Of some unimagined beauty.
Your mouth closes here
And immediately opens
With a shout of joy there.
Rumi: The Big Red Book Coleman Barks, p. 89
Happy Samhain to you! The cross-quarter day of Samhain or All Hallows Eve on October 31st ritualizes the time when the veils between the world thin and the Other Worlds come close. Since it comes during the rising darkness in the northern hemisphere, it commemorates Death in all its aspects. Halloween originated as a holy festival which celebrated those who had come before us as well as releasing those who had just died. The crossing of the Veils was honored as an important part of life. Celebrate where you've come from -- both your ancestry and your soul-lives -- so that you can face the future with the best of your inheritance available to you.
With this Scorpio New Moon, we enter the land of Death. The death of the year begins now, at Samhain/Halloween, as the darkness grows even deeper in the 6 weeks before the Light's return at Winter Solstice. Our western culture has made death something to be feared, and so we do not welcome it in any form. But Native peoples remember that Death is only the other face of Life. If we are strong enough to face our deaths, as don Juan suggested, then we will get through the Scorpio initiation of death and rebirth.
First we had to learn the lesson of Libra: to fairly balance the two extremes of duality so we can learn the lessons of the 3rd way -- to bring life into death just as death comes into life. Whether we learn it through partnership or through crisis, once we achieve that inner balance of life and death, everything flows without obstruction. What is dead is released; what is bright with new life flourishes. Only our unconscious fears keep us out of this Circle of Life.
Whether we consciously know it or not, we all have a deep-seated fear of death: the Jews still struggle with the horrors of the Holocaust while Christians and Muslims fear the fires of the afterlife, and many women fear the fires of witch burnings. It will serve us better to believe that we will return to life again after we die, to learn the lessons of spirit. How can we doubt that we are Mother Earth's children, bound by the cosmic law of life-death-rebirth? That's the message of all of our saints, mystics and Great Master teachers. And yet we ignore it -- now to the peril of the world.
As the Wheel of the Year turns to this holy season of Death, we have to honor the cycle of life and allow death in the door. We will need to release not only our personal fear of death but also our cultural one. We will have to let go of some habits that no longer serve our greater good. Addictions, fears, betrayals -- they taught us something our souls needed to learn. Now at this Scorpio New Moon, let go of the emotions that hold us in death and see how "your mouth [will close] here and immediately open with a shout of joy there'. It's only when we fear death that we don't believe in "some unimagined beauty' and the possibility of new life.
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