Where is the duende? Through the empty archway a wind of the spirit enters, blowing insistently over the heads of the dead, in search of new landscapes and unknown accents: a wind with the odour of a child’s saliva, crushed grass, and medusa’s veil, announcing the endless baptism of freshly created things. – Federico Garcia … Read more“Where is the Duende?”
There are no “signs” except those we assign.
Click here to listen to my recent discussion with Stephen Bradford Long on the Sacred Tension podcast, centered on the themes of mythmaking, poetic faith and nontheistic ritual/religion.
Also removed the stained glass lamp, until the days start getting shorter again.
The next rendition of my Art of Ritual course for the Morbid Academy (the online teaching branch of the popular Morbid Anatomy enterprise) begins on April 20th: The intangible culture of death ceremony became increasingly bureaucratized throughout the Industrial Age, as hospitals, businesses, religious institutions and civic authorities overtook what had previously been intimate, participatory … Read moreThe Art of Ritual: Changing Ways of Life and Death (April/May 2022)
I read this story sometime in the 1980s and I haven’t been able to recall, nor trace its provenance. I’m retelling it here as best as I remember it, because I think that it contains a seed of wisdom regarding the Way of Life and Death. There was once a wise and aged monk who … Read moreThe Monk, the Disciple and the Temple Gates at Midnight
The Shadow Dance is an elaboration of the memento mori ergo carpe diem mudra into a whole-body exercise. The original dance was a spontaneous creation of mine during a visit to the Rotokawau/Virginia Lake Reserve in Whanganui, New Zealand, sometime in the early 1990s. My then-girlfriend was a dancer much inspired by nature and although … Read moreShadow Dancing: an Exercise in Shifting Perspectives
When a baby is born, we celebrate a new life in the world and its potential; when a person dies, rather than mourning the loss of an impossible continued potential, we can mourn their death and then celebrate the life that they lived. A bell cannot be un-rung. That, of course, casts primacy on the … Read moreFirst, cry because it’s over; then, smile because it happened
At midnight on November 1st, 2021 I reconsecrated my totenpass amulet in front of the public shrine at my local park. The rite had to be somewhat curtailed because of the presence of a late-night dog walker and the sudden appearance of a police patrol car – as far as I know, the park is … Read moreTotenpass Reconsecration Ritual