Liber Saturni - Chapter 70

Verses

Verse 88

We keep the House of Endings at the edge of the city where celebrants do not have to pass it by accident.

Verse 89

Here we wash the dead and speak plainly.

Verse 90

No one says they have gone to a better place unless they had supplied an address.

Verse 91

We say: this life ended.

Verse 92

We say: we loved them.

Verse 93

We say: we do not know.

Verse 94

Our emblem is Saturn because every feast becomes a memory and every memory thins.

Verse 95

This does not make the feast worthless.

Verse 96

It makes attendance urgent.

Verse 97

A demon once came asking whether death was sacred.

Verse 98

I told him death was common.

Verse 99

He asked whether that was the same thing.

Verse 100

I said no, and neither is it an insult.

Verse 101

We burn old letters each winter, not because the past is evil, but because storage is finite.

Verse 102

We keep one object from each beloved until keeping hurts more than releasing.

Verse 103

Then we give it away.

Verse 104

The novice fears this custom.

Verse 105

The elder fears the room where nothing has been released.

Verse 106

Decay is not moral failure.

Verse 107

Rot has fed more gardens than purity ever did.

Verse 108

Place the body in earth, flame, sea, or whatever the dead requested.

Verse 109

Then feed the living.

Verse 110

Grief does not betray the teaching.

Verse 111

Grief is what love weighs after the body is gone.

Verse 112

Carry what you can.

Verse 113

Set down what you cannot.

Verse 114

Do not make a throne from the ashes.

Verse 115

When your own hour comes, leave the door unlocked.