Hungry Ghosts
We have come to the threshold of the season. The threshold between life and death. Fall is leaning into winter in the Northern Hemisphere. Here on Turtle Island, the Black Thunderbirds are yielding to the White Thunderbirds. This is Hallows Eve. Samhain. The time where the veils are thin. So, we carve our jack-o-lanterns and light our candles. We visage the monsters we know and costume our fears in carnival attire. Like the gargoyles on the corners of the Gothic cathedrals, we sentry the monsters we know to ward off the monsters we do not know. We seek to protect ourselves and our homes against those shades that might pass through the veils, emerge from the mist, cross the open borders, and disrupt our surety. Trick or treat, indeed!
I was invited to dance the Ghost Dance at Soul of the Mother Lodge at Six Nations many years ago. It was an honour to be invited. To feel the support and containment of the Lodge while I ventured out into the cold night to meet my ancestors. As instructed by the elders, my face was painted black and my robes were white. The opposite was true for the male dancers. Their faces ghostly white and their robes midnight black. As per ceremony protocol, we fasted 3 days and 3 nights through this thin time. Hungry and cold and tired, on the land, in the wet and in the dark, we shook our rattles and invited our ancestors to emerge. If they were willing, to bring us their wounds and their wonders.
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In the Tradition I was thus taught, I continue to make ancestors bundles to hang outside on Hallows Eve. An ancestor bundle is made up of a handful of seeds or tobacco gathered up in white cloth, and a similar bundle is gathered up in black cloth. We are told that these offerings feed the ancestors so that hungry ghosts do not feed on us.
Often, we are told that the health of a culture is determined in part by how they carry their dead. Hungry ghosts haunt the forgetting. If our dead are not carried in consciousness, they come out of the mist. Hungry, ignored, disavowed, forgotten, they feed on us. The more that is unconscious in the tribal soul, the more we will meet our monsters unexpectedly. They haunt our moods, our illnesses, our conflicts. Read the headlines, scoll social media, it is the hungry ghosts that garner our attention.
Ancestor bundles offer conscious nourishment to all that has preceded us. For seven generation. The black bundle represents the wounds of our ancestors and the while bundle represents the wonders of our ancestors. The two bundles are tied together with rainbow ribbons. The ribbons represent the faces of the unborn, the faces of the future.
The best story I have ever been told for this time of year was told to me by Jonathan Pageau, my carving teacher and cultural commentator. (https://thesymbolicworld.com) He told me the story of St. Christopher the Canine – the apocryphal story of the dog headed saint. Here is my rendering.
St. Christopher was born a giant. A colossal beast with the body of a man and the head of a dog. He was also born with knowing he had a big destiny - ‘to serve the most powerful force in the universe’. So, St. Christopher the dog-headed looked around and decided that the King must be the most powerful force in the universe.
After many years of serving the sovereign, St. Christopher noticed that the King was afraid of the Devil. Ah, so the Devil must be the most powerful force in the universe. So, St. Christopher the canine indentured himself to the Devil. For many years he did devilish things.
One day St. Christopher discovered that the Devil was afraid of the Cross. Therefore, the Cross must be the most powerful force in the universe. But, how does one serve the Cross? St. Christopher took himself to the Desert Fathers, the ones who wore the Cross on the breast of their robes. He asked them how he might serve the Cross.
“Fast”, he was told. “I am half dog”, he decried. “I do not fast!” “Pray” he was told. “I am a giant who has served the King and the Devil, I do not pray!” The desert fathers were running out of counsel for the wouldbe saint. “Then”, they offered, “go the threshold, the edge of the world, the brink of consciousness. There you will find a raging river. Your task will be to ferry travelers across the swollen flood waters.”
St. Christopher the Canine went to the edge of all that is known and faced the abyss. There he used his giant stature and colossal strength to ferry the travelers into the mystery. He pushed against the horizontal current of emotion and moved consciousness into the unknown. Day after day he ferried the travelers across, and in so doing, he served the Cross. He was content. His existence was hard, but meaningful.
One particular difficult day, after hours upon hours of shouldering the burden of his destiny, he found one last traveler waiting for passage. It was Hallow Eve. He was tired. It was late. The last traveler was the smallest of all – in fact, only a child. Yet, when St. Christopher picked up this child, he was humbled to discover this child was the heaviest traveler of all. Struggling, pushing, enduring, he waded into the surging waters. He fought to keep his small sacred burden and himself afloat. He stumbled and a few times the current almost took them both. But, after what seemed like a lifetime of effort, he deposited the child on the far shore. Suddenly, a rainbow of colour appeared in the sky.
The Cross is so much more than a religious icon. It is so much more than a sign. It is a universal symbol. Geometric, (ge·om·e·try /jēˈämətrē/) as in the measure of earth. It is ancient. Older perhaps than all our big religions combined. It is a portal into the mystery. When the horizonal perspectives of our incarnation, our mundane existence is stretched toward a vertical perspective of our infinite possibilities, our spiritual aspirations, we will suffer. We will be stretched. Emotions and unconscious eruptions of ideologies and righteousness threaten to down us and it is all we can do to carry the personal burden toward the future. The burden we each carry is that of our ancestors. Their wounds and their wonders. Our task is to extend consciousness in the service of the future. Making in our own small way, a tomorrow more conscious than yesterday. A study of history affirms that we are both victims and perpetrators in the tribal soul. We so need this wider vision.
I will take my ancestors bundle down from the icon of St. Christopher and at dusk I was offer it to the land. I will shake my rattle and light my candles. I will make a spirit plate. I will feed the hungry ghosts so that they do not feed on me. I invite you to do the same, in your own way. Trick or treat!