The Cosmic
Story: The Wheel of the Year
Samhain: Day
of the Dead: All Hallows
The Crone and Her Cauldron
The
Celtic New Year: Samhain, the Last Harvest
While our culture, and the whole world, has embraced
Halloween, most people don't know why we celebrate the way we do. Why
do we become someone else, grab all the sweets we can, and wander
through the night, sometimes (at least in the old days) wrecking a
tiny bit of havoc?
On Samhain, it was believed that the deceased came to
Earth in search of food and comfort, while evil spirits, faeries and
gods came in search of mischief.
We celebrate the Celtic New Year on October
31st-November 1st:
it is Samhain, the pagan New Year, it is The Day of the Dead, it is
Halloween and All Hallows. This is the time of year when the veils
are thin and the beloved Dead come close and wander around for a bit.
It is a day to honor the Dead and our ancestors. That's where the
costumes come from-- we want to 'try on' another life. And since we
want to honor our Dead, we offer them some of the food they loved in
life. That's where the sweets come from. And the havoc comes when we
don't honor those spirits properly.
Unfortunately, most of us have forgotten this ancient
rite. Halloween is just another excuse for a party. But if we don't
honor Death, we will be afraid of it. We get a chance, each year (and
for women, each month with our bleeding), to release what is dead
from our energy bodies, so something new can be born in the New Year.
And when we add to this release the honoring of where we've come
from, we can go forward into the next year with hope. And perhaps
even an ancestor spirit to guide us in the coming darkness.
This is the time to put a layer of protection around
yourself – may I only attract energies of the highest vibrations
within myself – if you're going to open yourself to the
ancestors. Because we know that there are both positive and negative
energies, spirits and souls that do get attracted to us, especially
when we're open to it. Open yourself to the highest spirits and bless
your ancestors.
We are about to descend into the darkest part of the
year in the Northern Hemisphere (while in the South, the sunlight
will be growing and you'll be celebrating Beltane! Dance the Maypole
for me!). What is darker than Death for us? What if we accepted a
small death now, so that something new can take its place? One of my
friends said, “I sometimes feel like I'm out to pasture.” I know
the feeling as an elder, but not really! This is not a time to stand
back and let the world flow past you. It is a time to stay centered
in a larger vision and hope, while you engage in the world in the
best possible way.
Whoever you are – come dance your dance. Whatever
you do – it will be perfect since it's you.
What is it like to dance with death? Words can't take
the place of experience. Imagination can get you there. Having a
power animal along with you to give you strength, cunning and
instinct and an ancestor who can give you clarity is one way to do
it. Out in the desert, we dance all night at this time around an
alchemical fire, We dance a bone dance.
The Celtic witches honor this time as the passing of the
king, the death of the green man of summer. Men especially can look
to the Green Man archetype to learn how to live, to love and to die
at the proper time. Seasonal renewal, ecological awareness, the Green
Man, his face masked behind leaves and branches, is a archetypal
energy of growth and fertility, who also knows when to let go and
die.
There are legends
of him (Khidr)
in which, like Osiris,
he is dismembered and reborn; and prophecies connecting him, like the
Green Man, with the end of time. His name means the Green One or
Verdant One, he is the voice of inspiration to the aspirant and
committed artist. He can come as a white light or the gleam on a
blade of grass, but more often as an inner mood. The sign of his
presence is the ability to work or experience with tireless
enthusiasm beyond one's normal capacities. In this there may be a
link across cultures, …one reason for the enthusiasm of the
medieval sculptors for the Green Man may be that he was the source of
every inspiration.
[William
Anderson, Green
Man: The Archetype of Our Oneness with the Earth.
San Francisco: Harper Collins,
(1990).]
Women can turn to Persephone's myth, the Maiden who is
ravished away from her Mother to the Underworld where she claims her
name – Persephone – and becomes a queen in her own right, away
from her Mother's power. Persephone is the strong one who each year
descends into the Underworld and welcomes the Dead, leading the way
through the dark to new life. Her work is to abide in the Underworld
for a season, with patience and calm, to invoke the next generation,
the next phase of life. She is 'brewing beauty in the Underworld'.
