Samhain Season and Rekindling the Old Ways

Another year has come to full fruition, the fields are being harvested, the gardens all stored in the pantry and cellars, and the light is beginning to fade. Samhain Season this is pronounced sow-ine, which correlates with Day of the Dead, and Halloween and all similar, linear celebrations of this time of year, rooted in tradition, and one in particular (though I love it) has strayed far from the roots that it came from. These Samhain celebrations were not only for the land, and community, but also, for the Ancestors who came before. 

Along with the coming of winter, looking back on the success of the growing season, and dancing in the sunlight, Samhain is a very special time of year, especially for those of us who are rekindling our connections to the lost heritage of Earth Based Spiritual Practices of Europe.  It is the time when we are closest to our ancestors as the veil between physical and spiritual realities is the most thin.  

This season of shifting into the darkness was always my favorite time, seeing the pantry full, and fall squash filling up the storage (nooks and crannies of my kitchen these days) is so wonderful. All the labor and love that went into the gardens, and seeing what the land produces because of all of it is a gift in itself. And now, nourishing our growing family with it all, feels like a Samhain celebration and blessing all together. 

It is also nourishing the cultivation of new traditions that are pivoting from what Halloween has become now, to what it once was. Along with all of the unrest we are experiencing in our modern day I have been feeling especially drawn to explore the Earth based spiritual practices of my heritage and the norse, celtic and welsh ancestors call.

What has become painfully aware to my soul is that we lost our traditions centuries upon centuries ago, the blessed Samhain among the wreckage.

This loss of heritage is part of why I feel the collective tends to grasp and gravitate towards ceremonial traditions of cultures that are still alive.  Though, in light of cultural & societal unrest between so many, I feel that it is important to hone in on the traditions that were lost to those of us who tend to grasp, we are all descendants of traditional, and indigenous cultures, though the European culture was severely burned and traumatized out of us centuries ago. 

AND, we hold the information in our BONES. It is beautiful that many cultures have been able to hold on to their traditions, and many had to go deep underground to do so. The ethereal body holds what the Roman empire attempted to burn away from us, and that is a gift, because as we continue to wake up, to what was lost and what we yearn for as a collective, it is only natural to go back to the earth and the traditions, like Samhain celebrations that send reverence and appreciation to the land and community. 

invitations

Grandmother Cedar holds deep memories of past lives for me and many other humans, truly an herb to reconnect with the ancestral realm alongside an herb for deep healing. Samhain celebrations is a perfect time to rekindle these lost memories, and dive into the great and powerful body of the ethereal or energetic component of ourselves, and nature.

When I had the deep and available time to devote to my meditation practices, this time of year was one I would spend a lot of time in this space, the one that cannot be touched, but those of you who know it, know it is incredibly alive and deep. The month of October and into November toward the Winter Solstice, was always a very powerful time in these realms, and before babies, I am SO glad that I devoted my energies as the farmacy garden shut down, because pieces of lost heritage started to trickle into my subconscious through dreams, trance states, and meditations. Even Songs and prayers for healing that coincide with the plants and the earth started to slowly return.  First a tune, then words to go along with it, each samhain ceremony and ritual I have held revealed more pieces to the puzzle that was obliterated.  

I am glad that this blog was somewhat treated like a journal for me then, because these bits and pieces are lost to my memory… “I was visited by Odin and Freya to start the month out, the creator God and Goddess of love of the Nordic people.  Later in the month I was in trance and was told of the torches of Mullein, wrapped in tallow. I was shown that we would be around a fire with torches celebrating the New Year together. These visions, recollections and visits have solidified that YES.  We do hold these traditions in our DNA, our cells and our bones.” 

This is what it means to tap back into the body that is outside of the physical, to listen to the ancestors, you are all able to hear this too, because we are all of this particular body, it is resonance that goes FAR beyond the physical, it is why when you friend from across the country, or the globe maybe, comes into your mind, and then you get a call, or a text from them. We are all truly connected as one and that includes the spirit world of the ancestors. 

Just as we hold the trauma of our cultures being ripped apart.  

Many earth based practices in spirituality are intact today.  Some more so than others like the Yogis in India, the Shamans of the Amazon, Peru and Eastern Europe, even traditions of the Indigenous people of what is now known as America, have caches of their heritage that were saved from eradication.  All of these practices are nourishing to the physical body as well as the spiritual.  

