Isolated as we are in our modern cities, in our cultures and conventions, we have lost connection with the ebb to the flow of life. Loss through death (even the thought of it) can be an agonising experience for anyone, and there is little comprehension in our modern world for how to process our grief and what support to give those grieving. People tend to shy away at the very mention of death, so toxic and threatening is it to our fragile egoic world.
Death doulas go some way to ease the transition from life to death. With a deeply graceful role to play, they support the dying one, their support network and dependents. Just like doulas helping to fulfil our responsibility when bringing new consciousness into the world, death doulas are there at the end, calm and coherent.
We are divorced from the awesome wonder that is our consciousness. We must heal our relationship with death, Yin, the moon, the ebb, winter. By facing your own death, and the death of everything and everyone you know, you will be forced to surrender to forces greater than all of humanity, forces that will make you succumb. You can cling onto what you know with increasing desperation, or you can open your heart.
The great Eleusinian Mysteries were ransacked and dismantled when pagan practices were outlawed and Europe moved into a Christian-medieval period. The sacred objects will likely never be known, libations and incantations cause vibrations worlds away now, and the deep care taken over precisely hewn stones has been worn away.
What we are left with is a sense of awe and wonder. Shadows of the annual pilgrimage of five thousand souls who spent a day walking from Athens, starved themselves, stayed up at night, to prostrate themselves before the gods, to change their relationship with death forever. Elefsina (the modern Greek port town built around the site of the Mysteries) was host to the European City of Culture 2023 and curators carefully collected testimonials and made a beautiful upgrade to the site and museum. We can piece together a basic understanding of the journey of initiates.
We also see across the world, in ancient cultures that have somewhat survived the ravages of ‘civilisation’, similar cultural practices taking place. You can visit a first-nation amazonian community and experience an ayahuasca ceremony led by their shaman. Or visit a siberian native group and take Amanita muscaria (fly agaric mushrooms) with their noaidi. But these traditions belong to their cultures and try as we might, most people who grew up and live in the modern western world will only ever be spiritual tourists.
We had this ancient wisdom too, that has been forgotten in the rush towards modernity and materialism.
Our mental health is getting worse, and our solutions (drug-based medical models) are blunt instruments that leave people behind. Interest in alternative therapies is increasing. Interest in spirituality and consciousness is likewise increasing. Reported accounts of Near Death Experiences (NDEs) are also ever-increasing thanks to the internet, and scientists are pushing boundaries to try to study the unexplainable- consciousness.
It is time for a renaissance of our spiritual heritage.
By following the lightly marked path into oblivion, and exploring how the modern world provides us with tools to guide us and curate our journey, we explore the deepest recess of what it means to be human and to lose everything.
This is the Reveries. Let’s return Home.