Funeral Prayer to Hela, Lady Death
Hail to the funeral pyre that lights the shadows,
Hail to the ocean that devours all flesh,
Hail to the open grave in the earth,
Hail to the carrion birds that feed and fly.
One we love walks the Helvegr,
One we love walks the Road of Endings,
One we love goes to become one of the Ancestors.
May the dust beneath your feet
Be as the stars of the galaxy,
Scattered behind you like the lives touched
That you left in your wake. We sing you there,
That your journey be swift and simple,
That the golden bridge be wide and sure
Over the rushing rivers, that the black stone
Of the final gates open to you, and reveal
Fair autumn lands wreathed in deep peace.
Hela, Lady Death, keep this soul in your deep peace
And cleanse them of all sorrow, all hatred, all wrath,
All small resentments borne of Life,
Gather them to your chill breast and rock them
To eternal sleep, or if such time comes
As there is healing enough, and they are ready to fly,
Give them that gift that only you can give
And release them again into Life, refreshed and open-eyed
And ready to Return. Mother of Bones, hold them
In your living hand, O Compassionate One
Of the quiet endings, of the long silence, of the comforting dark.
Let them know that they live in us, in our memory.
Let them know that they live in us, in how we were changed
By their light shining into our lives.
Hail to the ashes of the cremation grounds,
Hail to the silence of the tomb,
Hail to the gleam of the white bone,
Hail to the stones of the barrow-mound,
Hail to the whispering wind that mourns,
Hail to the opening of the empty hands,
Hail to the work of the carrion beetles,
Hail to all that rots to feed Life anew,
Hail to the end that is the beginning.
One we love walks the Helvegr,
One we love walks the Road of Endings,
One we love goes to become one of the Ancestors,
And we sing you on your way.
Artwork by Elisabeth Stilton.