(Caroline Casey) She is also strong enough to ascend and come back in
the springtime to bring that new life with her.
Both the Green Man and Persephone lead us to renewal.
Renew yourself and your soul ancestry as well as your
human ancestors by releasing the old story lodged in your DNA. We can
make a leap in evolution with our self-awareness and our values.
Understand your place in the beauty of creation. Take responsibility
for your world. It is time to take our place again the the biosphere
of Mother Earth. It is time to reclaim our bodies, our souls and our
spirit.
Mercury Retrograde in Scorpio
The Faerie Queen & King at Samhain
As Fate would have it, Mercury is here to help. Our
messenger/psychopomp is about to reverse direction on Halloween
(11:42am EDT). The Sabian symbol for Mercury turning retrograde at
28* Scorpio is: The King and Queen of Faerie
are solemnly welcomed to their realm. Quite
perfect, don't you think? When these archetypal energies return to
the inner world or other dimensions – in a solemn manner – we are
called to follow. Now is the time to turn within and contemplate our
inner landscape, our
innersphere.
Mercury has spent this year, and will spend next year,
retrograding in water signs. I guess the cosmos (the Mercury
retrogrades and Cancer North Node) wants us to look at our emotions
and heal them. This is Mercury's 3rd and last retrograde
this year, the other two occurring in the signs of Pisces and Cancer.
This Scorpio retrograde can help us work on those shadow qualities
related to other people in our lives – family, friends, co-workers,
strangers.
Mercury can lead us to see how we choose to hold
ourselves apart from intimacy, from sharing ourselves emotionally,
from diving deeply into life. What's holding us back? Fear of
betrayal, fear of failure, fear of being unloved and unlovable?
Terror at being dominated or worse? Fear of the unknown or the
stranger? Fear of our desires
and passions? Fear of the Dark?
For these 3 weeks, from
October 31st
to November 20th,
we can let Mercury lead us back to the source of our wounds, which
will become the source of our healing. Take the time and meditate
and/or journey with Mercury into the deep inner reservoir of your
emotional body. Face your fears, release and thank your shadows, and
embrace the joy of emotional freedom. Leave the trauma you learned
with in the cauldron of regeneration and claim the gift of your
initiation.
Re-member, re-lease, re-deem, re-claim, re-new,
re-dedicate, re-enchant and re-turn to your original state of
blessing and wholeness. Let the old king die so the divine child of
Light can be re-born at the Winter Solstice.
Mercury moving in front of the Sun
[Sky Alert! On the morning of Monday November 11,
Mercury will cross the face of the Sun – looking like a tiny black
dot! If you still have your glasses from the Great American eclipse,
pull 'em out. Also, find an observatory. In Rhode Island, Frosty Drew
Observatory is opened from 7am to around 1:30pm.]
The Astrology of Now
Sun at 15* Scorpio Power Gate
The
intense Scorpio New Moon on October 27th
was
opposite the planet Uranus in Taurus. Many people found it hard to
sleep those nights – the energy was high. A Scorpio New Moon plants
the seeds of emotional death and rebirth, embracing an awakened
awareness of life because we face death. With the awakener Uranus
opposing this New Moon, our psyches are energized and electrified
with an awakened body as well. Uranus in Taurus is an awakened Earth
– our awareness can align with Earth's awareness now. Our wholeness
has to include our bodies, our hearts and minds and our spiritual
awareness. This is it! This is what we've been working toward,
preparing us for the big upheavals of 2020 and beyond.
If
we're going to have an awakened Earth, we have to be the agents of
that awakening. The Sabian symbol for the Scorpio New Moon at 5* is:
A massive rocky
shore unchanged by centuries of storms. We
have to remember that there are fundamental principles of life that
can sustain us in these stormy times. We have to find our strength,
because who knows when a fire, flood, storm or earthquake will demand
that strength from us.
Uranus
in Taurus is an awakened Earth spirit. Our mother, Earth, will help
us survive those hard time is we're open to listening to her wisdom.
The body knows!
