Another Wonderful FEAST OF SAMHAIN!

We did the Beloved Dead proud,  providing them a seat at the head of the table, the place of honor, for Samhain.  Thanks to all who came and remembered those we love and the Ancestors.

The Feast of Samhain 2015

I love creating the Altar of the Beloved Dead and the Feast of Samhain........and after the Feast, I always take a day or so before I deconstruct the party.  After all, the Spirits do seem to enjoy the party.  So I lit it up tonight as well.

Samhain Blessings to all!

The Feast of Samhain 2014

I'm getting ready for my annual "Feast of Samhain", and having fun decorating the altar with Marigolds, a precious bottle of honey Mead, a remembrance of all the good things we are so generously given in life, and most of all, a remembrance of all those who came before us to bring us here, and give us the Gift of Life.  

 Walking, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of  thousands.
 
-Linda Hogan*

As always, being in full glorious irritable  Cronehood now, as the stores abound with ghouls, vampires, and witch silhouettes on brooms, I grouse at the loss of this important holiday for most people, the sanctity of "Hallowed Eve" replaced with scary ghosts - although, costume balls and trick or treating is something truly worth doing, and I'm sure the visiting Beloved Dead enjoy it all as well!
 

Witches on brooms!  Hah!  The meaning of the broom was an ancient folk tradition of "sweeping away the Bad", sweeping out of the house the bad energies, illness, and spirits that weren't "welcome to the Feast".

And the ghosts...........well, that's what the Feast, like Dia de los Muertos, is all about:  inviting the Beloved Dead to the party, setting the place of honor at the head of the table for them, drinking their favorite wine and preparing their favorite dishes, and lovingly telling their stories, jokes, and singing their songs. 

 Among those who we've lost this year, my brother Glenn, and my friend Jeff Rosenbaum, a prime creator of the Starwood Festival and A.C.E.  Jeff, I am somehow certain you're visiting a whole lot of Feasts, and all of them raising a glass to you.   And Margo Adler, author of Drawing Down The Moon, and my friend Sandy Wentz........



And there are those who have left, and are leaving, this World who also, most urgently, must not be forgotten.  

"The Sixth Extinction"

My wise friend Joyce sent me a lovely blurb today from an astrologer in NYC which I take the liberty of reprinting here.  I especially like her use of the Rumi poem, and her mention of Persephone, the Goddess of both Spring and Death, eternally moving in a Circle.  

I always leave Pomegranates for Persephone on my Alter.  For some reason, words are not with me these days, and the well of poetry left me years ago.......but every year this time I remember a poem I wrote for Persephone that I still love, and enjoy sharing that here once again as well.
        

"Persephone"

PERSEPHONE'S  FEAST  DAY

When all the names are gone
when there is nothing left
for memory to feed upon
November hides
an unborn  promise.

All the wastes of love and time
Become, at last, alchemy.
To ferment their healing, here
in these nigrado depths,
becoming  albedo,
the medicine.

    I offer now bread, red fruit, red wine.
    To life.

To the harvest that was,
the  kisses of summer past
fragrant  as  petals on the wind,
 to the poet and the bard, the mother  and husband,
laughter of children, the confidence
of  bountiful fortune.

And to those outcast as well -
the inarticulate, the lost,  the hungry  and fallen.
To every transparent lover
wandering these bardos in their solitude.

To age and youth, light and dark,
Tenderly entwined in their embrace:

Come to the table, all.

Here is a rich conversation
harvested from the last living garden.
A dappled pear, an apple, a ripe pomegranate
A butterfly in its chrysalis, sleeping.

The slow rebirth of color
    deep in the depths of this dream.

The sundial will circle once more,
The wheat has new life in it yet.

    The blessing will be given.

BLESSED SAMHAIN TO ALL!

Fall Astrology Café   
by Virginia Bell

 Halloween October 31  "The Season of the Crone"

Called Samhain (summer's end) Halloween is the Celtic New Year and one of the
four cross-quarter holidays (the others are Imbolc, Beltane and Lammas). It is
said to be a time when the veil of the astral world is lifted, the psyche is
unfettered, and anything is possible. The pagan idea used to be that the crucial
joints between the seasons opened cracks in the fabric of space-time, allowing
contact between the ghost world and the mortal world.

This is the time of the Crone, the witch, and the weaver; the time of year to
honor our ancestors and to connect with them for guidance on the year ahead.
Decorate your altar with photographs of friends, family who have passed over as
well as your heroes and heroines. The last day of October is the beginning of
the year's dark season. Traditionally, it is the time Persephone returns to the
underworld to take her place with Pluto her husband and her consort. Like
Persephone we now begin to turn inward, to go deep and connect with what is
real. At this time we can access the unknown and the unseen. What is it you
desire to bring to consciousness? Remember, what is freed at Halloween is
conquered and integrated. Open to the deep rivers of your wisdom and intuition.
Surrender to the space between the worlds.

It is your turn now.
You waited, you were patient.
The time has come,
for us to polish you.
We will transform your inner peal
into a house of fire.
You're a gold mine.
Did you know that,
hidden in the dirt of the earth?
It is your turn now,
To be placed in fire.
Let us cremate your impurities. 

Rumi

*Thanks to Virginia Bell Astrology

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Ancestral Visitations.........a Samhain Portfolio

Getting ready for my annual Feast of Samhain, I found some old photos that were irresistable in their mystery and their pathos.  Wanted to remember, especially, the unknown Grandmothers who brought me here.  

Just a few "snapshots from the other side of Forever".............................

 http://www.slideshare.net/laurenraine/ancestral-visitations-a-samhain-portfolio-40168014

Thank you.  Thank you all for bringing me here.

