Samhain: The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

This is from my October 2023 Newsletter.

Late October—it’s always been one of my favorite times of the year. I also love the fall, and I’m starting to really understand that I’m a winter witch—I love cozy sweaters, fireplaces, low lazy mornings, and time to do my rituals and meditate without all the pressure to get outside and soak up the sun. Summer witches tend to be nature witches—your herbalists, trail runners, ecologists, and the like. Winter witches tend to be meditators or empaths—counselors, meditators, spiritual teachers. We like to be inside with our candles and tarot cards, maybe gazing at the moon. 

Of course, this is a false binary. We all have a little sun and a little moon within. Either way, though, this is the perfect time of year to connect with your inner witch. Halloween falls on the same day as Samhain (actually, it’s an evolution of the ancient pagan holiday). This year, a lunar eclipse, or Blood Moon, is happening right before Halloween, which adds to the spooky energies. Samhain, pronounced sah-wen, is the last of the harvest festivals and the witches’ New Year’s Eve. It is a cross-quarter day, which means it marks the midpoint between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. The full moon around this time is often called the Hunter’s Moon or the Blood Moon, referring to the blood harvest—the slaughter of animals in preparation for the cold winter to come. 

A non-exhaustive list from The Full Moon Yearbook of the names October’s full moon has had from all over the world.

It’s said to be a time when the veils between the worlds thin, and intuitive abilities can be heightened. Celebrations around the world, including Dia de los Muertos in Mexico and All Soul’s Day in the Christian tradition are times to connect with our ancestors (biological/cultural/chosen), to honor and remember them. Some believe it’s a time when we can actually connect with them, call them in and have a chat. It’s a good time for an ancestor ritual, to receive guidance from those that have come before.

From a psychological perspective, when we consider our ancestors, we are also looking at our family systems. It’s easy to forget that our individual problems are in many ways passed down through generations in our families. This is literal: our DNA expresses differently depending on our life experiences. Studies on mice have shown that a mouse will fear cherry blossoms if his grandfather was taught to fear cherry blossoms. The egg that created you was fully formed within your mother when she was in your grandmother’s womb, so whatever your grandmother was going through when your mother was in utero could have affected the egg that became you. 

I have wondered if this is what we’re talking about when we talk about past lives. Life experiences, wars, and pandemics live in our individual, cultural, and spiritual DNA. Our issues today may need a wider view in order to heal completely. And one way to find that wider view is through ancestor magic. Another is to learn more about your family history and how individual and cultural events may have affected your family tree.

There are plenty of ways to explore this, but I do have a ritual you can try for the Blood Moon in my new book, The Full Moon Yearbook. You can also take some time out during this season to simply sit with these concepts and have a chat with an ancestor. If you’d like to try this in a guided way, I also have a meditation for just that here.

Happy Samhain!