Samhain 2020 - some Inspiration for ceremony and celebration

​The Celtic festival of Samhain is coming up this weekend - All Soul’s Night, Hallows Eve, Halloween – I would like to share a bit of inspiration on how you can celebrate this time and use it for your personal and spiritual development work -  especially now, as many of the public ceremonies and parties cannot happen. 

​We will have a small fire-ceremony at the Fireside Lodge; if you would like to give something to this fire please send it to me (fireside.andrea@gmail.com) . It could be something you would like to let go of, or a vision for the future that will be empowered by the heat, some words of forgiveness that will be honoured by the flames, or a prayer that will go to the universe by riding on the smoke …

After the light and darkness were still in balance at the Autumn Equinox in September, it is now time to step into the darkest time of the year – until the moment when the Sun (the light)  – is being reborn at the Winter Solstice. Darkness and death are important and necessary in the Celtic understanding of the years’ cycle; First of November is the start of the Celtic New Year.
The dark phase affirms new birth. Going through a time of reflection, remembrance, looking inside, connecting to your essence, letting go, seeking forgiveness – all these are necessary parts of starting the New Year, which then makes space for new visions and refreshed life-energy.

• You could use this introspective time of the year to take time for yourself every day; read a poem (or write one), listen to a long-lost song, meditate, light a fire or candle, play a slow song on your piano, sit in silence, tell stories to your loved ones, and listen to theirs.
• Visit the dark ‘womb’ space in yourself – where you find calm, earth-connection, and new inspiration. If you do not have a physical womb, you certainly have a spirit-womb, a deep and calm place in yourself that you can use as your little ‘bear cave’. This is the place of safety and trust. Connect to Grandmother Bear and ask her to take you to her cave. Cuddle yourself in her fluffy fur for a while and take a good rest.

 
The time of darkness and death also calls us to honour our ancestors; many people visit cemeteries and put flowers down. But the power of ancestral work is about much more than remembering your known relatives. You can go way back in time, and not only explore your blood-ancestry, but also your spiritual belonging.

• You could take some time and create a little ceremony to give thanks for the gifts you have received from your ancestors. What did they create for you, what strengths run in your family, what resources can you still access that were created by your ancestors?
• It may also be time to reflect what kind of barriers and dysfunctionalities still run in your family. Can you create a give-away ceremony to let go of these blockages and break the cycle for yourself and your children? Forgiveness liberates the soul.
• Besides your physical ancestral line, what ancestral tribe do you belong to in the way of connecting to your ‘kindred spirits’? Regarding your profession, your passion, your identity … who went before you, and how can you honour this connection? I give you an example; my great-aunty was the first female social worker in my hometown; she gained a lot of strength by connecting to brave, unusual women of the past, even though they were not blood-relatives of hers. So, who is there for you? Who inspires you? Read their biography, learn from them, connect with them when sitting in silence, ask them to visit you in your dreams…

 
Many say “the veil is thin” in the time of Samhain – meaning that it is easier for us to connect to the invisible world, to the non-ordinary reality. Our society still remembers this – but does not really know what to do with it. An accepted way of acknowledging it is dressing up and going to a Halloween party as a fancy ‘ghost’. Some additional ideas:

• You could go on a walk in nature, ideally when it is getting dark, and re-connect to nature; Close your eyes a bit, what can you see? Listen…. Can you hear the owls? Do you remember the fairy stories of your childhood? Look at the trees, in which tree-hole or root would you find your gnome? Would you like to collect some autumn leaves and create a “painting” like there on the grass? Allow yourself to reconnect to your enchanted inner child in whatever way suits you.
• If people say on Samhain; “the spirits our out there, roaming”; that might be you! Could you play with the idea that you are a ‘spirit on a human journey’. That the magic and wonder of life is not somewhere ‘out there’, but that you are a living, walking part of it? Can you feel this deep, wise, sacred place in yourself that is the True You, that is your essence, your place of power and beauty? How would you honour this on Samhain? Sometimes we need to break free from our physical experience of being ‘stuck’ in our bodies and open our wings to fly. I will meet you out there!