Cemeteries and other places of the dead often have one. A head spirit of the grounds who keeps an eye on things and keeps tabs on spirits and living visitors alike. I’m lucky that my local graveyard has a murder of them, or to clarify, a family of crows.

As my family and I walk, bird watch, and tidy up trash, our greetings and farewells seem to have sufficed in that, the spirits we sense around us keep their distance, follow close behind, or like watching from the center hilltop. No specific Gatekeeper in sight. The crows who have made a tree on the center hilltop home, however, frequently travel the grounds and the surrounding streets. They fly throughout the neighbourhood chatting to each other and having aerial battles with a family of hawks a few times a year. They have even brought us gifts of marbles near our offering stone. Their presence is a joy and a cherished reminder of seasonal cycles.

To the usual backdrop of birdsong and squawking crow solos at the cemetery, I looked down at my feet one afternoon to find the image of our Guardian, chiselled in the pavement. I thought of the crows ever keeping watch overhead, the gifts they have given, and the home they keep. I simply outlined our friend to see them more clearly, to work with them as the Gatekeeper symbol for the cemetery we love so much, and to utilize their imagery as an offering to that space. A Crow Groundskeeper surveying the hollowed earth within its walls. A face for the space. I can work with that.

This is one of the steps in my Cemetery Essence project where I deepen my work as a death witch and my relationships with local land spirits. This is what the land held in store for us. If you look in the graveyards in which you tread, what spirits or symbols can you see?