Book summary “The pagan book of living and dying”: summary

Introduction

You live in a culture that hides dying, sanitizes corpses, and rushes you through grief. Modern medical systems treat death as a personal failure rather than a natural part of existence. This separation leaves you isolated and unprepared when loss touches your life.

Starhawk presents pagan traditions as a practical framework for reclaiming death as a sacred passage. Pagan traditions provide practical rituals, communal care, and earth-based philosophies that help you navigate dying, death, and grief without fear. You learn to view life and death as an integrated cycle of continuous regeneration.

The book guides you through every stage of the transition. It covers bedside assistance, home body care, memorial planning, and long-term grief support.

• How do you tend to someone who is dying?
• What rights do you have for home funerals?
• How do you build altars and process grief within a community?

1. The Sacred Cycle of Life and Death

Observing nature shows that decay feeds the soil and sustains future life, forming the basic life-sustaining process on the planet. Pagans view this through thealogy, honoring immanent deities and recognizing that death acts as the matrix for new life. You learn to trust this continuous transformation.

Death is an integral part of the natural and sacred cycle of birth, growth, death, decay, and regeneration.

Pagans view death not as a curse or extinction, but as a natural phase that offers opportunities for growth in wisdom and love. Recognizing this cycle allows you to trust the process of existence and find meaning in transience. Birth, growth, death, and rebirth form the underlying order of the universe and the foundational cycle of the natural world.

Thealogical foundations

You can explore these themes through ancient myths that personify the cycle of loss and rebirth. The Sumerian story of Inanna provides a psychological map for facing illness, ego dissolution, and death. Inanna passes through seven gates in the Underworld, shedding her clothes, royal station, control, possessions, comfort, community, identity, and madness before confronting the well of fire and returning to the outer world transformed.

In the Sumerian myth, Inanna visits her sister Ereshkigal, is hung as a corpse on the gates, and is eventually rescued by sexless creatures using the food and water of life, with Dumuzi and Geshtinanna ultimately sharing her fate between the living and the dead.

Myths of Demeter and Persephone and the Sun God Lugh illustrate how seasonal agricultural cycles mirror human death, grief, transition, and the ultimate promise of renewal. Persephone eating pomegranate seeds binds her to the Underworld for a portion of the year, causing Demeter's mourning and winter barrenness, followed by joyful spring reunions. Similarly, working with Lugh guides the Talking Self through terror, rage, and grief into the radiant present moment of transition.

Persephone eats three, four, or six seeds of the pomegranate in the Underworld, dictating the number of months she must spend among the dead each year.

The four elements

The four sacred elements of air, fire, water, and earth correspond with cardinal directions, aspects of the self, and the natural cycle of birth and death. Air represents the mind and breath; fire represents energy and transformation; water represents emotions and return; earth represents the physical body and mineral history. Together with spirit in the center, they form the magic circle.

Breathing serves as a micro-cycle of birth, life, emptiness, and rebirth, acting as a constant daily practice for death and connection to all living things. Inhalation is birth and life, the moment of fullness is suspension, exhalation is death into emptiness, and the automatic intake of breath is rebirth. Breathing also physically connects humans to the global ecosystem through shared air molecules.

You can engage these forces through intentional exercises:

• Find a comfortable place outdoors or indoors with a window open, a candle, a bowl of water, and a live plant.
• Take a moment to ground yourself before beginning elemental meditations on birth, death, and rebirth.
• Breathe deeply and follow your breath into your lungs and out again.
• Name the inhalation as birth, the filled lungs as life, the moment of fullness and transition as emptiness or death, and the new breath as rebirth.

2. Care for the Dying and the Dead

Tending to the dying, washing the body, and maintaining a three-day vigil honor the spirit's transition.

Dying individuals occupy a liminal realm between this world and the next. You must respect their diminished physical control and heightened sensory sensitivity during this fragile stage. Patients devoted to deities of liminal spaces, such as Hekate, experience a gradual detachment from earth, fire, and air elements. They become acutely sensitive to light, sound, and third-person objectification.

John McClimans, a double amputee, diabetic, and priest of Hekate who suffered a stroke, chose to die at home. He spent his final forty-eight hours in his living room bed. Shifting shifts of Pagan friends and coven members surrounded him and chanted quiet prompts.

