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An occasional practice created especially for Between the Stacks subscribers, inspired by the Black Bird Oracle and the world of All Souls.
All Hallow’s Eve is a night when we are unusually comfortable allowing the past to sit beside the present. We tell old stories, bring out photographs, revisit traditions, and remember people who are no longer here. Even many of the customs we now associate with Halloween carry traces of much older ideas about memory, death, and the relationship between generations.
That makes The Bottle an especially fitting card to pull from The Black Bird Oracle at this time of year.
Deborah Harkness associates The Bottle with memories, ancestral guidance, and protection. Its affirmation is wonderfully simple:
I remember.
That idea feels particularly at home in All Souls, where the dead are rarely entirely absent. They remain in houses and libraries, in family stories and inherited objects, in traditions, and in the choices made by the people who come after them.
Diana’s life is filled with people she never had enough time with. Rebecca and Stephen are gone before she has the opportunity to truly know them as an adult, yet their choices continue to shape her life. Philippe’s influence extends far beyond his death. Emily remains part of Sarah’s story. Hugh remains part of Fernando’s. Across the series, people disappear, but what they gave to others does not necessarily disappear with them.
That is the idea behind this All Hallow’s Eve practice.
We aren’t going to ask the Oracle about the future.
For one evening, we’re going to use it to spend some time with the past.
