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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in hallowmas

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

 

Let's face it: modern Yule has undergone a thorough Christmasization.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, just a fact. Still, when we scrape away the encrusted barnacles from the ship of Yule—when we look, for instance, at the extended Winter Solstice celebrations of the Kalasha of what is now northwestern Pakistan, the last Indo-European-speaking people to have practiced their traditional religion continuously since ancient times—what emerges is revealed as something both strange and familiar beyond telling.

The same may be said for Samhain, now thoroughly reshaped by its proximity to Halloween, and by the Christian festivals of All Saints' and All Souls' Days.

When, however, we look at Samhain as it used to be—Samhain as recorded in the old lore—a new-old landscape emerges before us, a land both familiar and strange.

That is what makes the following little poem so remarkable. On the face of it—until you get to the last stanza, anyway—there's little that seems to be about Samhain at all. (Oh, but look deeper, my friend!)

Even more remarkable is the fact that this enumeration of the essentials of Samhain-ness is not, in fact, ancient, but a modern poem: an excerpt from a longer poem, “Fionn's Migrations,” in Martin Shaw and Tony Hoagland's 2020 Cinderbiter: Celtic Poems.

Listen, now.

 

Samhain Is the Name of the Season

Last modified on

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Samhain

The witches' new year. Time when the fields lie empty and the year lies down. The gates of life swing open, the dead lean in. Our world's veil is at its thinnest; we peer through the lace to find that growing edge. We meet in Deep Time, everywhere and nowhere, to greet the triple goddess who is the circle of rebirth. Over one shoulder lean the ancestors; over the other, unborn future beings peer. 

Remember this: we are 4 billion years old. It's taken evolution all this time to produce us, and our action will express that genius. We're an unfinished animal, fighting metaphysical battles in the physical world; flesh and breath in confrontation with abstractions. This is the battle of the human epic. Modern stories of our powerful vision express a reclaimed, authentic future, a remedy. Exalt in the never-ending journey of change. Seed becomes fruit. Fruit becomes seed. The beloved dead surround us, calling us to use our lives while we can in the service of the bigger life. The unborn future crowds 'round, waiting. It's up to us. This chaos is a seedbed for the future. 

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Last modified on

Did Halloween—as Variety section writers would invariably have it—really originally mean 'Holy (or Hallowed) Evening'?

Short answer: no.

'Halloween' is an eroded form of 'All Hallow's Even'. ('Even' here = 'evening, eve.') 'Hallow' is a dialectal form of the Old English word that also became Modern English 'holy.' Anglo-Saxon hælig (pronounced, roughly, HAL-ee) was a fine old pagan word denoting something in a state of radical wholeness: a holy thing or person.

It's the latter usage that gave rise to 'Halloween.' After the Conversion, the word came to denote a 'saint,' a (Christian) holy person. So All Hallows' Eve originally meant 'All Saints' Eve,' the eve of the ecclesiastical feast of All Saints.

('Saint,' of course, was originally a French word from the Latin sanctus, both of which—like hallow in English—mean both 'holy' and 'saint.')

Last modified on

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

Ask the Dark Mother,
faceless in her beauty
to open the portal
of self-compassion
to those whose scars
keep them hidden.
excerpt © Jennifer Lothrigel 2016

 

Samhain

Maenad moon gathers all souls,
sends then dancing into the wind

Light dims, cold moves over, roots reach down to the core where life coheres. We draw inward, grow reflective, slow to the pace of dreaming and remembering.

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Last modified on

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

Pssst . . . wanna know a secret? 

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...There is no “veil” between the worlds. We are always in multiple dimensions, and the veils, when there are any, are all in our heads! What is sacred today on Samhain is our communal decision to come together and venture beyond our imagined fail-safe points. Take your mother’s, sister’s, daughter’s, lover’s hand and walk bravely up to Death. Introduce yourself. Say hello.
     What a wonderful and holy time to practice leaping over the edge of Surrender into the dark juiciness of all Unknown. Death is just a doorway between particle and wave, and every particle of our being dissolves into wave every nanosecond of our existence—and then collapses back into the same old, same old who we think we are. NOT if we pay attention! Not if we think who we are is pure consciousness and out of that mystery decide to shapeshift ourselves into beings with great wings, beings shining with internal light, beings who dance an open spiral around the limits of death and life.
Miriam Dyak © Mother Tongue Ink 2015

Miriam Dyak (Seattle, WA) All my life is poetry. Close to 60 years of writing poems, journals, books and not about to stop. I am a Social Artist, Voice Dialogue facilitator and teacher, dream weaver, gardener of souls. miriam (at) miriamdyak.com
Paula Franco (Buenos Aires, Argentina) shaman woman, visual and visionary artist, teacher in sacred art, writer & poetess, astrologer, tarotist, creator of goddess card and mandalas book. 

Last modified on

Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs

SHE Cackles: 

Q: Why don’t witches fly on their brooms when they are angry? 
A: They don’t want to fly off the handle.

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