You can adapt bedside care to support sensory needs:

• Keep the dying person's room dimly lit and relatively quiet to accommodate their sensory sensitivities.
• Avoid speaking about the dying person in the third person in their presence to prevent making them feel objectified.
• Use quiet, whispered repetitive chants and direct eye contact to maintain deep personal communion.
• Read comforting sacred texts aloud to the dying person.
• Hang protective or spiritual imagery on the walls.
• Lay on hands to comfort and ease physical pain.
• Purify the air with salt water instead of candles or incense when oxygen equipment is present.

When Starhawk's former husband Rod passed away in 1988, readings from The Tibetan Book of the Dead and salt water purification were used instead of candles and incense.

Washing and blessing the dead

The soul remains near the body or home for three days during life review. You must provide continuous presence, singing, and support during this crucial window. According to Feri tradition teacher Victor Anderson, the soul stays close for three days. You should not leave the body completely alone or clear out rooms immediately.

You can care for the physical vessel through direct ritual actions:

• Avoid leaving a recently dead body completely alone during the first three days.
• Provide company through caring friends singing, chanting, invoking, and meditating.
• Wait at least three days or until burial before cleaning out the deceased's rooms or giving away belongings.
• Communicate any unexpressed words, love, and forgiveness to the spirit during this period.
• Wash the dead body with clear spring water mixed with sacred waters, scented oil, or rosemary.
• Recite the Blessing for Washing the Dead, moving from the hair down to the feet.
• Smudge the body with sage or appropriate incense.
• Smudge or cense the shroud or clothing, and dress or wrap the dead in a simple white cotton sheet.

The first three days

Unexpected, violent, or imperfect deaths require intentional grounding and cleansing. If a loved one dies suddenly or far away, you can still send energy through altars and visualizations. You should avoid obsessing over suffering while actively guiding the departed spirit.

You can clear trauma and direct your energy through specific practices:

• Ground yourself and cleanse with salt water.
• Light a candle to guide the spirit and recite the Blessing of the Elements and Blessing of the Dead.
• Set out a food or drink offering, composting it after a day or two.
• Create an altar to the friend's memory and spend time daily meditating there.
• Take a ritual bath and perform a cleansing meditation after encountering a stranger's death.

3. Funerals and Home Cremations

Rituals around death serve two distinct purposes: helping the dying person transition and comforting the living through grief. Ideally, these purposes support each other, as the grief of the living provides energy for the spirit to move on. In non-pagan families, conflicting beliefs can create power struggles, requiring adaptations or separate private and public rituals.

Community-led rituals and legal rights to home body care allow you to craft personal farewells.

A pagan funeral ritual is structured around earth-based elements, storytelling, raising power, and sharing food. You can perform this framework by following specific steps:

• Gather participants in a circle around the body or altar and play music.
• Leader offers blessed water to the spirits of the land.
• Ground, cast the circle, and call the four directions and center.
• Give an offering to the ancestors of blood and spirit.
• Share stories about the deceased and have participants drop a flower into the grave or coffin.
• Build a chant and direct energy as a river carrying the friend to the Isle of Apples.
• Share food and drink with the living and the dead, then devoke what was invoked and open the circle.

Funeral ritual structure

Families have the legal right in many jurisdictions to care for their own dead and conduct cremations outside commercial funeral homes. State laws, such as those in Texas, often permit individuals to obtain transportation and disposition permits, care for bodies at home, and conduct cremations without embalming, provided specific safety and distance regulations are met.

When Patricia Michael and her community in Texas wanted to cremate their friend Bo after his suicide, they consulted legal guides, a lawyer, and state offices to ensure they followed all laws regarding caring for their own dead.

You must follow precise legal regulations when managing a home cremation:

• Obtain a death certificate.
• Obtain transporting and disposition permits which must stay with the body at all times.
• Wait forty-eight hours to burn the body unless the person died of a contagious disease.
• Conduct the cremation at least five miles from a community of ten thousand people or more.

