The Dying Sun

Samhain and resurrecting Earth-Aware culture

Dying is a process.

Often, there is a lot of waiting. Ebbs and flows of light and life and energy. Ultimately, there is a moment of transition from which there is no returning to what was before.

Samhain (Sow-Win, about October 31) marks this time in the Wheel of the Year, especially here in the Northlands (Vermont), and the British Isles/Ireland where much of this lore and practice originates.

Frosts hit in the darkest hours of the night. And we awake to frozen landscapes. The plants slowly brown, and fall. The bees hunt for the last few red clover flowers, then most inevitably succumb. I’m finding them in the yard, wings numb, crawling on the earth. Watching my step.

The sun is dying.

The leaves are mostly gone, flowers brown, the landscape a crone’s palette of coal, burgundy, ash and hazel. My will diminishing, aspiration slowing, my sight, my light turning inward towards personal work, self healing, self loving.

No matter our ancestry, the landscape in which we live informs our body and mind, emotions and energy. The more we interact with the natural environment, the more awareness we will have of the parallels, and the more our body can respond in a way to bring balance. But even if we go from controlled environment to controlled environment, and even if we have ancestry from completely different climates than here, and we live in New England, the body responds in some way to the change in the light, the physiology learns the landscape, the skin, bones, blood reacts to these things. The knowings are in the body, and can go beyond it, especially with more awareness brought to welcoming the shifts.

There is no real escaping it, we are Earthlings (I say nothing of where our souls may come from, but if you’re in a human body, you’re meant to be here! Welcome!) For me, it feels good to acknowledge, celebrate, steep in that fact. The We=hell of the Year calendar supports me with that. Especially since I feel the lifestyle I have found myself in separates me more and more. The screens I pour a lot of my energy into, the vibrations I am more often than not surrounded with, pulling me away from what feels healing and centering for me.

As I find myself distanced and distracted more into my busy life ‘adulting,’ as some call it, I crave the feeling that I had as a child. I can’t quite pinpoint what it is, but when I get a glimpse it feels like ‘oh, thank God, it’s still there. I can still access that connected space.’ It’s akin to nostalgia, the feeling of noticing through the senses, eyes, light, smell, feeling of air on skin, that lands me into the present, yet knowing there was a past that will never be again, and a future, that will at some point be the past…never to be again…and I can just be here and now in the liminal, the me, the seer, the child, the ageless one as time, the Earth, and wheel goes on…and I am home for this moment. It is only possible for me to access this when out in nature, and even then, it is not a guarantee.

I did get to feel that the night before last, one of the glorious gift of warm late-fall days we have been having. Out on my deck, alone, on a yoga mat, watching the bats fill themselves on the surviving mosquitoes…I remembered. I landed. More, please.

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There will continue to be a diminishing of the light for another 6 weeks or so until Winter Solstice…but the drop begins to feel so dramatic after this juncture in the year. At sunset on Samhain, the Old Year dies, and the New Year begins in the fertile darkness. The Warm Season, or Summer, truly ends, and the Cold Season, Winter begins. We enter into the womb of the great mother, the chrysalis of Winter, to be transformed, changed, and churned.

Great change does not always happen in the noonday sun, but within a place of stillness and shadow. Like transformation through a time of illness, retreat, or rest and healing. When one emerges and interacts with the world on the other side of change, it can be seen and felt within community, but the actual transformation occurred while in the darkness.

Samhain is an opportunity to consciously enter in to a healing space. To consciously enter into the time of shadow, an opportunity to release what isn’t working or what is harming, and in that space see what will come to you, or come of you. Life is not a constant July state of being. We have permission to be in other states, other ‘months',’ other corners of the wheel of the year and still enjoy our lives, love ourselves, and receive and share the gifts from those places.

Samhain is considered to hold the Northwest corner in the wheel of the year. West being Autumn Equinox, and North being Winter Solstice. It relates to the crone, the later stages of life. The flowers of youth have passed. The bare truth and wisdom from a well-lived life are the fruits. The illusion of timelessness is broken, mortality very forefront, the reality of death on the horizon.

We have to dare to let go. Life will force us to learn to let go. I believe if we live with this knowing, it might make the living better, and the letting go in some way, easier. (I practice this by doing home cleanses, which I am preparing to do next week.)

Dare to leave space, for new things will only come if there is space for them to come home to.

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When my kids wake up for school they complain about the darkness, they notice the mist, and the frost. They see the ladybugs on our brick walls, soaking up sun, they notice the mushrooms, the wasps getting into our house, too.

They join me in cleaning up the gardens, we carve and paint pumpkins. We compost dead mums and kitchen scraps, plant daffodil and tulip bulbs, take in the rosemary and tulsi and fig.

We change the Summer curtains over from Winter, and put plastic in the windows. I bake pumpkin bread and pumpkin pie and revive a sourdough starter.

This past weekend I celebrated this seasonal junction with my clan and community at Dreamland in ritual and ceremony. Tonight we plan to visit a friend’s house to share a meal and honor our ancestors, bringing photos of family members or friends who have passed on and sharing love and gratitude.

Culture is subtle, it penetrates us deeply and shapes us profoundly. We get opportunities year after year, cycle after cycle, to co-create, recreate our value systems. What will you do this year? <3