A 21st Century Wheel of the Year: Release at Samhain

Samhain.  The time of no time, the time of the ancestors, the time of the wild hunt. The time when darkness blankets the land, the frost covers the landscape, and many things die. Here in the hemisphere, this signals the end of the fall months and the beginning of the long and dark cold of the winter. I always feel like Samhain is when we get our first hard frost. The first frost cuts through the land, tearing through tender annuals like tomatoes and basil, freezing the tips of the last of the aster and goldenrod, and hastening the annual dropping of the leaves.  It leaves a wake of brown and death in its stead, and signals clearly that summer is over and winter is soon to come.

Nature Mandala

In my first post on this series (Receptivity at the Fall Equinox), I made the case that the…