Re-Emergence Day

My mom is still really into the whole daemon part... I guess my grandma always was talking about how there were angels everywhere helping us and my mom would get annoyed with how saccharine the whole angel thing gets (so many figurines!) but deep down she kind of liked it so daemons were a less embarrassing way to imagine angels around us.

Anyway, she's always write down all the daemons on aluminum foil – she had this way of like scratching them in? Mine always rub off – and then fold that up in paper and we'd pick them from a hat and then put them in a candle flame to "reveal" our daemon for the year. I swear like nine times out of ten I'd get the forest daemon and my mom would tell this looong story about Tiber and Liluc and how they got lost in the forest, and always some middle part that was a barely-hidden allegory for whatever dangerous event mom was worried would happen to us that year, and the daemon that guided them out. I always wanted the quiet daemon so I could skip the whole guilt trip and have a moment of silence.

I'm trying to find a list of the daemons but everything I search for gives a different list... I guess I thought it was a standard thing like the twelve reindeer. Does anyone remember the baby daemon? The story with all the birth and babies giving birth and daemons giving babies away to other babies... so weird. I kind of think my mom just made that one up.

You mean there were other daemons? The so-called "quiet" one was the only one our parents ever told us about! I swear they used this whole holiday as an excuse just to make my brother and I behave better. "Don't talk too loud, don't talk out of turn, or the daemon... etc."

I'm guessing it's also inaccurate that you can only communicate with this "quiet" daemon when the clocks stop ticking? That's what my father told us. (My mother refused to call it a daemon. She said it was a spirit.) We always had to wait perfectly still in the dark, without making a noise, before we could light the first candle. Something about lighting a path from one season of life into the next, or to show the daemon where to emerge from "beyond the veil" to find us. Honestly, all the spiritual/cultural/metaphysical stuff went over my head when I was little.

lonesomepigeon wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 4:04 pm We always had to wait perfectly still in the dark, without making a noise, before we could light the first candle. Something about lighting a path from one season of life into the next, or to show the daemon where to emerge from "beyond the veil" to find us.

Ha, I'm totally stealing this for my next Re-Emergence with the kids. Finally a little peace and quiet after the roving bands of drummers and flautists that keep me up all Re-Emergence Eve