This is the season of magic. Though magic is with us at all times, if we choose to look for it, October and the start of November make it palpable around us. Maybe it’s because of the beauty of the changing leaves, the rich scents of Autumn, and the return of the dark evenings, while the weather is still warm enough to be out in nature’s enchantment. Maybe it is that the veil between our reality and others is in fact thinner at this time, as folklore and magical traditions have well described. And, certainly, the holidays of this time of year bring out our secret love of the supernatural, as well as a rare moment of cultural permission for make believe, wildness, and ritual, followed by reverence for the unseen and the ancestral. All of these elements of the season make it a special time that I look forward to all year, and I know I’m not alone in that.
In some ways, this year, in its necessary minimalism of Halloween and Dia de los Muertos events, gives me the sense of a time past, when celebrating the energies of the season was less a balance between the parties and public ceremonies and more of an everyday relationship with the Mysterious, as it pulls back the curtain some and beckons us to slow down, communicate, vision, and dream. This Halloween falls on a full moon and blue moon, meaning it is the second full moon of the month, a rare and auspicious omen in itself, making it hard to not take notice. Of course, with the uncertainty, and heightened stakes of our time, it also feels more urgent and important to observe these rites deeply, and to cultivate an understanding and a relationship to them for the children who will inherit our traditions, as well as our problems. Children will be missing some of the most anticipated festivities of the year, along with so much of their normal opportunities for socialization and development. Parents are getting very creative in their attempts to replace that excitement and whimsy, while staying safe. Perhaps there is also an opportunity to bring back some old ways of observing these holidays and the meanings they hold.
Halloween is an age old pagan holiday, stemming from the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced “Sow-when”). In the wheel of the year, which honors the cycles of death, rebirth, fertility, planting, and harvest, Samhain is the new year celebration. It is a time when we honor all that has passed in the year previous, our beloved dead, our losses, both individual and collective, and our new births as well. It is a time when the dead and the spirits of the unseen world move among us freely, for a short time, an element we now celebrate by dressing in masks and costumes of fantastical and frightening characters. It is a time to make offerings and appeasements to the world of the dead, the unfathomable, and the Fey, a tradition now represented by giving candy and treats to children dressed in their guise. It’s a time for divination, communion with the underworlds, where we dream and where we journey when this life is finished, and a time to receive guidance from our ancestors and unseen allies.
This honoring of the ancestral realm becomes even more palpable in the Mexican tradition of Dia de los Muertos, a major event in the cities of Mexico and Central America, as well as in some Bay Area neighborhoods. Beautiful altars of flowers, candles, and offerings are made for the dead on the 1st and 2nd of November, created in homes, cemeteries, and public streets, followed by processions, rituals and family meditations. It is considered a time when the beloved dead may return to the pleasures they knew in life, and to their families. They are greeted with careful preparation, marigolds to bring light to the darkness, photos, special foods like pan de muerto, representing the human body, and their favorite meals and vices, including alcohol and tobacco. It is a time to say thank you to our ancestors who sacrificed and endured, allowing us to be here now, and who preserved the gifts and teachings that benefit us. It is a time to honor where we are as a culture, to grieve and celebrate together.
This is a time to listen to our history. I can’t help thinking that our ancestors, from many various lineages and many generations, knew a lot more than we do about enduring times of great change, unrest, loss, and fear of the unwritten future. They also knew about creating security, warmth, and inspiration, with much less to work with than many of us have. Many of them knew how to think and behave as a collective, feeding each other and working together in times of scarcity. Some of them knew how to protect themselves and their communities in times of danger. Some of them knew about cultivating power and resilience in secret ways, in times of oppression. It is not as though all of our ancestors were enlightened, or even kind, but they were resilient enough to get us this far, and they may have wisdom to share, as do the ancestors of our soul paths and sacred traditions, though they may not have been our blood relations.
Ancestral magic is different than ancestral healing, though it may begin there. When we look back at the patterns of our family line, what we know of our history, we will likely find a mixture of destructive patterns, limitations, gifts, and legacies. Ancestral healing involves identifying the difficult patterns that repeat in our lives and in the lives of our relations, including addictions, illness, violence, areas of lack and suppression of certain aspects of our soul life or work that we want to grow but don’t know how. What our ancestors did or never could do creates a kind of groove in the road of our lives that we unconsciously follow, and it takes a lot of energy to move ourselves out of that well worn path. However, when we use our deep psychic listening to follow those lines back to their stories of origin, we might find that we have the power to bring new eyes and hearts to those old stories. Looking at the full historical context of previous times, and coming from a place of love and forgiveness, while acting as a witness for our ancestors’ traumas, failures, and impossible choices, can free us from the curse of repeating these themes in our own lives, again and again, and frees them, ourselves, and our future generations.
When we work deeply in this way, we may find something else that is equally important. What gifts, lineage medicine, or sacred teachings are written in our ancestral lines? These may be clear to us in the talents and interests that repeat over generations, or they may be quite hidden. All over the world, magical heritage had to be suppressed at some point, when it was too dangerous to practice or speak of publicly. In addition, colonization (however far back it occurred), immigration, assimilation, and secularization contributed heavily to forgetting what once may have been held as sacred or essential to who we were and are. Some peoples encoded stories and songs with the teachings and values that they wanted to preserve for their descendants. Some passed down teachings, practices, and prophecies for the times we are living now. Many made sacrifices so that we could have the luxury to live, look back, and reach for understanding and integration this way. And, some of what was left to us sings inside our veins, able to be reached at the right moment, when we can become quiet and open enough to listen.
How do we become the ancestors of the next generations? How do we learn to think in a manner that spans time and sends resilience and guidance to those who come after us? Maybe if we look back to the past, listening to the wisdom, warnings, and regrets of those who came before, we might be able to rise and fill that space. Even committing ourselves to healing our own destructive patterns, or reclaiming and developing our gifts, paves the way for a future generation to be able to go beyond that work, towards something we may not have imagined.
So, this Samhain and Dia de los Muertos season, while finding the ways to reimagine the wonder and transgression of Halloween, maybe we can use the quiet of a slower than usual time to create a beautiful altar to what and who we want to honor from the past. Maybe we can make a sumptuous and meaningful offering to the earth and her more ethereal inhabitants. Perhaps we can tell some ancestral stores from our family history or the history of the collective and think about what they are trying to teach us. Perhaps we can grieve with our loved ones of all ages for what we may have lost, and at the same time celebrate that which we have preserved or gained in this past year. And, most of all, maybe we can engage the ways we know, or can learn, to see, to scry, to journey, or to divine with the tarot, the messages that our ancestors may be longing to send us at this time.
Here is one suggestion. Ask yourself where you may feel trapped in a negative cycle or by a limitation in some area where you have the desire to blossom. Ask your ancestors what the root of this problem is and listen with a forgiving heart. Ask them what they need in order to be released from this, so that you may all be free? Then ask your ancestors what unrealized gifts you have inherited that you may need or want for moving forward with grace. Ask them what they have been waiting to share with you.
With love and gratitude,
the eleventh house
-This blog was written by Melusina Gomez. You can learn more about her work and healing practices at www.metzmecatl.com