To Deborah Mary Clementine Coulthurst 1954-1995.
With sweet grass, sage and juniper
with water and with air
with incense, stone and candle
I offer up this prayer.
May the flutes of the Mi'kmeswesu'k
guide you safely through the dark heart
of the forest to their wigwams where
a hundred nights last a hundred years.
May the keepers of the gates of death
befriend you.
May you find seeds in the ashes of
your hearthstone.
In the six worlds may you be
forever blessed.
May you fly forever with the firebirds.
May you soar on saffron wings to
our Grandfather, the Sun.
May the Dog Star guide your soul
to Ishtar Terra so we see you in the
twilight before dawn and after dusk.
With sweet grass, sage and juniper
with water and with air
with incense, stone and candle
I offer up this prayer.
May your death be a morning.
May it be a birth.
May your death be a doorway.
May it open other worlds.
While the reference to the keepers of the gates of death
is a reference to the four keepers in the Bardo Thodol or
Tibetan Book of the Dead, Ishtar Terra is a mountainous
region of Venus, the morning and evening star. The
remaining references are Micmac (Native Canadian).
The Mi'kmwesu'k are beings, male and female, whose music
enchants. They help people lost in the forest. A single
Mi'kmwesu'k day is one hundred years of our earth time.
The six worlds are: the earth world, the world under-
neath the earth, the world underneath the water, the sky
world, the world above the sky and the ghost world. The
sun is the creator of life, our Grandfather, and stars
are 'persons' who once were people or animals - and may
be so again.
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