Death & Dying (Pagan Resources)

Hey, Readers,

This post has been sitting in my Drafts folder here for the past year, just about. 2020 saw a lot of unnecessary death, and though I had been planning to share this beforehand, once certain events occurred last year, it no longer seemed appropriate timing to share. On the other hand, maybe some people would have considered it the perfect time to discuss death and dying and grief resources, but to me it felt like it may be construed as "using" the situation to seem relevant, get more views, or whatever. It truly just wasn't the best timing. So I've saved this post, and now, here it is.

Early last year, someone wrote to someone I work with, asking for help finding information about Pagan beliefs and practices around death and grief. The questions were forwarded on to me, and this was my response at the time. I saved it in case it could be helpful to others. Now it's been another year, and I'm sure there are other resources that can be mentioned (I think a few new books on the subject have come out more recently, though I haven't read them yet), but this was my answer as it stood at that time, early last year.

The Questions:

1. What are beliefs about death and dying?
2. What is the belief about autonomy or self-determination regarding treatment or end of life decision making? (Who makes treatment decisions, how much information does the dying person want, etc)
3. What are the death rituals? Is there a focus on burial and/or cremation?
4. How does bereavement play out -- are there expected practices after someone has died?
5. Is there anything that individuals do in order to help with the grieving or bereavement process? (Ex. therapy, community organization)

And my response was as follows:

Anti-Racism Resources

Dear Everyone, really, but especially white people,

We all have a lot of work to do in the fight against systemic oppression, racism being one of the big systems of abuse and discrimination that is currently on everyone's minds, especially where police brutality against BIPOC (black indigenous people of color) communities is concerned. I have been posting some things on my Instagram, sharing MANY things from other people in my story there to amplify other voices, and I'm working on a video that will go up on my YouTube channel tonight (31 May 2020).

I wanted to put together a post here with links to some of the anti-racism resources for white people that I've been finding thanks to other people sharing them, so I can link people to all of these more easily and have them handy for my own future reference, as well as everyone else's. I will continue updating this occasionally as I collect more. Please share any more resources you have.

~

Anti-Racism Resources for White People: bit.ly/ANTIRACISMRESOURCES

This document includes resources for parents to teach anti-racism to children, podcasts to listen to, movies or videos to watch, articles and books to read, social media of organizations to follow, and more. There is a LOT here and I recommend starting here and going through it a bit at a time.

One of the articles I found via the large compiled document above: "75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice". #38 is decolonize your bookshelf, which is one thing I've been doing -- looking up all the authors whose books I own so I can see how many are white men, as opposed to women, POC, queer, trans*, gender non-conforming authors, and so on.

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Witchy Book Recommendations

This post, where I originally started listing book recommendations in 2013 and have continued to update periodically, has now been moved to an actual PAGE here on the blog! Check it out:

Book Recs.

Blessings~

-C-