Sometimes I forget that Samhain is not the Halloween to All Souls celebrations that include my birthday. Samhain also can get swallowed up in the midwinter Yule/Hanukkah/Christmas/Kwanza celebrations that grip the globe. This year of the Horse has galloped; often it has felt like a bucking bronco. As we approach the end of 2014 I feel myself praying for solitude. Samhain is a season not just a hyper celebration of Celtic New Year. Which is what Halloween feels like in Ireland. We even have fireworks!
Samhain is the turning in time. Last year I spent a lot of time staring out the window. You could say I was busy doing nothing. As I look at the calendar with all the commitments marked for November I declared a moratorium for December. I have a three week window with nothing and that is the way I intend to keep it.
We all need deep thinking time, dream time, reflection. This does not mean we aren't functioning in the day to day way. It does mean that within the day to day there is an opportunity to burrow down into what I call bear cave mind.
It has begun already. The hibernation/incubation process has meant that once I dropped all the busyness of life (as life enhancing as those activities are) that I have begun sleeping for longer than usual stretches of time and I am remembering my dreams. I dreamed of a particularly delicious kiss this morning.
The Samhain reflection time is like a kiss of life to my psyche. When I am busy I can get off center. It can be more difficult to plug in to Spirit or Goddess. Yet, when I was musing this morning with my pint pot mug of tea I realized how often Spirit has whispered to me 'on the hoof' these past few months.
Bear is one of my power animal allies. These past few months I feel as wolf as been beside me. In spring snake will probably assert itself. For now, I am preparing to slumber in the fastness of Bear's embrace. Bear makes good Samhain medicine.
Seamus O Cathain writes in his book "The Festival of Brigit" of the associations between the goddess Brighid and bear. In this Samhain season I feel that power most directly. It is Brigit as the Hag Mother guise, hunkered down in her cave or cottage, spinning dreams as she slumbers.