Monday, October 30, 2017

Samhain 2017

Just think. Last year this time we were in the final weeks of an election we all thought was a lock.

What a difference 51 weeks make.

But that's not why I'm writing today. I'm writing because it's Samhain, aka All Hallows Eve!


Agnostic though I am, I have had so many things happen in my life that just don't seem to be coincidental. They were more like messages from another dimension, like someone trying to reach out to me and using a code only that person and I share. Have you had that experience?

Case in point: Just before my family farm in Appalachia sold, Olivia and I were out for a walk on the property. We went down into the hollow where a farm house used to stand. It burned down in 1938, so there's nothing left of it now.

Just as I said to Olivia, "I wonder where the midden pile was for this house?" she stooped over and picked up a fully intact 8-sided jar with not a nick on it anywhere. It was just lying there, somewhat obscured by grass and weeds for 74 years.





Now I use it as a beloved vase.

Yes, yes, coincidence that this jar was just lying there on the ground, muddy and forgotten, until I just happened to think how nice it would be to find the trash heap that these old houses invariably had, so I might, oh, you know, find a pretty glass jar or two. And this jar wasn't on a heap. It was right directly where the house would have been.

If the Veil thins, if our ancestors peer through it to see us, then this practice of veil-hopping goes all the way back deep into the mists of time. What mother wouldn't want to peek through the Veil to see her daughter? Where would that circle be broken?

I never met my great-grandmother, but why wouldn't she come with my grandmother to see me? Why wouldn't she hand me a glass jar?

I don't have answers, but I do have suggestions for Samhain ancestral visitations.

1. Don't pretend like everything is going great if it's not. Be honest with the Kindred.

2. Be respectful, even if some of your ancestors (like mine) were hounds from Hell.

3. Be the kind of person you are. Don't put on affectations, because they will see right through it. They were you before you came along -- so whoever you are, that's who you bring to the fire.

4. If you ask them for a sign that they care, tie a natural object to it, or a song, or some mundane but not terribly common thing (a monarch butterfly, a white feather, a tune or fictitious character they liked). This is where the coincidences start to arise. Like, who expects to see a monarch butterfly flying through the stadium in downtown Baltimore during an Orioles game? It happened to my husband in September.

5. Remember that you are part of an unbroken line. Your ancestors were alive the last time the Yellowstone Caldera erupted. They walked across continents that had no names. They survived to bear children, and their children survived as well. Your ancestors were sturdy.

They are coming to call. Build them a fire, because some day hopefully someone will build one for you.


9 comments:

Janie Junebug said...

I don't believe in coincidences. Someone reached out so you could see the jar.

Love,
Janie

Professor Chaos said...

A driend of mine had a windchime that was a gift from her father. She hung it outside her apartment, but because of the way the walls were situated. the wind never got to it. She never got to hear the chimes. When her father passed away, she heard the windchime tinkling for the first and only time. Coincidence? I doubt it.

anne marie in philly said...

I wonder what my ancestors think of me? and yes, sometimes I get messages from the spirit world from a dear friend of mine.

Debra She Who Seeks said...

Samhain blessings to you and yours, Anne!

yellowdoggranny said...

every time I start to do something of questionable behavior I hear my Daddy's voice as clear as if he was in the room with me..the veil between us is always thin...

Davoh said...

Ah, Anne, perhaps am a cynic - but there are times when i have to wonder. Was employed by myself on the morning of my mothers funeral - nobody paid me for 'time off'. So yep, attended the funeral, then went back to mowing lawns that afternoon.
Oddly had the 'feeling' that my mother was hovering somewhere close behind me. Even turned and said to thin air "Why are you following me??"
Somewhere in my head came the words 'because i never saw what you did for a living'. Me, being me, thought, 'yer well, piss off then'.

Oddly, soon after that, was out in the street lined with gum trees, loading my trailer - and a gumtree dropped a heavy branch, and missed me by about 2 foot from where i stood.
Um, think i, 'OK MUM, you've made yer point. will not swear at you anymore'.

Davoh said...

Interesting - the shades and shadows of forebears. My father died in 1945, six months after i was born (and about two months before the end of WW2 .. which has annoyed my thoughts for all these years).
Why war?
However, i do have an 'image' of him - a photograph of him as an "Officer in the Royal Australian Air Force".
Do i talk to it? Of course i do.
Do i 'hear' him talking to me?
No, not really; but can imagine what he might say.
(and, oddly, there are times when i 'feel' him 'watching over me' - illogical as that may be).

Davoh said...

But you ALL - on this planet - have to realise that THIS PLANET IS a globe
Your reality is not mine. My seasons are not yours.

AMERICA IS NOT THE CENTRE OF THIS PLANET !!!

Davoh said...

American politics interests me - so; cutting a long story short -
"shhesh, we White blokes in the south - lost th war of separation. Wees reely wants us slaves".

Capitalists in the American North?
Will always profit with discord and disunity.
The peasants will never understand - or comprehend - the subtle ways the peasants can be screwed.