Caitlin Matthews was a trustee of the Pagan Hospice and Funeral Trust, later the Voyager Trust, and wrote the following in 1997.
The Old Remembrance Sunday ceremony celebrated nationally only recalls those who died as a result of war, a fact that has worried many people because it neglects the greatest number of our ancestors. It is not that we wish to forget soldiers, civilians or others who died during wartime, but that we wish to include all out ancestors – even the ones we may not feel so proud or happy about – so that they are included in our memories and prayers at this important time of change and renewal.
The following format is a suggested one only: it includes ourselves as well as out ancestors and offers opportunities to clear away what is outworn in order that the renewing tide can recycle all burdens that are clogging up our lives. Please use what you will of it, adding or changing details for your personal need and circumstances. The wording has been purposefully planned to be inclusive of all spiritual traditions. You can use this format as a personal celebration or you can adapt it for a small group celebration, according to need.
You may wish to set up a simple shrine. This might consist of photographs of dead family and friends, some flowers or plants, a candle or objects from the natural world that feel ancestral to you. Our prayers and ritual paters need not be formal. Remember your ancestors as human beings, speak to them the way you would if they stood in your room with you now. The most important thing is that we bring our love and perhaps forgiveness.
Finding new ways of celebrating and honouring our ancestors is a challenge but the rewards of such remembrance are far-encompassing. Think of ways in which you can publicly mark your own ancestors: tending family graves and decorating them at Samhain, marking and hanging your own wreaths on your own trees and bushes in the garden, setting up a votive light in a window, organising small public gatherings among neighbours and friends, are a few of the ways we can bring our public spiritual and ancestral celebrations to a wider and more public forum.
Remember we will be the ancestors to our descendants. Whatever patterns we lay down now will help change attitudes to death and bring the ancestors back to our community in warming in loving ways.
Song of Samhain
I am the hallow-tide of all souls passing,
I am the bright releaser of all pain,
I am the quickener of the fallen seedcase,
I am the glance of snow, the strike of rain.
I am the hollow of the winter twilight,
I am the hearth-fire and the welcoming bread
I am the curtained awning of the pillow,
I am the unending wisdoms golden thread.
Prayer for Change
Weaver of life, Receiver of Death, you teach us time and eternity and the blessings of change. In the silence of our meeting, reveal to me how I also need to change . . . sacred silence . . . your merciful compassion is my guide.
Remembrance of All Inspirers
I remember all in the realm of light, the dear ones and the holy ones whose vocation is a template for my own, whose life-ways have opened my own pathways, especially . . . . May they enjoy concord, joy and felicity.
Prayer for Release From Burdens
As the year falls into darkness, I ask for my souls teacher to help me recognise what is finished, not to manipulate the powers of life and death to keep alive what is really worn out this year. I relinquish the fear and pride which may have restricted the flow of universal vitality into my life. May all the worn out things that I have harboured find their true rest and eternal home.
Prayer for Ancestral Release
Wise Women, Wise Men, Holy Ones of all generations, I call to you to send a blessing upon all who are stuck in the past and walk the spirals of an in-turning maze: may your wisdom lead them by fresh and fruitful pathways to the blessing of the present moment. Please show to me the ancestral patterns which I inherit, the pathways of the maze, which I sometimes tread myself. Help me to be aware that these pathways are not my own patterns, that I have my own way to walk.
Thanksgiving for Ancestral Wisdom
I give thanks for the golden links of lore that our ancestors remembered and which spill from our hands; for the treasures of tradition, for the rich heritage of wisdom, for the ancestral experience which I inherit in every cell of my body.
Prayer for Soul’s Purpose
Glad Giver, True Taker, as the raven stoops upon decay and cleanses the earth, so also do you take to yourself all scattered beings, keeping safe their souls. In the mercy of your silence I stand between life and death. May the life-blood in my veins bring me to perfect mindfulness of my souls purpose.
Prayers for the Passing of the Dead
Into the hands of the Grandparents of Life and Death I commit the souls of all who have passed from this life. I remember my own dear ones . . . May they find peace, clarity and restoration.
Consideration of Deaths Prospect
I consider the moment of my own death. May I be well prepared and worthy to enter the Land of the Living. May my life be lived with virtue and integrity. May my soul friends help me prepare for my death, however unlikely it now seems, that my dear ones are not weighed down with cares and responsibilities that I could have spared them.
I make frank appraisal of the things which I have left undone which must be completed before I die.
I consider also the legacy of wisdom I bequeath to my decedents.
Honouring Our Life
Glad Giver, True Taker, you hold the threads of life within your hands. Both the greatest and the smallest creature is in your care. As I enter the cave of your silence I am remade, as the day is reborn of the night.
Conclusion
I light this candle to shine as a beacon for those who go homeward to their death.
May all who have died without anyone to mourn them or bid them farewell,
be blessed and released from their wanderings.
May Holy Ones and Wise Ones from the Realm of Peace guide all wandering souls
to their true abode.
May all who have died violently and without opportunity to prepare their passing,
be peaceful and enter into the treasury of souls.
I raise this light for all who fear death.
May they learn that the dark is no darkness at all, that the end of this life is but the beginning of another way of living.
The blessing of love, light and life
Be upon the Ancestors
Now and forever.
http://www.hallowquest.org.uk/hallowquest-caitlin-matthews.html
I light this candle to shine as a beacon for those who go homeward to their death.
May all who have died without anyone to mourn them or bid them farewell,
be blessed and released from their wanderings.
May Holy Ones and Wise Ones from the Realm of Peace guide all wandering souls
to their true abode.
May all who have died violently and without opportunity to prepare their passing,
be peaceful and enter into the treasury of souls.
I raise this light for all who fear death.
May they learn that the dark is no darkness at all, that the end of this life is but the beginning of another way of living.
The blessing of love, light and life
Be upon the Ancestors
Now and forever.
http://www.hallowquest.org.uk/hallowquest-caitlin-matthews.html
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