And as of today, the Samhain season is over, and we move on towards the rebirth of Yule. I was thinking a lot the past few days about why we consider Samhain to be the "Pagan New Year", and the conclusion that I've come to is that the sabbat is really the final celebration of death on the Wheel; from Lughnasadh to Mabon to Samhain, we're considering the harvest and the autumn and the gradual shutdown of nature.
Now, in the month and a half before Yule, is a fallow period of quiet contemplation. We can determine our goals for the next year, get our things in order, and be ready to begin again like the sun on the winter solstice. If we imagine the Wheel of the Year as a tree, then this period is the acorn, lying dormant under the soil. Above the surface, nothing appears to be happening, but beneath the earth, there is so much potential ready to sprout.
I did a bunch of cleaning today, as well as redecorating. I had a lot of Samhain decorations to take down, and a few little Thanksgiving items to replace them with. It feels far too early still to decorate for Yule, and besides, those things are all at home; I'll have to be sure to pick them up over Thanksgiving break.
I wanted to redecorate my altar, and so I shifted everything around a bunch. I've decided to try keeping an ancestor altar up year-round, and my crystals also wanted to be switched out. Then I had some sugar maple leaves I'd pressed, so I set those around as well.
It feels a lot calmer in here after the fact, and I opened my essential oil bottle for a bit this morning, so the whole room smells like frankincense.
This is the Quartz point I received at yesterday's ritual. Since it has such a strong tie to banishing magick, I decided to set it on my altar facing one direction, with my other, invoking Quartz point facing the opposite direction. It struck me as a good way to balance out the energies.
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