Mark Green's Atheopaganism Blog

I improvised this guided meditation for the Atheopagan Saturday Zoom Mixer’s Hallows ritual on the theme I wrote about here, and people liked it so I thought I would write it down before I forgot it.

First, get comfortable. Take a deep breath and feel that life-giving oxygen like a wave running from your chest out to the tips of your fingers and toes, the top of your head. If you’re comfortable with it, close your eyes–if not, just lower them so light becomes dim.

You find yourself in the woods at night, at the foot of a hill. A warm wind whirls and gusts around you, unseasonably warm and kind of spooky. The air is filled with the faintly sweet scent of rotting leaves, and the drying autumn leaves rattle in the trees around you. Moonlight dapples the forest floor, and you see the faint track of a path ahead, climbing the hill.

You step forward onto the path up the hill, leaves crunching underfoot, body moving smoothly. The silver pools of moonlight on the path shimmer and move with the wind-blown trees.

The hill is steep. You stop to rest for a minute, breathing the rich autumnal scent deeply. Off to your left, you hear a small scurrying off the woods to as some tiny animal moves through.

You resume your climb, huffing up to an old Victorian style wrought-iron fence with spiked posts. A closed iron gate in the fence stands before you. Beyond the fence is an old graveyard in the moonlight with rounded headstones heaving this way and that, occasional mausoleums and stone crosses. The bright full Moon sails above.

You reach to open the gate, which screeches outrageously in the silent night as you pull it open. The path continues in the moonlight between the stones and monuments. The black outlines of yew trees are dotted here and there, and the crabbed bones of an old oak spread over some of the graves. The path turns to the right ahead of you around a looming mausoleum.

Coming around the corner of the faintly gleaming marble tomb, you see it: an open grave, with a pile of dirt beside it and a shovel thrust into the dirt. You can’t see the bottom of the hole; it seems to go down forever.

You stand beside the gaping grave quietly, contemplating as the creepily warm wind whips around you.

You draw forth your failed harvest: that thing you tried to plant this year but didn’t work out, didn’t come up. It must now be composted to create something else. You cast it into the grave and hear a soft pat as it lands in the damp earth below. If you have another such offering, you may cast that in as well.

It is time. You may use the shovel to bury it/them, or simply claw the dirt into the grave with your hands, burying the offerings. They will decompose and compost into nutritious soil, from which can spring something new.

When the grave is filled and tamped down, you may say any words that seem fitting, either out loud or to yourself.

Returning, you feel lighter. Freer. Your step is lively as you return to the gate and screech it closed, head down the hillside to where friends await around a fire.

The work is done. You can move on with optimism and hope.

When you feel comfortable, bring your awareness back into your body here, and open your eyes.