Tuesday October 31, 2023
– Full Moon Phase – illumination, realization, fulfillment, shadow, relationships, experienceexpression
– Moon in GEMINI –
– Retrograde Planets 2023 –
R- Saturn – Jun 17 – Nov 4
R – Neptune – Jun 30 – Dec 6
R – Chiron – Jul 23 – Dec 26
R – Uranus – Aug 28 – Jan 27
R – Jupiter – Sep 4 – Dec 3
– Best Days (from the Farmer’s Almanac) – October 31st – Cut Hair to Slow Growth, Set Eggs, Mow to Slow Growth, Host a Party, Wash Wooden Floors, Buy a Car, Quit Smoking, Kill Plant Pests, Write
– Planting Calendar (from the Farmer’s Almanac) – Oct 30th – 31st – Poor days for planting, seeds tend to rot in ground.
– Aspect of the Aeon Sophia: (Wisdom): – Kali – Goddess of Beginnings and Endings – Tara, Goddess who Guides, Shodashi (Goddess Who Fulfills Our Highest Desire)
– Aspect of the Aeon Thelete: (Will/Desire): Elias, God of the West
– Sabian Symbol for the Solar-Lunar Month – New Moon in VIRGO SUN/MOON – 22 LIBRA: a child giving birds a drink at a fountain arena (EARTH – 22 ARIES: the gate to the garden of all fulfilled desires)
SUN – 08 SCORPIO: the Moon shining across a lake
EARTH – 08 TAURUS: a sleigh without snow
Happy Halloween – or Samhain if you will
Most people agree that the origins of Halloween reside in the Celtic Festival of Samhain (pronounced Sow-an). This is the festival celebrating the time of year when “the summer goes to rest”. It was an agricultural festival and a time for “stock-taking” before the winter. Samhain was also, like we would expect in an origin of Halloween, a time of “supernatural intensity” where the force of darkness and decay were said to be abroad, spilling out from sidh, the ancient mounds or barrows of the countryside”.
At this time of year the Celtic people would build a large bonfire in the hope that it would please the gods and help the regenerative agricultural process. This foundation in an agricultural based festival is still visible today where in many agricultural based communities “the intervention of masks may help ensure that the crops grow well”. For the Celts this time of year held great symbolic significance, and it was said that many Mythic kings and heroes died on Samhain.
Most importantly, Samhain was viewed as a borderline, or liminal, festival as the separation between “summer and winter, lightness and darkness”. It was a time “when the normal order of the universe is suspended” and ritual transition and altered states were both possible and expected. When we look at our descendant of Samhain and its history in North America we can see that the festival still carries this element of liminality. Halloween within the US used to be a time for those “between childhood and adulthood” to go perform acts of trickery.
For example, when the World’s Fair of 1934 ended on Halloween “some 300,000 revelers, some masked as witches, took complete control of 32 miles of streets and concessions”. The feature of liminality actually assisted the development and appeal of the festival in North America which “stemmed precisely from the temporary freedom that it gave to young people to defy social convention”. This trend can be linked to other festivals of its kind (see Liminal European Festivals) because “below the surface of dominant European culture a current of implicit beliefs expressed in practices incompatible with the dominant of religious tenets and related ultimately to pre-Christian ideas” continues to persist. Thus the liminality handed down through the generations from the Celts, is still present and giving a certain amount of expectation and freedom to the festivities of Halloween.
Quoted directly from the Brown University Website
I have always enjoyed Halloween. Is it the dressing up? Trick or Treating? Dressing up? Horror movies and stories? It has always been fun in my world. No a be all end all holiday by any means. But definitely a fun day – or few days if you are lucky and are involved with others that celebrate as well.
Who doesn’t like a bonfire? I know who. My killjoy former Fire Chief, Next Door neighbor. That’s who. If it were 40 years ago, I know whose house would be getting egged!
For this time of year, we are usually more interested in the changing of the clocks. For how many years have THEY been saying that the US were going to change things up and keep things at Day-Light Savings time all year long.
I am mixed on how I feel about it. I like having late summer nights with as much sunlight as you can get. But I also savor waking up an hour later.