Death, Grief, and Mourning:
Fear not Death; for the sooner we die, the longer shall we be immortal.
~Benjamin Franklin
More often than not, death comes quickly and unexpectedly, as many would say “like a thief in the night”. Even when we know that death is soon at hand, rarely are we ever truly prepared for it? Death is the time when most people turn to their local religious/spiritual advisor, and for many cultures, even today, that means turning to a Witch for help. For most Witches being a Witch requires you to be around death and dieing a lot more than the average person. People turning to Witches for help during this difficult time, has led to many Witches thinking of themselves as priests and priestesses. While this title is properly only reserved for the rare few Witches who perform the duties of a priest or priestess, most of today’s American-style, Wicca -type Witches like to carry around the title of priest or priestess The question is though: how many of them are able to uphold that title? When you come down to the reality of it, very few even know what the title means, let alone are prepared to perform to tasks their “chosen title” requires of them. Sadly most of these Witches think of priesthood as a glamorous job where you get to float around in fancy robes and cloaks, give commands to groups of people (your coven),and cast spells–any fool can do all this, and they don’t have to be a priest or priestess to do it. What does it mean to be a priest? What does it mean to be a priestess?
A priest (or priestess) by definition is one who preaches spiritual truths to the world, administers to (helps) the sick, widowed, orphaned ,homeless, and needy, provides comfort and spiritual counseling, and can legally perform wedding and funeral services. Pretending to be a priest or priestess when you are not, is a serious violation of the law–it is considered fraud–and you could be fined if caught, or if someone was harmed as a result of your pretending to be something you aren’t, you could spend time in prison for it. Fraud is a very serious offense in the eyes of the law. The law doesn’t care how cute and glamorous you think it is to call yourself a priest or priestess – -in the eyes of the law it is no different than had you declared yourself a police officer–fraud is fraud, not matter what title you pick to pretend that you have–you are still a phony and committing fraud.
Therefore, for those of you who like throwing around your title of priest or priestess everywhere you go to everyone you meet; you had best be prepared to answer to your calling, when someone tells you they have a job for you. (By “calling”, you also mean that you are a volunteer–you are not paid to be a priest/ess.) Let us look at things that priests and Priestesses are asked to do by the general public. You will be asked to visit the sick, at home, in hospitals, and in nursing homes, to provide healing, comfort, spiritual guidance, and emotional support. You will be called in to pray over the dieing, to bless them for healing, to “preach” to them about spiritual things, or to read them their last rights, you are after all a priest/tess now. You’ll be reading lots of last rights, and standing by holding hands with your client as they die, from now on, so get used to it. One thing that few teenaged Witches understand is that being a priest/ess requires you to have a very strong emotional and mental makeup-something that very few teenagers have–you will be around the dead and dieing more often than the healthy and living. Some dieing patients may even ask you to act as a witness, when they are drawing up their will.
Do not think that once your client has died that you can sigh with relief “now that that’s over with”–it’s not over–staying at your clients side while they die is just the beginning of your job for them, now comes the hard part; hard for most people, that is. For most American-style Wicca -type “new” Witches, once they reach this point, once they realize what comes next–more often than not, they have a serious, rethinking of their career, and give up Witchcraft entirely. This is why you see so very many “teenage” Witches, but so very, very few who go on to become lifelong “adult” Witches. After your client has died, you will be asked to prepare the body for burial, and/or perform the funeral service (Don’t forget that you are, after all, a Priest/Priestess-you must be prepared to perform the duties of your chosen calling–it’s to late to back out now). How you prepare the dead and the type of funeral you perform will vary depending on your own religious beliefs and the beliefs of the dead or their family.
You will have to become quite proficient in your knowledge of the funeral and burial traditions of all of your local churches. Before and after the funeral, you will most likely perform mourning ceremonies as well. Mourning ceremonies are not often seen in America or Europe, but they are found in nearly every other culture, and are especially common among native Witch traditions, especially those from traditional Voodoo cultures.
After the funeral, your job is still not done-now you will have to provide spiritual counseling for the friends and family of your dead client. While a priest/ess Witch, like any other church leader priest, is not required to be a psychologist or psychiatrist in order to provide therapy, the state laws do require you to know and abide by the same confidentially laws that a psychotherapist must obey, including having a confidentiality statement and privacy agreement written up and signed. Therapy requires you to be able to sit quietly and listen to someone talk, without interrupting him or her or losing eye contact with him or her. It requires you to put your own emotions, feelings, beliefs, and prejudices aside and focus entirely on helping this person cope with their loss. Therapy requires you to be a compassionate, caring, selfless individual who is sensitive to the feelings of others and able to sacrifice your own time in order to spend it comforting others.
