near man smell the terror, and flee. Maisie repeated the saying of Sheen ; then, after a  silence, added :   "Adam Blair will not lie in his grave for a  year and a day, because of the sins that are upon him. And it is knowing that, they are, here. He will be the Watcher of the Dead for a year and a day."  

-Fiona Macleod, or William Sharpe, in The Sin Eater and The Washer at the Ford

Brittany, France and in Dorset, England

It Breton tradition whilst the corpse was resting at home the windows all had to be opened. Whilst this is a tradition in many other places given the term ‘Celtic’ there is some specific law relating to creatures. Insects in particular but also birds that enter the house are considered to be manifestations of the soul. If they came in prior to death they represented the free soul of the individual already separating from their body in preparation for death. For this reason after death, during the nine nights where the soul was still doing the work of birthing itself into its deeper state, it was forbidden to leave cups of water out over night or honey, or anything that might attract an insect that could then drown in it. This was thought of as a peril to the soul as the dead were naturally attracted to water in a way that may hark back to pre-Christian ideas of wells, lakes and other sacred water sources as doorways to the Underworld. 

The Bretons have a word for the collectivity of the dead that also refers to the place they go to for their rest: Anaon –very similar to the Welsh term ‘Annwn’. There is also the Ankou who some see as a personification of Death, appearing as an old gaunt man. However, in some regions the Ankou is the last person to die in a year who remains until another replaces them and is a kind of caretaker who oversees the newly dead, but whether man, woman or child still appears as a gaunt bony male. The Ankou fulfills a similar function to the ‘watcher of the dead’ that Fiona Macleod makes mention of. This tradition also existed in Wales where an animal was often buried first in a new graveyard because it was believed that the first to be buried in a new site would be stuck watching over the rest of the graveyard for an undisclosed amount of time. Being the Watcher of the Dead was clearly not seen as an enviable task, as in Scotland it is assigned to an evil man who cannot rest, and in Wales dogs and horses were buried to prevent it happening to a human. Nonetheless these watchers are very important and helpful allies to witches and necromancers.

In my own family, which until the last generation were rural people traces of very similar beliefs continued actively in Dorset until my grandmother’s generation. As she was approaching the time of the yielding of the breath my grandmother had an omen come where a robin flew into her home. She immediately took it very ill and declared that death was on the way and soon after she had a turn. Believing this firmly she went about settling her business, calling people she hadn’t checked in with in some time and otherwise making preparations. Within a couple of months she was found to have died in her sleep in the front room whilst taking a nap. A struggle ensued with regulations because our family insisted that she must stay in her house at least for the death night with a window open to allow her spirit to leave without confusion.  On the day of the funeral when the carriage appeared (black horses with plumes, no expense spared even though we are not wealthy people) two robins, a male and a female appeared at the window. All of the elders in the family stopped talking and bowed their heads while the birds were present. The funeral procession stopped traffic in Weymouth and took a specific direction and then paused by the beach so my grandmother to say goodbye to the ocean. When we were putting her in the ground another robin landed on the gravestone of Nan’s mother right beside where we were interring her. My oldest Uncle declared: ‘Look, there’s Shiela in her bird.’

I tell this comparative story because it shows how fragments of the literal belief that the spirits of the dead have some immediate connection to, or immersion in, the natural world, survived well into the twentieth-century and were widespread. When doing the decomposition and skeletal fire meditation from week one this connection with insects, animals and liminality between the physical body and other lives brings a special poignancy to the practice.

Death was, and should be, a communal event, it requires people to carry you, clean you, and sit with you all through the death night with a vigil candle.

Not only was it communal, how pleasantly it went depended on what you’d done for your community during life, in one example you had to have given away shoes in brand new condition to the poor to have shoes yourself when you had to cross the thorny zone of purgatory. Of course if you were Welsh you didn’t need to worry because your drunk friends would carry you all night! Which leads us on to the understanding that physical ritual actions were considered to occur in more than one world. So while they were carrying your coffin you were also getting a lift in the otherworld. This is why the coffin-ways and the crossroads where the coffin would often stop on its journey were so important, as it mapped the way. As your body went, so your soul journeyed. As an item symbolic of you went, so your soul journeyed.

The whole house and the landscape around where the death occurred were relevant and connected to the process, the inside of the walls, the mirrors in the house, the beehives, the local rodents and the paths and coffin ways you were expected to walk, as well as small aerial animals who may well be identified as the spirit leaving.

Being received into the local environment could still be very unchristian in emphasis even in recent times in rural communities where transformation into an animal or bird was still taken seriously. 

Omens aren’t just a sign or a ‘heads up’ about death but a door opening, a courtship, an interaction, a communing with the local natural world that is opening a door for you. Folklore can look a bit grim when you see the number of things attributed as omens of death, until we begin to shift our view of Death. When I spoke to my grandmother for the last time after her death omen came her tone was a mixture of sentimental (unusually tender for her) and strangely excited, like a new fire of vision was around her. Omens aren’t a doomful foretelling for people immersed with place, tradition, and the collectivity of the dead, they are the beginning of a new dance with the land and the ancestors drawing someone to a deepening of consciousness.

Most of us know about sin eating but less of us understand that the moment of death and the time where the dead are transitioning to the otherworld (usually reckoned at nine days) is also a time of great magical Virtue. The people who come to hang around the laid out body of the dead are able to absorb some of this Virtue, which can be for good or ill depending on how it is processed. Something we will speak about a great deal more next week.

