Ahh yes, October, my favorite time of year. Samhain and Beltane drive me crazy, I 'feel' so much more, and 'see' everything around me, I hear the voices of the otherworld and experience the knowing that I'm out of place on this plane. Perhaps it's my past lives filtering into this world, or maybe a more powerful connection with the goddesses and gods of old, the ancient ones, or my kith and kin from a life one can easily view as being too...movie-like, or one out of a fairy tale. But in reality, whether you believe in past lives, or the 'otherkin' or multiple universes stacked atop one another, reaching out to the possibility of being something more. something magical at this time of year can be seen as a healthy expression of empowerment. Halloween is a great time for allowing adults to play "dress up". To pretend to be someone else, to gather with others of like mind and play at being a swashbuckling pirate, a mermaid, a witch, vampire, mummy or even a successful baseball or football player. It gives us a chance to touch the child in us that acted out bits from our favorite movies, or re-enacted circus acts after watching the Ringling Bros, Barnum and Bailey circus on TV, or becoming a ballerina in Swan Lake, or knowing the bears invited to your tea party ARE real.

I love to take deep breaths during October, to draw in the magic of this time.

Take a visual stroll trough any social media and you'll see how many adults, possibly even more than children love Halloween. So many are excited about October, Halloween, dressing up, parties, and attending the many haunted attractions across the country. Why does Halloween have such an appeal to adults, and why is it seemingly so underrated that Christmas decoration hit the stores almost before any Halloween supplies? Don't get my wrong, I love the Yule season as well. but there's just something about Samhain, and Beltane, that speak to the wild individual inside each of us.b2ap3_thumbnail_Janice-Halloween-cape-ghostified.jpgb2ap3_thumbnail_dean-and-skull-3.jpg

We love the spooky, the unexplained, the chance that something is out there. We feel it in our bones in October, we sense the spirits walking alongside us and at Halloween it's ok to participate in anything having to do with ghosts, witches, zombies and vampires. It's ok to allow ourselves to be frightened by the actors in costume and animatronics at haunted attractions, and it's ok to take a ghost tours of a famous location and shiver at the stories told of true hauntings handed down through the generations. b2ap3_thumbnail_creepy-doll-at-paracon.jpg

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I see October as a time to let us drop our defenses, to get closer to the spirits as the veil thins between worlds. We can utilize this time to reflect, to grow, to feel the goddess more directly. We can use the costumed parties as a time to let slip a glimpse of our inner selves to our loved one and the world.

And most of all it's a time to celebrate the magic that simmers deep inside all of us. To hear the voices of our sisters whisper to us over the centuries or across the neighborhood. It's a perfect time to united, like the ladies in the movie Practical Magic as they clasped hands to cast out the evil, a perfect time to join together as we all leap off the roof and fly as the magical beings we are.