This essay is an edited excerpt from Chapter 4 of the author’s new book A Poiesis of the Creative Cosmos: Celebrating Her within PaGaian Sacred Ceremony.
Traditionally the dates for Samhain/Deep Autumn are:
Northern Hemisphere – October 31st/November 1st
Southern Hemisphere – April 30th/May 1st
though the actual astronomical date varies. It is the meridian point or cross-quarter day between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice, thus actually a little later in early May for S.H., and early November for N.H., respectively.
In this cosmology, Deep Autumn/Samhain is a celebration of She Who creates the Space to Be par excellence. This aspect of the Creative Triplicity is associated with the autopoietic quality of Cosmogenesis[i] and with the Crone/Old One of the Triple Goddess, who is essentially creative in Her process. This Seasonal Moment celebrates the process of the Crone, the Ancient One … how we are formed by Her process, and in that sense conceived by Her: it is an ‘imaginal fertility,’ a fertility of the dark space, the sentient Cosmos. It mirrors the fertility and conception of Beltaine (which is happening in the opposite Hemisphere at the same time).
Some Samhain/Deep Autumn Story
This celebration of Deep Autumn has been known in Christian times as “Halloween,” since the church in the Northern Hemisphere adopted it as “All Hallow’s eve” (31st October) or “All Saint’s Day” (1st November). This “Deep Autumn” festival as it may be named in our times, was known in old Celtic times as Samhain (pronounced “sow-een), which is an Irish Gaelic word, with a likely meaning of “Summer’s end,” since it is the time of the ending of the Spring-Summer growth. Many leaves of last Summer are turning and falling at this time: it was thus felt as the end of the year, and hence the New Year. It was and is noted as the beginning of Winter. It was the traditional Season for bringing in the animals from the outdoor pastures in pastoral economies, and when many of them were slaughtered.
Earth’s tilt is continuing to move the region away from the Sun at this time of year. This Seasonal Moment is the meridian point of the darkest quarter of the year, between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice; the dark part of the day is longer than the light part of the day and is still on the increase. It is thus the dark space of the annual cycle wherein conception and dreaming up the new may occur. As with any New Year, between the old and the new, in that moment, all is possible. We may choose in that moment what to pass to the future, and what to relegate to compost. Samhain may be understood as the Space between the breaths. It is a generative Space – the Source of all. There is particular magic in being with this Dark Space. This Dark Space which is ever present, may be named as the “All-Nourishing Abyss,”[ii] the “Ever-Present Origin.”[iii] It is a generative Place, and we may feel it particularly at this time of year, and call it to consciousness in ceremony.
The fermentation of all that has passed begins. This moment may mark the Transformation of Death – the breakdown of old forms, the ferment and rot of the compost, and thus the possibility of renewal.[iv] It is actually a movement towards form and ‘re-solution’ (as Beltaine – its opposite – begins a movement towards entropy and dissolution). With practice we begin to develop this vision: of the rot, the ferment, being a movement towards the renewal, to see the gold. And just so, does one begin to know the movement at Beltaine, towards expansion and thus falling apart, dissolution. In Triple Goddess poetics it may be expressed that the Crone’s face here at Samhain begins to change to the Mother – as at Beltaine the Virgin’s face begins to change to the Mother: the aspects are never alone and kaleidoscope into the other … it is an alive dynamic process, never static.
The whole Wheel is a Creation story, and Samhain is the place of the conceiving of this Creativity, and it may be in the Spelling of it – saying what we will; and thus, beginning the Journey through the Wheel.
Conception could be described as a “female-referring transformatory power” – a term used by Melissa Raphael in Thealogy and Embodiment:[v] conception happens in a female body, yet it is a multivalent cosmic dynamic, that is, it happens in all being in a variety of forms. It is not bound to the female body, yet it occurs there in a particular and obvious way. Androcentric ideologies, philosophies and theologies have devalued the event and occurrence of conception in the female body: whereas PaGaian Cosmology is a conscious affirmation, invocation and celebration of “female sacrality”[vi] as part of all sacrality. It does thus affirm the female as a place; as well as a place.[vii] ‘Conception’ is identified as a Cosmic Dynamic essential to all being – not exclusive to the female, yet it is a female-based metaphor, one that patriarchal-based religions have either co-opted and attributed to a father-god (Zeus, Yahweh, Chenrezig – have all taken on being the ‘mother’), or it has been left out of the equation altogether. Womb is the place of Creation – not some God’s index finger as is imagined in Michelangelo’s famous painting.
Melissa Raphael speaks of a “menstrual cosmology”. It is an “ancient cosmology in which chaos and harmony belong together in a creation where perfection is both impossible and meaningless;”[viii] yet it is recently affirmed in Western scientific understanding of chaos, as essential to order and spontaneous emergence.
Samhain is an opportunity for immersion in a deeper reality which the usual cultural trance denies. It may celebrate immersion in what is usually ‘background’ – the real world beyond and within time and space: which is actually the major portion of the Cosmos we live in.[ix] Samhain is about understanding that the Dark is a fertile place: in its decay and rot it seethes with infinite unseen complex golden threads connected to the wealth of Creativity of all that has gone before – like any compost. So it is in the current dark times culturally, and so it may be – we may be some of the Golden Threads. We must retrain our perception to see the beauty of new form possible in the old decaying fermenting compost. While our ancestors may have wondered whether they would make it through the coming Winter, we may wonder in our times whether we will make it through the global spasms and planetary changes – and in what form.
Life will persist … such hope is represented by the Seed in the Fruit (as in an apple cut across the diameter). There is a thread of life that has eternally endured. There is the Seed within us, the Dark Shining One, already present, simply awaiting its time of awakening. It may not be in the form we had in mind. To perform the magic, we accept all the old shapes of our lives, and ultimately of our culture, as compost for the new. We accept the unknowing. We put it all in the pot, consume it all … feed our imaginations good food so that the new may emerge. We may make “re-solutions.” We transform the old into the new in our own bodyminds – we are the transformers. While it is true that we give ourselves over to the Great Transformer, the Old One’s process – we are She, and thus we play our part in the transforming, in the imagining, in the manifesting.
NOTES:
[i] Swimme and Berry, The Universe Story, 75-77.
[ii] Brian Swimme’s term for the void out of which all arises, The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos, 97.
[iii] Jean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin (Athens Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1985).
[iv] Reference may be made to the PaGaian Wheel of the Year diagram in Chapter Two, for Samhain’s placement and context. Also here: https://pagaian.org/pagaian-wheel-of-the-year/ .
[v] 8-9.
[vi] Ibid., 8.
[vii] This is also discussed in Livingstone, PaGaian Cosmology, 57.
[viii] Melissa Raphael, Thealogy and Embodiment, 270.
[ix] Modern astrophysics has found that “dark energy” makes up 73% of Universe and “cold dark matter” 23%, the ordinary matter of which we are made is 4%.
REFERENCES:
Gebser, Jean. The Ever-Present Origin, translated by Noel Barstad with Algis Mickunas. Athens Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1985.
Livingstone, Glenys. PaGaian Cosmology: Re-inventing Earth-based Goddess Religion. Nebraska: iUniverse, 2005.
Raphael, Melissa. Thealogy and Embodiment: the Post-Patriarchal Reconstruction of Female Sexuality. Sheffield: Sheffield Press, 1996.
Swimme, Brian. The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos. New York: Orbis, 1996.
Swimme, Brian and Berry, Thomas. The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.