It is greatly better to be sponsored by others and to have done well by the community in life than to undertake death alone with debts to other on your head. 

What are the needs of the dying as reflected in folk practices?

Community sponsorship. Prior to death the person about to yield the breath requires knowledge that their community is with them in spirit, even if they can’t be with them in body. To know there will be an honouring of their memory, not just talk of their good deeds but something carried on in the world of the living that they started, whether it be a garden, a recipe book, or an heirloom. 

Wrapping up of unfinished business including the need to communicate a hidden story they may never told anyone or a project half-finished. Even seemingly unimportant things can make it hard for someone to die. My great-great aunt wanted to reach one hundred years old. She was ninety-nine and very sick. Before she went she asked my grandmother: am I one hundred yet? For she had lost all sense of time in the mists she was wandering into. My grandmother lied and said she was, after which she died within hours. Whether or not in this case it was right to lie to her, the power of an unfinished intention is made clear here. This is why my English grandmother set her affairs in order. She failed to mention where she’d hidden her diamond rings though, and had to return within the nine days after her death to show me where they were hidden, so they could be passed to my mother. Hidden objects are a surprisingly common reason for hauntings.

A return to the land or a place of meaningful context where their physical body is settled as they die into the living world in some way. Some people need to go home to die, or else to strongly visualise walking those paths back to the land they recognise. Things go best if the dying have a place they visualise themselves becoming one with.

An eventual re-returning (after a period of time traditional to their culture or to the manner in which they died) to the community in an altered form. If they can be retrieved this is taken as a sign that they have confronted and overcome the limits of their human identity when alive and are now seen more like collective ancestor powers. If they never answer again this should be accepted.

If one has contact with a dying person it is possible to get the jump on many of these needs by asking them questions like: ‘do you have something you’ve never told anyone that you want to get off your chest? I promise I’ll never repeat it.’ You can address fears around dying and tell positive stories that are harmonious with the beliefs of the dying person about the state of great ecstatic release experienced by those who have near death experiences. You can let them now what you and the community admire about them and what stories you will pass on about them into the hands of the future generations. If they are spiritually open you can invite them to a guided meditation where you get them to imagine becoming part of the trees and stones and life of the place they most love, or flying away as a winged being. A practitioner and healer Shaun Leyland passed me a method that can be used for people who don’t have a religious orientation. Shaun would encourage the dying person to find a picture, usually a soothing landscape image or a photo of somewhere they loved going in life. He would hang that picture up on the wall for them or put it in a frame near their bed so they could see it. It didn’t matter what the image was of so long as it made the person feel happy and safe. During the lead-up to the person’s death Shaun would encourage them through guided visualisations to imagine that they were walking into the image and meandering down a path and to gradually create in their mind, through repeated visualisations where that path leads and how it finally results in the crossing of some kind of threshold or gate, on the other side of which were dead family members waiting for them. The idea behind this practice is that whilst the person thinks they are only ‘imagining’ this nice scenario, Shaun was quietly training their mind in the ability to project its own reality far enough to pass through to a happy place on the Otherside and bypass the confusing miasma of other shades that gather in hospitals. Ideally at time of death the ‘death coach’ would be there, soothingly talking the person through the visualisation one last time. 

Traditionally speaking most of the four examples listed above agree on the notion that at least on the death night the body of the person must not be left alone. There is a vigil candle and at least one watcher, or in the Welsh example a great many carriers. Even in my twenty-first century example from my Dorset folk my family would not hear of my grandmother’s body being removed from the house on the first night or left alone. The reasons given for this are variant but similar, the Welsh feared that hobgoblins and even witches would grab the soul as they tried to make their great crossing alone in darkness, or even damage the body in some way. The Scottish story says: ‘before the dawn that follows the death-night the soul must go forth, whosever or whatsoever wait for it in the homeless, shelterless plains of air around and beyond.’  The Breton lore lists the danger of falling into water or honey in the form of an insect, and in my Dorset example the reason had been forgotten a bit, except that my Aunt wailed: ‘but she’ll never find her way home!’ when they wanted to remove her mother’s body.

These principles can be applied to the death of other things and beings not just people, old modes of society must be mourned, buried, and eventually allowed to provide compost, but not building bricks, for the creation of the new. Learning to cover the spiritual needs of anything crossing over helps us to acquire the death-midwifing mindset for when we do face holding the role of guide or vigil-holder at a human death. After-all the most important part of the mindset is the same regardless of what is dying: you must be capable of modeling the things you would like to happen for the one who is making their passing. All creatures are at there most communal near the edges of death, they are in a liminal state, highly attuned to connection, -if all is going well. So the very worst thing you could be when sitting with the dying is afraid. If you fear your own death, quite simply, you won’t be able to light the way properly for someone else. This is why the meditation in last week’s practical and building on that is so important. Your calmness will be contagious, so would your agitation. It might seem faintly glib to talk about ‘practicing’ midwifing the death of things by starting on something like ‘this entire era’ or one phase of life to another, but if we’ve learned anything from this age of plague it is that some people are more afraid of changing their lifestyle than they are facing physical death! You might even discover within yourself, as you poke this spot, that whilst you aren’t terribly afraid to die you are in fact afraid of losing other forms of certainty, -the chance to realize items on your bucket list, or the familiar way of life you have.