Raphael's Tears
On peace, compassion, oceanic angels, and necromancy with Jessie Waters.
Edit: The initial graveyard working featured in this post included an invocation of Raphael by way of a prayer from Reverend Janglebones’ Sorcerous Lineage & Magical Fortitude Course.
I See His Blood Upon the Rose
by Seosamh Máire Pluincéid
I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies. [...]
All pathways by his feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree
Necromancers for Peace
Jessie
My local Catholic graveyard has two gates. In the 1800s, if you were Irish, your body would pass beneath the gate that reads St. Patrick Cemetery to be laid to rest. If you were French-Canadian, you would be carried a hundred feet further down the road through a gate that reads St. Michael Cemetery. Once through the gates, there is no difference between the cemeteries. No fence separates them, except for the invisible delineation of names. They share their history, their paths, their central granite cross.
An hour before dawn on All Soul’s Day, that granite is icy against my back. Frost glitters in the beam of my headlamp. I have a jar of spring water, a bowl of salt, a wool blanket, and headphones with my meditation music. Marissa and I agreed to do paired graveyard magic on the same night, on opposite sides of the country, praying for peace and healing for the dead and asking them to pray for us in return. I wonder if it’s any warmer in Oregon. I wonder what layers of history her graveyard holds.
Here there are two gates and two names, reflecting the two waves of 19th century migration to this riverside town. First the Irish, fleeing the Great Famine. A generation later, the French-Canadians, also fleeing famine and martial law at home. Both came to work in the textile mills. It was a common for mill bosses to recruit workers who did not share a language—it prevented them from organizing. The mill workers buried here lived in conditions compared, by the journalists of their own time, to chattel slavery: “It would be abuse to house a dog in such conditions.”
When I first started coming to this graveyard, I felt great waves of grief, especially from the women of the Irish families—from the mothers. I asked them why they grieved. They answered:
We came because our children were starving and dying. We came here, and some of our children starved and died still. But some lived, too. Some lived.
Marissa
The way my spirits most often get my attention is with an idea that lands in my body with a jolt. This particular jolt-idea was "raise an army of the dead to pray for peace." An invitation? A suggestion? A demand? I never really can tell, but it sounded like a great idea. Necromancy is definitely one of my flavors of magic. I had never really vibed with the idea of raising an army of the dead to do by bidding, until this idea showed me that there was potential for "my bidding" to be something other than ultimate power or fame or whatever it is people have notably raised armies of the dead for.
At a later time during a bath journey, I was given very explicit instructions to facilitate the prayers from this 'army of peace' being carried by water from a graveyard out to the world. I had to be in water, with water, to receive this particular part of the idea. I was told to carry the waters to the dead so they could pray them with peace, and to carry the waters back out into the world so it could spread to all of the banks and shores. The idea went from a jolt to a post-bath-journey-filled-notebook-page titled WATER MAGIC.
I walked to the river near my house, the Willamette, who told me stories of her ancestors carrying the dead across the veil as their children. This river flows northward, the same direction as the Nile, a river that nourished and carried the dead of one of the earliest human civilizations. Rivers are featured in underworld stories around the world, serving not only as the entrance but also the general mode of transportation around the underworld realm.
The river said that she would carry our prayers of peace, on the condition that I must tend my cairn, my hearth, my home, and care for my trees. (The rant about landlords who plant fruit trees with no intention of caring for them is for a different time).
Then all of this was placed aside and wondered about, with hope that it would unfold further. Thanks to a nudge from St. Justina, and an invitation from Jessie to do some magic together sometime, this idea has now unfolded. Thank god for Virgo magic.
Saints of Comfort, Angels of Compassion
Jessie
Those Irish mothers worried what would happen to their children’s souls, buried so far from the land of their ancestors. The land their ancestors had passed through for millennia. St. Patrick, who went himself a slave and a stranger into a strange land, was their comfort.
When Marissa and I agreed to do paired graveyard elevations for All Soul’s Day, we knew we would need the saints' help. St. Patrick, and St. Michael were obvious choices for me. Then St. Nicholas of Tolentino, for his role as special intercessor for the dead, and St. Gertrude, whose prayer releases souls from purgatory. Each of these saints we came to for a reason, each had their role.
But Raphael, it felt, came to us. A last-minute addition, sparked by something read and half-remembered: that Raphael is the angel who descends into hell three times each day and three times each night to visit the souls of the suffering. That in the hadith, it is said that Raphael’s tears would flood the whole world if Allah did not stop their flow.
We came to pray for and with compassion. We came to pray peace. I do not know what it was like to be one of those mothers. In many ways, their lives are unimaginable to me: “There are very few literate people today who can enter into an existence in which one bears ten children and watches five of them die in infancy.”1To come and pray for them deepens my gratitude for all that I have. It deepens my compassion for those ancestors who sacrificed so that I could exist. It deepens my compassion for others, my kin by shared humanity, who suffer today.
