Death

tumblr_l3fk81Ypdt1qztrv0o1_400We will meet where the forest is deepest,
where the night is blank and there are no stars,
for I am your annihilation come to make peace.

— Geoff Bartley, “Language of Stones” (song)

Many Neo-Pagans believe in reincarnation. Others do not. What­ever their views on the survival of the soul, Neo-Pagans share a positive view of death.

In the Neo-Pagan Mythos, life and death are joined in a sa­cred marriage. The Goddess is both creator and destroyer. The Earth is both womb and tomb. This paradoxical life-death func­tion promises renewal in recurrence and transformation through surrender and annihilation. This is manifest in the seasonal turn of the year, in which the sacrifice of the old year makes the new year possible. In this view, every death promises new life. Noth­ing dies in vain. No virtue or energy is lost. There is only transfig­uration and transformation. The cyclical movement of nature thereby transforms apparent defeat into transcendence. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee explains:

“If life does not change, it dies, and yet paradoxically we are so frightened of death that we try to hold back the flow of life. Without knowing it, we are caught in a mascu­line idealized image, a longing for perfection that de­nies the feminine with its understanding of darkness, de­cay, and destruction. Without darkness there can be no birth; nothing creative can take place. Without destruc­tion there can be no cycle of life, only a sterile envi­ronment in which nothing grows. If we do not ac­cept the darkness, life will lose whatever meaning it has left. If we do not allow ourself to live in the darkness, the doors of revelation will remain closed.”

Neo-Paganism sanctifies our ultimate annihilation and teaches that death is no less sacred than life. Indeed, death possesses a holiness that transcends the individual ego’s will toward life. Neo-Pagans cultivate a transformation of consciousness toward an acceptance of our place in the eternal cycle of birth, life, and death. Neo-Pagan ritual encourages us to fearlessly accept the disintegration that somewhere awaits all of us. This requires aban­doning an egocentric perspective of human fate and com­ing to terms with the inescapable cosmic round. Time and death are only evil in the limited perspective of the ego. This perspec­tive deprives death of its individual reference and views death, like life, as a moment in the experience of the cosmos.

Updated 2019

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