Memorial day is a day to remember and honor those lost to wars, but as Pagans I feel there is an opportunity to care for these spirits after they are gone. Not just to remember them, but to help them find their peace.
War is a horrible thing, and of course fighting in them is traumatic. Firstly, not everyone who fought...or died...in wars were volunteers, so there is room for a lot of conflicting emotions on the part of the soldiers. And even if someone believed in the cause the war was fought on behalf of, the atrocities they saw and the actions they took might leave someone split and conflicted about their role in the war.
Now, there are a lot of perspectives on what happens to us after death. Many people believe there are places we go, based on what we believe and our actions in life. But many people also believe that the dead can be trapped, or lost, and never reach what should have been their final destination. These are the people I am talking about in this post...souls who may be stuck, shackled by their actions or the traumatic nature of their death, unable to take their final rest in the manner that they should.
The good thing is that, if you believe that such souls exist, you also have a way to reach out to them and help them move on. As every one of us is an individual, this will mean that the way in which you approach this task will be highly individual (not only for you, as the practitioner, but also for the person you are trying to help...different methods may be required in order to help different people).
I feel like the first step should always be some kind of divination...finding out who the person is that you are reaching out to. You may have family members who have died in wars, and this might be a good place to start. I don't feel like every person who dies in a war gets stuck like this, so the first step would be to determine if this particular person is...and divination is a great way to approach this. You could also do some research on people who died in the war and work with others, who may not be directly related to you.
Of course you could also take a different approach and start with divination to find a soul who needs help. In this case, the divination is less focused on whether or not they need help and instead focused on finding out who they were and what happened to them. This information will form the basis of the work that you can do to help them move on.
Now, not every lost soul will have the same level of coherence. Some spirits will be able to communicate very clearly, will have a good grasp on who they were in life, what has happened to them, and even might be aware of the state of the world today. Others might have lost a lot of themselves, and this process may be more about trying to help them remember who they were, and accept the fact that they are dead.
Once you have a decent idea of who you are working with and what their state is, you can start to figure out how to help them. Again, every spirit will be different, so one might only need to be reassured that their part in the war is over and that their job is done and they can move on. Others may need to be updated on their family, or they may want to know how their actions (and the war they were in) influenced the world.
One thing to remember here is that our role isn't to judge, condemn or pardon these spirits. We aren't evaluating how righteous or corrupt they are and sending them to where we think they belong. We are simply trying to figure out what is holding them here, and helping them to let go of any lingering concerns and issues so they can go where they need to go.
While doing this work, it is also important to make sure you are keeping your protections up. Especially when working with spirits who maybe don't align with our own moral compass, we don't want to risk that soul becoming fixated on us and hanging around when we don't want them to. Keeping strong protections is always a good idea, when working with any spirit, and especially spirits that may wish to create hardship or chaos in our lives.
It won't always be possible to help every spirit, but we can reach out and do what we are able to. We can be a light to the lost souls who are stuck and confused and afraid. We can help diffuse the anger and hatred that lingers with some of them and encourage them to release their hold on whatever is keeping them tethered. And helping these lost souls can also help us (and other people alive today) to release our own anger and resentment towards the actions of our ancestors and those who came before.
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