In Which I Accidentally find a Shrine to Diana

Sometimes I have to work hard to do spirit work.  I struggle and think and fail. Other times it’s dropped in my lap like a gift.  Plop! Have some spirit work!

I wanted to make sure I spent time with both my daughters this weekend. I played violin with my elder daughter, but my younger daughter wasn’t sure how she wanted to spend our time together. I suggested a number of things, and in the end, we went to visit a nearby cemetery in the hopes that we might find some “treasures” on the way there and give some offerings to those nice dead people.

So off we went, hand in hand, and walked through the iron gate into the land of the dead.  This is an old cemetery.  The patient rain has slowly dissolved the limestone of the oldest graves.  The elms and the cedars towered above us as we walked and tried to do our best to honor the dead.  Some of the headstones have broken over the years.  We flipped one over so the writing showed and carefully placed a decorative finial back on the top of another grave.  Each time we stopped we offered brightly colored sprinkles of the sort you might put on a sundae or a sugar cookie.  We are always looking for interesting graves, and there are a number of statues among the names and dates of death. 

We came upon a lovely girl, forever holding flowers in mourning above her family’s plot, a fir tree with a headstone nestled in its roots, and while we were heading back home we saw another statue.  We got closer and it became apparent it was an image of Mary.  I’ve had a fondness for Mary statues for some years now.   The serenity that comes from some of them is palpable, especially the ones you find on sacred ground. 

This particular day my friend’s son was having some health issues, and as I looked at the age darkened face of this statue I was compelled to pray for him.  I addressed her first as Mary, Mother of God, for that was who she was.  But this particular Mary was standing on the crescent moon.  She had a snake curled at her feet next to an apple.  I know what that iconography meant, but somehow my prayer changed and I was praying to Diana.  It felt right to me and I asked for healing and safety for all involved.  We gave our offering of rainbow colored sprinkles and my daughter insisted that we run all the way back to the iron gate.  It seemed appropriate to run together through the trees.  We dodged graves and for a moment it seemed as if we were running in the company of many women and girls. I did not know if we were the hunter or the hunted but it really didn’t matter.  We ran and that too became an offering to the Goddess of the Hunt. 

This morning as we drove past the cemetery I tried to find her among the headstones, but we were past the place in the blink of an eye.  I thought about her last night and dreamed of leaving candles and round white stones to honor her.

There is a feeling to holy places. There is an aliveness that surrounds me in them.  I remember visiting Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris when I was in my early twenties. I remember the way the stained glass windows looked in the sun, and how the cream and black tile floor drew my eye to the dizzying heights above the altar.   I remember feeling so peaceful in this place and how strange it was that even as a non-Christian I was comforted.   I researched the history of Notre Dame and found that the Pillar of the Boatmen was found underneath the Notre Dame, on the Île de la Cité.  This doesn’t really mean that it was necessarily a sacred site for the ancients,  but I found it interesting to think about how long people had been living and worshiping their gods there.

I do think that a continuity of sacredness means something.  I know many pagans who get all huffy and angry when they think about Christian churches built on ancient pagan sites, but I wonder how many of those churches were built by local people because of the sacredness already inherent in the place.   

The word sacred comes from the Latin word sacrum, which referred to the Gods and anything in their purview.  It also descends from the word sanctum, which means to set apart.  As a pantheist I have often disliked the idea of the sacred as setting something apart.  I feel that the whole world is holy, including the desk I am sitting at, the compost pile outside, and the blue sky above me.  But there is something to these places where religious rites have occurred.  A different feeling where it’s easier to fall into a place of connection.

I looked at a Mary and saw Diana.  Maybe there’s room for both.

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