Tamala/Samhain

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Dear Reader,

Please forgive my lack of posts over the last few days. I have been sick with a cold. I seem to be on the mend, thank the good gods for that. I'm going to make something of a personal post here about this holiday. Samhain (pronounces sow-en) has always been a special time of year for me. Partly because I love how it is one of the few pagan holidays embraced by the over culture (albeit in a very shallow and materialistic way). Partly because I find it easier to spend time with my beloved dead.

I keep a shrine for the dead and give them daily offerings (when life isn't too hectic and I remember). I talk with them regularly. It's like sitting down with them over a cup of coffee and just keeping them up to date about what is going on in my life. I treat them, in many ways, as though they are still alive and with me. Because, death is but stepping through a doorway into another room that we can not follow through in life.

In the last few years, the secular aspect of this holiday has begun to grate on my nerves. Perhaps it is because the weather's been poor and the kids didn't get to go trick-or-treating. (With young children, that equals a meltdown of epic proportions after a day of school getting them hyped up for the hunt for treats.) Perhaps it is because I want to do more formal observances but it is hard because I have young children. In either case, I've been feeling less joy and more curmudgeonly annoyance with it all.

As people around me focus on the 'spooky' elements, I get annoyed. Skeletons are cool and all, but the likelihood of them rising up from the grave is pretty small. Dragur are spiritual beings, not physical. The images of blood sucking vampires are laughable in their grotesqueness. But they don't mention anything about the fact that there are spiritual beings that are about this time of year that are pretty nasty. Some of the stories about how Samhain is the 'devil's night' hold a little bit of truth to them.

Haunted locations become more active. The spirit-bothered people get to deal with even more clamoring for attention. Strange things happen this time of year just because the energies are running weird compared to the off season. But, people get so focused on gorge themselves with candy and throw wild parties that they forget that randomly playing with magic is a bad idea. Those stories about the person who played with a ouija board and wound up with the thing getting haunted, at least 80% of them took place around Samhain. Because the veil between the physical and the spiritual world is thinner and pretty much anyone can move between them regardless of aptitude for such magic.

This is how people get spirited off by the fair folk. I'm absolutely sure that some of the missing people are off in another realm because they got lost. And their bodies, inhabited by changelings who wanted to see what human life was all about. So they're off living another life with out little if any recollection of their life before because they've been taken over by a spiritual being. I may get looked at as weird for this belief. I've seen enough weird stuff, however, this belief actually looks kinda logical.

♥