At my Grove, it's all about me. I put fundamental stress on the individual's experience of the Wheel of the Year, which means I'm continually checking in with my Grove as well as on my own relationship with the weather and the world, when giving human voice to the season.
This Samhain I decided not to talk about myths and pumpkins and embracing the world's shadow. I decided to confine myself to multi-layered verbal impressionism that a reader could take many ways, probably because I am feeling a bit indistinct and querulous about my own edges. I just want to live, unlike other years, and deciding to defy my own weaknesses is strange.
There is no darkness like October darkness. I can feel it creeping in behind the daylight as soon as the final harvest moon begins to wane.
The trees smolder with hazes of color which the rains cannot extinguish. Summer foliage catches the brilliant disease, combusts and then scatters to cover the ground with its motley ash. It smears into running pigment underfoot. Bark is soaked and oily looking; gray darkens to charcoal black. Solid looking underbrush turns to detritus that cracks with crumbling decay at its heart.
Beyond this packing down of leavings creatures of all sizes and scales crawl in deeper where they can, some readying for sleep, others merely trying to cease their shivers. Down comforter earns its name, if it has not been sold to appease the wolves.
The mists upon the low places for their part reveal as much as they cover, weighting down each spray with heavy tears to see if it will break. These are the excruciating veils between the worlds. They are visible now precisely because they have thinned. The netting is porous now and larger particles make it through. If the tissue is alive, warmth can tighten it again. The drum can be tuned. If not, fire will dry it until it cracks into crisp shards.
Doom, the beating heart seems to say. Doom and doom and doom and doom and doom. The slide away from the sun source is well away now. Dark will only grow, and the cold with it. Rage against it, if only to keep your own toes attached.
Samhain is not just a time of hearing history's ghosts and honoring them. It is also a time to grapple with mortality. Face fears. Take their measure. If you dare, let them try to kill you; it will help you locate that spark which denies entropy-- for now. It will strengthen your sinews to wrestle your fears. It will cleanse you to sweat from the touch of them. Your breath will be hot mist that melts the permeable and illusive and gives luster to the solid.
Take comfort from cauldron over fire, and what steams there to be ladled out, day by day while we prepare for the far away spring. Listen to the stories that rise from the past and the future reflected in forming skins of clarity upon the puddles, and do not take their chill too deep into your heart.
My heart always threatens to crack at the hugeness of the beauty at the year's end. It takes many deep sighing breaths to fit even a crumb of it into me. But the colors and the smells and the breezes are like vitamins for my soul. I take them with me into the year's night. I must remind myself that I have made it through many times before. I will blessed be.
Originally posted at Helgaleena's Live Page.
Helgaleena Healingline is Matriarch of Lugh and ArchDruid of White Rabbit Grove, Reformed Druids of North America, and editor-in-chief at Dark Roast Press.
