Blessed Samhain

Dawn this morning was so typical of this time of the year - gentle light and rolling mists veiling the landscape. Beautiful! Watching the mists it is so easy to imagine the dead walking, barely veiled in the distance. Human shapes drifting in and out of focus, passing between worlds.

In the early evening I was watching the flames of the fire waiting for the first knock on the door from Halloween revellers. My mind passed through the ages to a time when some built round houses and buried the bones of their dead beneath the hearth at the very centre of the home of the living. Round houses are special for they mimic womb space. A place for the living protected by the Goddess. As I watched the flames and the sparks in the rising air currents I wondered whether the hearth fire was once conceived as a vehicle for the rebirth of the beloved dead. Almost as if the dead rose on the hot rising air, the sparks being the first sparks of life. All within the womb space of the home, the hole at the apex of the roof the place of rebirth. Whether this is true or not it always amazes me what the human brain perceives as the eyes stare into flames. No wonder this is also a season of divination.