Tag: Halloween

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Yesterday, while cleaning, I found my box of Halloween decorations that I’d forgotten I even have. Orange and purple lights, two black light bulbs, caution tape. I haven’t lived anywhere that I could really decorate outside for a very long time.

My current home doesn’t face the street either, but I miss setting up decorations. I don’t really get trick or treaters, but I’m thinking I will dress up the porch anyway.

I no longer have the dummy heads that I made all those years ago, so I need something for my witch. I may swing by the Spirit store when I go for my walk to see if they have something I can use. I need a little joy these days.

The company I work for is having a contest for costumes and for decor, so maybe I ‘ll get bragging rights.

While I dig for the right clothes for my witch, I will also be digging out the clothes that I need to pack for Sirens, which is now less than two weeks away.

I will be adding to my “members only” story over on Ko-fi this week, the first part is up and open to all. For only $1 / month, you can get access to the story as it goes along.

My coffee cup appears to be empty and writing time awaits. Have an amazing Sunday, Readers!

Photo by Ksenia Yakovleva on Unsplash

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villains & vengeance & velocity

I’ve been battling migraines and all of their attendant baggage off and on for about two weeks. Only two days were really bad, but the up and down is exhausting.

Today the headache is only mild, but the nausea is yucky and my sinuses are cranky.

This is the start of my fourth week in the new day job, which I am enjoying. It’s a bigger company than my last few, but I get to learn new things, which makes me so very happy.

It is also October! I do love spooky season, which you know if you’ve been around here long (or not so long). I was supposed to be on vacation this week, but we postponed it out until we’re in a better place pandemic wise. My next opportunity for shenanigans is in just over two weeks, when I will be attending the Sirens Conference. I’m anxious, but excited.

I can not wait to see my Sirens family.

In case you didn’t know, I edit the anthology we publish to benefit the con, and this year’s anthology is available in both ebook and paperback. I also have a short story in the book. The profit from each book is donated to the Conference to help fund scholarships and/or defray the costs of putting the conference together. You can get your copy of Villains and Vengeance on Amazon.

We’re into that time of year when I can cuddle into fluffy hoodies and sweats, fuzzy socks and fingerless gloves in the morning, and strip down to shorts and a tank top by the evening…it’s also the time of year where time seems to excelerate.

Sure, this whole year has been something of a blur, but from now through January it always seems to enter warp speed.

And that’s pretty much my brain dump for you today, Readers. I hope the Monday treats you with kindness!

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the sanctity of samhain

This time of year, as the air begins to cool enough for mornings to need socks and the darkness seems to deepen so that the nights are black and still, a sense of peace starts to settle over me. As I shuffle tarot cards for folks who seek guidance and wisdom or light candles on my Beloved Dead altar, it seems fitting to ask them to visit with me.

I’ve never really been one who wants to share Samhain in a large group. It’s always felt like a solitary holy day, and I find the best way to honor it is alone. For me, Samhain is a time of reflection, a day to look at who I have been in the year since last Samhain, to not only celebrate the positive but to address the things I want to change.

Like planting a tulip bulb so spring will bring a beautiful flower, it is a time to plant the bulbs of intention for my future. I have employed a number of methods to do this in the past, but I think this year may involve actual bulbs in actual dirt.

Much of my Samhain rituals are private, intimate. I hold my time on Samhain as sacred. It is a time to commune with my gods and my ancestors. In these next ten days I draw into myself, disengage from the outside world (as much as is possible in this time of chaos) and prepare myself.

I am also holding space for a family member who will be crossing the veil very soon. May her transition be peaceful and her soul find rest.

On that somber note, Readers, I need to get headed to the day job. The commute gets tough right around the corner of hallway and living room, especially if there is a kitty pile up.

Cover Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash

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the autumn of innocence

I was born in September. I don’t know if that has any bearing on my love for autumn, but I like to believe it does. In my Upstate New York childhood, autumn meant new school clothes and supplies (I still love new notebooks and pens and markers and folders and, and, and…), the smell of dry leaves and cider, and the excitement of Halloween. The highlight of October was the annual trip to Kelly’s Farm to pick out our pumpkins and get fresh brewed cider and old fashioned donuts.

While the innocence of that time has gone, and the world is a different place today than it was then, there is a certain wonder to the autumn months still. I sometimes miss the New York autumns, especially here in California where we basically get two seasons, Summer and Not-Summer. Sure we have leaves on the ground and the mornings and nights are cooler, and sometimes even cold, but the true fall colors don’t happen here, unless you travel up into the mountains.

We’re into the time of year here that means long pants and long sleeves in the morning, tank tops and shorts by noon and the air conditioner in the late afternoon. I go to bed with the fan blowing and not even the sheet pulled over me and wake up under blankets chilled.

Last night I refreshed my altar for my ancestors as sort of an invitation. The veil between worlds is thinning as we approach Samhain and I welcome them to visit.

Samhain, and Halloween for that matter, will be different this year, I imagine. For me it is usually a quiet holiday, being the my front door doesn’t face the street, but just the sheer number of newly dead this year…loved ones to be remembered and honored…changes the tenor of the day. This was true for me the Samhain after 9/11, and this is so much more, so many more dead, and many of them left this world bereft of human touch, without the ones they loved by their side.

On that somber note, I wish each of you a lovely week and the kindness and compassion that changes lives. I’m off for more coffee and to log into work. May this autumn be one of a better harvest.

Cover Photo by Dennis Buchner on Unsplash

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yule logs and pumpkins and the fear of 13

It’s Friday the 13th, which honestly is a day I love, and not only because I was born on one.  I’ll be honest, most superstitions strike me as odd, but they tell us a lot about who we are, or who we came from.  The roots of such superstitions can be illuminating, and they illustrate the times and lives of our ancestors.

