Stephanie Pouliotte writes for Geek’d-Out! on the origins and various renditions of Ray Bradbury’s classic Halloween story: It’s an important holiday after all, one that allows us to freely explore our obsession with the macabre and the unexplained, to experience “the rawness and nearness and excitement of death” as Bradbury put it. And children, he … Read moreRay Bradbury’s “The Halloween Tree”
Taking place during late August of 2024, the inaugural Sky Meadow Mystery School was a free, week-long, residential immersion into wholesome permaculture practice and the mythopoetic mysteries of Life and Death. As an experiment in countercultural community-building, the Mystery School was also a time and place to learn new skills and perspectives. One of our … Read moreThe Sky Meadow Mystery School, Harvest 2024 in a few words and many images
Part of my morning ritual walk, which is undertaken partly for exercise, partly as a kind of moving meditation practice, is to navigate this stretch of several hundred feet of shoreline adjacent to the local river. Because of its position, slightly downstream of the point where two branches of the river meet, tree trunks washed … Read moreWalking the boulder field
A conversation about this upcoming residential retreat event in Vermont, which will combine permaculture praxis with mythopoetic art, ritual and philosophy on the memento mori ergo carpe diem theme.
Aug 21, 2024, 2:00 PM – Aug 28, 2024, 2:00 PM The Sky Meadow Mystery School is a free, week-long residential immersion into wholesome work and Deep Play in Vermont’s beautiful Northeast Kingdom. Our theme at the 2024 Harvest Mystery School is memento mori ergo carpe diem; “remember death and therefore seize the day.” For … Read moreThe Sky Meadow Mystery School: Harvest 2024
The good people of Cicely, Alaska enjoy their eccentric, Day of the Dead-inflected version of Thanksgiving in this scene from Northern Exposure (1992). As explained by Marilyn Whirlwind (Elaine Miles), the indigenous people of Cicely do not regard the orthodox Thanksgiving as a day of celebration. In fact, they carry a lot of ancestral anger … Read moreThanksgiving/Day of the Dead in Cicely, Alaska (Northern Exposure, 1992)
Recommended viewing by actor/filmmaker Mark Webber: “Where do we go when we die?” It is this simple, but unanswerable question from a precocious three-year old that kicks off an epic journey as the small lad leads his family on an imaginative adventure through fantastic lands filled with mythic creatures.
Elizabeth Bruenig writes for The Atlantic: Halloween is no approximation of the firsthand experience of death. But it does foreground the visceral fear of death (occasionally via viscera itself). And it offers an opportunity to engage playfully with the idea of dying, through community celebration rather than solemn contemplation—or jarring confrontations with violence in headlines … Read more“This Halloween, Let’s Really Think About Death”
Today is the first day of Fall in the Northern Hemisphere, and the seasons are visibly (and in other ways) shifting. From my own perspective, within my own Way, this marks the unofficial beginning of Memoria; a festival of harvest and remembrance before the onset of the winter months. That festival will “officially” begin when … Read moreMemoria 2023
I suspect that, had the technology been available, the Shugenja of ancient Japan might well have devised an experience akin to the drop tower towards training themselves to die with grace. As a rider, you have a choice, in the liminal moments before the drop. The drop itself, of course, is happening whether you want … Read moreDrop Tower Shugendō: a memento mori ritual