AND the understanding that mother Earth, Turtle Island is a sacred vessel of life. Each time a human being, anywhere on earth dives into ceremony, based in tradition or just searching for those that were lost, more of the collective awakens to the power we all hold, the connection to tradition awakens more and more. Simply through the resonance of the electromagnetic field of our hearts. 

Access 

Those of us who were displaced centuries upon centuries ago, have nothing physical, or even verbal to grasp onto so the tendency to drift to other practices starts, as the person searches for deeper meaning that they know is there somewhere.  If this is you, I urge you to look into the depths of your heritage, no matter how lost it may seem to you now, rekindling this connection is only going to guide you closer to that which your body and soul want. 

Then yoga becomes a wonderful piece of your practice, not the entire existence, the whispers of the spirt animals, and plants come through you in a different way than maybe the books even say. The connection you will cultivate through celebrating Samhain season will be priceless and your intuition will wildly awaken. The word Shaman, in it’s roots is an easter european word, from the thigh north country, the lands of amanita ceremonies (there is a blog dedicated to this mushroom and how much it holds for you) So dig in my friend, and celebrating Samhain Season is a PERFECT Time of year to dive deeper into rekindling your sleeping heritage.

One who understands, and has understood from a very early age that the Earth is sacred.  That each and every one of the beings on our Earth is sacred, plant and animal alike.  

Samhain blessings are the beginning of the season of celebration and ceremony, which makes sense even to the modernized holidays that surround this time of year, don’t you think? In the dark days of the year, back when your ancestors lived with the lands, bonfires lit the way for their ancestors to come through, being lead into their homes, and sacred places, through the darkest time of the year. 

You can reconnect with these sacred ceremonies too, the sacred understanding of the Earth is there, I see it so much in the collective consciousness that is coming back to the land, there is a force behind that. And  the traditions, practices & ceremonies are coming back because of this resurgence.  

Ancestral Healing Ceremony for a blessed Samhain

To unlock this information that is needed at this time, you need to reconnect with your direct lineage, and dive deep into the ancestral realm from the beginning of Samhain Season through the winter. The inquisition was the death of these sacred ceremonies…

The love for my grandparents runs deep, I can remember them vividly, though this year, they have been gone 18 years. I was raised with them, and having that connection and experience, is a deep honor for me in this life. The traditions and what was instilled in me growing up with them is still rippling through my life now. It is probably because of them that I know that working with the land, growing food, storing food, nourishing my family well, is a key component of my life. These in themselves are traditions, and ceremonies. 

For this healing work though, I humbly and respectfully asked to move past their reign of my ancestor, the ones that I knew, because I knew I needed to go deeper, past the grandparents who traveled across the Atlantic ocean to settle on the now called American continent. Even beyond them, past the Inquisition and reiterated that I needed to work with the ancestors of the times before the burnings…  

When I did this ceremony for the first time, it was at the time of the quarter moon of Scorpio season, and the healing called to me. I found myself in ceremony. Realizing, I needed to relieve blocks.  Remembering that these STUCK forces of energy were deeply rooted. These blocks I have felt are a part of my holding back from being vulnerable with my words. The blocks that disallow my feeling secure in sharing my voice, my experiences & thus throwing me off my path. These of course, are all deeply related to traumatic experiences of a blood line, and all of us, at this point in modern existence, hold this kind of trauma, humans have been tortured for centuries, and still are, thus the souls that come through, new are holding this energetic imprint. 

Celebrating Samhain with a Healing Ceremony

As I went through my body in ceremony, I was focusing on healing my cells.  Cells of individual organs, collections of cells that hold specific patterns of the trauma I have experienced in this physical life.   As I went through the healing of the DNA so many songs were coming to me revolving around the plants that I was working with.  Prayers were coming through in voices that I did not recognize.  Understanding the herbs and their placement on the body, how our ancestors understood the actions of the plants, and working with nature, without modern science having to show it, they too, lived through their experience and the ques of the subtle body… the visuals were magical, there was so much peace that I felt, and so much of my chosen life, that of herbalist, farmer, and leaning into intuition, made more and more sense…

Sweet Autumn light coming through the bells of pine drops during Samhain Season

Prayers from grandmother Cedar came through as an ancient lost grandmother of my own.  She sternly reminded me, in a strong but loving grandmother way, that she was doing as I had asked.  She was helping me to understand the ceremonial works of the medicine women of our time.  I let her energies flow through my hands.

