My first experience of Finados or All Souls Day in the Santo Daime Tradition was yesterday. It started out in the normal pattern. We were dancing and singing in Portuguese led by our Brazilian brother and sister. 
The hymns were those of Antonio Gomes de Silva who died in 1946. 
They were very powerful. About half way through the Hinario, I began to feel weak and went into the healing space to lay down. I covered myself with a blanket. Then the golden light hit me, filling me with ineffable information. I accepted this. Soon I felt the spirit of the man whose hymns we were singing slowly mesh with mine. It seemed he wanted to hear his songs with my ears. I have had this experience with people who have recently crossed over when they wanted to see their loved ones and/or communicate with them. But this was different. I began to feel colder and colder. Another brother came and laid on the floor beside my couch. I felt reassured by this. My family was all around me, but I could not move.
When the singing and dancing stopped. I wasn’t sure if I could return to my body. I could feel the ice cold breath of Death and see the Specter before me. At that moment I chose Life and willed myself to sit up. Across from me sat a sister whose look reassured me. She had seen what happened. She was holding space for me, keeping safe, sacred guard, as was my nephew, the men’s Guardian. Slowly I got to my feet wrapped in my blanket and warily wobbled down the steps into the sunlight. It felt so good to be alive. After sitting for a while in the sun, I got up and walked to the flat space where I could do the Cherokee Dance of Life. There I addressed the four directions, Mother Earth and Father Sky, drawing their energies through my body and connecting and balancing their energies within me. Facing each direction in turn, drawing energy and giving it away, I moved around the Medicine Wheel, feeling more and more connected to the Earth and with Life. When I completed the circle, another man, a Fardado, asked me to teach him the Dance. Together we made two more circuits around the Medicine Wheel. Then I returned to the second half of the Work.
After the Work was completed, one of my grand daughters approached me. I told her the story of what happened and she stared in astonishment into my eyes, holding my shoulders, saying: “That was an initiatory experience! That’s the Death Gate. I’ve never told anyone about my experience of that Gate. I can’t even go there, but I can acknowledge for you that I can see it is still open. I offer you this prayer, that when the Medicine has finished transforming you, showing you what you need to see, that the Gate will close and you will be restored, whole and complete.” She hugged me and welcomed me back. It was profound. I ate like I have never eaten before. The food, the conversation, the music all nourished me. I have returned from the realm of Hades and didn’t look back. Glad I am that I knew the story of Orpheus and the lesson of letting go. Now I understand the flight of the Condor and why we Eagles must learn to fly together with the Medicine of the South, thus completing the prophesy.
Merlin and the White Eagle 