I’ll be honest here, I often take a perverse sort of pleasure in purposely defying superstition.  I dress in black on Friday the 13ths, today replete with skulls.  I adore black cats, the only fear I have of ladders is of falling off of them.

This juxtaposition of Friday the 13th against the landslide down to Christmas is amusing, not the least because it invokes the whole Nightmare Before Christmas scenario.  I’m that person who has Halloween decorations up (for some value of decoration, I don’t do much) year round.  Right now the area in front of my TV is filled with pumpkins and witches and candles and some pine boughs…

I don’t do a lot of decorating, mostly because I hate taking it down and putting it away!  One year I had Christmas lights up until nearly July.  I save that urge for my mother’s house, where I will be going tomorrow to help her get the tree up and all that fun stuff.

I may go so far as to decorate a Yule log and burn it in my fire pit one night, we’ll see how I’m feeling about it, and if the rain lets up long enough to make it happen.  Yule is pretty low key for me generally, as a Pagan, but I do want to recognize the rebirth of the sun and the return of the daylight as we pass the solstice and the days grow longer once more.

Christmas is a secular celebration for me, a time to spend with those that love me and to give gifts that remind them of my love for them.

But for today, I’ll just wrap my arms around the day and celebrate the overcoming of fear.  I should probably also re-heat my breakfast, which has gone cold and drink some more coffee, because coffee is life!

Happy Friday, Readers!  May the 13th shower you with good things!

 

Photo by Hannah Gibbs on Unsplash

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season of the witch

It is that time of year again, as the veil thins and the spirits of the dead move through the land and the world remembers that witches exist.  Sure, we’re around all the time, but mostly people forget until Samhain approaches, and then suddenly we’re meant to perform our witchness for them.

Okay, so witchness isn’t a word, I get that, but still it’s not that they want to understand who we are, what we do and all that…they want us to be a “witch,” to live up to their expectations of what a witch actually is.

I identify as a witch.  I have for quite some time.  My daily life is pretty mundane:  I work, I write, I travel (having just gotten home from Denver and a conference for women/nonbinary in SFF).  On occasion, I commune with the spirit world, light a few candles on my altars.

Come Samhain, I dress up in costume and participate in the secular traditions of Halloween, as much as allowed by my living situation and workplace allowances (tomorrow I’ll be dressed as a Jedi for work)…then I come home and I light a few candles, set out some food to entice the beloved ancestors to stop by my house, and I read or watch movies until it’s time for bed. I may even open a bottle of wine or whiskey, pour out a little for the ancestors and such.

If there is time, I offer up tarot readings, because it’s a good time of year for it.

But, I’m a witch all year, not just at Samhain.  And I do these things (minus the dressing up, though I do that sometimes just for fun) all the time.  I’m not performing my witchness for anyone, I’m just being a witch.

All that said, Samhain is a time to look back, and look forward.  It is a time of reflection on what has been and a time of planting seeds for what is to come.   The old year ends, the wheel turns.  Summer fades and Autumn settles us in to prepare for Winter.  It is a sacred night when the harvest is done and the feast prepared.

And it is a night when kids of all ages dress up as their favorite super hero, princess or space man, skipping from house to house in echo of the past, and we, witch or not, praise them for their clever disguises and offer them candy and other treats as recompense for their tacit agreement to leave off the curses they might otherwise feel compelled to whisper into the night.

So, blessings to you, in this season of the witch.  May your final harvest be plentiful and feed you well through the winter season.  May your fallow fields lie unspoiled and resting until the time comes to plant.  May you dream the dreams of your people and may you commune with your beloved dead in peace.

 

 

Photo by Paige Cody on Unsplash

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samhain and the dead

As I am writing this, I am looking at tomorrow’s holiday with a new perspective of sorts.  I’ve always loved Halloween, from my earliest memory.  It was a fun holiday, a chance to become something besides your self, and of course, there was all the candy!

As a new Pagan many years ago it took on new meaning.  I celebrated Samhain as I imagine a lot of new Pagans do.  I did a little research, I borrowed traditions from paths that seemed to get it right, and I threw myself into celebrating this holiday of the dead.

But what I didn’t really have, or understand, was any real connections to my “beloved dead” or my “ancestors”…I never really had a strong sense of family connections beyond my immediate family and they’re immediate family (mother, father, siblings…aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents).  I had never known my mother’s father and at the time I chose my Pagan path, the only people in my life who had died were my father’s mother and a childhood friend.

Still, I had a strong draw toward honoring the dead.  My love of old cemeteries also goes back to my childhood and my interest in the spirit world was part of what drew me to Paganism to begin with.

Over the last few years, my religious path has changed some…nothing drastic, but if your faith doesn’t grow with you as you grow then your faith can die.  I found myself digging into my family tree, into the history of me as it were, and discovered a feeling of connection with several ancestors that I had never known.

Two years ago, I attended a class in bone reading as divination.  It had a strong emphasis on calling on the beloved dead to assist.  It was after that class that I set up a small altar with pictures of those ancestors, and in the two years since I have added images of those who have passed more recently, not necessarily family of my blood, but family of my heart.

This Samhain, after I go to work in my Raven costume, I will spend an evening in quiet contemplation and while I can’t really have a bonfire like I’d like, I will light as many candles as I deem safe and invite those beloved dead to visit.  I may even throw some bones and see if they speak to me.

Whether you celebrate Halloween, Samhain or Dia de los Muertos, may your day be filled with blessings and sweet things.