keepers of the sacred flame

dispatches from the Underworld #1

Last spring, I attended a cremation ceremony in Crestone, Colorado at one of the only open air funeral pyres in the country. Around sixty of us gathered in the early morning, circled inside an enclosure with the pyre at the center. The crisp, cold spring air was filled with the cleansing smoke of juniper boughs which had been harvested from the family’s backyard, nestled in the piñon and juniper forest of the high desert of the San Luis Valley. 

The Beloved One, who had died a few days earlier, arrived in the bed of a pickup truck, shrouded in blankets and fabric. Reverentially, we turned our eyes toward the group of men who eased him out of the truck and carried him up the gravel pathway on a wooden pallet. We followed, two at a time, a silent procession into hallowed ground. 

His ceremony was so tender. Voices of cherishing soon activated the sacred space, singing praise, speaking love. The ceremony culminated with the lighting of the pyre by his wife and children, an action that initiated the sacred alchemy of cremation. 

Flecks of ash swirled about in the gentle wind and landed on my skin and clothes, consecrating my body in this hallowed ground of alchemy. An honor, to be covered in the ritual ash of a soon-to-be ancestor. 

What struck me most was the utter devotion & skill of the firekeepers: there was one firekeeper stationed at each side of the pyre, four in total; and after the fire roared to life, they tended to it with mesmerizing attentiveness. With eyes trained on their assigned section of the fire, they watched the growth of the crackling flames and tended the fire’s alchemy, adding logs when needed and moving materials around with their fire staffs. This process was synchronized, ancestral ritual at its most breathtaking. After the fire was lit and all the guests filtered out, I imagine that they continued tending the fire throughout the rest of the day. It is no small task to keep a fire burning hot enough for long enough to incinerate a human body. A sacred task. 

I could feel the ancestral resonance in my bones with these fire tenders, detecting in their agile movements and watchful eyes the energy of their ancient ancestors. Tending to the fire is one of the most honored and sacred roles in community, whether the fire’s purpose is for sacred ceremony, smoke cleansing, heating the food that nourishes us, keeping us warm to survive the cold winter, or cremating our Beloved Dead. Skills of fire-tending come naturally to many of us. I am often awestruck watching friends and beloveds of mine tend to campfires with a single-minded flow that feels instinctual. 

The open air pyre in Crestone, Colorado, managed by the Crestone End of Life Project. See more breathtaking photos of the pyre in action here: https://crestoneendoflifeproject.org/services/open-air-cremation-site/

This sacred fire - from candle flame to bonfire - enlivens the heart of how I strive to show up in the world, and what I will explore here in the written word. 

The logo for my practice Fiercely Beloved is centered around this sacred flame, with an image of a single candle in the darkness, surrounded by bare branches and nestled within blooms of rose & pulsatilla. Rose, a lush plant ally who carries love & devotion; pulsatilla, a powerful herb who fiercely soothes our grief and shock. This candle is the spark of warmth, ritual, and community that calls to us in the darkness of our world, beckoning us back home - to each other, to ancestral knowing, to relationship with the earth, to devotion, to the sacred.

I am a ritualist, ancestral healing practitioner, grief tender, deathworker, and a devotee of the Underworld. I have never been able to ignore the dark sides of life, and in fact I have always in some way been called to be face to face with them. Because of this, I have seen that the most breathtaking intimacy, the most sacred of rituals, is to be found within the brilliant darkness, and within the ways that we light candles in the darkness to warm each other. 

This writing project is my way of lighting my small candle and holding it up in the Dark.

It is plain to see that we are in the Long Dark, as Francis Weller calls it, a time of Collapse, a descent into the Underworld. Systems of Empire and dominant culture have been wreaking violence on the earth and on humans for centuries. Legacies of trauma and cultural uprooting are leaving us bereft and alone, in deep pain and grief. And it is becoming increasingly more difficult to survive in this capitalist world, let alone to live in a good way, in right relationship with each other and all beings around us. I feel it in my body. I feel it in the bodies of the plants, in the bodies of the Beloved Dead ones I serve, in the bodies of the people I love  - the deep aching yearning, the grief and fear and pain. 

And yet, we are not alone. 

I draw strength from the ancient sacred bonfire that illuminates a dark forest, surrounded by elder ancestors who have been tending this flame for millenia. They are gathered around, singing & dancing, or sitting in silence watching the embers crackle through the sky. And always, always inviting me in from the cold, beckoning me to warm my hands and body. Reminding me that I am not alone. This fire is the warmth that keeps us alive, and this fire is the fuel for our inspiration and our medicine in the world. 

We are not alone. We stand alongside our elder ancestors who walked before us, our Beloved Dead, and the vast ecology of stone, plant, animal, and soil kin. We are re-membering ourselves, and re-membering our place in the village.   

Together we keep the flame alive in the Darkness, holding space even in the midst of deep grief, anguish, sorrow. We can embrace one another around the fire, because we have to do it together. We cannot survive alone. 

My Nordic ancestors called it Kenaz, the Sacred Flame. I light this torch to guide me in the dark, drawn from the ancient Deep Time fire that has been tended by our elder ancestors: the edgewalkers, the witches, the queer and transcestors, the grief tenders, the ritualists of all kinds. As we walk, torches in hand, we enflesh the skill of balance: holding onto beauty & love even in the pain, not avoiding or having to choose one over the other. And we reclaim the ancient primal thread of community care, of soul practices, of devotion to the earth & animist relating.

My hope is that this Substack newsletter, and all of my offerings as a ritualist, can serve as a candle in the darkness. I want to be visible to those who may benefit from my offerings, and to all of those who are tending these ancestral fires with me. Let us build community together in this Long Dark. Let us find each other, all of us who kneel at the altars of community liberation, decolonization, ancestral reverence, earth-tending, ritual reclamation, and community deathcare. We cannot do this work alone. 

Let us re-learn our ancestral skills of fire tending, and create new ones for our shifting times. Let us gather around our collective fire.

If the fire we tend is strong enough, it can withstand the winds. 

If the fire we tend is strong enough, it can be a guiding light in the Long Dark. 

If the fire we tend is strong enough, it can keep us all warm together.