One of my current fascinations is the healing that comes from syncing-up and sinking-into biological cycles and the external concert. So I’ve given myself the challenge to ask, at every point in the year’s circle, what is the challenge of this time? what is it’s potency? It’s medicine? What keeps the cycle spinning? This project dances up against another project of mine, which is also about syncing and sinking and has at it’s core a desire to know more about the people and places I come from.
Samhain
And so here we are, it’s October 25th, and we’re about halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. October 31st marks Samhain (pronounced sah-win or sow-in), a gaelic festival that was widely observed in Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Mann. Samhain is just one of many festivals in around this date, in what is now called Europe, that celebrates the end of the third and final harvest of the year.
Samhain is set right in the middle of autumn— 7 weeks before the darkest day of year. It’s medicine resides in this decent into darkness, death and decay. Yep, Samhain is about the heavy and hard stuff… the old stuff that sinks to the bottom. We all have some, to varying degrees and densities. But whatever the quality of your ‘stuff’ the challenge of Samhain is to gracefully descend into the depths and to not just bear the dark and decay but compost it into something worthwhile.
Look outside
The air is growing sharper and colder, and so we protect our soft, warm skin. Similarly, trees and plants send their energy deep into their terrestrial root systems. When things get tough, they (like us) let go of the adornments and flaunting flowers of gentler seasons and hold strong to their most essential pieces, the prima material, close their roots. Or perhaps they drop still sleeping seeds to the earth to be cradled in the dark humus of previous year’s decay.
We haven’t quite reached the deepest, darkest, still point of the year, but we are on a journey there. In myth, Samhain is the night when the sun dies and the old Crone of the dark moon mourns her consort the Sun for the next 6-7 weeks. His return harkens Winter Solstice, the return of increasing light, and the welcoming back of the Yang half of the year.
Soma
But for now we’re still descending. And what is down there? what makes up our personal and shared underworld from which we grow from? For one, we find our pre-natal ancestry, our physical and spiritual DNA, or what in TCM we call pre-heaven Jing. We also find our post-natal cell memories along with our traumas, scars and wounds that are stored in our neurological responses, our cells, epigenetics and muscle holding patterns. It’s also the soma space, that physical reservoir of feelings, instincts, and animal wit.
These underworlds are always with us, our movements twist upwards from them, but this is the time of year when they have extra potency; when the upper realms quiet and we can touch down in ways we can’t at other times of the year.
Hekate
And who are our guides in this season of darkness? Here I think of Hekate— the lamplighter, greek goddess of the underworld and mother of witches, who predates Olympian gods and probably originated in Thrace, a region known for its magic. Hekate is the lamplighter for a reason, she’s at home in these dark spaces and she’s not a newcomer to the labyrinths of the unconscious. A midwife between the comings and going, life and death.
Weiji
And so the underworld is both a place where sleeping dogs lie and a place where, out of stillness, everything emerges. In the healing journey, and within the wheel of the year, this time represents a crux point. In Taoist alchemy this point is called the Weiji point, a point of crisis when you don’t know if the healing process will succeed and if light will be reborn. Like Persephone who is captured by Hades and brought to the underworld for 6 months of the year, this is a time when we leave behind the world we know. The challenge of Weiji is to move against the instinct to turn and flee, make a plan and move on it; and to instead surrender to darkness. As Dechar states “allow the powerful tides of change to carry us to the next stage of our lives…(for) solutions to problems come after we have tolerated the discomfort of breakdown, after we have surrendered the limited activity of the ego and the will and allowed the structures of our lives to fragment and dissolve.”
The underworld journey isn’t an easy one to be sure, but the decent into chaos is also the flip side of a joy that has at it’s heart a sense of freedom that is not dependent on the outer fluctuations of life, but rises from somewhere deep and essential. And so, the crux point is that spot that is both desolate but also wildly fertile, where things fall apart or degrade to a point where what you are left with are the most essential bits. This can bring us in close contact with our selves, in ways that are rare.
the Cauldron
I love the imagery of the cauldron for Samhain. In Celtic traditions, the cauldron is the great cosmic womb from which all things are conceived, and so at Samhain all life, death and rebirth return to the Crone’s cauldron to await reincarnation. My favourite cauldron imagery comes from one of my teachers, Martin Pretchtel, who talks about taking the emotions we typically want to flee from, and instead cooking them. That is: simmer them, cure them, season them, stir them, mix them with your tears, mull them over and make poetry out of them until they are transformed into something new and delicious. This is doing rough times well; perhaps these well cooked tough times will leave you a bit saltier, but with proper cooking you will definitely be more flavourful and layered human being, like a well aged wine. And so, cheers to the hard stuff and the ways they transform us if we let them, as Nietzsche says “one should not only bear it, one should love it. Amor fati: that is my inmost nature. And as for my long sickness, do i not owe it indescribably more than i own to my health.”