Let me tell you something about human beings.

We go everywhere. In our travels, we meet others of our kind.

When we meet, two things happen: we fight, and we have sex.

America is a Great Rite of Peoples.

From this, we derive our vigor.

The Great Rite: the Hieros Gamos, holy marriage, the Conjunctio Mysticus, the mystical union.

The Union of the Gods renews the world.

Witches are a Great Rite of Peoples.

Even back in old tribal days, we were already a mixed people: the Dobunni, the people of the two bands. Later, we became the eponymous Hwicce: Celt and Saxon together—Angle, actually—not to mention the flotsam and jetsam of the Roman Empire who just happened to wash up on these shores. Meet my friend Tree: his grandfather comes from Numidia.

These days, people of all sorts call themselves witches: a mixed and mongrel lot, just as we always have been.

In recent days, I've attended three different Samhain observances. At all of them, I was impressed to notice that not once—not even once—did anyone bring up the Election.

No, this was not some taboo in operation, though anyone with any experience in such things can tell you that politics profanes the sacred every time.

The reason? We're tired. We're sick of it.

We're sick of the divisiveness, the vilification, the mean-spiritedness. We've got work to do, hard work, the hard work of making a living in a hard world; we simply don't have the time or mental space for such childishness any more.

So we've moved on.

The Wheel turns.

Even, I find myself feeling a certain guarded optimism. We are, after all, a Great Rite of Peoples, resilient.

The Union of Peoples—the Union of the Gods—renew the world.