Category: Fall
Ten Ways To Celebrate Samhain
Samhain (pronounced sow-en) is the traditional Celtic holiday of death, endings, beginnings and visionary magic. Straddling the transition from fall into winter, Samhain marks the start of the Celtic calendar year. Considered to be a time when the boundaries between the worlds dissolve, during Samhain the unseen energies of the earth are more apparent…
What Happens When The Veil Thins?
Growing up, I always felt the power of fall. I loved Halloween and its lantern-lit festivities, the amber hue of the canopy and gold leaves falling from the trees. I adored the apple crisps and cozy blankets but the thing I loved most of all was the feeling of fall. It wasn’t until I was older…
The Way Beyond Death
In autumn, we embrace the dying. As the leaves grow spotted, then yellow and aflame, we watch the world around us begin to wane. We’ve grown so accustomed to the idea of autumn, the disappearing of the green, that we forget how truly profound it is. For those of us in the deciduous belt…
Psychedelics + the Ecosystem of Meaning
Autumn is a psychedelic season. More than just a waning golden hour, autumn has its own texture. And just by touching it, our consciousness begins to shift. In our culture psychedelics are often synonymous with “drugs,” exotic substances that blow open the gateways of your perception, concentrates that tip the cup of the world over…
Walking with Ghosts
Autumn has fallen here in the mountains. The trees are turning inwards, curling their leaves into colors of copper, ember and dusk. The canopies empty in a thick caramel of fire, and suddenly that which felt obscured or far away is close and able to be perceived. There is a kind of haunting that…
Autumn is the Dying
If Winter means death, then Autumn is the dying. In our culture, death is often synonymous with dread. Like late blight to tomatoes, it seems devastatingly final and achingly unfair. But the idea that dying is an event to be feared is a very human story, and one we have only recently started telling…
Samhain: Practices + Reflections
Today the world is lost to its own thought. This morning found the last russets of maple leaves scattered beneath the trees and tonight we’re expecting our first killing freeze. It is Samhain, and the consciousness of the earth feels as fluid as the shadowy iridescence of a raven’s wing. Samhain, the ancient Gaelic…
Autumn Melancholy + Saturnian Journeys
It is late October, and the peak of the Equinox has come and gone. The fields are golden with constellations of butter-colored squash and dried corn, and every day the light grows dimmer. In the wheel of the year, autumn is a time of both extravagant wealth and liberating death. As the days curl…
