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Samhain Season Reflections

I had vague plans for Oíche Shamhna — beyond the usual handing out candy as my husband took the kiddo trick or treating — but after an October where I was sick and then my husband got sick and stayed sick, and then I finally got the new covid vaccine (which, predictably, tanked me for a week), plans did not solidify and materialize beyond brief prayers.

Normally, that would have upset me, and I would have felt guilty for not being a better descendant to my ancestors and devotee to my deities, but instead I woke up on the first of November having had a profound dream, and very shortly after waking I was visited by a messenger from the High Court associated with the Chesapeake Bay watershed.  I hadn't done work, but work had come to me.  The dream featured Angrboda — a jotun goddess(1) who is perhaps best known as the other parent of Loki's most famous children: Hela, Fenris, and Jormungandr — teaching me to spin seidr with flax.  I will need to go see her again to get the rest of it cemented in my mind, but the flax I bought online that day is coming in the mail.  The messenger had news of a more personal nature for me (which is still something I haven't quite gotten used to), acknowledging the fulfillment of a contract.

If you had told me ten years ago that in ten years' time I would be up to my neck in Otherworldly conflict and politics, I wouldn't have believed you.  Sure, I interacted with my Local Fair Folk then, but primarily the less powerful ones that wander about a bit, not the Gentry.  But here I am and here I'll stay for good or ill.  As John Beckett said recently: "sharpen the swords you have".  This work is the sword I have, and I'll do it to the best of my ability, though I'll caution anyone else considering following this path that this is not a job you can just quit.(2)

In the intervening decade, I've interacted more and more with the Gentry — first those closest to my house wherever I was living, and then as time went on and I became more involved with the Court and Queen I serve in the Otherworlds, I was finding that I needed to "check in at the embassy" in every new territory before I did more than the smallest instinctive magics, which meant needing offerings for the local Gentry every time I went to any kind of pagan event, from a major conference like Mystic South or Sacred Space, to a small backyard holiday gathering at a friend's house.

And as I've done these check-ins, I've met more and more courts(3) who seem to be embroiled in the Otherworldly conflict that is part of The Great War, The Storm, Tower Time — whatever you'd like to call it.  (I've taken to calling it the "Strife-Storm", recently, because it does seem to shift and build and release like weather. Although I was one of those who talked about it back in March under the term "Great War", that didn't fit as well once I took it out of Irene Glasse's metaphor and applied it to the Otherworldly conflicts I was seeing, but I didn't have better words back then!  We'll see if "Strife-Storm" sticks, because I do really want a term to talk about the conflict itself, within the sort of larger context of Tower Time.)  Part of my work for my Court is connecting with some of these courts I'm encountering, and doing some work to establish something like diplomatic ties that are grounded in this world, as well.

I've been tasked with keeping up these connections with semi-regular contact and offerings, and the picture on this blog is of my recently reorganized shrine, with most of the main courts I interact with all brought together.  There are candles, and a few "tokens" (the pins and ring, all symbols of pledges made) and one little statuette of a husband and wife gnome kissing... That was a very specific request from the King and Queen of the High Court associated with the. I had asked how they wanted to be represented on my shrine; let it never be said that the fae don't have a sense of humor!  The candle I used (and will continue using) for the Pleiades Cycle is on top of a box of trinkets and jewelry which has been the center point of my fairy shrine for most of the past decade.  The rose candle is for the Queen of my immediate local area, and the two large candles are for the Monarchs of Spring and Autumn of the High Court associated with the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

In my last blog about the Strife-Storm, I mentioned battles, and those are ongoing but either less frequent, or I am less frequently aware of my part in them, which is more of a relief than anything else.  Waking up feeling drained, tired, and sore with bruises I don't remember having is one thing; getting flashbacks of battlefield carnage I never saw with my physical eyes is quite another, and I'd very much prefer the first.  But in general things seem to be more at an uneasy standstill by me.  I heard reports of weirdness elsewhere during the last solar eclipse, which I suppose makes a certain amount of sense, as the forces my allies are fighting against seem to be held at bay by solar energy. I do not know what to expect in the coming dark season, but it's always best to be prepared.  And that's really what this week ended up being, for me: a time to contemplate the work of the summer, and to prepare for the work of the winter.

