As the Veil Thins this Samhain

Winter gathers Her garments and our grief is shed.

Blessings on this Samhain to you!

I have always loved Halloween, or All Hallow’s Eve as some call it, but as I have aged its meaning has changed for me.

As a child, growing up in a New Age spiritual community, we were never allowed to dress up as ghouls and monsters. No, we dressed up as “incarnations” of the Ascended Masters. For anyone unfamiliar with that phrase, think of them like saints who have done their due duty toiling away on the Earth plane and now get to hang out in fancy etheric palaces.

One year my middle brother dressed up as “The Violet Flame”. Not a person, per se, but a transformative energy. It was a great costume, honestly. He wore purple leggings, a purple turtleneck, and we painted and dyed his hair purple. That was the year that I dressed up as Empress Elizabeth of Austria (an alleged incarnation of the Church Universal and Triumphant’s leader). My mom put so much effort into that costume and it was truly beautiful from the blue velvet bodice to the delicate lace gloves and fan I carried.

It wasn’t until I was much older that I got to masquerade as a vampire, a tartlet, or a dead celebrity (Marilyn Monroe). I donned the platinum wig, wrapped a bed sheet around myself, and carried around a bottle of pills. A bit macabre, but highly artistic.

In years since moving back to my little mountain town, Samhain has become a more quiet time for me—a time for going “inward”, resting, dreaming, and communicating with the Dead and the Dark.

Traditionally, this is what Samhain was for: honoring our ancestors.

Pagan and pastoral people saw this day as the end of harvest, the heralding of winter the “darker half” of the year, and the coming of the Crone. Bonfires were lit, food and beverages were indulged in, and places were set at the feast for “those no longer with us”.

The Crone—with her long-toothed and hollow-boned medicine—is so vastly different than the ripe, full womb of the Mother, or the perpetual blushing youth of the Maiden.

Here we find “deep medicine” and the need to renew our own relationship with the Dark? And what is the dark, not what but who?

She is the Feminine (known as Hecate by some)—the holy triad of womanhood.

Yet it is the Crone that encompasses them all, for it is only the Crone who has lived through all of womanhood’s miracles and losses. She has buried a deeper love than most of us will ever know. She walks on the forest’s edge with furred beasts and winged fowl and she knows them and they know Her as something feral—as something Wild.

Perhaps it is easy to stuff our faces with sweets and candies when we are young and innocent, or even naive, but as we are seasoned by life’s cycles—as we come to know the Crone’s kiss—our indulgences also tend to be tempered with grief.

This is (or at least may be) a time to grieve.

As the veil thins, and we find the days themselves growing cold and long in the tooth, we are reminded to turn inward. And on this day, in particular, let us remember our ancestors—those who are no longer here, but whose blood we carry.

And not just for those whose bodies came before ours, but for our own bodies and the burnt, and the brunt, and scars of life that they bear.

Perhaps, now, you build an altar, not only for the bones that rattle from the past, but for your own past as well. Not every aspect of “self” or psyche, is meant for the long haul, even unto Death’s door.

No.

Some parts must be laid to rest long before our eyes close for the final time.

Maybe I speak of an “ego death”, but maybe all that is is some part that is weary of fighting, weary of defending, and weary of “holding” it all together. Maybe it is some part that is just incapable of healing in the way we once thought we would. And that is okay, there is unspeakable beauty in the brokenness. Not all things are meant to be mended. Some pieces seek the soil and forever home away from the prying of the light and our incessant need to drag everything out into it for examination.

No.

It was several years ago that, on Samhain, I realized my romantic relationship was not long for this world. As I had stumbled drunkenly through my evening it occurred to me that the man I was with then was most enchanted by a part of me that I no longer wanted to be. I fondly think of her as “Gangster Justice”. She is crass, dangerous, and entirely too likely to start a fight or lose the contents of her own stomach after a night of carousing.

And so, a year later—on Samhain and after the official dissolution of that relationship—I “watched” her climb on a pyre and immolate herself. Tears fell, but not enough to quench those inner flames and my sobs would not drown out the voice of my own “Inner She”: Never again.

Since then I have watched as many parts sink into loamy psychic lakes, or lay wasting by the side of them for lack of the required “fix”, languishing into non existence. And that is okay, more than okay—it is the way.

As the Crone lifts the bones to her lips and blows her haunting call into the Dark, a shiver runs down our spine, our blood chills, and our fleshy bodies shiver.

Will you go to Her…She who is the Dark?

Will you lie on your belly in Her forest and let the creatures nibble at skin? Will you feed the mycelium with precious inner organs?

You will!

You will because all that eats will one day be eaten. No matter the boxes we carve for our bones, the Bone Woman will one day have them. We might as well smile while we can, fill our cups with deep wine, and make love in as many ways as we can possibly dream.

She—the Dark… She is not coming.

She is already here.

~Justice

Gentle reminder: Today begins the Dream Keys Course, 8 weeks of individual and group exploration into the Dark, dreams, and the symbolic nature of reality. There is still time to sign up, if so inspired.