Wausau Pagan Society

Halloween/Samhain approacheth.  The day of the dead, it is the time of the year where the veils between the spirit world, and our world are the thinnest, and an unwary traveller out at the witching hour of midnight, might find him/herself wisked away by a disgruntled spirit, to the Netherworld.  Listen to the sounds outside at this time a year.  The way the wind howls, or as it wips up under the moonlight, blowing leaves all around you, off in the distance a dog howls, dogs that are sacred to Hecate, Goddess of the Fringe, Ghosts and Magic.

Death is a frightening thing, it is the ever present reminder of our mortality and the unknown that faces us after death.  But evidence of this life after death exists all around us, if we would only open our eyes to see it.  Nearly everyone has had an encounter with something they cannot explain.  I can tell you stories of the Palding Light, be it a Will O’ the Wisp, or fairy or maybe even alien, but the light that is a living being in and of itself that wanders nightly in the woods that border Wisconsin, the U.P. and Lake Superior. Gitche gumee herself, as a sacred and very old body of water, has her host of angry ghosts, angry ghosts that can possess a mans body and compel him to walk door to door and shoot his neighbors, or beings that can fuse an animal through a floor, much like the legendary Philadelphia Experiment.

Frightening stuff, and largely misunderstood stuff.  For all that science knows it is only beginning to unravel some of these phenomena.  By for as terrifying demonic spirits can be, they are only a small percentage of the people who once lived, and then died on the land you live on, wherever it is that you live.  What happens to the rest?  The good people, who found peace in their hearts and learned the lessons of this life that they were supposed to, where are they?  I do not even pretend to know that answer completely, but I can tell you they are somewhere, for they are the grandmothers and grandfathers who guide us and help us as we make our journey through this life.

For even has science has not yet begun to fully comprehend the implications of all this, the ancient traditions do make sense of it.   They speak of the hypnotic green light that burns in the life freezing eyes of Medusa, Ereshkigal Hel and Hecate.   Be it even liminal Goddesses such as Rhiannon and the Sirens, who are more embodiments of trances and dreams, the message is the same, death is a fact of life, it is inescapable.   However, for those choice few, who accept this inevitability with courage and grace, those green lights are the light of rebirth, for as terrible as these Goddesses are, and not to be trifled with, they are wise, and they are the midwife attending birth, if  not the Mother herself.

The Magick present in such forces is extremely powerful and as a result dangerous, and unfortunately there are some who under the guise of science have tampered with such forces, and the results are closer than you think.  But these Goddesses and forces also have a sense of justice, after all they are intimately associated with the judgement that awaits all when we die.  Those who tinker, those who ask for such power, for the sake of power alone, usually meet horrific ends, a punishment that more often than not fits the crime.  They are a reminder that death is not an unfair curse of mortals, but a passageway.  To what is entirely up to us, for these ladies also are the patronesses of dreams and of Oracles.  Like Vishnu or Odin, it is the dreamer who wills the world into existence, in whatever form, for good or for ill.  The waking dreaming of meditation likewise wills the thoughts into reality.

We are far more powerful than we realize, our minds are capable of incredible things.  So this year as you honor those who have passed before at Samhain, remember that the time between Samhain and Yule, is the dreamtime.  The period of gestation between the death of the old, and the birth of the new, that makes manifest what you think and feel during this time.  Lay out offerings to the spirits, then come inside to a fire, a warm bowl of food or a glass of homemade wine, listen to the wind howl and reflect on what came before, and what can be out of what remains.

Blessed Samhain.