Bo's cremation and legal rights

Bodies can be preserved and prepared for home wakes and cremation using specific herbal and natural antiseptic ointments. Anointing a body with a thick, sticky ointment containing preservatives, essential oils, and colorants helps control odors, slow bacterial growth, improve appearance, and facilitate quicker burning.

Patricia Michael cooked up a gallon of ointment using honey, myrrh, orange oil, rosemary, frankincense, and berries to prepare Bo's body for a multi-day prayer vigil in Texas heat.

You can mix and apply this anointing preparation using a simple method:

• Get water boiling, add wood, stones, honey, myrrh gum, frankincense, and berries, and boil for about twenty minutes while stirring.
• Turn off the heat, add leaves, cover the pot, and let sit for about ten minutes.
• Strain or squeeze out the solids and adjust the liquid by adding oils and desired color.
• Stir well and let cool, thinning with more oil if it is too thick.

An outdoor funeral pyre must be carefully engineered with stacked wood, airflow channels, and safety precautions to ensure complete cremation. Pyres are built like pottery kilns, using a dense stack of wood designed to direct air upward and structured so that the body collapses inward as the fire burns. Extensive safety measures such as water buckets and sand are mandatory.

Sid, Robert, Paul, Ted, and Patricia built a pyre on their Texas farm using old pine cattle fenceposts and wax blocks, stacking it five feet wide, twelve feet long, and four feet tall with built-in newspaper vents.

You can construct a safe pyre structure using these guidelines:

• Stack a solid rectangle of heavy wood designed to collect air in channels and direct it upward.
• Build the side away from the wind more solidly with the heaviest wood so the body falls inward.
• Lace the center with blocks of candle wax.
• Create channels down low on the windy side and stuff them with wadded-up newspapers.
• Place buckets of water, sand, blankets, shovels, rakes, gloves, and wet bandannas around the clearing for safety.

Bodies undergoing natural decomposition or cold storage require specific binding and covering to manage shifting tissues and fluids. Because gases build up and muscles contract or expand during decomposition, bodies can make sudden movements. Proper preparation includes tying limbs, swaddling, padding openings, and wearing protective gear.

Drawing on information from The Tibetan Book of the Dead and practical experience, the community tied Bo's limbs, covered his body openings to prevent fluid discharge, and wrapped him like a baby.

You can handle a deceased body safely with these protective measures:

• Wear rubber gloves and use professional help if the person died of a contagious disease.
• Wear a respiratory mask if there is an odor.
• Wash well after every time you handle the body, cleaning skin, hair, jewelry, and clothes.
• Tie the arms and hands across the chest and bind the legs and feet together.
• Tie the jaw closed and prop the eyes shut until rigor mortis sets in.
• Keep a cloth over body openings including mouth, ears, nose, eyes, anus, and genitals.

4. Grief, Altars, and Community Support

Grief is a comprehensive and non-linear process that encompasses a wide range of contradictory emotions beyond simple sadness. Dr. Bertha Simos notes that grief includes shock, denial, panic, anger, yearning, and sorrow. Mourners frequently experience contradictory emotions simultaneously, such as crying and laughing or feeling relief alongside loss.

Structured mourning timelines, physical altars, and communal name-calling help you process complex grief.

Starhawk suggests a Pagan timeline where the first three days focus on the deceased and funeral rites, the second three days focus on nurturing the survivors, and the third three days begin a gentle transition back to ordinary life, followed by longer milestones like a moon cycle and a sun cycle. You can follow this structure after a loss:

• First Three Days after Death: Focus on the dead, sit vigil with the body, prepare the funeral, and handle burial or cremation.
• Second Three Days: Focus on survivors who need care and nurturing; keep a candle burning, use prayers and chants, and do not go back to work.
• Third Three Days: Begin a gentle transition into everyday life on a reduced schedule; begin sorting possessions and handling legal matters.
• First Moon Cycle: Light a candle every night, use a nightly prayer, song, or chant, and choose one ordinary activity not to do until the cycle ends.
• First Sun Cycle/A Year and a Day: Light a candle every dark of the moon, use the same chants or prayers, and abstain from a chosen activity for the full year.

Starhawk would forbid anyone from working for a minimum of six days after a loss, with nine days as the ideal time off including transition days. Twenty days after her mother's death, Starhawk was contacted by her adopted daughter.