 

  1. Look, we can debate terminology and theology later in the comments if you like.  But people pray to her and she answers, and that's goddess enough for me.
  2. You quit the Gentry just about the same way you quit the Mafia, which is to say: you're in for life (and in the case of the Gentry, potentially after death too: word to the wise).  
  3. Here using the loose meaning of the word "court": just a group of some vague cohesion.
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Samhain Season, Spooky Season, and Spicy Spirit Weather

This morning when I woke up, there was frost on the ground – the first frost I’ve seen this year. It’s earlier than the past two years I’ve lived here; previously it was just a few days before or after October 31st. The farmer’s almanac was close though – their prediction this year was the 18th, 3 days ago, and it got down close to freezing then but not quite. I took a few photos on my walk this morning and posted them to my instagram. It was early, just about sunrise, and the neighborhood smelled like woodsmoke – a lovely start to my personal Samhain Season.

While a lot of pagans and witches consider Samhain to be the one day most often celebrated as a neopagan high day (generally November 1st), my personal observance of Samhain includes October 31st (known in Irish as Oíche Shamhna, or November Eve), November 1st through at least the 7th or 8th (the astrological halfway point) and sometimes through the 11th (the adjusted old date, before the calendar shifted), and the first frost, wherever I am. It’s a little loose for a liturgical event, but it’s more than a single day holiday for me. The end of the summer half of the year and the transition to the winter half of the year is a liminal space and I let it take up space in my practice and in my life. Samhain is the name for the whole month of November in modern Irish, and there’s evidence that some of the fire festivals went two weeks in length, and that’s sort of the feel I’m going for. This period also usually coincides with a stellar date that’s important to my practice: the heliacal rising of the star Spica. She’ll rise just after the sun on November 2nd this year, after being gone from the sky for about the last six weeks, and that observance has also become part of my Samhain Season, marking a time of personal transition towards darkness, as I prepare for the winter months.

That transition towards darkness and winter is also a big part of why fall is sometimes called “Spooky Season”, I think. Some people only use “Spooky Season” to refer to the month of October and the run-up to Halloween, but lately I’ve been hearing it about September and November as well, and I think it’s sort of fitting. Autumn is a season of harvest and death and decay, and that can be a bit spooky – in a good way, in my opinion! It’s a good time to reflect on the past and engage with our shadows as the nights become longer and colder. Death is omnipresent, and not just because of Halloween decorations. I start to feel the stirrings of the Wild Hunt on the wind in September most years, and by the first frost at the end of October, they’re running strong most nights. Oiche Shamhna has long been associated with the proximity of otherworldly forces, or the “thinning of the veil” in modern parlance, and with the Dead especially. My own practice around Samhain focuses on the Morrigna, Be Chuille, and the Dead. In my new monthly calendar, I honor the Morrigna in October and Be Chuille (and her family) in November, and my Samhain practice transitions between those two in a way more overlapping than sharply delineated.

The Dead being more present and the Wild Hunt running around both contribute to the seeming uptick in supernatural events, paranormal activity, and general spirit weather that occurs this time of year. I’ve seen more than one post on Facebook reminding fellow witches and pagans to ground and shield and make sure your wards are tight – and with good reason. Not everything riding the wind wishes us well, or is friendly or favorable to our intentions and lives. Nor are they truly evil or even baneful, however – they just Are. I don’t assign moral meaning to forces of chaos or destruction, personally; they can be for good or for ill, just as forces of order and creation can also be used for good or for ill. Wards are fences – as much as I might enjoy the presence of my Local wind riders when I’m walking around at dusk, I do prefer them to stay outside! I stay out of their way, and I hope they’ll stay out of mine, and good neighbors may we be. How much to avoid them and how thick to build wards to feel safe inside is a matter of personal preference, and I recently saw these upticks referred to as “spicy”, which struck me as a perfect analogy! Some people (like me) like their food with a bit of a kick, and while sometimes we might bite into something a little hotter than we can manage, we know how to remedy that situation and generally we can handle it with good humor. Some people, when they bite into something spicy, find only pain and no enjoyment (and sometimes shake their heads at spice lovers in disbelief). There’s no need to engage with the wilder spirit weather if you don’t want to, but it’s my jam, personally, and one of the many reasons I love the fall. Samhain and Bealtaine are probably my two favorite holidays, mostly because of the wild and carnivalesque otherworldly tides of energy surrounding those two times of year, and because of how important both transitional periods are to the Fair Folk I’m connected to. It invigorates me and my practice in ways that steadier energies don’t. So don’t mind me, I’m just gonna take my hot apple cider and be off with the Fairies…

