It is autumn and the Celtic year comes to a close. With Samhain the Night of the year begins – for the Celtic the year was devided into two halfs, the light half, the day, and the dark half, the night – and this silvester feastivity was celebrated at the new moon end of October / beginning of November.
It is the time of death. The light half of the year is dying. Mythologically the king of the year, the sun god, is dying. He is killed as the sun deer during the hunt and his wife, the vegetation geddess, now rules in the underwolrd as the death goddess. The land is barren and while it is getting darker, the silence and the getting-into-one-self increases. Until, at the winter solstice, the new sun god is born and the new life starts to grow in deep in the earth.
It is a good time to deal with death, the big transformer. Especially in these times, where we stand at the treshold into a new world, into a new consciousness. We all are, knowingly or unaware, co-creaters of this change. We can sense what in our life can die, what is of no use anymore, what already is dead but we only keep it out of habit. We can shed old beliefs, habits, patterns, which do not serve ourselves and the earth anymore.
And it is a good time to become aware of one’s dreaming. We create what we call reality. Or like the ancient ones say, we dream our life into being. “We are the weaver, we are the woven one, we are the dreamer, we are the dream.“
It is a good time to ponder the follwoing questions: Which dream do I dream? How do I dream my life? From which materila do I spin my threads of life, what kind of threads am I spinning, and what kind of net am I weaving? What right now does the world need? Can I create it? How? What is my contrinution?
Like all crossings, also Samhain, the night, which smbolises the crossing from the old year into the new, provides a free realm between the old and the new. In these in-between-spaces all is possible, because the walls between the worlds are especailly thin. During these crossovers space and time are suspended, the rules of our ordinary world do not hold true.
In this in-between we consciously can co-weave the new world. To do so it is important that we give up our plans and ambitions. That they die. That we pause. Only then can we fully perceive what the world needs right now. We are in the middle of a massive change, where no one knows what will be at the end. We will not go back to the old familiar, that’s for sure. And what we have at the moment definitely will not be the new.
I will hold a sweat lodge. The sweat lodge offers a sacred space to cleanse, to purify, to shed old unnecessary patterns, so that we can travel with light luggage and greater awareness about our dreams and the dreams of the earth, into the dark half of the year. But you can do any ritual to align with the energies. Take some time, set the intention, open a sacred space, drop and listen – what the Earth tells you, what your heart tells you. What needs to die? What is needful now? While you drum, walk the eighth, meditate, sing, dance, …
image credit: Tanja Schulte / pixabay