Most of us have begun to feel the Sun moving through Scorpio by the time we come to Samhain (pronounced sow-wen) and this year, the spooky vibes are being amped up even more by Jupiter’s visit to the sign of the mystic!
You probably know this festival as Halloween, All Hallow’s Eve, the Day of the Dead, or maybe even the Feast of Apples. It’s collected many names over the years as it’s grown up and away from its Pagan roots. Samhain is one of the cross-quarter feast days, falling at the midpoint between the Autumn Equinox and the Winter Solstice, or Yule (that’s for those in the Northern Hemisphere – on the South of the globe, you’re halfway between the Spring Equinox, or Ostara, and Midsummer). Samhain is also regarded by many as the witches New Year, so it’s a day for celebration, as well as for darkness!
Samhain’s Dark Beginning Explained
The darkness part comes with the annual rising of underworld. As light starts to dim up here on the earth plane and winter draws ever closer, Samhain illuminates the world of shadow, where our personal, and our collective darkness lurks. Dressing up and playing tricks has become a modern way to honour our access point to this place, though I wonder how many are conscious of what they are really entering into?
A Spiritual Portal Opens Up
The veils are especially thin at Samhain.
It is a powerful portal – a doorway for communication and connection with the unseen realms, so divination can be incredibly powerful on this day. The insights revealed to you, if you ask, could be unapologetically clear. So it’s one of the very best days of the year to have a reading, pull some cards or even try scrying using fire, smoke, water or crystal.
But what’s often overlooked at this time of year, in amongst the costumes and fright, and the spell-work and wizardry is one of the most ancient meanings that Samhain still carries. This is the opening it creates, for contacting and honoring all those who have come before.
Who To Think About During Samhain
We all belong to a lineage: familial, tribal, practical, spiritual. We share blood with ancestors, but we share soul with so much and so many more.
So whilst Samhain is the ideal time to call upon your spirit guides, angels and totems for guidance, insight and support, it’s also a day to remind and re-familiarize yourself with the energy of other people or beings, who resonate strongly with you at this point in your life.
For example:
- Family members no longer residing on this plane
- Spiritual teachers from your tradition, or a tradition you feel drawn to
- Artists, healers, inspiring figures of the past, whose message you share and want to continue
- Historical change-makers whose existence has had a profoundly positive effect on you.
There are many ways to honour these humans and their histories, but the most ancient are often the most straightforward, simple, and effective! So here is a really easy way to connect to your roots at Samhain and tap into the deeper wisdom of your ancestors.
A Simple Samhain Ritual: Tapping into the Wisdom of Your Ancestors
1.Feel into your lineage
A few days before Samhain, spend a little time in meditation, feeling into your lineage.
- Who inspires you?
- Which people and their story do you share a deep, deep affinity with, right now?
- Or who keeps appearing to you, in your thoughts and your dreams?
Release any self-imposed limitations – you don’t need to be physically “related” to a person, family, culture or race to have a soul connection to it. Or perhaps you do feel drawn to connect to a member of your own blood line.
2. Find artifacts to connect you to this person
When you have a strong enough sense of who or what you are being called to reach out to, find photographs, prints, statuettes or art (perhaps old family albums, postcards or pages from books) of the figure, or figures that you want connect with. You may also use your own drawings, poems or writings. Gather these materials as powerful symbols of the lineage you are claiming your part in, and are still pioneering today.
3. Connect to the person in mind
Hold each one in front of you, and set a heartfelt intention into it, that it serves as a powerful gateway for only the highest and most beneficial expression of energy and influence to move through the veils and into your life and work. Know that these symbols are like open windows, portals through which the frequency of the person behind them can enter into your world again, strengthening and guiding your thoughts, expressions, words, actions and ways of being.
Place your symbols on your altar (if you have one), and on window sills around your home and/or workplace. It’s important to do this a few days before Samhain, because you want to send out a signal ahead of time that these energies are welcome to enter into your life and the space you’re inhabiting (which is why you place them on windowsills – the literal openings to your physical spaces).
4. Re-connect whenever possible in the days leading up to Samhain
Over the next few days leading up to Samhain, be sure to spend just a few moments each day (whenever you pass by or glance at your images or symbols) in appreciation and gratitude for the strength of wisdom you have behind you! By the time Samhain arrives, your chosen expression of soul-lineage will be right inside your world, working hard for your highest good!
This is a truly powerful way to honour where you have come from by bringing back the strength and power of past gains, so that you can be nourished by them, and build upon them in the present day.
I hope you will be reminded during this Samhain of the depth of soulful support and love, coming from the forebears you have gathered around you at this time.
Samhain blessings!
Katherine
How will YOU be celebrating Samhain this year?
And will you be inviting your soul-family into the celebrations?
Share your heartfelt connections with the community here, so we can all work to widen our circle.
Image above by Milolika via DeviantArt
