Welcome! For those of you who don't know me or are curious about why my focus is on death magic and the Celebration of Life, allow me to tell you a little about myself. I am a Priestess of Persephone, a Priestess of the Morrigan (also known as just "a Morrigan"), on the Druidic path (ADF Dedicant and AODA Candidate), in the Clergy 101 program at Pagan Pathways Temple, and I will be pursuing my death doula certification from Lifespan Doula Association in October 2018. I also practice Qadishti, Reiki, Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), past life regression, hypnosis, and guided meditations -- all certified. I like to collect certifications. I've taught a number of classes on death magic, death rituals, group past life regressions, contacting the dead, and debunking paranormal phenomena. That last one is ironic, isn't it?
I have a long and mostly amusing relationship with death. In most of my childhood pictures I looked like Damien's sister. The very first movie I saw in theaters was Jaws during its second run and I cheered on the shark from my mother's lap. My mother used to refer to me as her little Wednesday Addams. A papyrus poster of the Book of the Dead hung in my room when I was a pre-teen. I've always just been this way. I never went through a Goth phase; my wardrobe has always been largely monochromatic and favoured dark colours. My life has been described as an Edgar A. Poe story with a dash of H.P. Lovecraft.
There's also that quirk about seeing dead people. I'm not a medium, I can't really communicate with them, but I do see them around. My parents were also spiritualists and rather casually attended seances, searched for haunted houses, and practices automatic writing. When I was a young child, a teacher colleague of mother said it wasn't good to let me have imaginary friends. I was an only child and didn't have any friends my own age, so she suggested that my imaginary friends might either indicate or lead to a problem. My mother quickly corrected her colleague by saying, "Oh, they're not imaginary. They're dead." Go mom! Over the years my parents would never lose their excitement over my dead friends being accurately identified. Check my blog for some of those stories. Because of this I was always known as a "child of Persephone." Now, as an adult, I am her Priestess.
However, my history with death wasn't always so amusing. My grandfather died when I was twelve, providing me with my first personal experience with death. A few years later my aunt, my closest loved one and my mentor in witchcraft, died suddenly of an aneurysm while I was in 11th grade. Several other family members died that year. During my senior year of high school, another beloved aunt was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, placed into hospice at home, and slipped into a coma that lasted for several weeks before she passed away. My parents, who always strove to be death positive as well as extremely organized, immediately added advanced directives, a DNR, a living will, and funeral instructions to the fire safe that held their wills dictating what would happen to me. They helped me create my own documents, and I've periodically updated them with changes since my teens.
I've had to. Over the past twenty-five odd years, I've buried nearly my entire family, including my parents. I have an aunt, a couple of uncles and a smattering of cousins, but no immediate family left to follow my dying wishes when the time comes. As part of my death magic practices, I keep an ancestral altar filled with pictures and trinkets of those who've passed mixed in with offerings to them. One day I'll join them with a happy heart, but until then I'll work with the dying to listen to their stories, hold their hands, help them cross over with love instead of fear, and celebrate their lives when they've passed.
Remember me,
Tara L. Callaghan
Priestess of Persephone
Priestess of the Morrigan
"When I die,
I don't want to rest in peace
I want to dance in joy.
I want to dance in the graveyards,
the graveyards.
And while I'm alive,
I don't want to be alone
Mourning the ones who came before
I want to dance with them some more
Let's dance in the graveyards."
- Dance in the Graveyards by Delta Rae