“True voyage is return” — U. K. LeGuin
After a year away, I’m back with material I hope you’ll continue to find of value. Thank-yous to you who’ve supported this blog, returning to read from over a decade of posts, commenting, encouraging, and recommending articles at A Druid Way to others.
Here we are at another time of festival and holiday, which it pays to remember is ‘holy day’, one set apart from mundane time. The English words holy, Old English halig, and hallow, Old English halga, ‘holy one, saint’ also form a verb halgian, to hallow or make sacred. Hallow evening or Hallowe’en, or All Hallows’ Eve, OE Ealra Halgena Æfen, is in many traditions the first of three days, continuing with All Saints’ Day on Nov. 1 and concluding on All Souls’ Day on Nov. 2. Together the days of the period make up Allhallowtide, a holy time.
It’s a great word we could easily bring back to wider use in contemporary life. What are your hallowtides? If you’re observing Samhain or Halloween alone or with a small group, it’s a great theme for meditation, or a ritual question to ask and answer aloud or silently.
On Friday I drove with a friend to one of Mystic River Grove’s celebrations of Samhain. The crisp air, the almost windless evening, let us feast outdoors before ritual, and the sacred fire warmed us as temps dropped to freezing. “All you who have gone before, please listen now, we are listening too” we sang as we processed into the circle. Third of the ancient Celtic harvest festivals, Samhain is truly ‘summer’s end’, as we turn inward to winter. And as with all things, balance persists, whether we discern it or not: the Southern Hemisphere is cherishing Beltane and its celebration of growing heat and light. This is one of the great challenges of our time, especially as Druids: to find the balance, the hinge point or still center around which events and passions swirl.
* * * * *
With this cycle of the voyage comes a site upgrade, so you can now read without ads.
A Druid Way 