Why death is a hot topic for priestesses.

It’s the part of priestessing we don’t want to talk about. 

And being honest, it took me about a decade to come round to learning about it. 

It’s scary and a bit of a downer… and in our modern western world we are taught to avoid it, hide from it, outsource it and pretend it’s not happening. 

This part of priestessing is all about DEATH. 

Thing is, being bold and daring enough to learn about death is a big part of being a bonafide, grounded and badass priestess. 

And when you begin to think about it, death is the one life transition we all make – that one moment and shift that all of us have to go through, and what is priestessing if not honouring and marking life transitions?

So why do we ignore death in modern priestessing? 

Why is it all about hand fasting and oracling and devotion, and not about endings and passings away?

Why do we hide any and ignore it?

Well, because it’s scary and it’s uncomfortable, and priestesses are people too – we get freaked out by things and avoid difficult topics, we aren’t saints. 

I’ve been gently dipping myself into this topic for the last few years and it’s still uncomfortable for me.

But it is SO IMPORTANT for a modern priestess to have some intimacy and knowledge about death.

Why?

🖤 On a personal level, simply learning about death helps us be less afraid of it.

It’s one of these things that the more we bury our head in the sand about it and ignore it, the scarier it is. (Kind of like a tax return!) But as soon as we start learning and getting curious and opening our hearts to it, the fear and terror begins to melt away a bit.

🖤 Death has this weird ability to help us treasure and cherish life more – when we are aware of our death, we know how precious our life is and we finally give ourselves permission to live because, well, life is not going to last forever.

Death is fascinating. We are all gonna do it. 

🖤 Part of the work of the Priestess is to make things sacred by being present, and learning and studying death enables us not only to be present and calm for the dying folk we might be called to tend, but also helps us accept, deal with and help people through other endings that might happen in our lives. 

Death isn’t a one time thing – throughout our lives there are lots of little deaths, moment on the wheel of life where something goes away for good. 

Learning about death makes us less uncomfy when it shows up in our lives and makes us more able to show up for others.

Everyone’s life is going to be touched by death because death is life’s closest companion. You are going to be holding space for people that have lost their parents, Grannies and Granddads, children, lovers – all sorts. They are going to be in your circles, in your rituals, in your community, in your family, and they need someone who isn’t going to look away from their pain because it’s uncomfortable. 

Can you imagine how helpful it would be to have presence of someone who is able to be fearlessly present at these times? 

You are not going to be able to do that if you are terrified of death, or rely on new-age clichés, or wrap it up with fluffy white fairy tale denial. 

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Now, learning about death as a priestess doesn’t automatically mean you are forced to be an end-of-life companion or soul midwife for folks who are preparing to make that last transition. 

It’s totally fine and cool if that’s not for you and it’s not a priestess prerequisite at all. I am personally exploring this edge of priestessing but I am also not sure if it’s right for me yet – it’s intense!

You can learn about death and still go and only serve the happy times of life – host the parties, officiate the weddings, adore the moon and teach people to love their bodies. That’s amazing and perfect and so, so needed. But that intimacy of death that you learned on your priestess path will ground you in a way that nothing else will. It will add this extra dimension to your practice and I find this extra edge of faith. It will soften your own fear of death so you can be a source of strength for others – whether that is a bride who deeply wished their mum was still around to be with her at her wedding, or someone whose relationship with their body is affected by a history of miscarriage.

Death on the Avalonian Path

It’s my personal opinion that if you are a Priestess on the Avalonian path, particularly if Morgan le Fay is a big influence on you, you gotta learn about death, someday. 

At some point you are going to be confronted with this curriculum because Avalon is not only the island of idyllic priestesses and partying faeries and love and all good things – it is also very firmly the Isle of the Dead.  

Yes, Morgan le Fay is a magician and a sorceress and a faery queen, but she is also a psychopomp who midwives dying souls across the veils. 

Avalon is very entwined with faery, and faery itself is very entwined with the souls of the dead and the ancestors. 

Wether you like it or not, it’s a part of your Avalonian lineage and you need to be brave and look at it.

You can ignore death for a good ol’ while but at some point you are going to notice it lurking around.

I believe that learning about death is an essential part of your training as an Avalonian priestess. Disagree with me all you like – I feel like it’s one of the forgotten parts of the path of Avalon, and I am here to take a stand for it. 

(Luckily, if you are drawn to Morgan le Fay, you will be blessed with the strength and courage to explore this most uncomfortable of topics! Morgan peeps are badasses!)

Do you feel like death is an important thing to study and get comfortable with on the path of the priestess? 

It’s ok if it makes you nervous! 

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Further Resources

A really great book that I have been reading on repeat this last year is The Soul Midwives Handbook by Felicity Warner – I highly recommend it. 

In my upcoming Priestess of Avalon training, we will have a whole training module dedicated to learning about death, how to sit with the dying, how to soften our own fear of death and how to priestess for people experiencing grief. We will be taking the practical death skills of the priestess and applying them to so much more than just funeral ceremonies, so if you need it you have that skill in your toolkit.  

You can sign up to the waiting list here to be the first to learn more about it.

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