September through December is my favorite quarter of the year. It’s when I feel most connected to Earth’s energies and cycles. I particularly love all the holidays you find in nearly every belief system and continent that honor the dead. Celebrations, feasts, spooky fun traditions, and so much symbolism.
Day of the Dead
All-Hallows Eve
All Saints Day
All Souls Day
Grandmother Moon
Corn Harvest Moon
Night of the Ancestors
…to name a few.
Pumpkins and apples, spirits and spices, gatherings of friends and family, gatherings of ghosts and other un-embodied things. We make offerings. The energy gets crisp and clear, the veil thins, all that is needed is known. And after that, we reset. We rest, clear our calendars and our minds, cozy up to the hearth or the kitchen table, or maybe we just hide under a warm blanket in our favorite chair.
The truth is that everything dies. It decomposes. It rests. In the darkness and the invisible places deep within the earth, seeds gather what they need to begin again. To renew. To start fresh, take an idea and grow (step by step) into something beautiful. Ripe with possibilities and hope, they wave hello to a passing earthworm or two.
Every person has their own beliefs, their own understanding of life and death and spirit and breath. For me, death isn’t an ending. It’s part of the greater cycle. And the dead aren’t truly gone. We miss them– we grieve, get angry, scream and cry and ask a million whys. It hurts to live sometimes. But the dead are still with us, if we want them to be. In our hearts, in our memories, in our journals and counseling sessions and favorite old wooden spoons. Family recipes, old photos, remembered stories, and the life choices we make in honor of where we come from, and the sacrifices we made to survive. To quote an old movie: Death is only the beginning.
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