While I prayed, Raphael came like the first rays of dawn—gradually, then all at once. I saw him tall as the pillars of heaven, bending his tearful face over the tops of the white pines and the cold granite stones. In journey, the dead climbed those pines, reaching towards the angel. They climbed, and Raphael's tears flowed down to meet them. Where they touched, there was light.
When the angel arrived, I felt deep grief again. I want to scream. I want to cry. I want to throw a tantrum like a child, and rage, and rage.
You are the angel of infinite compassion. Why did you make them wait? Why did you let them suffer?
Does even the angel of infinite compassion suffer from compassion fatigue? I thought of the righteous and apocryphal Mary, commanding the angels to remember their duty to intercede for all sinners. But Raphael challenged me back: it is not his burden alone. The living must participate in the healing of the dead—living people with living hearts.
How many people walk past this graveyard every day and never once think or care what the people here suffered? How much hurt do I walk (or scroll) past every day, and ignore myself? How much hurt in my own ancestral lines am I ignorant of? How much hurt in my own living family? Was I asking the angel, or myself? Why do you make them wait? Why do you let them suffer?
It is outside of human capacity to feel every single suffering. We cannot hold it all. Raphael can, but only by our participation. The descent into Hell is an Underworld mystery, and I mean Underworld in the way Sophis Strand means it: the shared womb of Deep Time where all things are gestated, the place of co-becoming:
Why does the Russala mycelia support the Monotropa uniflora without receiving anything in return? I’m not sure. But I know that I have benefited from the stories of people who do not know my name and have never received explicit nourishment in return. I have eaten fish from seas I have not fed my tears.
The tears, it seems, are key.
Tears, Blood, Ocean
Jessie
Sea salt contains 84 elements and minerals, more than two dozen of which are essential to life's function.2 The salinity and composition of sea water is comparable with many human bodily liquids: blood, sweat, tears, and amniotic fluid. Salt itself is a traditional medicine for cleaning wounds, regulating blood pressure, balancing hormones, and improving digestion.
Yet the medicine—and the mystery—goes deeper still. Sea salt contains in itself the wisdom of the ancestors: minerals from land (including those literally from the bones of the dead) wash constantly into the sea by the action of streams, rivers, and rains. Many cultures throughout history have believed that all human essences—their souls or spiritual powers—flow similarly into the sea. This may have been preserved in the old baptismal tradition of placing a few moist crystals of sea salt on the tongue of the infant, to ensure they would grow “righteous, pure, and wise”—that they would inherit the wisdom and power of their ancestors.
Salt also contains the wisdom of the heavens. Cosmic rays penetrate and ionize ocean water at around 240 feet of depth. Upwelling eventually brings these minerals and nutrients to the upper layers of the sea, where the greatest concentration of marine life thrives.
In this magical substance is the great mystery of Raphael’s tears, the ones he sheds for those who suffer. When I put salt into water, I make an echo—a metaphor—of those tears, and in so doing, bring more compassion into the world. This is my offering. I did not understand why it would be so before that moment in the graveyard. The water was cold and the gray salt crystals clung to the bottom of the jar before dissolving. I pulled off my gloves and circled the stone cross, sprinkling the fresh-made salt water. A blessing for the dead. I spill Raphael's tears—and my own—upon their graves.
What I am left with at the end of the ritual is gratitude (and a small jar of reserved salt water, which now lives on my ancestor altar). I am grateful to the angel, to the saints, to the well ancestors.
I am grateful to have done this magic with Marissa as my collaborator—grateful that, sometimes, two gates lead to the same place.
Marissa
I was tasked with experimenting with river water as the offering to the dead, instead of the spring water called for in the St. Nicolas of Tolentino rite.3 We decided to try both because of the strong presence of the river in the initial communication of this idea. During my time at the graveyard, river momma came on STRONG. She nourishes the land and seeps into the soil, the dead know her by the dirt and the earth and her gentle carrying of them between worlds. We can see evidence of reciprocity between the dead in the earth and rivers in what happens when water is allowed to be how it bes.
"When water slows on the land, that’s when the magic happens... A full underground aquifer can help feed a river’s flow, pushing water up through its streambed during the dry season. And vice versa: when groundwater levels fall, river water can filter down to replenish it, leaving less water on the surface. The key to greater resilience to both flood and drought, say the water detectives, is to find ways to let water be water, to reclaim space for it to interact with the land."
I arrived to the graveyard when it was still light outside, completely cloudy and probably going to rain. Raphael was waiting for me when I got there. The whole place was covered in chirping flittering birds. I set about finding the perfect spot. Once I was nestled amongst the trees and the tombstones, I made the water offering, said the prayers, and laid down to journey with the music.