We
have moved so far away from living in our own skins that we no longer
know how to eat, to sleep, to stay healthy and relaxed. Uranus in
Taurus wants us to get back into our bodies. That's when we'll
confront the poison in our food, our soils, our atmosphere, our
waters. If we don't feel it, how can we heal it?
Mercury joins the Sun the day before the Taurus/Scorpio
Full Moon. Always an intense time of year, the Saturn/Pluto
conjunction in Capricorn trines this Taurus Full Moon and sextiles
the Scorpio Sun. Simply put, this energy of release before a new
cycle of power and re-structuring starts will push us to go deep and
find out what it is we really love and desire.
As
Caroline Casey says, while Venus is in Scorpio, we are brewing beauty
in the underworld. Then Venus will quickly move into Sagittarius on
November 2nd
and
into Capricorn the day before the Sagittarius New Moon on November
25th.
Mars is challenged to work for peace and harmony rather than
self-aggrandizement at the Samhain power gate. Mars leaves
Libra on November 19th
for
Scorpio, settling in to transform the Libra lessons into passion and
power.
December starts with Jupiter finishing up his time in
his home sign of Sagittarius (where does time go?) and moving into
Capricorn, where he'll meet up with Saturn and Pluto later in 2020.
And it's a big year for eclipses. Including the late
December 2019 Capricorn solar eclipse, in 2020 we have a total of 7
(6+1) eclipses in Cancer/Capricorn and Gemini/Sagittarius coming up
in the New Year, along with the much anticipated Saturn/Pluto
conjunction in Capricorn on January 12, 2020 – to be joined
throughout the year by Jupiter and Mars. Big energies for
transformation and rebirth are due in 2020.
So. Prepare Yourselves. Open the Way.
Samhain Blessings,
Cathy
It Is Hard To Have Hope – Wendell Berry
It is hard to have
hope. It is harder as you grow old,
for
hope must not depend on feeling good
and
there is the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.
You
also have withdrawn belief in the present reality
of
the future, which surely will surprise us,
and
hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction
any
more than by wishing. But stop dithering.
The
young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?
Tell
them at least what you say to yourself.
Because
we have not made our lives to fit
our
places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded,
the
streams polluted, the mountains overturned. Hope
then
to belong to your place by your own knowledge
of
what it is that no other place is, and by
your
caring for it as you care for no other place, this
place
that you belong to though it is not yours,
for
it was from the beginning and will be to the end.
Belong
to your place by knowledge of the others who are
your
neighbors in it: the old man, sick and poor,
who
comes like a heron to fish in the creek,
and
the fish in the creek, and the heron who manlike
fishes
for the fish in the creek, and the birds who sing
in
the trees in the silence of the fisherman
and
the heron, and the trees that keep the land
they
stand upon as we too must keep it, or die.
This
knowledge cannot be taken from you by power
or
by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful
when
they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy
when
they ask for your land and your work.
Answer
with knowledge of the others who are here
and
how to be here with them. By this knowledge
make
the sense you need to make. By it stand
in
the dignity of good sense, whatever may follow.
Speak
to your fellow humans as your place
has
taught you to speak, as it has spoken to you.
Speak
its dialect as your old compatriots spoke it
before
they had heard a radio. Speak
publicly
what cannot be taught or learned in public.
Listen
privately, silently to the voices that rise up
from
the pages of books and from your own heart.
Be
still and listen to the voices that belong
to
the streambanks and the trees and the open fields.
There
are songs and sayings that belong to this place,
by
which it speaks for itself and no other.
Find
your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your
hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground
underfoot.
Be it lighted by the light that falls
freely
upon it after the darkness of the nights
and
the darkness of our ignorance and madness.
Let
it be lighted also by the light that is within you,
which
is the light of imagination. By it you see
the
likeness of people in other places to yourself
in
your place. It lights invariably the need for care
toward
other people, other creatures, in other places
as
you would ask them for care toward your place and you.
No
place at last is better than the world. The world
is
no better than its places. Its places at last
are
no better than their people while their people
continue
in them. When the people make
dark
the light within them, the world darkens.
~
Wendell Berry ~
(This
Day: New and Collected Sabbath Poems)
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