Samhain, Spirit and Sacred Story

I'm not Irish (this incarnation), though I've long been fascinated by the culture ~ perhaps because, for me, Ireland defines myth and magic.

I've just read The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog by Patricia Monaghan, who was raised in Alaska and didn't begin exploring her Irish roots until adulthood. Her ineffable prose is tantamount to immersion in Celtic tradition. I traveled lustily with her through verdant valleys and over holy ground, inside the history and mystery of pagan celebrations once subjugated and now reclaimed.

Because Patricia paints a picture of an Ireland still steeped in "the old ways," where the Goddess in all her guises is a formidable presence, her story is a soul-nourishing gift for Samhain, one of the eight holy days that comprise the Wheel of the Year.

In the U.S., Samhain has been reduced to a children's holiday called Halloween, with a focus on costumes, candy and occasionally, mischief. But on the Celtic calendar, Samhain ushers in winter and the mysteries of the dark. October 31^st precedes Day of the Dead/All Soul's Day on November 1^st, a paean to the ancestors. The dark side — that which is hidden from view — calls us to remember our sacred heritage, as Monaghan so masterfully does in her incandescently rendered soulscape.

Mythologist Kathleen Jenks, an advisor to Monaghan's Black Earth Institute, explains on her own site, Myth*ing Links why this season is an excellent time to explore what is ending, or "dying", within us. What do you need to release in order to move forward in your life? Now, when the veils between worlds are thin, is a ripe moment for each of us to embrace personal and planetary transformation.

And the souls of those who have gone before can still share their wisdom with us, if we invite their collaboration. Astrologer Caroline Casey likes to say, "We cannot live through the dead, but we can invite the dead to live through us." What gifts are asking, aching to be brought forth through you in this quantum moment, when the entire world is awash in tremulous rebirth? How can you shine your brilliance and step fully into your aliveness, passion, purpose and service?

It's time to remove your mask, and step fully into who you came here to be.

Day Out of Time: Celebrate Possibility!

Wednesday, July 25th, heralds the annual "Day Out of Time" on the Thirteen Moon Calendar — a calendar on which every Friday is a lucky Friday the 13th! And in this spectacular year of regeneration on every level, it's about breaking through old paradigms and belief systems to align with natural rhythms and human biology, enabling us to access fourth and fifth dimensional frequencies. The daily affirmations (260 in all, referred to as "kin") work on an intuitive level.

What, then, is the Day Out of Time (also known as Green Day)? Here's a summary from the Foundation for the Law of Time.

Around the planet, this day is reserved for festival and community. Central focuses are: Planetary Peace through Culture, 'Time Is Art!', forgiveness, atonement, freeing of debts, purification, and the Art of Peace.

Celebrated annually since 1992, the Day Out of Time always falls on July 25th. On the Thirteen Moon Calendar, this day is not a day of the month. It is a day in between the closing of the previous year (July 24th) and the dawning of the new year on July 26th.

The Day Out of Time is a day to celebrate "Time Is Art". This is what hundreds of thousands of people who follow the new calendar do every year on Gregorian calendar July 25^th. And since art is the basis of constructive peace, this day is also celebrated as International Peace through Culture Day. Peace through culture is a fundamental premise of the Thirteen Moon Calendar. When you celebrate time is art you are promoting peace through culture.

Here's an article about How to See Yourself As An Artist, and one about using the questions of the 13 Moons: Embracing Paradox Can Help You Beat the Clock

The energy signature for Wednesday, July 25, 2012 is White Rhythmic Mirror, and sounds like this:

I organize in order to reflect

Balancing order

I seal the matrix of endlessness

With the rhythmic tone of equality

I am guided by my own power doubled

I am a galactic activation portal…enter me

On this Day Out of Time, we can join kin around the world in deepening our commitment to the truth that Time is Art, and that we can free ourselves from the oppression and confusion of mechanized time. As we liberate ourselves from its distortions, we awaken from the 5000-year spell of history, re-membering (making membership again) our connection to the galactic time magic residing in every human heart. And from this connection, true prosperity can flower.

The Law of Time site says: "Give the human a harmonious standard of measure and then a harmonious human will walk a harmonious mile.

Harmony ~ that's what the day of time is all about."

Beltane: Celebrate Your Planet, Yourself

In the West, we often water down our sacred days to become mere children's celebrations: Samhain, ushering in the dark half of the year, becomes a specter of itself as Halloween; Imbolc, heralding the return of the light on February 2nd, morphs to Groundhog Day; Beltane becomes a chance to dance around the Maypole.

Yet the deeper meanings reflect our lost connection with natural rhythms, with seasonal shifts we actually embody. READ THE REST!

Emancipation Proclamation Redux

Almost 150 years after President Lincoln signed the document that ended slavery in one fell swoop, we stand on the threshold of a fuller freedom, as our first hybrid president, who understands viscerally what it means to be both black and white, reaches beyond human-contrived barriers to unite us as a global people under Love's umbrella: a true Aquarian Age leader.

The world has responded with such an outpouring of joy to Brarack Obama's election because he is the archetypal symbol of our collective future: an integrated confluence of all the seemingly disparate parts of ourselves, cohering as cells in the body of the Great Mother, just as the cells of our own bodies do to create the remarkable being each of us takes for granted. As above, so below. Knowing our own wholeness, holiness, healing (which all derive from the same root word) can we strive for any less for our beloved home?

How fitting that we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday the day prior to the presidential inauguration. King stood for the same ideals Obama espouses, and died for them. But this is a new moment, and we have evolved beyond the need to kill what we disagree with or dislike. We would not dream of cutting off our toe or ear because we didn't like it. Our brothers and sisters may look, think, worship and behave differently than us ~ and perhaps that is the very intent of Creation: diversity as a vehicle in service to our growth. It's easy to embrace that which you know, that which is like you. To allow difference and strangeness takes courage ("of the heart"). Forbearance. Strength. Faith. Love.

We're getting there.

This is a global holy week. Celebrate. Commemorate. Reflect. Renew. Reimagine.

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