Samhain: Finding Rest in Shedding and Becoming

The seasonal turning point toward winter. Shedding what's dying by honoring the life that has come before you and now passed. In rest, there is connection with the spirit that remains and lives on.

Oct 31, 2024

Welcome to a my seasonal posts on the Wheel of the Year. These posts are free and provide traditional insight, ways to work with the season, and reflections in the collective. Tuning into these seasonal celebrations gives a sense of relationship to this planet and the grounding sense of biophilic connection that provides a platform to relate, root, and grow as a human on the spiritual journey.

Thinning of the Veils—Honoring Spirit

Halloween is rooted in Celtic Pagan traditions as Samhain [saa-win] which in the turn of church became All Saints Day or All Souls Day through Christianity. The celebration in Mexican tradition is called Dia De Los Muertos. This day marks the mid-point on the Celtic Wheel of the Year between Fall Equinox and Winter Solstice. It’s a time where the collective is embracing the spirit beyond the human body—where the full force summer expression begins to turn to the more quiet, inward relationship to self and the subtleties. The spirit of ‘being’ is now in transformation.

man in black coat standing near fire — Photo by Robin Canfield on Unsplash

Traditions believe that the changing of the sun light thins the veil between the human and spirit world. As a collective when we engage in recognition of the souls beyond us, we permit energetic access to the spirits that have come and gone before us. In its wholesomeness, the time is here to celebrate the cycles of life and death and the pure connection between both worlds.

Halloween is a celebration in gratitude for the cycles of the transformative processes.

In the traditional practices, we are invited to gather together and honor the wisdom of our ancestors—the stories they carried and the lessons or choices they made along with those auras. The energy of our ancestors inherently gets passed along by way of their once lived practices, stories, relationships, and behaviors through the connections they made to their environments like food, loved ones, community, and the earth. The work they’ve left behind, some of which is supportive and some of which is a burden we carry to transform, sits before us as we cycle through in our own stories.

Share Weavings of The Nest

Regardless of the judgement we make about what has been passed on by the spirits, it is important to connect back to the gratitude that we have for the life we get to live. The gift of human life, to have a conscious and unconscious mind, enables us to practice in the cycles of making choices to change or pass along the energy to those that come after us.

In honoring the wisdom of our ancestors, we acknowledge the gift of our own lives and the impact we choose to leave after we pass from our human bodies.

Death will eventually happen, to all of us. In Celtic and Pagan tradition, we understand that “The Wheel of the Year” inevitably turns, with or without us. A new day isn’t always promised and we don’t know when our time will come. It is the gift of living another day that grants us the permission to show up as best we can with grace, with discipline, to shed old energies and continue to create anew for the betterment of the collective.

a shrine with many statues — Photo by Roger Ce on Unsplash

Traditions to celebrate and protect living energies carried on this holiday include:

A sacred alter to rest our acknowledgements and thanks for our ancestors
Bonfires in community to strengthen the light of the all against the vulnerability of the darkness and provide an element of alchemy
Costumes or masks to carry the spirit of our human bodies in protection around the unseen spiritual realms

Learn more at the end of this post on how you can cultivate your practice this holiday.

Shedding the Old Skin, Dancing in the New—Rest

Making meaning of the season, the astrology, the energy

The heat of summer expression is over. With less light comes the darkness which brings about a time to get more quiet; it is a calling inward. So, it’s possible to be feeling more tender, more connected, or seeking to be more connected, to the spiritual or abstract. The less we see, the more our other senses begin to activate.

This inward connection is a process of shedding the old skin and the development of the new layer from the inside out.

I recently wrote in my last Substack post about the September Lunar Eclipse and the Fall Equinox. I mentioned that the time period was developing the readiness to release the ‘Old Self’ as there was a letting go of the earthly crops.

Now, the current period may feel more like the true shedding. It’s as if you knew this shedding was coming, and it’s now here.

In preparation for release, there must be gratitude for what once was and gratitude for what is becoming. While we turn closer to Solstice, we will begin to witness the primary phases of integration of the new skin as we mingle among others in more inward environments during the dead of winter. But the depth of the integration will carry on for the times to come.

