Up comes Samhain

So up comes what has to be my most favourite time of year. I have always felt a connection to Halloween. And thats an odd thing.

Living on an island that does not celebrate this holiday at all there was a total absence of pumpkins, ghosts and goblins from my childhood days. There was, however, a feeling of something otherwordly hovering all around me between the periods of September to the end of October. At that time every year, I would get melancholy, pensive, in my analytical mood and it was only as I got older and removed myself from the prevailing mental constructs that I began to look inward more closely and analyze the moods I had.

I see the event as an opportunity to embrace things that we fear. Those dark,  decrepit feelings and moods that we are told are evil, wicked and destructive. As I grew older, I realized that there is the opportunity to take these very energies and channel them into something that may be positive. I have learnt that in time of emotional stress, or great challenge; summoning the powers of these moods assists in dealing with the seemingly great problem. The power of mischief can be very useful in dealing with fear.. mischief thought, not acted on. In this way, you control it, it doesn't control you.
I have summoned a warring spirit to deal with apathy.

None of these things, mind you required a whole lot of ritual. It was a simple matter of having felt the feeling and tapping into its strength to deal with whatever adversity was occurring at the moment.

Halloween, to me, gives permission to embrace the other side of ourselves. To look freely beyond the veil into those things that we fear, and learn to deconstruct that fear, turning it into a useful tool for taking us further spiritually.

Every year I pick one of those dark feelings in my inner self, and figure out a way to use those energies positively. I do not suppress them, for they will torture me and grow into something uncontrollable. I believe that finding a way for them to be expressed, in the context of being a useful tool is a much more appropriate way of dealing with them.

Embrace your dark side...and always remember...and ye harm none (including yourself) so mote it be.