For My Dead Homies
MacRaven points out a great article in the San Francisco Chronicle about the ongoing “R.I.P.” shirts trend.
“The R.I.P. shirts — airbrushed or featuring scanned photos of lost loved ones — were just a novelty when they were first created a decade ago. But today they are an everyday ritual of death in many American cities, like choosing a casket or sending flowers. Shirt-making enterprises now thrive in areas where the homicide rates are high, including parts of the Bay Area, New York, Washington, D.C., Miami and Chicago.” – SF Chronicle
He also points out that urban youth also share a tradition with the ancient Greeks, the pouring out of libations to the dead.
“Earl “E.J.” Jackson cracked open a Miller High Life and poured a dribble into the gutter before taking a swig. “That’s for my dead homies,” he said.” – SF Chronicle
“But those of the middle sort, and they are numerous, wander in the meadow without bodies, having become shadows and vanishing like smoke on contact with anything. They are nourished by the libations we pour and by burnt offerings over their tombs, so that if any one of them lacks a friend or relative above ground, that one ekes out an existence among the dead as a fasting and famished corpse.” – The Poet Lucian (courtesy of the fine site Laudator Temporis Acti)
The connection with our dead on such a personal and everyday level is a truly “Pagan” idea that has carried over into our modern culture and in some cases modern non-Pagan religion.
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