O, Death! O, Death!
Won’t you spare me over til another year
Well what is this that I can’t see
With ice cold hands takin’ hold of me
Well I am death, none can excel
I’ll open the door to heaven or hell
Whoa, death someone would pray
Could you wait to call me another day
— Lloyd Stanley, O, Death, Appalachian dirge
Death
Part of the 2022 Advent of Lucifer
In the United States, death has been removed from its place in the natural life cycle. Like anything that can be under capitalism, it has been alienated and commodified. Like most of human civilization, the wealthy are affording lavish funerals and interred into monuments to not much in particular while the poor are left to make do with what they can afford.
Funerals are somber, often performatively sad affairs in which people who rarely have anything to do with each other come together to act out how sad they’re supposed to be. Everyone shuffles outside to watch a chemically preserved corpse be lowered into the ground in a wasteful casket in a misguided attempt to cheat death through mummification, and all of this too will decompose while leaching formaldehyde into the groundwater. Last comes the grand tradition of the family tearing itself apart through bickering, pettiness, and even lawsuits over the assets of the deceased.
All of this comes at an exorbitant cost. In America, most people can’t even afford to die.
While your experience with death and American funerary practice might not reflect all of this disorder, it surely reflects some of it. Maybe the sad funeral is replaced with a “celebration of life”, which is a step in the right direction at least.
We believe that the earlier death and its processes are understood, the better. Death is an inevitability to be accepted, even embraced, because it imparts both meaning and urgency to our limited existence. Human lives are beautiful because they are relatively short and unpredictable. We are ephemera.
This is the fundamental basis for an epicurean life. It is the reason we “live deliciously”.
Our lives are fleeting, we strive to make a positive impact on our world, and then we are gone. We have no special knowledge of the afterlife – and don’t believe anyone else does, either – but we do believe in returning our borrowed substance from the land that generated and sustained us. A reminder that our very lives depend on the health and wellbeing of the natural world, that we are not removed from it, and that we belong to it fully in death.
We are elemental creatures, and we return to the elements. It is our ideas, our passion, our divine spark that lives on, not our physical bodies. Human life is change, and our death is merely more change. We are transformative, alchemical, born from stars, and the matter of your body will recycle again and again, living through millions of beings until the heat death of the universe, maybe to be swallowed finally by a black hole or incinerated in the heart of a star – a true return.
So die as you live, with dignity and reverence for the natural world. Because everything ends, and everything begins again.
Charging the Sigil
Death serves as a reminder of change and transformation. Death can be incredibly beautiful if you allow yourself to accept it as it is. Everything has its time to end, and new life takes hold in its place. We face the changes in our life with bravery and positivity, whether it be the loss of our loved ones, relationships, our past selves or even dreams we once held. We honor Death as it brings us balance, for we cannot truly appreciate the life we lead without it.
As we devote our time this month to honoring Lucifer, charging our sigil encourages a deeper connection. If this is your first time charging a symbol like this, you can think of it like a moodboard – this sigil represents us as a community and religion. What does this sigil mean to you? What can it represent? Take the time to focus and reflect, meditate on what each of our concepts mean to you and how they can apply to our lives.
For our energy workers, you may charge our sigil by visualizing a bright white light surrounding it. Use breath work to guide this energy into the sigil, knowing that it grows in strength as you do so. You can also focus our themed concepts into the sigil using meditation and our affirmations to program this energy. This will serve to strengthen our sigil for later use in our ritual.
The following incantation may be used as part of your sigil charging, or used as an affirmation:
“Transform thy life, thy endings become new beginnings.”
Daily Devotion
Death asks of us today to honor the changes and endings in our lives. We honor those who have parted us too soon, our past, our old dreams. Embracing the endings in our lives allows us to see the new beginnings that come our way – new opportunities, relationships, dreams and more. We transform our lives through this honor, accepting that the ultimate balance of death is a needed and natural part of our lives.
Further Reading
The following resources may be enjoyed to deepen your connection to today’s concept. Please note that links to reading are not endorsements of every idea contained therein but are intended to offer a more broadly informed view.
Make Your Own
We encourage you to make your own oracle card for each of our themed days, so that come the end of our Advent, you will have your own Luciferian oracle deck. These cards may be used to give you insight on what you may need to work with in the future.
We recommend using blank playing cards if available, but any kind of art or canvas cards, even lined notecards can be used. Make your drawing or symbol (it doesn’t have to be amazing, only meaningful to you) on one side and on the other write down any key phrases or words or concepts that resonate with the image to you.
If you choose to share your result, which we would love to see, you may use the hashtags #luciferiandominion and #adventoflucifer so that we can find them! If you choose to make your oracle deck part of your #Inktober or #Drawloween events, please feel free to use those hashtags and include them in relevant spaces!
Happy creating during this blessed Advent!
