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Hello dear Reader,

Beaming into your inbox through the Thinning of the Veils while we swirl in these Samhain days for your Cross-Quarter missive on all things Hallow’s Eve, including…

🍂 The timing of True Samhain {or, why you’re receiving this well after October 31st 🙃}

🍂 How to pronounce it and its Celtic history

🍂 Lunar Samhain, Solar Samhain, and why neither actually happen on “Halloween”

🍂 What we can learn from Samhain and its Death Medicine to support us in heavy times

🍂 Where Samhain Shows Up in Your Menstrual Cycle

🍂 What your period tracking app and the Gregorian calendar have in common

This is an excerpt of the complete Cross-Quarter Day Missive about the wisdom of Samhain — to get all of the magic over on the blog → CLICK HERE!​

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The timing of True Samhain {or, why you’re receiving this well after October 31st}

We’ll dive into this even deeper in the section on Lunar Samhain and Solar Samhain below, but here’s the skinny:

All points in the Wheel of the Year are determined by our relationship with the Sun from here on Earth.

The Solstices show us when we are receiving either the most amount of light from the Sun, or the least. While the Equinoxes land us at the seesaw point of balance — equal day and equal night before tipping the scales to one side or the other.

The Cross-Quarter Days are the midpoints between Solstices and Equinoxes. Because the Sun does not abide by the Gregorian calendar, the Wheel of the Year points will shift around the fixed days we humans have marked.

With the Cross-Quarter Day of Samhain, we are at the midpoint between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice — the entry point, the initiation, into the seasons of Winter. This happens when the Sun hits the point of 15* Scorpio {this is midway between 0* Libra and 0* Capricorn}.

This year, 15 of Scorpio occurs on Wednesday, November 6th*

{ok the other reason you didn’t get this on October 31st is because I hadn’t finished writing it yet 😂 but this timing feels better anyways, doesn’t it?? Hehe}

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How to pronounce SAMHAIN and its harvest origins

The Celtic language fascinates me. As a native English speaker, just about nothin’ makes sense when it comes to guessing Celtic pronunciation — and the name of this Cross-Quarter Day is one of Wheel of the Year Holy Days that trips most of us up the most.

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SAMHAIN ~ pronounced as “sow” {like the pig} + “ehn” {add “eh” before the “n” sound} OR “sau” {almost like “saw” but without the hard “w”} + “ihn” … but either way, definitely NOT the way it looks 🚫 “sam-hane” 🚫

Samhain is one of the few words in the Wheel of the Year that we actually have some certainty was used by ancestral Celts.

Modern day WOTY practitioners gifted us some of the Holy Days words like “Litha” (Midsummer) and “Mabon” (Autumn Equinox), but Samhain seems to be traceable back to ancient Gaul and likely originates within the Gaulish language.

Samhain is said to be derived from the root words translating to “summer’s end” — a nod to this where the livestock would be herded back from summer pasture to their wintering stables or chosen for slaughter to feed families.

As the last of the harvest days, and connected with death in many ways {the livestock being slaughtered for sustenance, the leaves turning color and then dying, the Sun’s decent toward its “death” and then rebirth at the Solstice}…

It’s no wonder this point in the Wheel of the Year is so deeply connected with the Ancestors.

{more on this ancestor and Death Medicine connection further down…}

One of the most important pieces for us to remember as we sit with the turning of the Wheel of the Year: all of these Holy Days are an honoring of the relationship between the EARTH and the SUN

While not all of the Holy Days are connected to times of reaping the harvest — that’s kind of the point… LIFE itself is never perpetually growing or harvesting.

But we are perpetually in relationship with the Sun as a life force that feeds and guides the seed from germination, to sprout, to fruiting, to harvest, to death and compost. {Whether that seed be the literal food that will feed us, or the seed of an idea, or the journey of our human life cycle.}

And on that note of how we relate to the Sun and its guidance…

Lunar Samhain, Solar Samhain, and why neither actually happen on “Halloween”

All across the world we see ancient structures that were built to honor this relationship between the Earth and the Sun:

From the Stonehenge of England, to Germany’s Gosek Circle, Peru’s Machu Picchu, Turkey’s Karahan Tepe, and the Temple of Karnak in Egypt our ancestors mapped their lives {and their sacred architecture} based on how the Sun and Earth dance together.

This relationship with the Sun is why the Gregorian calendar is all sorts of inaccurate when it comes to connecting us to the true turnings in the Wheel of the Year.

We try to pin down the days of Solstices, Equinoxes and the Cross-Quarter Days (like Samhain or “Halloween”) to a set date on the calendar, but this isn’t an embodied reflection of our relationship with the Sun from our place on Earth.

So, if you want to deepen your Wheel of the Year practice and receive the medicine of living more in tune with the Great Mother, here’s my invitation…

Learn to identify the Sun-based moment of each Holy Day.

Head over to the blog to read more on...

🍂 What we can learn from Samhain and its Death Medicine to support us in heavy times

🍂 Where Samhain Shows Up in Your Menstrual Cycle

🍂 What your period tracking app and the Gregorian calendar have in common

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Here's what I'm contemplating this Samhain — maybe you'd like to use it for a journal prompt:

what in me needs to die so that I can LIVE more fully?

I'd love to hear from you if you sit with this — just hit reply and let me know what this 👆 brings up

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Many, many Samhain blessings, dear one. May this time serve to root you deeper into the knowing that the Death portals are as divinely powerful as your moments of reaping abundance in the spotlight.

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Big Love, all ways always

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GET YOUR FREE GUIDEBOOK: THE LIVING WHEEL

Discover the wisdom and magic of your female body as you embark on a journey of tapping into the magic of the Wheel of the Year as mapped through the female fertility cycle.

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