Samhain Reflections

I lovingly joke that counting the times I hear “when the veil between the worlds is thinnest” during this season would be a full time job. It’s true that October, home to the holidays Halloween and Samhain, has a strong association with the otherworldly. I’ve always loved this time of year because it seems extra magical: when else are we permitted to play with the spooky, imaginative, and uncanny sides of the human experience with such abandon?

This is also the busiest time of the year for a professional tarot reader, so finding time to squeeze in my personal celebrations has been a bit of a challenge. And what’s more, there’s some tenderness and pressure tied to Halloween as well.

A quick trip through “witch instagram” will give you hundreds of examples of rituals and tarot spreads to conduct for Halloween or the pagan holiday Samhain. And, in true instagram fashion, all of these are laid out and photographed alluringly with candles, crystals, flowers - the whole ritualistic shebang.

So you won’t be surprised to hear that I was pressuring myself to come up with something meaningful, elaborate, and photogenic. And, as seems to always be the case, my internal judgment and expectations lead to… nothing.

To be fair, I’d been running around hosting a big party and reading at several others the weekend before. When the 31st came around I was plum tuckered out. And, since Halloween and Samhain deal with all things ancestral (what’s behind that thin veil), I had a lot of emotions tied to contacting them.

I think it’s easy to get caught up in the “shoulds” of any situation, and witchcraft and magic are no different. With instagram things get trickier. Those photogenic altars are meant to telegraph profound and developed personal practices. Many of them are. But they often gloss over the more challenging aspects and experiences.

For me, ancestral reverence and communication can be an emotional and complicated practice. Not all of us have straightforward or uncomplicated relationships to our ancestors. Many were complicated people making the best of a complicated time. Working with them can be an emotional experience and that side, I’ve found, is rarely shown online.

So instead of having a lush Samhain ritual, I simply sat and experienced my feelings. Grief, love, emptiness, and searching - all of them were enough to handle as I focused on making a very ancestral meal of pierogis/vareniki and relaxing the best I could.

And this morning? I got up early, clearer and more focused, and called my beloved ancestors into a circle for a tarot reading. The time was right and it was more than enough.

Weekend Send-Off: Getting Spooky

I don’t know about you, but I’m a huge Halloween fanatic. In recent years, however, I’ve fallen off the wagon of making epic costumes. Some highlights from my glory days: going as a shrimp tempura roll, a toaster (very impractical for dancing), and Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle.

But this year is a return to form! After months of ebay searching I finally found the perfect dress for my Beetlejuice-themed costume. I’m going as Lydia Deetz in the wedding scene, heinous 80s red dress and all. It feels wonderful playing with costumes again. There’s something so magical about the outer and inner transformations that happen when we change our appearance.

I hope you all are having a magical lead-up to Halloween (please share you costumes in the comments below!) and are enjoying the effects of the full moon a few days ago. And now, without further ado, some highlights from the week.

Tarot Discoveries - The Spolia Tarot

A dear friend of mine was generous enough to bring his epic tarot deck collection to this month’s Tarot Club meetup. I find that seeing the decks in person and handling them is the quickest way to see if they resonate with you. One of the standouts was the gorgeous Spolia Tarot, whose gilded edges and lush collage artwork is proving to be irresistible to me. I may have just ordered a copy...

Woo Humor - Mercury Retrograde

Got a good laugh out of this piece from The New Yorker - “This is Not a Drill: Mercury is in Retrograde.” Who can resist a little healthy joking around everyone’s favorite-to-bemoan astrological event?

Repeat Tarot Card - The Lovers

The Lovers has appeared in a few profound readings this week, pointing to a lot of challenging and rewarding choices along with some good old fashioned romance.

Listening, Reading, Watching

It’s that time of the year where I re-watch my favorite animated series, Over the Garden Wall. It’s a magical story of two brothers who get lost in the woods and references all sorts of famous illustrators. Plus, I have a feeling you could view it as a bit of a Fool’s journey…

I’ve been reading a fascinating book on hallucinations called…wait for it… Hallucinations by the wonderful and inimitable Oliver Sacks. It’s been fascinating getting a neurological perspective on a subject that’s so fraught and, interestingly, tied to the spiritual community whether it’s through ecstatic visions or the use of hallucinogens. I’m especially looking forward to the next chapter on “Phantoms, shadows, and sensory ghosts”!

And now, finally, our card for the weekend:

Four of Cups

Message: Take time to process an already full plate of emotions!

Embrace: Reflection, solitary practices, reminiscing about the past.

Let Go Of: Criticizing what you have, pressure to be more active.

Guidance: There’s a lot of experiences and feelings that have been accumulating. Now is the time to set aside time and space for things to settle. Treat yourself tenderly and see if you can see your past experiences from a new vantage point.