And the tears they did fall from the sky. Within minutes of laying down to journey I was laughing with joy as Raphael rained down his tears upon me. I shielded myself with the umbrella I had brought with me, then unshielded myself at the insistence that some of the tears be able to fall on my face, and then RE-shielded myself at the insistence of my dead grandmothers that I would catch a cold if I was not careful! So many spirits, so much joy.
Drink my tears and let them flow through you, the human heart is a most glorious channel for love to flow through and be directed. My tears become your blood.
With this message I was called to take a sip of some of the offering water that I had set aside for talismanic merit offering purposes. Immediately afterwards upon picking up my phone to note down the words of the angel, the journey music stopped and Brian's voice streamed through my headphones "We are often called upon to be a moment of healing or to be a vessel through which love can flow." Subtlety was not the name of the game for Raphael today.
Rivers, Ports, Ships
Marissa
The trees called to me to look up into their branches and see them for the rivers and streams they are, flowing, connecting, dispersing.
I was nudged to move to sit beneath a different tree, one of the same family as a tree-friend who I often visit and make offerings to on walks around my block. I laid beneath this tree filled with birds, and a graveyard watchdog spirit came to sniff me and lay beside me while the river and the dead told me about the ships.
These are the rivers of peace upon which the new world is built.
These are the prayers of peace upon which the world is built.
All shall come home
And all shall be well
On the banks of the rivers
It all shall be well
In this I heard not only the dead gathering, collecting, and teaching, but the descendants calling out, reaching through, and pulling me towards them. Speaking to me of the world we dream for our children with the dead, the same as they dreamed our world for us, with us. Together we move forward, to a place known in our hearts. Together. Peace is not a final destination it's an always dancing, always bringing, by singing the songs of gratitude, by praying our words of peace.
The dead showed me ferry boats and supply ships. I had a sense of this graveyard and Jessie's being connected—two ports of prayer along these rivers which the dead share. Then they showed me warships (just what an army of the dead needs). I was struck by war-ship being only one slight shift from wor-ship. Worship, coming from "worth" and "-ship." Worth, as a verb, means "to come to be" and -ship is "a state of being." To worship is to "be being." We are not called to bow down, prostrate ourselves, or cower before these angels, saints, and gods as our masters. We walk with them as co-beings in place and time. We sail together.
As Gordon White put it "The past is a living geography (Under World), and it is an essential function of a human being to come into relation and resonance with it in the present (Middle World) so that this ongoingness co-creates and co-dreams our collective becoming (Upper World)."
We are called to fulfill our essential function as beings of the Middle World. The ports are set for the ships of the dead, for us, for the children, to journey to our becoming. Ships coming in, ships going out. Blood coming in, blood flowing out. This graveyard is a port for prayers, a port for ships coming in and going out on a river of an angel's tears to flood the oceans of the world with peace. This graveyard blessed with the intention of peace is a heart that the blood of the earth thrums through, to be blessed, to carry, to heal. I knew then the dead received my invitation to pray for peace, for they pray just the same as us.
A Prayer for All
What You Can Do
Go to your graveyard, pray to Raphael, open your heart to the dead of the place. We highly recommend that the graveyard you choose be elevated in some fashion. If you are in need of allies, that's what our girl Gertrude and our boy Nick are here for, otherwise reach out to those who call to you (“do the usual”). Each recitation of prayer is a bead strung on a necklace of healing for the dead. Your offering of breath, of song, of time, frees their souls from the suffering of purgatory. Pray to bring peace and healing to the dead, to fill their cups so they may overflow into peace for the world. When you pray for the dead you pray for their children and their children's children. Anyone who has experienced the miraculous shifting that comes from ancestral healing will be familiar with just what is possible with this magic. This is something we can do.
Keep some of the water offering on your altar and light a candle on the New Moon to feed the river/ocean of peace
Journey and report back! What do the dead tell you?
Raphael Prayer
I call to the most holy Mother of Heaven, Queen of Angels, and Empress of Hell to hear us, your children, and send to us the Healing of God. Archangel Raphael, you said to the family of Tobit that when we pray with our tears, we offer our prayer to the Lord. Pray now your endless compassionate tears with ours. Hear our prayers flow through our hearts, feel them sing our blood, and rain down your tears to feed the rivers of peace upon which the new worlds are built. Our blood is the river of your tears coursing through the roots of our bodies. The roots of the trees flow through the soil made fertile by the ashes of that which does not serve love, life, joy. Rain down the rivers of your tears to nourish this soil. These are the prayers of peace upon which the new worlds are built, that all shall come home, and all shall be well, on the banks of the rivers, it all shall be well.
Barbara Rosen writing on early modern England, qtd. in Emma Wilby’s Cunningfolk and Familiar Spirits, pp. 245.
Commercial table salt is mostly an industrial waste product and contains only two—sodium chloride and artifically-added iodine.
From Gordon White’s The Chaos Protocols.
Most beautiful thing I have read in a while. Thank you for doing this work. Praise to Raphael.
Beautifully moving thank you.