Other things that you may be asked to do as a priest/ess, may include such things as pre-marriage counseling, performing weddings, couples counseling, divorce counseling, group therapy, healing services, exorcisms, blessing babies and children. If you want the government to believe that you are a priest/ess, and not a fraud, than you will be required, by state law, to preach in front of a congregation-even if you just stand on a street corner and preach your religion to the commuters. You don’t have to have a church building or be a Christian or Jewish to be a legal priest/ess, but you must preach, and it must be something spiritual, and for the betterment of the souls of mankind, if you don’t want the government arresting you for fraud; and many-but not all-states require you to be formally ordained, by a church leader.
As you can see, there is allot more to being a Witch, than wearing “witchy” clothes, mixing herbs, and casting spells; and there’s allot more to being a priest/ess than just being your “average” Witch. Rituals and ceremonies make up a large and very important part of Witchcraft. I don’t mean those senseless chanting, washing, dancing around the bonfire at midnight, and sacrificial rituals of Hollywood, the Church of Satan, or the Gardeneraian Wiccans –when I say rituals and ceremonies, I mean the real rituals of Witchcraft– exorcisms, blessing babies, performing weddings, preparing the dead, funerals, and mourning ceremonies. These things make up the heart and soul of Witchcraft, and without them, you have nothing but a person in funny clothes who casts spells. I have often heard of many a teenager who proudly proclaimed that they were a Witch/priest/priestess, but I’ve yet to ever see a teenager prepare a dead body, perform a funeral, cast out ghosts and demons, reform a wedding, give counsel to couples, or counsel a grieving family–in fact I can’t even think of anyone who would even ask a teenager to do any of these things. Most often the teenagers who make these claims are just Wiccas seeking a thrill, showing off, or rebelling against their parents, and not real Witches, priests, or Priestesses A teenage Witch may, out of necessity bury a parent, pet, friend, or sibling, and/or provide counseling to their own family, but this is extraordinarily rare. Taking this in mind, it is foolish to believe that there even is such a thing as a teenage Witch. Teenage Witch in training, yes, a Witch’s teenage apprentice, yes, but a real teenage Witch/priest/priestess? I don’t think so. Teenagers can most certainly train to be Witches; they can start out with the small stuff-the herbs and spells-and often do. As Witches in training, they certainly have the right to call themselves Witches, but to go so far as to use the title of priest or priestess, so early on in their training, is nothing more than vanity. Nearly every adult Witch started out as a teenager studying to become a full-fledged Witch, but very few jump in full swing from the start, and most are not ready to take on the duties of a priest/ess at all, ever in their entire lifetime. Unless they grew up in a funeral home, very few people, teenager or adult, are prepared to take on the responsibility of acting as a Witch priest/ess.
As for myself, I did not grow up in a funeral home, but I have seen over 500 deaths of friends and relatives in the past 24 years. The Great Spirit threw me into the art of Witchcraft, unwillingly at first. Unlike most Witches in America today, I did not choose Witchcraft as my calling or career of choice. What I wanted to do with my life, it would seem, was unimportant, as necessity and nature had its own ideas for my life. The Great Spirit has set me on this path in life, and set me there very early on. There was a time when I feared death, Death came so often, hardly a month in my life has gone by, and that Death has touched. Over the years, I have come to expect and accept Death. I can not call Death a friend, as I have heard others do, for I still view him as a thief, but never the less, Death comes as he chooses, and no force on earth can stop him once he is here. Death has been my life long companion, but I do not think that he will ever be my friend.
