Welcoming Samhain

Although Samhain officially lands on November 6th this year, marking the official halfway point between the Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice, Samhain is not just a day but a season of time that opens us up to the thinning of veils between physical and energetic, the material and spiritual.

Can you feel it upon us already?

This is our yearly reminder that our physicality is not the full picture, and that to honor the fullness of life, we must honor not only the invisible spiritual forces of life, but also the always changing and morphing shape of reality, the way things die back in order to transform and pass energy on to something else.

This season marks the swath of time where the threshold between worlds can open more easily. Where spirits cross over. Where our psyches are more open to seeing parts of ourselves that need healing, recognition, or honoring. Where the ancestors can speak with us with more ease. Where we can commune with the nature spirits more profoundly.

Honoring the Otherworld at Samhain

In Celtic language, we call this realm beyond ours the Otherworld.

This Otherworld overlays our physical world, feeds this world, and we feed it. There is a reciprocal recognition and honoring that happens in order for the balance to remain.

And yet we’ve slacked on our duty in this realm for many years. Decades. Centuries even.

We’ve neglected our soul work, the honoring of our ancestral lines, the feeding of the spirits. We’ve cut ourselves off from the root system that allows our physical reality to sustain itself. We’ve stopped recognizing the other consciousnesses that share our Earth with us.

And we've turned out back on Death herself, as life-feeding force. For every one of us feeds off death in order to live.

We can perceive this Otherworld as the world of the Soul. We can view it as the location of the faeries, the spiritual guides, or the ancestors. We can also see it as the world of the unconscious mind that houses our shadow, past life memories, and so much that’s beyond the light of the conscious mind’s awareness.

It doesn’t necessarily matter how you perceive it, but what does matter is the recognition that there is so much more beyond our sight. Beyond this dimension of reality.

And that we feed this Otherworld not only with our prayers, and offerings, but with giving honor to that which has died. To what has crossed the threshold from material to spiritual. Physical to energetic.

What Samhain invites us to remember

Samhain reminds us that a healthy, sustainable life must include the honoring of this depth and mystery, whether that simply means acknowledging our own inner shadow, or that which we've deemed unworthy.

Otherwise we're only seeing and experiencing a partial reality. And in that partial reality, much is lost. What is not being acknowledged or fed will in turn come back to haunt us.

Samhain invites us to acknowledge the unseen mystery. To acknowledge death and the spiritual "beyond." To dance with it, to pray with it, to be open and curious about it, to feed it, to sing to it, to nourish our relationship with it.

Samhain asks us to truly honor the truth that for us to keep living, something must die. Every. Single. Day.

Samhain invites us to remember.

To remember we’re not alone. To remember that the landscape around us is animated with consciousness. To remember that we're not the only spiritual beings on this planet, and that we all feed and learn from one another.

To remember that the Otherworld, that Soul, creates form. That everything you see comes from an energetic blueprint. That everything expressed in physical form is an expression of a spiritual force.

So here, at the Samhain threshold, let us remember this. Let us honor this. Let us honor death, mystery, and the spiritual forces of Life that feed us every moment of our lives.

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Samhain resources

A few years ago I made a ​video about Samhain​, ways to celebrate, and plant medicines to work with. Check it out if you’re interested in a few ritualistic ways to dance with the energies right now.

And if you want to utilize this sacred darkness to commune with the unseen forces inside yourself, the realm of the ancestors, and the spirits of the plants, it's not too late to jump on board ​Call Into Darkness: Deepening Plant Allyship​.

I've found that the plants are incredible bridges and guides to help bring us into communion with the Otherworld.

In this 6 week course you’ll make profound spiritual alliances, and to move through some beautiful healing processes, so you’ll begin the new year’s unfurling cycle of light at Winter Solstice feeling much more connected with yourself, stronger in your soul’s light, and deeply held by the spiritual forces of Life.

We begin next week, but I’ll be shipping out the tinctures on Tuesday 11/4. Hop in today to ensure you receive your plant medicines before we begin!

Join Call Into Darkness