ancestors |

In the Netherlands, today is Dodenherdenking. It is the day of Remembrance of the Dead, the day and evening before our Bevrijdingsdag (Liberation Day) on May 5th. On this day we remember those who lost their lives in war, from the second world war until today.

This year I will remember Willem Arondeus. Artist, freedom fighter, and proud homosexual who forged documents to protect the Jews. When the forgery was discovered, he and his fellow resisitance members bombed the Amsterdam city records, erasing hundreds of names and saving hundreds of people. He was arrested and executed in 1943. His last words to were “Tell the people that homosexuals are not by definition weak”.

This year I will remember all those who wore the pink triangle, the Nazi concentration camp badge which identified them as homosexual, bisexual or trans. I will remember all those who were saved from the concentration camps, only to be thrown into prison because of paragraph 175. All those who were freed but never knew freedom.

Tonight at 20:00, two minutes of silence will be observed in the entire country. At that time I will light a candle and place it on the sigil above. The pink triangle with my sigil to honour the beloved dead. In those two minutes I will be silent, and I will remember.

And tomorrow, the flame of freedom will burn and I will celebrate the freedom that our LGBTQIA+ community has in our country and be grateful to those who made that happen.

Samha’in is creeping ever closer (like autumn fog!) so I thought it would be a nice time to share with you a sigil I made a few years ago. This was made for a ritual me and my coven sisters did in honour of Samha’in, where we honoured our loved ones who had passed through the Veil. The sentence to make the sigil was therefore “Beloved Dead, we honour you.

We drew them on glass candleholders and made spellcandles by adding herbs and crystals to it. What I used was:

🍁 Rosemary – remembrance
🍁 Marjoram – brings spiritual bliss to the souls of the departed, personal connection (my name means marjoram)
🍁 Apple – offering, nourishes the souls of the dead
🍁 Thyme – re-establishes communion with those who have past
🍁 Heather oil – invites the spirits to visit
🍁 Willow oil – sacred to the Gods of the Otherworld
🍁 Marjoram oil – see above
🍁 Calcite – closest in consistency to bone, connects with ancestors
🍁 Hematite – blood, the ancestral bloodline
🍁 Obsidian – connections to spirits, seeing into other realms
🍁 Red, White and Black candle wax for the connection through blood (red), bone (white) and spirit (black)

It was a very powerful candle and ritual that year, so I’m bringing it back and making a new candle this year. There are many who I wish to honour.

(the sigil and candle were first shared on my Tumblr)

ancestors

Remembering the Pink Triangle

Sigil for honouring the ancestors