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Crow Folks: Samhain Approaches

This time for the Dark Moon, when I journeyed to see Na Morrigna, I was sent to do a little bit of personal work first, and then when I returned I poured a flagon of brandy into their cauldron, and they stirred it in with wands and used those to convey the themes for their message – which I was then instructed to turn into a free form poem. So with Their help and inspiration, I wrote the following:

Lughnasadh passed; Samhain approaches.
A new moon, a new-coming year,
and an end to waiting.

A few weeks to prepare;
Plans to revisit,
Goals to reassess.

Your choice of paths to take.
What role will you fill?
What path draws you toward it?

Flame burned around you;
Now you stand fire-hardened,
Ready for new work.

A time for you to renew
Both your convictions and your dedications
As the year turns from light to dark.

A turbulent seasons begins:
Wind tearing at trees,
Palisades mended with new earthen supports.

Paths diverge: deep or shallow?
Deep and deeper still,
Into the heart of the Work.

This is the calling:
An end to superficial engagement,
And into the bone-fire of transformation.

The old to be burnt away,
Clearing way for new growth,
Growth from your own shadowy depths.

As my personal Samhain observation and celebrations continue through the first week of November, the next Dark Moon (November 4th) will likely be a Samhain message. If you don’t have plans I recommend at least doing a small solitary ritual, perhaps just to learn more about what they wish you to do in this coming year (Samhain to Samhain) by doing a journey, or a bit of candlelight divination.

If you aren’t sure what to do, I always welcome emails, and if you’re on Facebook I highly recommend the group “The Morrigan’s Cave”, run by the Irish Pagan School. It’s a spectacular resource, and is full of very knowledgeable practitioners!

Samhain 2018

My Samhain Season began with my transition into darkness, timed to the heliacal rise of Spica (a star or multi-star system in the constellation Virgo) on October 24th, the same day as the full moon.  The timing was something I discovered by accident, as I fell down a rabbit hole of faery holidays and stellar timing following Morgan Daimler’s revelations about the Pleaides.  Spica seems to be closely associated with my Faery Queen, whom I call The Starflower Queen, and she has a sort of light-in-darkness and darkness-in-light balance to her energies that reminds me of the Chinese yin yang symbol.  I had noticed on previous years that her transition into darkness happened before November Eve, but this year I really dove into star charts and paid careful attention and though I believe her transition from light to darkness is somewhat gradual, the bulk of the transition seems to occur between the heliacal rise of Spica (when it rises before the sun) and when Spica is at its zenith in conjunction with the sun, which happens much closer to November Eve. (I’m still not 100% clear on whether it’s the zenith at noon or the sun conjunction that matters more, but the zenith at noon was easier to calculate: October 30th this year.)

Hallowed Homecoming, which was the subject of my previous blog post, began my ancestor work and my work with the Morrigna.  For the Ancestor Altar there, I prepared a small charm box, in a repurposed Sucrets container.  (I’m a huge fan of witchy upcycling.)  Inside I placed a sodalite stone from an incomplete rune set carved with Othala, a fortune from a fortune cookie that bore the phrase “missing you” in English and Chinese, and a purple paper heart into which I spoke the names of some of my most beloved ancestors.  It spent the weekend on that altar, among other tokens and pictures, and then it came home with me to my own ancestor shrine.

I did very little on the 31st.  We passed out candy, and though I expected to pull cards for my Crow Folk, I was told I had to Wait.  So, I worked on memorizing some more of the chants for the ritual I was helping plan, and I waited.  I did not feel called to pull cards to speak to any of my ancestors, either – I had received the messages that were most important during the main ritual at Hallowed Homecoming.

On the 2nd of November, I attended a Memorial and solidarity Shabbat Service at a local synagogue with my husband’s family, and that was an especially poignant evening of Ancestral Communion.  It was also a much needed balm for my grief, and I came away glad for the community I live in, and wishing that my own faith was better represented in it.

On the 3rd, I gathered with some friends at a friend’s house, and together the nine of us had a ritual to the Morrigna, which was powerful despite our greenness and small number.  Afterwards we had a pot luck, and there was an ancestor shrine set up in one room for people to visit and take time at.  My little sucrets container sat among other tokens for another evening.

