I'll leave you with some further insights as to how I spent my Halloween, and why I celebrate Samhain. From the lovely oracle of Instagram, here's one of my recent posts:
Crop of The Dreamweaver & The Nightmare, an image @kitfoxvalentin and I created last Samhain season
“The dead speak but we as a people have forgotten how to listen. We hold them in our hands, they course thru our blood.”
- Patti Smith
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I spent All Hallows’ Eve in a vow of silence for my third year. No speaking, no writing, no typing. Only gesturing to communicate with those I was with in person. I took the day off from work completely. I kneaded, folded, and tended to a loaf of sourdough bread, which was baked in a cauldron the following day. I processed many a quince, symbolically thinning the veil with each triangular portal I sliced through the core. Made my own pie crust out of einkorn flour to be filled with cooked quince for a delightfully unique pie. Kitchen witchin’ to celebrate the end of harvest season, the beginning of descent into winter’s rest. Dressing up in darkness. Dancing late into the night. Quelling my voice to hear those of my ancestors more clearly. To let them guide my hands with each cut of quince and fold of bread. To feel, acknowledge, and honor the lifeblood that brought my own flesh wrapped skeleton into existence. To continue to weave the tapestry of my ancestral bloodline, remembering that which they knew, but we have most forgotten.
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This is why I celebrate the Celtic New Year of Samhain. & this is why I’ve chosen to celebrate the culturally recognized offspring of Samhain - Halloween - in silence. I still engage in classical Halloween festivities, but choose to do so in a more meaningful, intentional way. Lunar Samhain occurs on November 7th, where I will retreat to the depths of the dark woods, dancing around firelight as the celestial cross quarter day between the Autumnal Equinox and Winter Solstice aligns, and maybe, just maybe, I will become that much closer to those that came before me, both in bloodline and in otherworldly realms.
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