All Souls Night is a time to call upon our ancestors and burn the world's bad ideas. Then we can refill the world with ideas of hope and joy. In Duluth there was an All Souls Night celebration that was coordinated by a local puppeteer. The ceremony was indirectly sponsored by Occupy Duluth and vice versa.
We all met in the Depot (one of the prettiest buildings in Duluth) where there was drummers and gypsy belly dancers.
Inside the Depot there were alters set up in memory of those who had recently passed.
Later we gathered outside for a march.
The three people who did the mourner puppets were actually my friends Jenny, Jesse, and Jay. (AKA The "J" Team)
The moon made an appearance.
The puppets and stilts people led the parade.
We marched up 5th street to the Civic Center where we marched around the DAD encampment.
The weird purple thing is the people's living room. It's purple because some of the walls are translucent(for solar-passive heat) and the main light source in there are Christmas lights.
Kids ran around, danced to the drummers, and spun in circles throughout the parade.
A vid of some of the sights and sounds of the march:
After the parade we gathered to the stage under the library's cantilever for the ceremony. The ceremony opened with some poetry. Then we all wrote down evil ideas on paper and burned them on stage. Many people read out their idea before they burned them and most of them were economy related like "economic injustice," "corporate personhood," and "the 1%."
After the burning we all joined hands in a circle and danced around the drummers singing, "By breath, by blood, by body, by spirit; we are all one."
The ceremony ended with an about 15 minutes fire dancing performance. Video:
Very nice low-light shots. Seems like a very cool experience.
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