Our New Blue Moon: a celebration of grief. 

"Brig came and keened for her son. At first she shrieked, in the end she wept. Then for the first time weeping and shrieking were heard in Ireland." Cath Maige Tuired section 125

The DCWC will be facilitating a new public ritual, a celebration of grief, that we are calling the Blue Moon. We will offer it through Meetup, online, using zoom. 

https://www.meetup.com/druidry-centered-womens-circle-events/events/294838167/

As Pagans we know the deep value of ritual, how it changes us and the world around us. It brings concepts into being and transforms mundane actions and objects into icons, and literal space into sacred space. Ritual is built into the human experience and personality. We are designed to respond to the symbolic. We have been doing it for millennia. 

One of the most common rituals of humanity, dating back to other human species that came before us, is the ritual for the dead. We grieve, we honor, we release. 

Having lived through the AIDs crisis of the 80's I can tell you that it is critical that the community which experienced the loss, gets to mourn that loss in their own ways, and in their own words. When outsiders or interlopers decide to narrate our losses for us, in terms that describe their view of our pain, the result is not transformation, not wholeness, but disconnection and frequently suppression of the experience of grief. We cannot be silent. It is unhealthy to be silent. It is transforming to raise our voices, or to hear voices raised with expressions that we recognize from the inside out. 

We are living in a time of so much disruption and change that as a culture we are not merely mourning single deaths, but many deaths, and many losses. We mourn the loss of companion animals, and the loss of abilities, or possibilities. We mourn the loss of the world that still exists in our memories but is no longer available to us. We mourn youth when it has left us. We mourn personal losses that we cannot or will not express. 

And it is right to mourn, to grieve the things we have lost. It helps us to accept the world that has been changed.

The world is changing continually. When our unmourned grief freezes us we fall out of step with our continually changing world. We fall out of alignment with our seasons, our moons, our days and our nights. Sometimes it's just a part of us that is blocked, but even that creates a dissonance, a lack of harmony with ourselves. 

As an Irish Polytheist practice, the Druidry Centered Women's Circle recognizes the power of the keening, the caoineadh (QWEEN-eh), the heartfelt lament that was the center of the ritual of mourning for centuries in Ireland. The keening woman, bean chaointe, gave voice to the shared loss, gave permission to name how truly awful and terrifying loss, especially death, can be. The bean chaointe gave the community permission, within the ritual, to fall apart, which gave the community the opportunity to come back together again, to step back out into the ever changing world together. 

Rituals don't "fix" grief. They aid the processing of loss to help us acclimate to a new reality, to set our bodies in motion in harmony with our own lives, after a loss has put us into discord. 

The ritual we share will have some of the same shape as our Full Moon ritual. We'll ground and center ourselves in our own space, in relationship to the sun, the moon, and the directions where each of us sit. We will share some of the lore of Don Firinne, Whose hall is open to welcome the dead as they wish before their journey onward. We will share some poetry and each person who attends will have the opportunity, as they wish, to name their loss. We will share a keening song, and at the end, accept back the energy of life into our hands, the hands of the living, the changed, the continuing, to strengthen us as we move on again. 

We hope that this opportunity will be of service to our community, and we are planning to offer it again if it seems appropriate. 

However you are, however you mourn, celebrate and heal, we wish you well. 

Peace of the mountains to you, 

Paulie Rainbow

founder: Druidry Centered Women's Circle