Building death altars

Constructing physical altars serves as a tangible focus for processing grief, honoring the lost one, and marking sacred boundaries. Altars utilize elements to represent directions, along with photos, mementos, cut flowers to feed plant spirits and symbolize life cycles, and a burning candle to signal the spirit world. You must carefully disassemble and dispose of them respectfully once normal life resumes.

In 1989, M.A. Bovis built an altar for her deceased brother using photographs from throughout his life, his favorite foods, Tarot cards representing fishing and freedom from pain, and elemental objects. You can build an altar by following specific steps:

• Meditate silently on the purpose of building the altar.
• Invoke Air in the East using a feather or ritual knife for mental clarity.
• Invoke Fire in the South using a lit candle, wand, or crystal for energy.
• Invoke Water in the West using a bowl of water to channel emotions.
• Invoke Earth in the North using a pentacle, rock, dirt, or living flowers.
• Call the Center for Spirit to anchor the work.
• Include personally significant items, photos, and fresh cut flowers.
• Disassemble the altar respectfully, returning water to running water and organic matter to compost.

Publicly calling the names of the beloved dead within a communal ritual setting facilitates closure and deepens healing. During large seasonal rituals like Samhain at the Spiral Dance, organizers collect and intermingle the names of ordinary people, public figures, and pets. Reading these names aloud in a focused, unhurried manner helps release grief and allows participants to feel their dead are present.

Macha NightMare spent eight or nine years collecting names from obituaries, death notices, and community phone calls to read aloud during the Samhain circle at the Spiral Dance. You can honor the dead in a group setting through these practices:

• Collect names of personal beloved dead, public figures, and pets from community members and obituaries.
• Intermingle ordinary names with prominent figures so everyone receives equal honor.
• Read the names slowly and carefully during the ritual, directing the voice toward quadrants where grieving loved ones are sitting.

Because death is physically and emotionally exhausting, grieving individuals require structured support and practical help from their community. The primary mourners should be relieved of ritual duties and organizational burdens. Community members should step in to priestess funerals, handle practical administrative or legal tasks, and provide food and silent companionship akin to a postpartum doula.

You can support grieving people in your community with these actions:

• Provide a doulah period where people take turns cooking meals and cleaning house so mourners can focus on their grief.
• Offer silent companionship without requiring mourners to entertain or make conversation.
• Assist with ongoing tasks like dealing with lawyers, accountants, and authorities.

Making intentional offerings to the dead helps maintain a connection and provides spiritual energy for their journey. Cultures regularly burn incense, set out food, or pour libations. Offerings can be tailored to what the specific person enjoyed in life, such as their favorite drinks, foods, or hosted gatherings.

Starhawk celebrated her mother's seventy-fifth birthday posthumously by hosting an evening salon where friends shared desserts and intimate stories after her mother died at age eighty. You can make offerings using these ideas:

• Consider what kind of offering your friend would have liked, such as wine, coffee, home-baked bread, chocolate, or a poetry reading.
• Create an altar or host a gathering to share stories and celebrate the memory of the deceased.

10 Key Ideas

1. Death is an integral part of the natural and sacred cycle of birth, growth, death, decay, and regeneration.
2. The four sacred elements of air, fire, water, and earth correspond with cardinal directions, aspects of the self, and the natural cycle of birth and death.
3. Tending to the dying, washing the body, and maintaining a three-day vigil honor the spirit's transition.
4. You must provide continuous presence, singing, and support during this crucial window because the soul remains near the body or home for three days during life review.
5. Community-led rituals and legal rights to home body care allow you to craft personal farewells.
6. You must follow precise legal regulations when managing a home cremation, including obtaining a death certificate, permits, and waiting forty-eight hours.
7. Structured mourning timelines, physical altars, and communal name-calling help you process complex grief.
8. Constructing physical altars serves as a tangible focus for processing grief, honoring the lost one, and marking sacred boundaries.
9. Pagans view advance directives as vital tools for retaining bodily autonomy and ensuring end-of-life care aligns with spiritual values.
10. Grieving individuals require structured support and practical help from their community because death is physically and emotionally exhausting.