Today as I took a walk the wind was whipping up all around me. Through the now thin leaves the sun shone chartreuse and dark green. New York is slow to go colored its warmer here than in other places but this is my place and I see the withdrawal of the God from the leaves, frozen in rose buds that will never open which when no one is looking I will collect and use in my magick. Powerful buds withholding their life force. I will use that life force.
They used to say that if you didn’t bring in your plants by Samhain night the Faries would take them. Perhaps I am part Fairy…after all I am half Irish!
Loreena McKennitt is so Samhain to me! Her voice, the mystery in the music…it all speaks to me of meditation and smoke and freedom to chant wildly with others in a spiral dance as the new year rings in at Midnight on November 1…or on the actual 15 degree of Scorpio date (Nov. 6th this year) that brings it full.
Sugar Skulls gotten from Sunset Park and Ossi di Morti from the Sicilian bakery in Bensonhurst…coming in this week to my home to remind us that life indeed is sweet.
This year I buried a mother. I lost my biological mother. She is in a grave somewhere in Pennsylvania next to my biological father. She is not in that grave only the parts of her we left for the Earth Mother to use. It has been 9 years since I have had a Samhain with a dead relative to communicate with. Yet, as of yet…I do not feel her. I am pretty sure she’s moved on, curled up in the womb of some other mother be it human or other form that is carrying her now…not her…her essence…her being.
I suppose that since the veil is so thin….thin for me for months since her passing when at the moment of her death when I was 200 miles away I smelled the most amazing scent. Full of earth and hay, cigarettes, and flowers. It was all around me. Stinky and funky. I thought it was me or my cats or something in the house, but no I was the only one who smelled it! I smelled it again several times…each time it grew fainter. Then it was gone.
I was a disappointment to my mother. I was/am a Witch, a theater person, a musician and I married men out of the faith she raised me in. I didn’t come to see her. She didn’t seem to care. She never really did. I think she blamed herself for my way of begin. She told me I was born with the Caul…which to the Irish is the sign of a Witch birth.
I am a Caulbearer. I am. I know that the beginning of my life it was all set down. I know I am here to be on this particular path. From the first time I saw the Virgin Mary in our church on a gigantic mural I knew that is who God was…Goddess is.
Of course…tarot cards given to me by my fathers Strega mother and palm reading and my mother’s affinity for the wheel of the year, the moon and nature added to it….of course.
The wind was whipping me with its intensity today as bits of the sky, October blue with its fading yellow sun surrounded me. It is Samahin time.
I will put out an altar for my dead. I suggest you do the same. A simple thing consisting of some food and a note or two as well as a candle to light their way.
I find it really does make the holiday special. Then listen. Don’t chant or sing or dance. Listen for their voices.
Blessed Samhain. Happy New Year.
2016
The Magic Apothecary \Green Witchcraft and Healing 