The Feast of Samhain, 2013

Feast of Samhain, 2012

I'll be celebrating the "The Feast of  Samhain" again (November 1st), with a place set at the table for the Guest of Honor, the Ancestors and the Beloved Dead.  As last year, it will be a candlelit night of sharing stories of those who have passed away but remain in our hearts, our memory, and our bloodlines. What is remembered lives. 

Decor will include, of course, pumpkins, to commemorate also the Last Celtic Harvest Festival (there are 3), All Hallows Night, before going into the darkness of Winter.  And November 1st is also the Witches New Year, as well as Dia de Los Muertos, something widely celebrated here in the Southwest, and in Tucson, with a famous parade (and just in case you don't believe the Spirits come to join the Celebration, check out Ginny's "Orb" photo below from last years parade.

Photo by Ginny Moss

I don't feel that I can say anything more eloquent about this High Holy Day than I have in previous years, so I copy below musing from a previous year..........and also a post I did on Dia de Los Muertos can be found HERE.  I  Wish all a very wonderful Samhain!

Mariachi Wedding from All Soul's Procession, Tucson

© dominic arizona bonuccelli | AZFOTO

 I remember  the Spiral Dance, which I participated in a number of times in San Francisco (I created the Masks of the Goddess for the 20th Annual Spiral Dance).  I also brought this beautiful ritual to Tucson in 2000 with the help of Priestess  Macha NightMare.   When one has danced the Spiral Dance and come face to face with each participant in the course of the dance, you leave changed.  

November 1st has been called the "Witches New Year", and what comes to mind. of course, is the universal image of the  "Witch and her broom". The Broom is associated with many folk traditions of "sweeping away the old bad energies" - purification rituals for the home and Hearth (Heart). Traditionally this was the time to celebrate the last of three Celtic Harvest Festivals before going into the dark of Winter.   It is the closing of the old year,  a time to honor the ancestors, the harvest, and the gifts of the year past.  When I lay out the Feast, I always imagine many generations laying out the last fresh apples, the treasured honey mead reserved only for special occasions, and toasts raised  to the invisible ones,  their plates heaped high as well. Inherent in this celebration was a profound respect for the Spiral wheel of the year,  cycling the natural cycles of death and re-birth.

Here is my gratitude to the year that is soon to pass away, and to all of those who have passed away from my life as well, people who have gifted me and created with me and loved me, and I them.  Blessed Be!

Sometimes we don't realize, because things manifest through time, the ways that our wishes have often been granted.  Thinking of the Spiral Dance, and Reclaiming, I remember another one of those stories of Grace and Magic, and want to tell it, although, as all true stories are, it's part of a much larger story that is woven into the fabric of my life, and lots of other lives.  I think when we tell  these stories we get a glimpse of how seamless "reality" really is.  And Magic is always afoot, although I don't believe it has anything to do with wands.  I think it's much more about Weaving and being Woven.

"Gaia" (1986)

When I was in graduate school, I began reading "The Spiral Dance" by Starhawk.  It was such a revelation, the way she spoke about the Goddess, and a theology of Immanence.  It became the central inspiration for one of my shows while in Grad school.  When I graduated I went to live in New York, and married, and then in 1997 got divorced.  My ex and I were very involved with the Pagan community on the East Coast, and when we divorced I felt like I lost my community.   In those days I was doing Renaissance Faires, so I packed up my van and became a nomad.

I had a booth in the fall of that year at the Maryland Renaissance Faire, and I happened to hear of a holistic health practitioner who also did shamanic work and "soul retrievals" in the area.  I figured it couldn't hurt, so I made an appointment.  We lay down on the floor, he "journeyed" for me, and "blew my soul pieces" back into my chest.  I didn't know what to think, but as he described his impressions, among them he told me that there were two things that would show me that my old life, were over.  One was a magenta flower, a Cosmos.  The other was a little terra cotta angel.

In November I packed up and went to Arizona to spend the winter in my trailer.  By March I was  wondering where to go next.  I had recently discovered the Internet, so I looked up just about everything I was interested in - Goddess, ritual, mask theatre, transpersonal psychology, etc.  Every single time it came up Berkeley, Marin Country, or San Francisco!   The clincher was when I was looking for the email for something called the Center for Symbolic Studies near New Paltz, New York.  I knew Stephen and Robin Larsen, and wanted to get a recommendation from them. Up came the Center for Symbolic Studies in Berkeley, California!  And the Center was the creation of a Jungian psychologist named Robert H. Hopcke  who had just written a book called There Are No Accidents: Synchronicity and the Stories of Our Lives!

Well, that was enough for me, so I packed up the van when the show ended,  and headed west to California, back to the Berkeley I remembered so well but hadn't seen in over 20 years.  I decided I would sleep in my van if I had to, until I could find a place to stay (and fortunately for me, I had no idea of how hard it can be to find a place to stay in Berkeley now.....)

Arriving finally, I looked around for a familiar landmark, and found the Cafe Mediterranean.  I didn't know anyone anymore in Berkeley, but for old times sake I parked the van nearby and went in for my first Cappachino since the 70's.  As I stood in line, someone tapped me on the shoulder and said "Are you Lauren Raine?"  It was my old friend Joji!  I couldn't believe it.  He bought me a cup of coffee, asked me where I was staying, I told him I had just arrived and planned on moving back to Berkeley, and he invited to stay at his house where he had an extra room.  I didn't have to sleep in my car for even one night!

Judy Foster

And when I went to his house that evening, in his living room was a big, framed close-up photograph of a magenta Cosmos.

When, two months later, I found a room to rent with Judy Foster, the first thing I encountered when I walked into her house was an altar with a terra cotta angel.  And as it turned out, Judy was one of the founders of Reclaiming and the Spiral Dance, and a close friend of Starhawk.   The universe put me exactly where I needed to go, a Spiral Dance.