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Dear Friends,

For the Celts, October 31st  was the beginning of the New Year; Samhain (SOW wen),  or Summer's end, marked the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next.  The harvest was in. The veil between the worlds- past and present, living and dead - was at its thinnest. Traditions of magic-making (and mischief-making), honoring the dead and remembering the ancestors come down to us as Halloween, All Hallows Eve, Day of the Dead (Dia de Muertos), All Saints Day and All Souls Day.

Does the veil between worlds feel especially thin this year?

This year, the Celtic New Year on the 31st in ushered in by a new moon on October 30.
Talk about power…

Wishing you all the power of love as we start this New Year journey –

Beannachtai na Samhna!

 




Samhain - October 31, 2016



It's your twelfth house, the astrologers say -
occupied by Pluto, governor of decay
and birth,  beginnings and endings,
the egg of the world;  there
the chart shows my planets lined up, there
at the door of this final, distant domain, stacked up
like cards; some astral poker game dealt me
this loaded twelfth house.

This is the home of the pearl
buried by ocean, the house of violet, amethyst, grief,
of purple, fathoms deep, the royalty of sorrow
(those are the pearls that were his eyes)
and the robes of the dead rulers and kings I wore
in all those other lifetimes; karmic weight
worn like an ocean,
bone memories waiting to be salvaged, past lives dredged –

this is the house of the drowned sailor.
Here is the house of things asked for and never gained,
the house of things never spoken of or explained;
the house of shadows

of the sailor at rest
but still restless

waiting

in the dwelling of longing.
The disappointment, the sorrow 
never touched,

but carried always, like a pearl
in the pocket
on the journey
not done.



"The House of Secret Sorrow"
From: NOTEBOOKS FROM MYSTERY SCHOOL, by Margaret McCarthy
Finishing Line Press, 2015