Now it is the 7th, the day of the Dark Moon, and my Samhain season comes to a close.  I am finishing these blogs as the sun goes down, and then I will pull cards and dream on them, seeking a message from the Morrigna.  Tomorrow, I will write up a blog for the Dark Moon, and I will begin to pull cards for all the Crow Folks who have requested them.

Crow Folk: Are You Doing the Work?

Hello again, my fellow Crows: warriors, clerics, healers, and witches, we are many things but we have all been called by Na Morrigna to join their legions.  You have heard the call.  You have answered it.  Are you doing the work?

Many of us have self-work to do in preparation for the coming months, and that is good and right.  What skills are you honing? What personal revelations unfolding?  Do you feel your wings grow as you live a life truer to yourself?  You need to be sure of your foundations, because each of us is a stone, supporting the others in our mutual work.  Find and embrace your role in the greater scheme, and embody it as fully as you can. For most of you, the training period is almost over.  By the equinox, you need to be at a transition point: finishing your internal work, and ready to plan external workings.

The equinox is likely to be a more gentle shift, an ombré blending the colors of the early harvest with the late.  We’ll be shifting from interior worlds to the exterior, making plans for Samhain.  Some rituals and workings go well when they are done off the cuff, but this one is too big, too broad, and has too many moving parts to be done that way.  To the furthest extent possible, we need to be working in concert.  Trust Na Morrigna to guide you: ask what you should be doing for Samhain, be it ritual, witchcraft, mundane, or something other.  They know.  They will guide you.  They see the whole pattern, the entire map of the battlefield, too vast and too complex for our consciousness.  Trust, trust, and plan to Do.

For my part, I’ll be gathering with a few friends to have a small ritual at one of their houses.  We are asking Na Morrigna for guidance every step of the way, and we are crafting a ritual that will allow us to serve the best ways we can.  It is not an easy thing to craft a ritual that truly harnesses all the energy raised and sends it towards its target straight and true.  Planning is needed. Rehearsal is needed.  Some things will happen spontaneously during the ritual itself, yes, but the structure must already exist, so that we know, the group knows, what is expected and what our target is.

Find your target.  Figure out what is expected of you.  Make sure that the work you are doing now will lead you to where you need to be.  The autumn winds are stirring, ready to pare back anything extraneous, anything we can do without.  The Wild Hunt is awakening, and change is in the air.  There will be a powerful shift at Samhain, and as of now the outcome is still uncertain.  We can push it.  We must push it.  We will do the work.

 

[[As a note – I am still offering these readings to anyone who wishes for a little help elucidating their role in all this.]]

Our Samhain, and a new kind of Spellwork

We ended up spending Samhain with friends, and took part in a small group ritual, which nearly got rained out.  It was still good to reconnect, though, and Baby was very entranced by the bonfire (though I took him inside as it started to rain).  We burnt offerings of whiskey, acorns, and a cinnamon broom, and then huddled inside enjoying a potluck meal.  I had meant to bless the crochet granny square I’d made at the request of the Morrigna, but alas by the time I was done feeding baby it was raining too hard and the fire was practically doused.  Ah, well.  It seems that wasn’t necessary.

The granny square itself turned out rather well, I think:

20171113_131210It’s a sort of a knot spell, woven with intent.  My role in my work with the Morrigna and their (her, for those who use the singular Morrigan) other devotees is akin to that of a battle medic – I’m playing support to the warriors, those fighting the good fight.  But there’s been a bit of divisiveness in the ranks as of late, and we need to align ourselves if we’re going to achieve the Morrigna’s goals (or so they tell me).  To that end, I was told to weave us together – all those who have fully committed to the cause, those whom I see growing raven wings from their backs, those whom I know or have met and also those who I have not.  The Morrigna supplied the connection to the individual strands of fate, and I have begun to knit us more tightly together, in rows.  Or, well.  Crochet.  The work is not finished – it is only beginning – but I am, as ever, heart-glad to play my part in all of this.

Knotwork isn’t new to me, but crochet spells in particular are, and I’m really happy how this one turned out, and I’m surprised how easy it was.  I think I’m going to make a few more, starting with a healing charm for a friend.  And if there’s interest, perhaps I’ll start offering them for sale as custom spellwork, too.

What do you think, dear reader?