For All Souls

The final day of Tamala: All Souls' Day

The end of our three-day festival has arrived. I see the last day of Tamala as one for truly all souls -- faithful or lost, good or bad, human or animal -- that last offering for those who are lost or in pain or who have done wrong to come and make amends.

I'm a firm believer in life beyond death -- for all souls, maid and animal alike -- though we do not have many details on exactly what that life may be like. Humans through the course of our history have been praying for their loved ones who have died; belief in an afterlife where the souls of the deceased needed our aid was so strong that though Christianity taught early European converts the dead went away to heaven or hell, they still continued to believe in souls wandering the earth in need of our aid to the point that purgatory could not be confined to a single place that believers went to be purified. (We can still see this 'wandering purgatory' in works such as Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol where Marley wanders the world in his chains.) Later efforts mostly succeeded in demonizing many aspects of the otherworld, including ghosts, making all apparitions whether waking or sleeping out to be demons in disguise rather than actual loved ones visiting after death.

For our part, we remember the dead and give them honor and what aid we may offer.

I hope everyone has had a good festival and has a blessed month ahead of them!