I first saw death when I was four years old when a friend died during surgery: an accident the doctor had said. Death came again that same year, to yet another friend, through a sudden and tragic freak accident that came without warning a “hanging” by becoming tangled in a rope that prevented him calling for help. A horrible accident. I remember finding him hanging from a rope tangled on the fence, a scene that I can never forget. Than for the third time that year Death came once again, this time a ten-year-old girl on a bike was hit by a car and killed instantly, right in front of our house. There are people who are terrified to set foot on our land, let alone in our house, for they say that not only is the house haunted, but also the land is cursed. Every year since than, Death has come to our family, our friends, or just people passing by our house, at least once each year, and he never just comes and goes away quietly, Death is never peaceful when he comes knocking at my door. Death brings with him gruesomeness, fires, drownings, plagues, long painful illnesses, bizarre freak accidents, and several bloody and horrific murders. (The large number of deaths, unexplained illnesses, freak accidents, and other outlandish events that happen in, near, and around our house has lead to the rumor that it is haunted or cursed.-It is after all built on land that white men stole from the Penobscot and Saco tribes-in fact our house was built on the Pena Scot’s old apple orchard itself, and some of the ancient trees are still standing, just behind our house in the Ross Forest-these two tribes were famous for their Witch Doctor curses on the white invaders of Southern Maine-most notable the Pena Scot’s curse on Googins Beach in Old Orchard and the Saco’s curse on the York Hill section of the Saco River in Biddeford.)
Death continued to come repeatedly. At the age of 12 disease struck, and death surrounded us for weeks, that year I preformed my first funeral, with many more to come. At age 14 ,five of my friends were brutally murdered-a scene that I walked into and witnessed (and became the key witness in court later that year)–at 14 ,I did a lot of growing up-I remember standing there covered in blood holding my still alive, but soon to be dead best friend,( my other four friends were already dead) while being interviewed by the police–the court had ordered their bodies not to be buried, and to not even be moved at all–during a 113 degree August heat wave. Two weeks later I prepared their badly decomposed, green fleshed, maggot ridden bodies for burial -the stench was indescribable -seeing death is one thing–the smell of death is another–once you have smelt the rotted flesh of death, you well never forget it as long as you live–I also preformed their funerals. Today fourteen years later, I still have nightmares of this horrible event-for me sleep is not peaceful, sleep is not my friend any more than Death is. My childhood ended that summer; I became an adult and never experienced what it was like to be a teenager. In 1994 cancer took my grandmother,” professionals” had been called in for her funeral; that same year- old age took my horse, and cancer took my dog. In 1995, my out of state cousin was murdered by a police officer, who had mistaken him for someone else, and because it was a case of mistaken identity, the charges were dropped, and his murderer went unpunished. In 2003, I lost twelve friends in the space of four months through sickness, heart attack, old age–and for the first time was faced with a death were there was no body to bury–the tragic result of a fire and the loss of two very dear friends who never got to be buried as there were no remains left to be found.
Death has whirled around me, my entire life. Understanding hearts are not easily found, when everyone around you dies, and you are left behind. I have found that, because of my own losses, I am able to understand and mourn with others, when death comes to their own family. We must all learn to come face to face with Death, but very few people are mentally or emotionally able to do so. Teenagers have an even harder time with it than adults do. Yet, you have chosen to be a Witch, and you too, must learn to deal with death. It is what you might call an occupational hazard. If you want to be a priest or priestess of Witchcraft, you must first look Death in the eye, and be able to do so repeatedly. That is not an easy thing to do. Very few teenagers are able to do it, and keep their sanity intact. When you become a Witch, you must be prepared to do your job, regardless of how it makes your stomach turn. I have searched for other teenage Witches in America, but have had a hard time finding many real Witches at all-adults or teenagers, that are willing or able to prepare bodies and perform funerals. Myself, personally, as far as I know, I am the only one-I’ve been preparing the dead and performing funeral services since I was twelve years old-and I’ve yet to find another Witch who started at such a young age. I have found countless Wiccas, both teenaged and adult, falsely claiming to be Witches, but I have yet to find any of them who could perform a funeral.
Outside of America, it is difficult to find a Witch who does not prepare the dead and perform funerals. However, in America and Europe, Hollywood glamour has created a fad out of Witchcraft, and most people who go into Witchcraft today, do so merely stay in style and “keep up with the Jones”. This is a sad thing, really. Yes, it is nice that there is a growing interest in Witchcraft, but as with all things that become fads, Witchcraft is being poorly preserved, deeply edited, and badly watered down, by this growing generation of “teenaged Witches”, who only want to show off the fact that they are Witches and care little, if at all about preserving the traditional jobs and careers of Witchcraft. Sadly, as a result of this growing trend the deeper and truer meanings and purposes of Witchcraft are slowly being tossed aside in favor of the “cool stuff”, and very few Witches today are capable of reading an eulogies, let alone performing a funeral, and preparing a body for burial is often looked at with horror and disgust by these so called “Witches” who are unable to live up to their title.
A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth. It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart. Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools. For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool: this also is vanity. ~Ec 7: 1-6
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