The All Souls’ Day always takes place when the Sun crosses Scorpio. The same drama repeats itself each year, with Christ-Logos descending into the black waters, and consciousness faces its own reflection in the deep. The Sun that rules the living walks for a time among the dead, and the veil between both worlds grows thin like the skin of an eyelid before sleep.
Yesterday, November 2, was the day of remembrance in the Catholic calendar, and it took place precisely on Sunday, dedicated to the solar Christ-Logos. When the Sun shines through Scorpio, the serpent sheds its skin, and the soul passes through its own darkness. What the Church calls commemoration of the faithful departed is, in the deeper sense, an act of cosmic respiration. The living exhale towards the dead and the dead inhale the Light that they can still receive through prayer. Whenever we light a candle or pronounce a sacred name, we do take part in this exchange. The gestures may appear small, but the cosmos is built upon them. One flame equals one world remembered.
The veil that separates these planes does not dissolve through curiosity or necromantic will; it thins through remembrance and Love. The descent of the Sun into Scorpio is the descent of Spirit into matter for the sake of its redemption. Death becomes transparent to life and life perceives its own roots in death. The prayer of the living is a bridge of sound across that transparency. When our voice speaks for the dead, it restores the vertical order of the world, drawing the fallen branches back to the trunk of Light.
II. The Intermediary Realm and the Duty of Prayer
Every religion remembers an intermediate state. Whether it is called purgatory, barzakh, bardo or the lower world of souls, it names the region where forms linger after the dissolution of the body. The density of the material world, named Assiah in Kabbbalistic terms, holds the remains of the untransformed soul like dew upon the grass. It continues to press and the light still bends through the residue of earthly attachments.
The human soul, composed of many layers of consciousness, must be released from this heaviness before it can rise again through the higher worlds. In the same Kabbalistic view, the human soul is a ladder composed of several ascending lights. These degrees are called Nefesh (נפש), Ruach (רוח), Neshamah (נשמה), Ḥayah (חיה), and Yechidah (יחידה): the vital soul, the spirit, the divine breath, the living essence, and the singular unity. Nefesh animates the body and binds it to the acts of the world; Ruach governs the heart and the motion of desire; Neshamah contemplates the hidden wisdom; Ḥayah breathes the current of prophetic life; and Yechidah rests beyond all form, where the soul knows itself as one with the Infinite. When the lower parts remain bound to the echoes of earthly life, prayer is the current that lifts them toward their luminous source.
Prayer is the ladder by which this release occurs. To pray for the dead is participation in the cosmic order of mercy. Each name spoken in reverence opens a passage and a psalm recited with devotion is an avenue through which the soul recognises its path home. Among the prayers of greatest weight stand the De Profundis, known as Psalm 130, and the Kaddish of the Hebrew tradition. Both speak from the depth, honouring the continuity between the living and the dead, containing centuries of devotion that have carved channels through the astral sea. When we repeat them, we are deciding walk in those carved channels, allowing the current of countless voices carry the newly departed beyond the magnetic pull of earth.
Words in Latin or Hebrew vibrate with the memory of ritual use; their sound has been polished by repetition until it became luminous. These languages are instruments already tuned by generations. If we speak through them, we touch a resonance that transcends the individual. They are vessels for intercession. Oration aligns breath, intention, and cosmic rhythm, restoring each fragment of consciousness the remembrance of its origin. Prayer ends the cycles of confusion that bind the departed to the lower air. It fulfils the Divine nexus that holds together Assiah, Yetzirah, Briah, and Atziluth, the worlds of manifestation, formation, creation, and emanation.
When we pray for our ancestors, we are allowing their ascent and conducting the theurgy practice of Tikkun; to forget them is to prolong their shadow within oneself. Every lineage carries its own residue, and the voice that prays becomes a mouth through which that residue can be purified. The act is simple: a candle, a psalm, a name. Simplicity is the language of the invisible. Through it the universe re-aligns its breath.
III. The Lunar Gate and the Restitution of the Souls
The Moon herself teaches this work. In every cycle of twenty-eight days, she rehearses the mystery of birth, fullness, decline, and return. Her phases are the mirror of the journey of the soul through worlds. Each waxing is a birth, each waning a death, and the new moon is the silence that precedes rebirth.
The Moon corresponds to Yesod, the Foundation. It is the sphere that receives the light of the higher planes and transmits it to the world below. It is also the gate through which souls pass when leaving or returning to embodiment. The prayers for the dead work through this lunar channel. When we pray, we clear the waters of Yesod so that the reflection of the higher light can reach those who linger in shadow. Cleansing Yesod means purifying the collective memory of humanity, since Yesod is the storehouse of images, dreams, and unfinished emotions. The pure word enters that sea and sets it in motion, dissolving what has congealed through ignorance or fear.
A small ritual with water can express this mystery: to pour clear water into a cup, to speak above it the names of the departed, and to let the reflection of a candle tremble upon the surface. The candle represents Tifereth, the heart of beauty; the water is Yesod, the mirror of transmission; the act unites both. In silence, one lets the soul travel through that image, guided by the light. Such gestures, though humble, correspond to the hidden architecture of the worlds.
The Middle Pillar, called in Hebrew Amud ha-Emtsa’i (עמוד האמצעי), is the axis of this reintegration. It represents far more than moral balance or ethical moderation; it is the way of Teshuvah (תשובה): the path of return. Only the central axis (the line that joins Malkuth (מלכות, the Kingdom) to Kether (כתר, the Crown) leads the souls back to the Shoresh ha-Neshamot (שורש הנשמות), the Source of souls.
It is the channel through which divine influx (shefa, שפע) descends, while praise, desire, and consciousness ascend. Yesod, the Moon, is the “channel” (tzino’r, צינור), the organ of spiritual transmission. The same Moon is the keeper of return. When her face shines upon the water, the spirits remember their path. When she wanes, they rest. When she is dark, they wait in the silent womb of creation. If we decide to pray in rhythm with her phases, we take place in the restitution of the souls, lending one’s breath to the great exhalation that releases the bound to the freedom of light.
Κύριε ελέησον