The astrology of Samhain, Halloween, Day of the Dead

We just had a hefty Full Moon in Aries on October 17th and November 1st calls for the New Moon in Scorpio. This New Moon, in Scorpio— archetypal ruler of the underworld— will provide us the gentle, deep, passionate, and nourishing rest we need to finally shed and welcome the tender, new skin we vow to live in for the initiation of the coming age.

Not only that, but Pluto, the ruler of Scorpio officially moves into Aquarius on November 19th, 2024 to stay for the next 248 years. So while, this planet currently undergoes its own transformation, it is projecting deep transformation for us as individuals for the collective. In support of the rest we need for our contemplation of shedding and becoming, we have the New Moon conjunct the thinning of the spiritual Veil. This segment is meant to connect us to the spirit world of our ancestors through soft, gentle, fun, and easy forms in order for us to gather the best spiritual support in our transformations.

Costumes and looking back at ourselves

In the Pagan tradition, fires in individual homes were left to burn out and the communities gathered around a bonfire in costume. The bonfire was a central point from which a torch would be carried back to in order to light the hearth of the homes with the collective spirit. Costumes disguised and protected individuals from the roaming spirits that were collecting energies that needed to die and or ready to pass on to the spirit world.

In honoring our ancestors, we must look at ourselves. We must take inventory of what stories we carry that need to die in order for us as individuals to move the collective forward with less weight from generations prior and more wisdom for the generations ahead.

So the questions become: what’s dying within you? Rather, what’s old that’s shedding from you? What is being asked to be to let go? What needs protecting with your strength? Rather, what is being asked to come through with no further strings attached, with less weight to carry?

Is this post resonating with a conversation you recently had? Share it with your comrade.

You, me, we, currently in these bodies, reading these words, are the alchemy we seek as a collective. It takes discipline, but it also takes a hell of a lot of grace to do this work. For your soul knows, your human must learn. The unified field of soul in the human body is the inherent gift of transformation itself.

This is, we are, life and death, and it is to be celebrated as a gift to simply be, to become undone, and to build beyond. Death is the portal to life in new ways. Ways that we may not always understand to begin with, but as we grow accustom to, we realize we are not alone in the process and we never have been.

After all, the only thing that separates us from the dead is our human flesh and bones.

So, how do you dance in the new skin? How do you wear it the way you want it? How do you work with its bells? How do you work with its imperfections?

Guidance from the Studio

A Reiki and Energy Guide’s Perspective

In the studio I am seeing a very large amount of energy leave through the heart space. Grief, shame, bitterness are present but they’re shedding with reception of self, and wholeness. This energy is seeking comfort in the heart to be acknowledged once and for all to be released.

Aligned power remains. Aligned action, stronger insight, and more clear flow of life-force moves through the crown with a lot of resounding grounding energy stabilizing in the root.

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But it isn’t without rest. It isn’t without being in the depth of weaving the emotions in what’s happening do we find what we are actually carrying and what we are willing to tolerate moving forward.

Clients are feeling deserving of what they are creating in their expression. It comes from who they feel they are at their core and believing in it to the point where they just know it. This is what provides for a better, well nourished collective.

We’re not meant to do it alone

Community and support is so vital to our process of shedding and becoming.

I am offering two modalities of support.

1. Reiki and Energy Healing (Remote or In-Person)

Drop-In Session
- Tune-up support for the transitional season, connect deeper and find rest
Initial Assessment
- Shedding of your skin needs on-going support and requiring you to fully step into yourself with an aligned sense of authentic power
- 90 Minute Follow Up Sessions
  - Available in a 6 month Premium Package which will include coaching, notes, a Human Design overview and integration application, with on-going voice note and text support.

2. Spirituality Coaching & Practitioner Mentorship

Spiritual Guidance Sessions
- Discuss goals and integration, get high level support
- Topics Include:human design overview and application, spiritual growth, psychic support, finding a mate, embarking on your life purpose, somatic awareness, ancestral healing
Practitioner Support Calls
- Fine tune your skills as an energy or spiritual practitioner or coach
- Skills Covered: Reiki, Breathwork, Energy Healing, Nervous System Education, Spirituality Coaching