She explained to me the deep understanding that our ancestors held before modern science.  We call this form of spirituality ‘New Age’ but it is not that at all, it truly is the oldest way, when it is in correct alignment and practiced with sincerity.  The ways to work with the earth, the ceremonies that go along with this work is within ourselves, we just have to turn the key to open these vats of our DNA, our bones and blood.  

the New Age is really the old ways of celebrating Samhain Season

We are waking up. There are many groups of women, of healers, of men, of thinkers, of creators.  All waking up, right now to realize the dirt is sacred, the dirt is alive Each petal of a flower is holds a purpose, that the waters that hold our cells are indeed alive and receiving messages from our minds. YOU just have to harness this awakening, cultivate the traditions that surround these understandings from deep within your self, and the beginning is cultivating a blessed samhain season.  

The way your are understanding the Earth again, is not of the new age, this is ancient.  What is of the new age is the people waking up, again to the power that their bodies have.  

The people remembering how to think in the ancestral ways that once were done as full communities, this was back when your ancestors HONORED the Earth for what she is, the life giver, their home. By diving into these healing ceremonies, at peak times through the seasons, you are only cultivating more and more ways to heal the line of your ancestors, and reconnect with what your intuition holds to guide you.

The how of creating a blessed Samhain Season…

The tea ceremony that I re-sent last week is a perfect place to start, a lot of this is super practical, or can be incredibly intentional with a long meditation and sit, I plan to infuse lots of these different things into our children, so they go beyond the gathering of candy and tricks or treats… this time of year is much more and much deeper that that.  

Seed keepers have been connected to the collective ancestors deeply through the growing of food and medicine. Taking seeds from your garden and spreading them out for a fall planting, sharing them with friends and family too. This is a perfect celebration of the earth during Samhain that is something you, as a plant person, I am sure do already, simply bring in the intention, or prayer or invitation of your well ancestors to guide you, to know they are safe, and being honored through remembrance. You can create your own mantra while you clean the seeds you have gathered, or package them up to give as gifts, the mantra being the prayer, and the vibration that your body will hold within its waters…

AS you all know, I love to garden as the forest gardens, wild and chaotic, there aren’t many rows here at the farmacy gardens of Enchantment Creek, and this was originally because I wanted to simply mimic the forests for the sake of the medicinal herbs, recreating their native environment so they felt at home here. But this has also brought to light for me, that so many of the ancestral ways were in this manner, connected to nature, but the tending the ancestors did, to the wild lands, was a sign of respect. 

Weaving the tall and sturdy mallow stems into garden borders and walkway borders is one of my next moves for the fall and spring. Weaving fences, and gates from willows, bringing home fallen timber (with a permit now… insert eyeroll teehee), not only cleaned up the forests, but also brougt the wild lands home with our ancestors. How can you incorporate some tending, some cleaning, and some loving of your favorite wild space so that it is thriving and your home is adorned with it? This is creating ceremony for a blessed Samhain, winter and then spring, the energy will flow through for you and yours to enjoy…

Patience is key… 

We can find these ceremonies again. For they are not far., there is only a lock of trauma held around them in our DNA, it is up to YOU to break the chains. The best part about this? YOU STILL have access to them!  We have the tools to unlock those constituents of our making, of our bodies, and our heritage.

All we have to do is open the door of possibilities.  This my loves, is the time.  The time of YOUR Ancestors, YOUR Heritage & Traditions. 

Lots of the work of healing will be incorporated into my renewed Vibrational Healing sessions that will be announced after Maternity Leave. So get ready to dive deep into the ways that I have taught myself, the ways the ancestors have shown me and the ways of healing that have come from decades of research into herbalism, nutrition and certifications that have all led to this point. I want to see YOU heal your life too, the more of us who do, the more will continue to wake up, take back their power alongside you and I, and reclaim what it is to truly be human upon this Earth. 

Blessed Samhain Season, and Honoring YOUR Ancestors. I bow to you for being here, and honoring me with your healing, and reclamation journey.