Elevation & Rumination

I wanted to write a little bit about the elevation ritual I performed for my husband between Feb 1st and 9th. I wanted it to be during a waxing moon which is one reason it nestled up so close to Anthesteria and I haven't had a chance to write about it until now.

This is just one of the things I learned about while taking Galina Krasskova's course on ancestor work.  The lessons were a big help for me in getting started honoring the dead and I highly recommend the class if that is something you are interested in. Ancestor elevation is something you can do if you think a particular soul is troubled or distressed, but can also just be done to send them love and energy for peace and well-being. 

My desire to do this came after my birthday in November, when I'd had an incredibly vivid, lucid dream of my husband telling me, among other things, that he was sad and lonely. Whether this was a projection of my fears or not, I felt compelled to do this for him. At best, it would help his soul heal. At worst, it would just be an big showy display of how much I care about him, and there's certainly no harm in that.
 
Because the altar needed to be left out on the floor for 9 days in a row I actually set it up in a walk-in closet.  My brother's cat has been an absolute terror lately and I didn't trust him to not desecrate it.  Although this was done for practical reasons, I rather liked "opening the door" at the start of each night's ritual. Sitting on one side of a doorway and having his altar be on the "other side" later struck me as very symbolic.  This is what it looked like:

 

I can't really describe how soothing it was to me to look at this altar with all the white and the flowers.  I hope he found it as comforting as I did.  More than once, I would open that door and sit down to perform the ritual and I felt a very profound timelessness, a feeling as if I had been doing this same ritual not just for a few days, but for months... or always.

I said prayers to Dionysos, Ariadne and Arianrhod, each ending this prayer with "I entreat you to open the ways of blessings between myself and my beloved... Protect Him and keep him in your realm, and if he becomes lost or sorrowful, remind him of your mysteries, and your love, and the love of those who still remember him." I modified the prayers for the elevation very slightly, and called to spirits, ancestors and guardians who were special to him or watched over him, both particular ones I knew and any in general who wished to help.

I also added a prayer that was a blend of several of the prayers and instructions in the Orphic gold tablets.  (I've been reading a book about them - Ritual Texts for the Afterlife by Fritz Graf & Sarah Iles Johnston -- and I find them to be powerful and beautiful.)

Every day I tried to have a special food or drink offering.  The first night it was a specialty beer that I'd bought before he died and wanted to share with him.  Another night it was special chocolates I'd found, one with honeycomb and the other with mushrooms.  On another it would be a donut and Dr. Pepper (favorites of his).  Twice, it was a full meal.

Another offering, perhaps the most significant, was music.  I played all the records of our favorite band.  And yes, actual records, most of which are rare and were painstakingly acquired by us during the time we were together. This act of offering the music was actually really really hard for me.  We used to lay down together and just bask in these songs, and even in those most exquisite moments, the beauty of it would threaten to overwhelm us.  In fact it is so personal, so deeply and achingly *resonant* to the beauty of our relationship, that I almost don't even wish to share the name of the band.  Like I wrote during Anthesteria, music is a pathway, and this pathway happens to wind through the most intimate and precious parts of my soul and memory.  That we both adored this music, could find the eternity in it, was a metaphor for our love of each other, for the miraculousness of finding one another.

Each day I did the ritual it felt a little different.  Some days were more emotional than others. I can't say there was exactly a progression that I felt.  In fact, if I had to make such a judgment, I'd say that things sort of culminated somewhere in the middle -- at a point where I could actually feel myself being a conduit of the blessings bestowed by the spirits around me.  The energy flowed into me and then through my heart chakra and towards my husband, or at least my focal point on the altar for him.

Although I didn't consciously plan for it to happen this way, the urn that I had had custom painted for him arrived on the 6th or 7th day. So as part of the last night's ritual I transferred his ashes into the urn. I was glad to have this gift for him.

I had asked for certain specifications with the urn but how it turned out was a total surprise.  I burst into tears when I first saw it because it was so perfect.

Some footnotes to this... There have been a lot of things before and since the elevation ritual that have been significant to my grief process and mourning.  I don't know if I could possibly list them all.  Major ones include getting a couple tattoos with his ashes last month, which didn't involve as much physical pain as I feared and hoped for.  Anthesteria was somehow both a blessing and a trial.  There were loud and clear messages of hope from Dionysos, but I felt my husband's absence more than ever.  I put my whole heart into the festival, and my heart felt the stress of it.  A friend's divination told me it's time to come out of mourning, so of course I rebelled and fell into another pit of despair, or a "spiritual temper tantrum" as I've taken to calling them (since I know better than to despair and it's really just the same emotional riffs to the key of I can't/I won't/I don't want/I will never...)  But I came out of that dark place quicker than usual. I found a book I was obviously meant to find that put things into perspective while at the same time one of my best friends had a vision that reiterated the same perspective/message for me.


In short, I have to move forward.  That was another thing given to me during the Aiora, while walking the labyrinth.  We have this idea in life of an infinite number of paths to take and sometimes that freezes us into a state of panic and indecision.  But there's only one choice of action in the labyrinth.  You walk or you stand still.  The path is already there, whether you perceive the pattern or not, whether you have faith in it or not.  And I think that's truer to life than we know.